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Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82
The astonishing, hitherto unknown truths about a disease that transformed the United States at its birth
A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the American Revolution began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America.
By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Québec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.
A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the American Revolution began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America.
By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Québec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 171 reviews
May 10, 2011
The smallpox epidemic that covered the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada to Mexico in the late 1700s is something that very few people have covered and this book could have been very very interesting. As it was I learned a lot about not only the smallpox epidemic, but also about what was going on elsewhere on the North American continent at the time of the American Revolution. It was very interesting to learn how the smallpox epidemic affected the Revolution as well as the fur trade in Canada and Spanish expansion in the West. This book was well-researched and included a lot of primary source material.
I had several problems with the book. First of all, though this is a very interesting topic it really was not enough to fill a whole book with. It would have been better if it was part of a larger work on the American Revolution or North American colonies. Being in a 300+ page book meant that it got very repetitive. The author kept reiterating the same points over and over again. She also would say something like "there's no way to tell where the Pacific Northwest Native Americans acquired smallpox from" and then spend 30 pages trying to tell just that. The book got very annoying after the first few chapters and I really just skimmed the last 100 pages. I would recommend this book for someone who is very interested in smallpox but not for the casual reader.
Reading Scavenger Hunt: North Carolina
I had several problems with the book. First of all, though this is a very interesting topic it really was not enough to fill a whole book with. It would have been better if it was part of a larger work on the American Revolution or North American colonies. Being in a 300+ page book meant that it got very repetitive. The author kept reiterating the same points over and over again. She also would say something like "there's no way to tell where the Pacific Northwest Native Americans acquired smallpox from" and then spend 30 pages trying to tell just that. The book got very annoying after the first few chapters and I really just skimmed the last 100 pages. I would recommend this book for someone who is very interested in smallpox but not for the casual reader.
Reading Scavenger Hunt: North Carolina
October 21, 2020
This book brings together so many other books and stories that I have encountered.
We know that Small Pox was an issue around the revolution, but we do not think about the fact that it affected the whole of North America.
We do not think about the choices that were made at different points in time. For example, we know that Mount Vernon was a horrendous year for the revolutionary army. It is often presented as a turning point in the Revolutionary War. But rarely do we realize that it was the first organized attempt at widespread immunizations in the United States!
Washington intentionally had his troops infected with Small Pox so that they would be immune when fighting the war.
Nor do we realize that small pox played an early role in killing off millions of native Americans across Canada, the great plains, the Texas region, California, and the north west. This book traces the illness (sometimes trying to piece together the path) of the illness and how it affected Americans.
For what it is worth, by the time Lewis and Clark traversed the continent, the disease had already spread. Lewis and Clark noted the symptoms and evidence of Pox in their journals.
We know that Small Pox was an issue around the revolution, but we do not think about the fact that it affected the whole of North America.
We do not think about the choices that were made at different points in time. For example, we know that Mount Vernon was a horrendous year for the revolutionary army. It is often presented as a turning point in the Revolutionary War. But rarely do we realize that it was the first organized attempt at widespread immunizations in the United States!
Washington intentionally had his troops infected with Small Pox so that they would be immune when fighting the war.
Nor do we realize that small pox played an early role in killing off millions of native Americans across Canada, the great plains, the Texas region, California, and the north west. This book traces the illness (sometimes trying to piece together the path) of the illness and how it affected Americans.
For what it is worth, by the time Lewis and Clark traversed the continent, the disease had already spread. Lewis and Clark noted the symptoms and evidence of Pox in their journals.
December 24, 2014
I am giving this 4 stars for breadth rather than readability. Pox Americana is worth reading but be prepared for a lot of statistical detail.
Thoughts on the book:
-Colonial history often rests on the idea of the 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard, this book explores a broad interwoven system of trade and conflict between native tribes that proved to be a powerful highway for the virus. We so often think of globalization as being a modern concept, the spread of small pox in only a few years across the continent belies that it is just a product of the 20th century.
-We in the modern world rarely appreciate what it was like to live with these devastating diseases. It makes me appreciate so much more why we need to contain modern contagions such as ebola.
-Westward migration may not have been so easy if the native tribes had not lost so many,it reminds of the fundamental social changes you see recorded in Europe after the black death.
Thoughts on the book:
-Colonial history often rests on the idea of the 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard, this book explores a broad interwoven system of trade and conflict between native tribes that proved to be a powerful highway for the virus. We so often think of globalization as being a modern concept, the spread of small pox in only a few years across the continent belies that it is just a product of the 20th century.
-We in the modern world rarely appreciate what it was like to live with these devastating diseases. It makes me appreciate so much more why we need to contain modern contagions such as ebola.
-Westward migration may not have been so easy if the native tribes had not lost so many,it reminds of the fundamental social changes you see recorded in Europe after the black death.
January 1, 2021
Review of: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn
by Stan Prager (7-9-20)
Imagine there’s a virus sweeping across the land claiming untold victims, the agent of the disease poorly understood, the population in terror of an unseen enemy that rages mercilessly through entire communities, leaving in its wake an exponential toll of victims. As this review goes to press amid an alarming spike in new Coronavirus cases, Americans don’t need to stretch their collective imagination very far to envisage that at all. But now look back nearly two and a half centuries and consider an even worse case scenario: a war is on for the existential survival of our fledgling nation, a struggle compromised by mass attrition in the Continental Army due to another kind of virus, and the epidemic it spawns is characterized by symptoms and outcomes that are nothing less than nightmarish by any standard, then or now. For the culprit then was smallpox, one of the most dread diseases in human history.
This nearly forgotten chapter in America’s past left a deep impact on the course of the Revolution that has been long overshadowed by outsize events in the War of Independence and the birth of the Republic. This neglect has been masterfully redressed by Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, a brilliantly conceived and extremely well-written account by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Elizabeth A. Fenn. One of the advantages of having a fine personal library in your home is the delight of going to a random shelf and plucking off an edition that almost perfectly suits your current interests, a volume that has been sitting there unread for years or even decades, just waiting for your fingertips to locate it. Such was the case with my signed first edition of Pox Americana, a used bookstore find that turned out to be a serendipitous companion to my self-quarantine for Coronavirus, the great pandemic of our times.
As horrific as COVID-19 has been for us—as of this morning we are up to one hundred thirty four thousand deaths and three million cases in the United States, a significant portion of the more than half million dead and nearly twelve million cases worldwide—smallpox, known as “Variola,” was far, far worse. In fact, almost unimaginably worse. Not only was it more than three times more contagious than Coronavirus, but rather than a mortality rate that ranges in the low single digits with COVID (the verdict’s not yet in), variola on average claimed an astonishing thirty percent of its victims, who often suffered horribly in the course of the illness and into their death throes, while survivors were frequently left disfigured by extensive scarring, and many were left blind. Smallpox has a long history that dates back to at least the third century BCE, as evidenced in Egyptian mummies. There were reportedly still fifteen million cases a year as late as 1967. In between it claimed untold hundreds of millions of lives over the years—some three hundred million in the twentieth century alone—until its ultimate eradication in 1980. There is perhaps some tragic irony that we are beset by Coronavirus on the fortieth anniversary of that milestone …
I typically eschew long excerpts for reviews, but Variola was so horrifying and Fenn writes so well that I believe it would be a disservice to do other than let her describe it here:
Headache, backache, fever, vomiting, and general malaise all are among the initial signs of infection. The headache can be splitting; the backache, excruciating … The fever usually abates after the first day or two … But … relief is fleeting. By the fourth day … the fever creeps upward again, and the first smallpox sores appear in the mouth, throat, and nasal passages …The rash now moves quickly. Over a twenty-four-hour period, it extends itself from the mucous membranes to the surface of the skin. On some, it turns inward, hemorrhaging subcutaneously. These victims die early, bleeding from the gums, eyes, nose, and other orifices. In most cases, however, the rash turns outward, covering the victim in raised pustules that concentrate in precisely the places where they will cause the most physical pain and psychological anguish: The soles of the feet, the palms of the hands, the face, forearms, neck, and back are focal points of the eruption … If the pustules remain discrete—if they do not run together— the prognosis is good. But if they converge upon one another in a single oozing mass, it is not. This is called confluent smallpox … For some, as the rash progresses in the mouth and throat, drinking becomes difficult, and dehydration follows. Often, an odor peculiar to smallpox develops… Patients at this stage of the disease can be hard to recognize. If damage to the eyes occurs, it begins now … Scabs start to form after two weeks of suffering … In confluent or semiconfluent cases of the disease, scabbing can encrust most of the body, making any movement excruciating … [One observation of such afflicted Native Americans noted that] “They lye on their hard matts, the poxe breaking and mattering, and runing one into another, their skin cleaving … to the matts they lye on; when they turne them, a whole side will flea of[f] at once.” … Death, when it occurs, usually comes after ten to sixteen days of suffering. Thereafter, the risk drops significantly … and unsightly scars replace scabs and pustules … the usual course of the disease—from initial infection to the loss of all scabs—runs a little over a month. Patients remain contagious until the last scab falls off … Most survivors bear … numerous scars, and some are blinded. But despite the consequences, those who live through the illness can count themselves fortunate. Immune for life, they need never fear smallpox again. [p16-20]
Smallpox was an unfortunate component of the siege of Boston by the British in 1775, but—as Fenn explains—it was far worse for Bostonians than the Redcoats besieging them. This was because smallpox was a fact of life in eighteenth century Europe—a series of outbreaks left about four hundred thousand people dead every year, and about a third of the survivors were blinded. As awful as that may seem, it meant that the vast majority of British soldiers had been exposed to the virus and were thus immune. Not so for the colonists, who not only had experienced less outbreaks but frequently lived in more rural settings at a greater distance from one another, which slowed exposure, leaving a far smaller quantity of those who could count on immunity to spare them. Nothing fuels the spread of a pestilence better than a crowded bottlenecked urban environment—such as Boston in 1775—except perhaps great encampments of susceptible men from disparate geographies suddenly crammed together, as was characteristic of the nascent Continental Army. To make matters worse, there was some credible evidence that the Brits at times engaged in a kind of embryonic biological warfare by deliberately sending known infected individuals back to the Colonial lines. All of this conspired to form a perfect storm for disaster.
Our late eighteenth-century forebears had a couple of things going for them that we lack today. First of all, while it was true that like COVID there was no cure for smallpox, there were ways to mitigate the spread and the severity that were far more effective than our masks and social distancing—or misguided calls to ingest hydroxychloroquine, for that matter. Instead, their otherwise primitive medical toolkit did contain inoculation, an ancient technique that had only become known to the west in relatively recent times. Now, it is important to emphasize that inoculation—also known as “variolation”—is not comparable to vaccination, which did not come along until closer to the end of the century. Not for the squeamish, variolation instead involved deliberately inserting the live smallpox virus from scabs or pustules into superficial incisions in a healthy subject’s arm. The result was an actual case of smallpox, but generally a much milder one than if contracted from another infected person. Recovered, the survivor would walk away with permanent immunity. The downside was that some did not survive, and all remained contagious for the full course of the disease. This meant that the inoculated also had to be quarantined, no easy task in an army camp, for example.
The other thing they had going for them back then was a competent leader who took epidemics and how to contain them quite seriously—none other than George Washington himself. Washington was not president at the time, of course, but he was the commander of the Continental Army, and perhaps the most prominent man in the rebellious colonies. Like many of history’s notable figures, Washington was not only gifted with qualities such as courage, intelligence, and good sense, but also luck. In this case, Washington’s good fortune was to contract—and survive—smallpox as a young man, granting him immunity. But it was likewise the good fortune of the emerging new nation to have Washington in command. Initially reluctant to advance inoculation—not because he doubted the science but rather because he feared it might accelerate the spread of smallpox—he soon concluded that only a systematic program of variolation could save the army, and the Revolution! Washington’s other gifts—for organization and discipline—set in motion mass inoculations and enforced isolation of those affected. Absent this effort, it is likely that the War of Independence—ever a long shot—may not have succeeded.
Fenn argues convincingly that the course of the war was significantly affected by Variola in several arenas, most prominently in its savaging of Continental forces during the disastrous invasion of Quebec, which culminated in Benedict Arnold’s battered forces being driven back to Fort Ticonderoga. And in the southern theater, enslaved blacks flocked to British lines, drawn by enticements to freedom, only to fall victim en masse to smallpox, and then tragically find themselves largely abandoned to suffering and death as the Brits retreated. There is a good deal more of this stuff, and many students of the American Revolution will find themselves wondering—as I did—why this fascinating perspective is so conspicuously absent in most treatments of this era?
Remarkably, despite the bounty of material, emphasis on the Revolution only occupies the first third of the book, leaving far more to explore as the virus travels to the west and southwest, and then on to Mexico, as well as to the Pacific northwest. As Fenn reminds us again and again, smallpox comes from where smallpox has been, and she painstakingly tracks hypothetical routes of the epidemic. Tragic bystanders in its path were frequently Native Americans, who typically manifested more severe symptoms and experienced greater rates of mortality. It has been estimated that perhaps ninety percent of pre-contact indigenous inhabitants of the Americas were exterminated by exposure to European diseases for which they had no immunity, and smallpox was one of the great vehicles of that annihilation. Variola proved to be especially lethal as a “virgin soil” epidemic, and Native Americans not unexpectedly suffered far greater casualties than other populations, resulting in death on such a wide scale that entire tribes simply disappeared to history.
No review can properly capture all the ground that Fenn covers in this outstanding book, nor praise her achievement adequately. It is especially rare when a historian combines a highly original thesis with exhaustive research, keen analysis, and exceptional talent with a pen to deliver a magnificent work such as Pox Americana. And perhaps never has there been a moment when this book could find a greater relevance to readers than to Americans in 2020.
Review of: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn https://regarp.com/2020/07/09/review-...
This review is also available as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify & Podbean here: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/p... ... I encourage you to download and share it in your network. Many more reviews on an eclectic array of fiction and nonfiction books are available at www.regarp.com and www.regarpbookblogpod.com Have a great day!
by Stan Prager (7-9-20)
Imagine there’s a virus sweeping across the land claiming untold victims, the agent of the disease poorly understood, the population in terror of an unseen enemy that rages mercilessly through entire communities, leaving in its wake an exponential toll of victims. As this review goes to press amid an alarming spike in new Coronavirus cases, Americans don’t need to stretch their collective imagination very far to envisage that at all. But now look back nearly two and a half centuries and consider an even worse case scenario: a war is on for the existential survival of our fledgling nation, a struggle compromised by mass attrition in the Continental Army due to another kind of virus, and the epidemic it spawns is characterized by symptoms and outcomes that are nothing less than nightmarish by any standard, then or now. For the culprit then was smallpox, one of the most dread diseases in human history.
This nearly forgotten chapter in America’s past left a deep impact on the course of the Revolution that has been long overshadowed by outsize events in the War of Independence and the birth of the Republic. This neglect has been masterfully redressed by Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, a brilliantly conceived and extremely well-written account by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Elizabeth A. Fenn. One of the advantages of having a fine personal library in your home is the delight of going to a random shelf and plucking off an edition that almost perfectly suits your current interests, a volume that has been sitting there unread for years or even decades, just waiting for your fingertips to locate it. Such was the case with my signed first edition of Pox Americana, a used bookstore find that turned out to be a serendipitous companion to my self-quarantine for Coronavirus, the great pandemic of our times.
As horrific as COVID-19 has been for us—as of this morning we are up to one hundred thirty four thousand deaths and three million cases in the United States, a significant portion of the more than half million dead and nearly twelve million cases worldwide—smallpox, known as “Variola,” was far, far worse. In fact, almost unimaginably worse. Not only was it more than three times more contagious than Coronavirus, but rather than a mortality rate that ranges in the low single digits with COVID (the verdict’s not yet in), variola on average claimed an astonishing thirty percent of its victims, who often suffered horribly in the course of the illness and into their death throes, while survivors were frequently left disfigured by extensive scarring, and many were left blind. Smallpox has a long history that dates back to at least the third century BCE, as evidenced in Egyptian mummies. There were reportedly still fifteen million cases a year as late as 1967. In between it claimed untold hundreds of millions of lives over the years—some three hundred million in the twentieth century alone—until its ultimate eradication in 1980. There is perhaps some tragic irony that we are beset by Coronavirus on the fortieth anniversary of that milestone …
I typically eschew long excerpts for reviews, but Variola was so horrifying and Fenn writes so well that I believe it would be a disservice to do other than let her describe it here:
Headache, backache, fever, vomiting, and general malaise all are among the initial signs of infection. The headache can be splitting; the backache, excruciating … The fever usually abates after the first day or two … But … relief is fleeting. By the fourth day … the fever creeps upward again, and the first smallpox sores appear in the mouth, throat, and nasal passages …The rash now moves quickly. Over a twenty-four-hour period, it extends itself from the mucous membranes to the surface of the skin. On some, it turns inward, hemorrhaging subcutaneously. These victims die early, bleeding from the gums, eyes, nose, and other orifices. In most cases, however, the rash turns outward, covering the victim in raised pustules that concentrate in precisely the places where they will cause the most physical pain and psychological anguish: The soles of the feet, the palms of the hands, the face, forearms, neck, and back are focal points of the eruption … If the pustules remain discrete—if they do not run together— the prognosis is good. But if they converge upon one another in a single oozing mass, it is not. This is called confluent smallpox … For some, as the rash progresses in the mouth and throat, drinking becomes difficult, and dehydration follows. Often, an odor peculiar to smallpox develops… Patients at this stage of the disease can be hard to recognize. If damage to the eyes occurs, it begins now … Scabs start to form after two weeks of suffering … In confluent or semiconfluent cases of the disease, scabbing can encrust most of the body, making any movement excruciating … [One observation of such afflicted Native Americans noted that] “They lye on their hard matts, the poxe breaking and mattering, and runing one into another, their skin cleaving … to the matts they lye on; when they turne them, a whole side will flea of[f] at once.” … Death, when it occurs, usually comes after ten to sixteen days of suffering. Thereafter, the risk drops significantly … and unsightly scars replace scabs and pustules … the usual course of the disease—from initial infection to the loss of all scabs—runs a little over a month. Patients remain contagious until the last scab falls off … Most survivors bear … numerous scars, and some are blinded. But despite the consequences, those who live through the illness can count themselves fortunate. Immune for life, they need never fear smallpox again. [p16-20]
Smallpox was an unfortunate component of the siege of Boston by the British in 1775, but—as Fenn explains—it was far worse for Bostonians than the Redcoats besieging them. This was because smallpox was a fact of life in eighteenth century Europe—a series of outbreaks left about four hundred thousand people dead every year, and about a third of the survivors were blinded. As awful as that may seem, it meant that the vast majority of British soldiers had been exposed to the virus and were thus immune. Not so for the colonists, who not only had experienced less outbreaks but frequently lived in more rural settings at a greater distance from one another, which slowed exposure, leaving a far smaller quantity of those who could count on immunity to spare them. Nothing fuels the spread of a pestilence better than a crowded bottlenecked urban environment—such as Boston in 1775—except perhaps great encampments of susceptible men from disparate geographies suddenly crammed together, as was characteristic of the nascent Continental Army. To make matters worse, there was some credible evidence that the Brits at times engaged in a kind of embryonic biological warfare by deliberately sending known infected individuals back to the Colonial lines. All of this conspired to form a perfect storm for disaster.
Our late eighteenth-century forebears had a couple of things going for them that we lack today. First of all, while it was true that like COVID there was no cure for smallpox, there were ways to mitigate the spread and the severity that were far more effective than our masks and social distancing—or misguided calls to ingest hydroxychloroquine, for that matter. Instead, their otherwise primitive medical toolkit did contain inoculation, an ancient technique that had only become known to the west in relatively recent times. Now, it is important to emphasize that inoculation—also known as “variolation”—is not comparable to vaccination, which did not come along until closer to the end of the century. Not for the squeamish, variolation instead involved deliberately inserting the live smallpox virus from scabs or pustules into superficial incisions in a healthy subject’s arm. The result was an actual case of smallpox, but generally a much milder one than if contracted from another infected person. Recovered, the survivor would walk away with permanent immunity. The downside was that some did not survive, and all remained contagious for the full course of the disease. This meant that the inoculated also had to be quarantined, no easy task in an army camp, for example.
The other thing they had going for them back then was a competent leader who took epidemics and how to contain them quite seriously—none other than George Washington himself. Washington was not president at the time, of course, but he was the commander of the Continental Army, and perhaps the most prominent man in the rebellious colonies. Like many of history’s notable figures, Washington was not only gifted with qualities such as courage, intelligence, and good sense, but also luck. In this case, Washington’s good fortune was to contract—and survive—smallpox as a young man, granting him immunity. But it was likewise the good fortune of the emerging new nation to have Washington in command. Initially reluctant to advance inoculation—not because he doubted the science but rather because he feared it might accelerate the spread of smallpox—he soon concluded that only a systematic program of variolation could save the army, and the Revolution! Washington’s other gifts—for organization and discipline—set in motion mass inoculations and enforced isolation of those affected. Absent this effort, it is likely that the War of Independence—ever a long shot—may not have succeeded.
Fenn argues convincingly that the course of the war was significantly affected by Variola in several arenas, most prominently in its savaging of Continental forces during the disastrous invasion of Quebec, which culminated in Benedict Arnold’s battered forces being driven back to Fort Ticonderoga. And in the southern theater, enslaved blacks flocked to British lines, drawn by enticements to freedom, only to fall victim en masse to smallpox, and then tragically find themselves largely abandoned to suffering and death as the Brits retreated. There is a good deal more of this stuff, and many students of the American Revolution will find themselves wondering—as I did—why this fascinating perspective is so conspicuously absent in most treatments of this era?
Remarkably, despite the bounty of material, emphasis on the Revolution only occupies the first third of the book, leaving far more to explore as the virus travels to the west and southwest, and then on to Mexico, as well as to the Pacific northwest. As Fenn reminds us again and again, smallpox comes from where smallpox has been, and she painstakingly tracks hypothetical routes of the epidemic. Tragic bystanders in its path were frequently Native Americans, who typically manifested more severe symptoms and experienced greater rates of mortality. It has been estimated that perhaps ninety percent of pre-contact indigenous inhabitants of the Americas were exterminated by exposure to European diseases for which they had no immunity, and smallpox was one of the great vehicles of that annihilation. Variola proved to be especially lethal as a “virgin soil” epidemic, and Native Americans not unexpectedly suffered far greater casualties than other populations, resulting in death on such a wide scale that entire tribes simply disappeared to history.
No review can properly capture all the ground that Fenn covers in this outstanding book, nor praise her achievement adequately. It is especially rare when a historian combines a highly original thesis with exhaustive research, keen analysis, and exceptional talent with a pen to deliver a magnificent work such as Pox Americana. And perhaps never has there been a moment when this book could find a greater relevance to readers than to Americans in 2020.
Review of: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn https://regarp.com/2020/07/09/review-...
This review is also available as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify & Podbean here: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/p... ... I encourage you to download and share it in your network. Many more reviews on an eclectic array of fiction and nonfiction books are available at www.regarp.com and www.regarpbookblogpod.com Have a great day!
January 18, 2025
Pox Americana is the second history in my inadvertent plague duology, the first being Eliot Cohen’s Pox Romana, which I reviewed here. There are many parallels in the eras covered in these books. Both recount a devastating plague that disrupted long-standing social, economic and political status quos in times of increasing contact between hitherto isolated regions and times of imperial expansion. Where Cohen’s analysis was largely limited to observing that plague’s effects indirectly, Fenn has access to a wider range of sources that directly discuss the disease – in this case the well-known smallpox virus – that gives us a clearer picture of what was happening on the ground as it ravaged an entire continent. I’m sure, had we similar sources for the second century CE, they’d describe the same thing: Vulnerable populations, empty villages, piles of bones & the disruption of the lives of the survivors.
Smallpox had been endemic in Europe at least since the 16th century CE and so was present in the Americas from the beginning of European colonization but it wasn’t until the late 18th century that all the factors came together to produce a continent-wide plague that lasted from about 1775-82 (coincidentally the years of the American Revolution).
Recommended.
[Sidenote: The smallpox epidemic was the first case of mandated inoculations in American history. George Washington required all his troops to be inoculated against the disease. Unlike vaccinations, which too many present-day Americans think are part of a plot to destroy the country, inoculations were far more dangerous. The procedure involved exposing a person to the actual smallpox (albeit in a diluted form), which resulted in contracting the disease. The fatality rate was far less, however (around 2-3% maybe), but it was still a risk. And the recovery time was just as long: About a month.]
Smallpox had been endemic in Europe at least since the 16th century CE and so was present in the Americas from the beginning of European colonization but it wasn’t until the late 18th century that all the factors came together to produce a continent-wide plague that lasted from about 1775-82 (coincidentally the years of the American Revolution).
The American Revolution, the seminal event of the era, was not excluded from Variola’s maelstrom. Nor did events stop elsewhere while the revolutionary conflict was waged. The very breadth of Variola’s movement redirects our attention to turmoils occurring in places far removed from the well-known fields of battle. The pestilence can teach us the ways in which other upheavals – native warfare, missionization, the fur trade, and the acquisition of horses and guns, all of which enabled Variola to be transmitted – had already reshaped human life on the North American continent. The movement of the virus from one human being to another shows us how people actually lived in the late eighteenth century. For despite the political, social, and racial boundaries of the day, people rubbed elbows: They lived side by side, they talked, they fought, they traveled, they traded, and in these daily transactions, they passed Variola on to one another (p. 275).
Recommended.
[Sidenote: The smallpox epidemic was the first case of mandated inoculations in American history. George Washington required all his troops to be inoculated against the disease. Unlike vaccinations, which too many present-day Americans think are part of a plot to destroy the country, inoculations were far more dangerous. The procedure involved exposing a person to the actual smallpox (albeit in a diluted form), which resulted in contracting the disease. The fatality rate was far less, however (around 2-3% maybe), but it was still a risk. And the recovery time was just as long: About a month.]
May 28, 2011
Enjoyed learning about the smallpox epidemic of the 1700s and liked how the author divided the book into three sections through the chapters; the Colonies, then Mexico and finally the Indian natives on the Pacific coast / Alaska.
Sprinkled through out the book are some individual stories, and (in my copy at least) there are a few photographs of paintings, pictures and other smallpox plague items.
She has added some maps along with the pictures, but while they are fine being included with the other photos, I think it would have been better to place those maps with the corresponding chapters / sections as it would make it easier to see the patterns.
It's a little hard to read as at times it seems that the author took her information and simply placed it on a time line. There were a few parts where I needed to stop reading so that my brain wouldn't overload on pure facts.
On the other hand, this is a nicely put together book and I think that she did a wonderful job researching the topic. I would read any other books she has / will publish.
Sprinkled through out the book are some individual stories, and (in my copy at least) there are a few photographs of paintings, pictures and other smallpox plague items.
She has added some maps along with the pictures, but while they are fine being included with the other photos, I think it would have been better to place those maps with the corresponding chapters / sections as it would make it easier to see the patterns.
It's a little hard to read as at times it seems that the author took her information and simply placed it on a time line. There were a few parts where I needed to stop reading so that my brain wouldn't overload on pure facts.
On the other hand, this is a nicely put together book and I think that she did a wonderful job researching the topic. I would read any other books she has / will publish.
May 28, 2016
Subject matter: fascinating. Writing: awful. Pages upon pages of speculation about how the smallpox didn't get to native Americans in Washington State. Lots of similar details that make it, honestly, read more like a thesis than a book.
December 8, 2016
This originated as an opinion essay for class and I have adapted it for a review, but because of this it is a little different in tone than my regular reviews.
The experience of reading Pox Americana was a very different one for me as I was not all that sure how this epidemic would relate to American history during the Revolution. I soon found myself thoroughly engrossed in the material and actually interested in learning more. Disease is always a common factor in war, but for me, the association of smallpox with history had always been regarding the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the effect of its arrival on their way of life; I had not previously considered how it might have affected the colonists and almost changed the outcome of history as we know it.
I have never read a microhistory on disease, or for that matter any type of book on disease. That has always been my husband’s area of interest and I was happy to leave that study to him; so I was more than a little hesitant about approaching a history on smallpox (remember that this wasn’t originally by choice). One thing that I appreciated early on, rather surprisingly, was the author’s fairly detailed discussion of the effects of smallpox. While disturbing, especially when reading these passages while eating lunch, it gave me a much deeper understanding of just how devastating the disease would have been to those suffering from its effects during any time period. I have never even had the chicken pox and therefore did not even have that terrible comparison to draw upon when considering smallpox previously in the limited experience I have had with the subject. It also is not a disease that exists in nature today, only in a secured laboratory, which means that I have not heard anything about the disease even in passing. While that portion of the book might have been a little bit gruesome, I found it necessary to my understanding of how devastating the disease would have been to an already hard-pressed army.
I can understand why a subject like the smallpox epidemic might not be covered in American history survey classes in high school or college. In their grand scheme of imparting the most important information on the American Revolution, it is not absolutely necessary to understand the effects of this disease on the troops. At that stage, the big names and events will serve their purpose and there is usually some general discussion of camp diseases that will vaguely touch on the effects of health on army readiness. However, for a Masters level class or for those who are deeply interested in American history, where we should already have a solid understanding of the basic points of the history, I think that Pox Americana provided another level of valuable analysis to dig deeper into why events transpired how they did and allow us to consider, even tangentially, how history might have been different if not for General Washington’s decision to inoculate the troops at Valley Forge. That decision is just as significant a turning point in the American Revolution as the outcome of the Battle of Saratoga. The rate at which smallpox was devastating the American army was placing it in a dire situation, especially when compared to the relative health of the British regulars; you could almost see the crush of the American troops coming. Knowing this, my opinion of General Washington has thus improved after having considered just how difficult of a decision it was to decide to take the chance with inoculation when so many at the time were against it and his troops so badly needed it. It is a great leader who can justify taking an immense risk as that given all the marks against it. If his great leap of faith had gone wrong, the Americans might have lost the war, but they might have lost even if he did not.
We were only required to read a couple of chapters of this book for class, but I was interested enough to pick it back up and finish the book. It explored all areas of the North American continent and it was interesting to see how the disease effected the regions differently; although I will admit that the chapters assigned were the most interesting. Some of the later chapters became much more dry resulting in the lower rating.
While this book was a history of a devastating disease in a localized area, it served an even greater purpose: to bring to light a chronically overlooked, but critical element in the history of the Revolutionary War. The author tells us in her introduction to the book that the outbreak of smallpox killed more people during the war years than resulted from combat with the enemy and that just as much as the war, this epidemic was a defining characteristic for many who lived through that time. Phrases like this do not suggest that the effect of smallpox on the history of the United States should be taken lightly. Disease often kills more people during wartime than the battles do, but it is often the result of many different camp diseases, not just one disease, showing just how powerful smallpox was. Additionally, for something to be a defining characteristic in someone’s life, especially during a time when there was so much change happening in the country to begin with, that means it was perceived to be of vital importance. For these reasons I am grateful to have had the opportunity to explore the topic and further my understanding of the myriad of elements that comprised the American Revolution years. For me, the most eye-opening aspect was the discussion on the differences between how smallpox effected the British troops versus the American troops. Not only did it help me to understand to a greater extent the uphill battle that Washington and his men were facing, but it also helped draw another distinction showing how far the Americans had come from the way of life of the Old World. Other texts have illustrated how their manner of speech had changed and customs began to differ, but nothing is as striking as their susceptibility to a common disease in their former motherland. It is even more interesting when you consider that so many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas died after first contact because of the introduction of this disease by explorers who were not affected by it and that not so many years later, the descendants of these settlers were now being attacked by that very same disease, while again the “invaders” were immune. It makes a very interesting point for further consideration.
This review was previously posted at my blog, The Maiden's Court
The experience of reading Pox Americana was a very different one for me as I was not all that sure how this epidemic would relate to American history during the Revolution. I soon found myself thoroughly engrossed in the material and actually interested in learning more. Disease is always a common factor in war, but for me, the association of smallpox with history had always been regarding the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the effect of its arrival on their way of life; I had not previously considered how it might have affected the colonists and almost changed the outcome of history as we know it.
I have never read a microhistory on disease, or for that matter any type of book on disease. That has always been my husband’s area of interest and I was happy to leave that study to him; so I was more than a little hesitant about approaching a history on smallpox (remember that this wasn’t originally by choice). One thing that I appreciated early on, rather surprisingly, was the author’s fairly detailed discussion of the effects of smallpox. While disturbing, especially when reading these passages while eating lunch, it gave me a much deeper understanding of just how devastating the disease would have been to those suffering from its effects during any time period. I have never even had the chicken pox and therefore did not even have that terrible comparison to draw upon when considering smallpox previously in the limited experience I have had with the subject. It also is not a disease that exists in nature today, only in a secured laboratory, which means that I have not heard anything about the disease even in passing. While that portion of the book might have been a little bit gruesome, I found it necessary to my understanding of how devastating the disease would have been to an already hard-pressed army.
I can understand why a subject like the smallpox epidemic might not be covered in American history survey classes in high school or college. In their grand scheme of imparting the most important information on the American Revolution, it is not absolutely necessary to understand the effects of this disease on the troops. At that stage, the big names and events will serve their purpose and there is usually some general discussion of camp diseases that will vaguely touch on the effects of health on army readiness. However, for a Masters level class or for those who are deeply interested in American history, where we should already have a solid understanding of the basic points of the history, I think that Pox Americana provided another level of valuable analysis to dig deeper into why events transpired how they did and allow us to consider, even tangentially, how history might have been different if not for General Washington’s decision to inoculate the troops at Valley Forge. That decision is just as significant a turning point in the American Revolution as the outcome of the Battle of Saratoga. The rate at which smallpox was devastating the American army was placing it in a dire situation, especially when compared to the relative health of the British regulars; you could almost see the crush of the American troops coming. Knowing this, my opinion of General Washington has thus improved after having considered just how difficult of a decision it was to decide to take the chance with inoculation when so many at the time were against it and his troops so badly needed it. It is a great leader who can justify taking an immense risk as that given all the marks against it. If his great leap of faith had gone wrong, the Americans might have lost the war, but they might have lost even if he did not.
We were only required to read a couple of chapters of this book for class, but I was interested enough to pick it back up and finish the book. It explored all areas of the North American continent and it was interesting to see how the disease effected the regions differently; although I will admit that the chapters assigned were the most interesting. Some of the later chapters became much more dry resulting in the lower rating.
While this book was a history of a devastating disease in a localized area, it served an even greater purpose: to bring to light a chronically overlooked, but critical element in the history of the Revolutionary War. The author tells us in her introduction to the book that the outbreak of smallpox killed more people during the war years than resulted from combat with the enemy and that just as much as the war, this epidemic was a defining characteristic for many who lived through that time. Phrases like this do not suggest that the effect of smallpox on the history of the United States should be taken lightly. Disease often kills more people during wartime than the battles do, but it is often the result of many different camp diseases, not just one disease, showing just how powerful smallpox was. Additionally, for something to be a defining characteristic in someone’s life, especially during a time when there was so much change happening in the country to begin with, that means it was perceived to be of vital importance. For these reasons I am grateful to have had the opportunity to explore the topic and further my understanding of the myriad of elements that comprised the American Revolution years. For me, the most eye-opening aspect was the discussion on the differences between how smallpox effected the British troops versus the American troops. Not only did it help me to understand to a greater extent the uphill battle that Washington and his men were facing, but it also helped draw another distinction showing how far the Americans had come from the way of life of the Old World. Other texts have illustrated how their manner of speech had changed and customs began to differ, but nothing is as striking as their susceptibility to a common disease in their former motherland. It is even more interesting when you consider that so many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas died after first contact because of the introduction of this disease by explorers who were not affected by it and that not so many years later, the descendants of these settlers were now being attacked by that very same disease, while again the “invaders” were immune. It makes a very interesting point for further consideration.
This review was previously posted at my blog, The Maiden's Court
November 18, 2020
Three and a half stars. This is an account, fully researched, of how small pox affected the lives of Colonial/Revolutionary Americans as the war unfolded. I learned a lot about how inoculations were as divisive, controversial, and willfully misunderstood as vaccines are today. There are so many parallels between then and now.
September 22, 2022
A well researched, tantalizing tale of smallpox within the Revolutionary period. There was a lot of be learned about the increasing globalization of North America as well as the social responses to this disease . Very fun read!
April 6, 2009
Pox American follows the smallpox epidemic that spread through North America from 1775-1782, tracing its impact on the Revolutionary War and Native American and Colonial society. Historian Elizabeth Fenn is meticulous in chronicling the devastation, using firsthand accounts and surviving records to sketch out the death and fear that followed the disease.
The impact of smallpox on the Revolutionary War occupies much of the book. Epidemiologically, the Americans were at a disadvantage. Smallpox was endemic in Europe, and British soldiers were much more likely to have been exposed to the disease, gaining immunity. This vulnerability led to serious losses during the revolutionary army’s invasion of Canada, as smallpox weakened and killed susceptible soldiers.
George Washington struggled with the decision of whether to inoculate his soldiers. Under the imperfect technique of the time, inoculation was a draining affair, confining inoculees to sickbeds. The process also potentially increased the risks of transmission, as inoculees were contagious during the dormant period that followed inoculation. Fenn skillfully uses this dilemma to build tension in a historic account.
In the post-Revolutionary period, Fenn focuses on the impact of smallpox on Native American populations throughout the continent, offering repeated accounts of decimated villages and devastated cultures. Native peoples were more vulnerable to the disease, and the successive accounts of loss are heart-rending.
The book is thorough and engaging but can be technical in its presentation of history. The larger themes of the Revolutionary War aren’t fleshed out. The author, it seems, is confident that readers will remember battles and developments they may not have encountered since elementary school. But the book is compelling in advancing its central theme: the outsized impact of this continent-wide epidemic.
The impact of smallpox on the Revolutionary War occupies much of the book. Epidemiologically, the Americans were at a disadvantage. Smallpox was endemic in Europe, and British soldiers were much more likely to have been exposed to the disease, gaining immunity. This vulnerability led to serious losses during the revolutionary army’s invasion of Canada, as smallpox weakened and killed susceptible soldiers.
George Washington struggled with the decision of whether to inoculate his soldiers. Under the imperfect technique of the time, inoculation was a draining affair, confining inoculees to sickbeds. The process also potentially increased the risks of transmission, as inoculees were contagious during the dormant period that followed inoculation. Fenn skillfully uses this dilemma to build tension in a historic account.
In the post-Revolutionary period, Fenn focuses on the impact of smallpox on Native American populations throughout the continent, offering repeated accounts of decimated villages and devastated cultures. Native peoples were more vulnerable to the disease, and the successive accounts of loss are heart-rending.
The book is thorough and engaging but can be technical in its presentation of history. The larger themes of the Revolutionary War aren’t fleshed out. The author, it seems, is confident that readers will remember battles and developments they may not have encountered since elementary school. But the book is compelling in advancing its central theme: the outsized impact of this continent-wide epidemic.
December 4, 2021
Found the first third very interesting — that a small pox epidemic from 1775–82 “coincided almost perfectly with the American Revolution and took many more American lives than the war with the British did,” yet it is rarely mentioned in texts on the Revolution. It provided new insight into the patriot defeat at Quebec and, if not for a Washington’s decision to inoculate the Continental Army, who knows if they would have been victorious. The rest followed the path of the virus through Central and North America — heavy on dates and numbers rendering it more of a report.
February 9, 2009
The first part of the book, which describes the impact smallpox had on the American Revolution, was extremely interesting and added another dimension to my understanding of the war. Unfortunately the story went downhill from there and seemed to merely relate one outbreak after another without making a larger point.
March 19, 2012
Technically, this is a good book. Ms. Fenn researched her topic thoroughly and offered up interesting observations of the Revolutionary period and how the spread of small pox influenced the course of American history.
However, it is an extraordinarily dry read and should probably be pursued only by those serious history buffs.
However, it is an extraordinarily dry read and should probably be pursued only by those serious history buffs.
December 18, 2014
This exhaustively researched tome will tell you more than you want to know about small pox during the American Revolution. If diseases are your thing, this is a must read. History is my thing, so I found the focus a bit narrow. Interesting, but dry.
December 11, 2020
A book for my class about epidemics. After a few chapters it got repetitious, but interesting nonetheless.
March 6, 2025
great writer. made a boring topic bearable!
October 28, 2025
Interesting topic, I liked how the virus was described as almost human sometimes.
November 27, 2025
Finally finished this. Interesting but dry.
February 19, 2024
This became very tedious, but I do not blame the author. Smallpox was just really bad over and over again for a really long time.
February 12, 2025
All you really need to do is read the epilogue and that’s it.
November 21, 2017
Amazing historical tragedy and eventual critical decision on thw newborn matter of Smallpox innoculation, and how this trned the tide of the Revolutionary War.
A book to read more than once and; this should be taught in every pre-med class.
A book to read more than once and; this should be taught in every pre-med class.
April 10, 2015
I have been seeing this in used bookstores for years, and I always kind of wanted to read it. Though I notice of late that my reading choices have been horrendously depressing. I was simultaneously reading this book about epidemic smallpox, Drew Faust's book on death and the Civil War, and "The Killing Zone" which is about Cold War murder in Latin America. I need some light comic novels or something.
So I finally bought this at one of the bookstores, and having read it, I can't decide if it is important in any way. I don't mean to dismiss Fenn's accomplishment of identifying this epidemic as a thing that historians had heretofore ignored. It certainly is interesting. During the American Revolution, a massive smallpox epidemic spread all over North America, from Quebec to Boston to the Carolinas to New Orleans, and Mexico City, Santa Fe, then out into the plains and up into the Rockies and over to the Pacific and up into the heart of what is today Canada. Killed thousands of people.
It is definitely good to know this, and I appreciate this as a cross-border, macro kind of history. That's why I picked it up. It is important to look at North America is a whole, to see all the networks and trade connections that could accidentally spread disease, and I liked the way Fenn consistently reminded the reader of the timeline - here's what was going on in New Mexico, or Hudson's Bay, here's what was happening in Boston and Virginia. But is this epidemic actually important? Does this really change any interpretations of history? I mean, we already knew that smallpox spread everywhere, even if we didn't really know much about THIS epidemic in particular. Fenn points out that Washington's decision to inoculate his army was important to the war, so there's that. But I don't know...beyond that, what does this really tell us?
I guess maybe just examining the continent as a whole at the time of the Revolution is important. But I wouldn't assign this book in a course because it would take too long to read for something I would only discuss in one lecture. Maybe I could assign the introduction and one chapter, or Fenn's article, which apparently covers most of this in a shorter package.
So I finally bought this at one of the bookstores, and having read it, I can't decide if it is important in any way. I don't mean to dismiss Fenn's accomplishment of identifying this epidemic as a thing that historians had heretofore ignored. It certainly is interesting. During the American Revolution, a massive smallpox epidemic spread all over North America, from Quebec to Boston to the Carolinas to New Orleans, and Mexico City, Santa Fe, then out into the plains and up into the Rockies and over to the Pacific and up into the heart of what is today Canada. Killed thousands of people.
It is definitely good to know this, and I appreciate this as a cross-border, macro kind of history. That's why I picked it up. It is important to look at North America is a whole, to see all the networks and trade connections that could accidentally spread disease, and I liked the way Fenn consistently reminded the reader of the timeline - here's what was going on in New Mexico, or Hudson's Bay, here's what was happening in Boston and Virginia. But is this epidemic actually important? Does this really change any interpretations of history? I mean, we already knew that smallpox spread everywhere, even if we didn't really know much about THIS epidemic in particular. Fenn points out that Washington's decision to inoculate his army was important to the war, so there's that. But I don't know...beyond that, what does this really tell us?
I guess maybe just examining the continent as a whole at the time of the Revolution is important. But I wouldn't assign this book in a course because it would take too long to read for something I would only discuss in one lecture. Maybe I could assign the introduction and one chapter, or Fenn's article, which apparently covers most of this in a shorter package.
March 25, 2024
Petition for all anti vaxxers to undergo 18th century smallpox inoculation
March 7, 2018
As a museum interpreter, I’ve long related aspects of the story of George Washington and his dogged determination to win the Revolutionary War. Then a friend loaned me her copy of Pox Americana, and now I’ve learned about yet another obstacle that Washington had to vanquish alongside the British forces. I knew that smallpox afflicted the American population for a couple of centuries, but not to the extent that, between 1775 and 1782, it was as deadly as one of the black plague outbreaks that so famously devastated Europe.
Pox Americana is an eye opener. It opens with a description, complete with photos, of the course that smallpox takes, from early exposure to its horrific outbreak to its most frequent outcome, the death of the sufferer. The photos were explicit enough to prompt me to put the book aside for a few days to get over a bout of nausea over what they showed. The narrative provides the history of the inoculation efforts that were opposed by so many, and, once it became evident to Washington that his forces in 1775 Boston were likely to be annihilated by the disease, the process which he went through in order to formulate a plan to save the army as well as the general populace. “Taking the smallpox” via inoculation was no walk in the park. Evidence that British military leaders attempted to employ germ warfare against the American side (Europeans had greater immunity to smallpox due to centuries of exposure) is also examined. Of course, it wasn’t only Caucasian Americans that were susceptible, and the second half of the book follows the spread of the disease to such distant places as Mexico and the Pacific coast. There is also evidence that Native Americans were subjected to germ warfare by the American ruling class.
Pox Americana is not a pleasant book, but it is a well researched study, one that provides new information about a little known crisis in a competent, readable style and format. Without Washington’s foresight, our national anthem might yet be God Save the Queen.
Pox Americana is an eye opener. It opens with a description, complete with photos, of the course that smallpox takes, from early exposure to its horrific outbreak to its most frequent outcome, the death of the sufferer. The photos were explicit enough to prompt me to put the book aside for a few days to get over a bout of nausea over what they showed. The narrative provides the history of the inoculation efforts that were opposed by so many, and, once it became evident to Washington that his forces in 1775 Boston were likely to be annihilated by the disease, the process which he went through in order to formulate a plan to save the army as well as the general populace. “Taking the smallpox” via inoculation was no walk in the park. Evidence that British military leaders attempted to employ germ warfare against the American side (Europeans had greater immunity to smallpox due to centuries of exposure) is also examined. Of course, it wasn’t only Caucasian Americans that were susceptible, and the second half of the book follows the spread of the disease to such distant places as Mexico and the Pacific coast. There is also evidence that Native Americans were subjected to germ warfare by the American ruling class.
Pox Americana is not a pleasant book, but it is a well researched study, one that provides new information about a little known crisis in a competent, readable style and format. Without Washington’s foresight, our national anthem might yet be God Save the Queen.
September 25, 2017
This excellent work shows readers how the American colonists had to overcome more than just Loyalists, escalating war debt, often poor logistics, and the might of the British Regulars and their Hessian mercenaries and Indian allies in order to procure independence. Indeed, Smallpox ravaged the colonies during the struggle for independence and at times placed the outcome of the war in highly unfavorable terms for the revolutionaries.
Smallpox was the deadliest of Old World pathogens transmitted across the Atlantic during the Columbian Exchange. The deadly pathogen was a non-discriminatory killer, to be sure. From New Spain to Virginia to Massachusetts to Canada, the disease proved deadly, even in areas of New Spain where immunities had built up over the years. One cannot help but see Fenn's debt to the seminal works of Alfred Crosby ("The Columbian Exchange") and William McNeill ("Plagues and Peoples") while reading her analysis.
The real strength of Fenn's work is her placing of the event within its global contexts (see especially chapter one). Indeed, as it has become the fashion in modern American Revolution historiography to place events within the contours of Atlantic history - within those trade networks and interactions of peoples and cultures that comprised the Atlantic world - Fenn's work fills a void by showing how disease, spread mainly through trade networks, played a crucial role in the conduct of the war.
The work is not without problems, however. As Fenn acknowledges, statistics for mortality rates are often scant in the colonial records, which makes impossible a complete analysis of the pox's impact.
In the main, I wholeheartedly recommend this study; a study which will continue to make an impact on studies of America's colonial and revolutionary periods and their place within the broader structures of the Atlantic World paradigm.
Michael H. Auterson
Smallpox was the deadliest of Old World pathogens transmitted across the Atlantic during the Columbian Exchange. The deadly pathogen was a non-discriminatory killer, to be sure. From New Spain to Virginia to Massachusetts to Canada, the disease proved deadly, even in areas of New Spain where immunities had built up over the years. One cannot help but see Fenn's debt to the seminal works of Alfred Crosby ("The Columbian Exchange") and William McNeill ("Plagues and Peoples") while reading her analysis.
The real strength of Fenn's work is her placing of the event within its global contexts (see especially chapter one). Indeed, as it has become the fashion in modern American Revolution historiography to place events within the contours of Atlantic history - within those trade networks and interactions of peoples and cultures that comprised the Atlantic world - Fenn's work fills a void by showing how disease, spread mainly through trade networks, played a crucial role in the conduct of the war.
The work is not without problems, however. As Fenn acknowledges, statistics for mortality rates are often scant in the colonial records, which makes impossible a complete analysis of the pox's impact.
In the main, I wholeheartedly recommend this study; a study which will continue to make an impact on studies of America's colonial and revolutionary periods and their place within the broader structures of the Atlantic World paradigm.
Michael H. Auterson
April 20, 2019
Ambitious, fascinating, well researched, well presented. I was familiar with tales of Small Pox in Central America afflicting the Aztecs, and the effects of the more modern Spanish Flu, but this was all new to me.
June 28, 2014
In this work Elizabeth Fenn patiently assembles a previously unknown picture of an epidemic that rolled across North America during the years of the Revolutionary War. Beginning with New England's rebellion against the crown, she charts its passage into the Southern colonies, the urban centers of New Spain, through the west by way of Shoshone horsemen and finally north into the remote villages of the Pacific Northwest and the Hudson Bay fur trading networks below the sub-arctic.
Information about quirky medical practices during this time is always fun. From John Adam's lead poisoning to the class tensions over inoculation, Fenn's exposition of contemporary practices in early chapters is one of the perks of reading this book. Better still is her point that epidemics spread by connection. By following the course of the continent wide epidemic Fenn has found a like of radioactive dye that makes clear the pattern of returning veterans and otherwise unknown Indian trade routes throughout the interior plains.
In her summation, Fenn chalks up the losses across North America at roughly six times the total American deaths in the Revolutionary War, and implicates it in the shift toward foreign soldiers in the Continental Army, the failure of the British to successfully militarily mobilize the slaves who fled to their lines in droves, the weakened resistance of southwestern Indians to Spanish colonization and the domination of the Great Plains by the nomadic Souix rather than the riverine villages of the Mandan.
All in all, pretty good.
Information about quirky medical practices during this time is always fun. From John Adam's lead poisoning to the class tensions over inoculation, Fenn's exposition of contemporary practices in early chapters is one of the perks of reading this book. Better still is her point that epidemics spread by connection. By following the course of the continent wide epidemic Fenn has found a like of radioactive dye that makes clear the pattern of returning veterans and otherwise unknown Indian trade routes throughout the interior plains.
In her summation, Fenn chalks up the losses across North America at roughly six times the total American deaths in the Revolutionary War, and implicates it in the shift toward foreign soldiers in the Continental Army, the failure of the British to successfully militarily mobilize the slaves who fled to their lines in droves, the weakened resistance of southwestern Indians to Spanish colonization and the domination of the Great Plains by the nomadic Souix rather than the riverine villages of the Mandan.
All in all, pretty good.
March 18, 2017
It's a PhD dissertation that's been published for wider consumption but desperately needed another round of editing. The first half of the book is the most interesting, the most on-topic, and the best edited. This focuses tightly on the period and geography of the American Revolution, as the title would suggest the whole book was about. The author clearly lays out how smallpox was transmission and the impact it had on both sides during the conflict.
The second half of the book branches away geographically and in terms of quality. It is marred by frequent spelling errors that slipped through the gaps as well as numerous pointless digressions that either exist to fill pages or show off the breadth of research. The topic sways over to central and south america, to the middle america, and finally up to the northwest. While the stories of explorers finding piles of bones and empty villages are haunting and well-worth discovering, the writer also includes such pointless dalliances as trying to narrow down which expeditions could have brought small pox to the northwest. She does this by covering two or three expeditions in tedious detail before concluding they couldn't have brought the small pox. Had I been the editor, these sections would have been excised with extreme prejudice. If one's topic is the transmission and impact of small pox in north and south america in the late 18th century, don't waste page-space with stories that aren't going anywhere.
The second half of the book branches away geographically and in terms of quality. It is marred by frequent spelling errors that slipped through the gaps as well as numerous pointless digressions that either exist to fill pages or show off the breadth of research. The topic sways over to central and south america, to the middle america, and finally up to the northwest. While the stories of explorers finding piles of bones and empty villages are haunting and well-worth discovering, the writer also includes such pointless dalliances as trying to narrow down which expeditions could have brought small pox to the northwest. She does this by covering two or three expeditions in tedious detail before concluding they couldn't have brought the small pox. Had I been the editor, these sections would have been excised with extreme prejudice. If one's topic is the transmission and impact of small pox in north and south america in the late 18th century, don't waste page-space with stories that aren't going anywhere.
January 10, 2014
Elizabeth Fenn's "Pox Americana" covers the widespread North American outbreaks of Smallpox during the time frame of the American Revolutionary War. These outbreaks ranged from Mexico to Canada, and from the Eastern seaboard to Puget Sound.
And what threads she weaves! Tracing the death and destruction of the epidemic as it affects Native Americans and Europeans in Canada. As it destroys major English military initiatives along the Atlantic Seaboard. As it depopulates remote Mexican villages. As it moves along Plains and Rocky Mountain trade routes, devastating Native American villages along rivers and the Pacific Coastline.
Dr Fenn's research is even more impressive when one realizes that for the time period and peoples affected there are often few to no written records. She is completely transparent with respect to what is conjecture and what is known. And she is completely open as to the data she found and how she used it.
All this and a well story besides! I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Revolutionary War period anywhere in the North American continent, in history, in epidemics, and in the scourge of smallpox. Time spent reading this book will not be wasted.
And what threads she weaves! Tracing the death and destruction of the epidemic as it affects Native Americans and Europeans in Canada. As it destroys major English military initiatives along the Atlantic Seaboard. As it depopulates remote Mexican villages. As it moves along Plains and Rocky Mountain trade routes, devastating Native American villages along rivers and the Pacific Coastline.
Dr Fenn's research is even more impressive when one realizes that for the time period and peoples affected there are often few to no written records. She is completely transparent with respect to what is conjecture and what is known. And she is completely open as to the data she found and how she used it.
All this and a well story besides! I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Revolutionary War period anywhere in the North American continent, in history, in epidemics, and in the scourge of smallpox. Time spent reading this book will not be wasted.
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