Mosquito Empires

Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914

Inbunden, Engelska, 2010

Av J. R. McNeill, Washington DC) McNeill, J. R. (Georgetown University, J. R. Mcneill

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This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2010-01-11
Mått152 x 229 x 25 mm
Vikt740 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieNew Approaches to the Americas
Antal sidor390
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9780521452861
UtmärkelserAlbert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association 2010

Tillhör följande kategorier

Amerikas historia inom Historia och arkeologi
Historia inom Historia och arkeologi

J. R. McNeill is University Professor in the History Department and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His books include The Mountains of the Mediterranean World (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000), co-winner of the World History Association book prize and the Forest History Society book prize and runner-up for the BP Natural World book prize; and most recently The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History (2003), co-authored with his father, William H. McNeill. He has also published more than 40 scholarly articles in professional and scientific journals.

Part I. Setting the Scene: 1. The argument: mosquito determinism and its limits; 2. Atlantic empires and Caribbean ecology; 3. Deadly fevers, deadly doctors; Part II. Imperial Mosquitoes: 4. From Recife to Kourou: yellow fever takes hold, 1620–1764; 5. Cartagena and Havana: yellow fever rampant; Part III. Revolutionary Mosquitoes: 6. Lord Cornwallis vs anopheles quadrimaculatus, 1780–1; 7. Revolutionary fevers: Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba, 1790–1898; 8. Epilogue: vector and virus vanquished.

'For most of the last five centuries, the Atlantic empires - European and North American - wrested, fought wars, and killed thousands of citizens and slaves for possession of the wealth swaying in the fields of the Caribbean islands and coastlines. The dominant factors in the long conflict, no matter what the protagonists claimed, were not political or religious or even economic but septic, that is, the microbes of yellow fever and malaria. J. R. McNeill's book is by far the clearest, best informed, and scientifically accurate of the accounts available on this sugary conflict.' Alfred W. Crosby, University of Texas, Austin