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New Approaches to the Americas
Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914
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.
390 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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April 7, 2023
This was more of a skim than a read, but I learned quite a bit about the influence of yellow fever and malaria on the course of history in the Americas and the Caribbean. The mortality from these diseases in tropical and subtropical parts of these regions was astonishing, ranging from 30% to 90% death rates among newly arrived Europeans. The normal annual death rate from tropical diseases among British citizens and soldiers in the Caribbean was 15 to 25%, which meant that the British Army had to maintain a constant stream of replacement soldiers to its colonies there. The death rate varied based on several factors, including nutrition and the length of the rainy season, but the primary factor was whether an individual was newly arrived, without immunity to yellow fever, from Europe. These extremely high death rates influenced the outcomes of wars and defeated attempts at colonization, such as the attempted British colonization of Panama.
Over time, the survivors who remained alive in the Americas passed on their genetic propensity for immunity to their children, so the overall death rate among natives of the region was lower as decades passed. Also, those of West African descent had a much higher survival rate because of the genetic superiority of their immune systems with regard to yellow fever and malaria, which are endemic in West Africa. Indeed, Toussaint Louverture understood this advantage, and actively used it by avoiding combat with the French and British, waiting for yellow fever to do the work for him. It was common in Haiti for disease to kill ten times as many European soldiers as deaths from actual combat.
The defeat of yellow fever followed Walter Reed's discovery that the disease was caused by mosquito bites, and William Gorgas' dogged work to eradicate mosquitos in the Panama Canal Zone, which ended yellow fever there by 1906 and malaria a few years later. His public health systems became standard in the US after initial resistance because of the cost of them. It was many years later that a vaccine was developed for yellow fever - General Gorgas used the brute force method of eliminating the vector - the mosquitos, which was also the method used by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930's to eliminate malaria in the south central US. Personal note: my mother was born before the TVA's efforts bore fruit, and she had malaria as a child in southern Missouri as a result.
This book is an interesting addition to the historical record, giving mosquito-borne disease its proper credit for the outcome of many of the grand plans of world leaders in the Western Hemisphere.
Over time, the survivors who remained alive in the Americas passed on their genetic propensity for immunity to their children, so the overall death rate among natives of the region was lower as decades passed. Also, those of West African descent had a much higher survival rate because of the genetic superiority of their immune systems with regard to yellow fever and malaria, which are endemic in West Africa. Indeed, Toussaint Louverture understood this advantage, and actively used it by avoiding combat with the French and British, waiting for yellow fever to do the work for him. It was common in Haiti for disease to kill ten times as many European soldiers as deaths from actual combat.
The defeat of yellow fever followed Walter Reed's discovery that the disease was caused by mosquito bites, and William Gorgas' dogged work to eradicate mosquitos in the Panama Canal Zone, which ended yellow fever there by 1906 and malaria a few years later. His public health systems became standard in the US after initial resistance because of the cost of them. It was many years later that a vaccine was developed for yellow fever - General Gorgas used the brute force method of eliminating the vector - the mosquitos, which was also the method used by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930's to eliminate malaria in the south central US. Personal note: my mother was born before the TVA's efforts bore fruit, and she had malaria as a child in southern Missouri as a result.
This book is an interesting addition to the historical record, giving mosquito-borne disease its proper credit for the outcome of many of the grand plans of world leaders in the Western Hemisphere.
December 5, 2024
Yellow fever and its host mosquito species were imported from Africa along with the slaves needed to support the plantation economies the Europeans built in the islands and adjacent mainland regions of the Caribbean. Once there, both the microbes and the insects made a new home and found plenty of victims. One effect of this ecological transformation was that it gave the locals a serious home-court advantage in wartime: the African slaves had a certain natural immunity, while childhood exposure wasn't dangerous and gave immunity most cases. Waiting for disease to wreak havoc on the invaders while staying inside one's fortifications, like the Spanish at Cartagena (1741) or Havana (1762) worked very well. Another strategy was to leave the invaders in the sickness-ridden coastal areas while the locals took to the more salubrious highlands, as did the British in Jamaica or the Haitian rebels under Toussaint (1802-04). In the latter case, Napoleon sent some 60,000 to 65,000 men to suppress the revolution in Haiti (St. Domingue, as it was called). About 50,000 to 55,000 died there, the great majority of disease, primarily yellow fever, a world-historical event, as it turned out. Bonaparte had planned on finally settling this army to populate Louisiana, so there wouldn't have been a Purchase for Jefferson. That sort of massacre was commonplace in the 'Greater Caribbean' - by which the author means the region from Suriname to the Chesapeake - because it had become a major strategic target for the maritime powers of the day: Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands since the treasures of the New World and then the wealth created by the plantations needed to be shipped back to Europe. "Home-court" disease vectors also aided the locals' revolutions against the European masters; the factors of "climate" (science had not yet identified microbe-carrying insects as the source) were well-known to Simon Bolivar, for instance. As late as the 1880s, the major cause of France's failure to build a canal in Panama was the deaths of 22,000 workers from various diseases, again mostly yellow fever. The introduction of modern medical procedures and disease-control by the Americans after their experiences in Cuba in the war with Spain (1898) and, especially, during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-14), finally transformed the region from a death trap to a vacation destination. A fascinating tale of how ecology, disease and international politics are connected, all by a virus that makes its victims vomit blood.
February 14, 2018
I knew in principle that the Caribbean in colonial times was a really unhealthy area but the details are staggering. Armies would arrive from Europe and 60% or even more would die within months. Disease was always more dangerous than enemy gunfire at the time but this was ten times the rate in Europe. Colonies in the area had deaths outstripping births deep into the 18th century. These wealthy islands and adjacent mainland areas ended up being inhabited mostly by slaves because few sane humans would voluntarily move there, and certainly not just for the promise of hard labor. Any fantasies I had from reading Horatio Hornblower stories as a kid now seem twice as ridiculous; neither valor, intelligence nor even modern ideas of hygiene would have been much of a protection to anyone visiting the area.
What makes this book more than just good is the amount of detail given to ecology, epidemiology and entomology, and the thesis. The detailed description of A. aegypti (the yellow fever mosquito) and how human settlers created an environment ideal for it is fascinating--the Caribbean was a relatively healthy place before the forests were cleared and ports and ships created a "super city" with clean fresh water for their eggs and enticing, non-immune humans. Herd immunity could help the random immigrant but fresh arrival of a mass of new victims--like an army of European veterans--pretty much guaranteed an epidemic.
The thesis itself also strikes me as perceptive and novel. McNeill argues convincingly that differences in disease susceptibility made a big difference. Survivors of yellow fever are immune, and if you got it as a child because you were born in the area you had a good chance of surviving your first bout. This meant that after 1650 or so established colonies (mostly Spanish) had a strong advantage because, even if their forces were small and relatively undisciplined, they weren't wiped out in the weeks following the first rains. By the 18th century the pattern of "Europeans will die soon after they arrive" was well established and taken into account in the plans of defense for cities and colonies.
It's also a very well skillfully book with covering a huge number of fields with great clarity. The subject matter is too grim to call it entertaining but it was educational.
What makes this book more than just good is the amount of detail given to ecology, epidemiology and entomology, and the thesis. The detailed description of A. aegypti (the yellow fever mosquito) and how human settlers created an environment ideal for it is fascinating--the Caribbean was a relatively healthy place before the forests were cleared and ports and ships created a "super city" with clean fresh water for their eggs and enticing, non-immune humans. Herd immunity could help the random immigrant but fresh arrival of a mass of new victims--like an army of European veterans--pretty much guaranteed an epidemic.
The thesis itself also strikes me as perceptive and novel. McNeill argues convincingly that differences in disease susceptibility made a big difference. Survivors of yellow fever are immune, and if you got it as a child because you were born in the area you had a good chance of surviving your first bout. This meant that after 1650 or so established colonies (mostly Spanish) had a strong advantage because, even if their forces were small and relatively undisciplined, they weren't wiped out in the weeks following the first rains. By the 18th century the pattern of "Europeans will die soon after they arrive" was well established and taken into account in the plans of defense for cities and colonies.
It's also a very well skillfully book with covering a huge number of fields with great clarity. The subject matter is too grim to call it entertaining but it was educational.
December 4, 2020
McNeil examines the history of yellow fever and malaria spread by mosquitoes, most notably in the greater Caribbean region. These diseases were most prominent from 1620 to 1914 and seemed to spread in times of expansion and military campaigns throughout the area. Ecology also affected the spread between countries and North America as mosquitoes would travel upon ships hauling cargo, soldiers, and slaves.
The author uses a historical narrative method along with quantitative data to show how the mosquito shaped human politics and affected war times. I had expected a dry read, but this was very engaging and interesting with a bit of quirky humor throughout.
The author uses a historical narrative method along with quantitative data to show how the mosquito shaped human politics and affected war times. I had expected a dry read, but this was very engaging and interesting with a bit of quirky humor throughout.
October 8, 2012
J.R. McNeill’s environmental history examines the role of disease bearing mosquitoes as a determining factor in imperial ambitions in the Greater Caribbean, which he defines as the islands and the Atlantic coastal regions of the Americas, from 1620 to 1914. Through careful examination of travel and medical accounts he reconstructs how environmental factors such as weather, sugar cane manufacturing processes, bovine and monkey populations, and population demographic and density would align and create ideal breeding grounds for the mosquito genii Aedes aegypti and Anopheles quadrimaculatus, carriers of malaria and yellow fever. Once the mosquitoes began their reproductive cycle, which for the females requires a blood meal, imperial ambitions could be thwarted or bolstered as the carriers of yellow fever and malaria transmitted disease to armies that were often already weakened by scurvy and dysentery.
McNeill’s examination is broken down into three sections. In the first section he outlines his argument that, “quests for wealth and power changed ecologies in the Greater Caribbean, and how ecological changes in turn shaped the fortunes of empire, war, and revolution in the years between 1620 and 1914” (2). He admits the difficulties in classifying his work as, “it is not quite an essay in mosquito determinism, or even environmental determinism” (6). In the second section McNeill does an amazing job at breaking down the ecological factors that created the optimum conditions for the vectors of yellow fever and malaria. He initiates the novice masterfully into the scientific and vernacular realm of the biologic variables he will be discussing. Readership with no exposure to this world is admitted into the Caribbean with an easily gained understanding of the elements of McNeill’s argument and how the variables must align in order to produce the conditions under which imperial ambition is being influenced. He examines the obvious factors such as heat and rain, but also how the human impact made in the manufacturing of sugar cane contributed to creating ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes by producing both a sugary food and receptacles for standing water, be it in pieces of broken clay pottery or the process of planting, hauling and building that accompanied population redistribution in the region. Immunities within the population of African slaves and others born in tropical climes, as well as European survivors of yellow fever and malaria, also impacted the successful transmission of the viruses. When the majority of the population is immune, the transmission cycle is interrupted and abates until a significant population of individual without immunity is introduced. McNeill calls this differential immunity, and the concept is explored in great detail in the third section of the book.
In addition to the environmental factors, McNeill examines the medical practices of the era that exacerbated the infected more often than they cured them. Galenic practices that originated in the second century were still the prevailing medical theories some fourteen hundred years later, and with little advancement beyond the humoral theory that promoted exsanguinations as cure, further weakening those afflicted with fever and helping to assure they did not survive. The chapter entitled Deadly Fevers, Deadly Doctors is, by McNeill’s own admission, rife with modern criticism and judgment that, “are not up to the standards of the historical profession” (63). That being said, the humor he injects in this chapter keeps the reader from setting aside what could easily devolve into a depressing clinical narrative of the brutish death that accompanied yellow fever. The tone may not be up to academic standards, but the research is, at least for the European contribution. His commentary on local medical treatment is a bit thin. This is understandable for a population that had immunities to yellow fever, but malaria, once contracted, exhibited itself throughout the lifetime of the infected. The greater take away from this chapter is that confusion how the diseases were transmitted works to explain why imperial armies were sent over and over again in spite of the infectious doom that repeatedly cut through the ranks, at great expense both in men and resources.
The third section explores the importance of differential immunity in times of revolution and how yellow fever, and to a lesser extent, malaria, became dependable defenses, if given enough time to infiltrate non-immune invaders. He uses examples from the American Revolution and several Central and South American rebellions. His analysis of the military maneuvers and strategies feel a bit underemphasized, but given the focus of the book, this is not surprising.
Overall the structure of the book works well to bolster McNeill’s thesis. He starts each chapter with an introductory statement of purpose and ends each with a tidy conclusion. Given the repetitive nature of the work, and this is, to an extent, unavoidable as the vectors and environmental conditions need to be established for each case study and the conditions for outbreak are fairly specific, with little room for variable, make for useful check ins to pull the reader back on point. However, chapter eight, Conclusion: Vector and Virus Vanquished 1880-1914, feels a bit tacked on. He covers Gorgas’ abatement efforts in Cuba and Panama in few pages and then tries to extrapolate the process of disease control and power into a modern setting in which health, scientific research capacity and power are interconnected. He does not really develop this idea; it just lies there in the last few paragraphs of the book, as a possible thesis for another work, tenuously connected to Mosquito Empires.
McNeill’s contribution to colonial and environmental studies is significant. Disease is often glossed over when it ravages European powers and highlighted when it decimates indigenous populations. It is an important contribution to our understanding of just how important these colonies were to world power and how countries were willing to send waves of citizenry to their death in an effort to obtain territory.
McNeill’s examination is broken down into three sections. In the first section he outlines his argument that, “quests for wealth and power changed ecologies in the Greater Caribbean, and how ecological changes in turn shaped the fortunes of empire, war, and revolution in the years between 1620 and 1914” (2). He admits the difficulties in classifying his work as, “it is not quite an essay in mosquito determinism, or even environmental determinism” (6). In the second section McNeill does an amazing job at breaking down the ecological factors that created the optimum conditions for the vectors of yellow fever and malaria. He initiates the novice masterfully into the scientific and vernacular realm of the biologic variables he will be discussing. Readership with no exposure to this world is admitted into the Caribbean with an easily gained understanding of the elements of McNeill’s argument and how the variables must align in order to produce the conditions under which imperial ambition is being influenced. He examines the obvious factors such as heat and rain, but also how the human impact made in the manufacturing of sugar cane contributed to creating ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes by producing both a sugary food and receptacles for standing water, be it in pieces of broken clay pottery or the process of planting, hauling and building that accompanied population redistribution in the region. Immunities within the population of African slaves and others born in tropical climes, as well as European survivors of yellow fever and malaria, also impacted the successful transmission of the viruses. When the majority of the population is immune, the transmission cycle is interrupted and abates until a significant population of individual without immunity is introduced. McNeill calls this differential immunity, and the concept is explored in great detail in the third section of the book.
In addition to the environmental factors, McNeill examines the medical practices of the era that exacerbated the infected more often than they cured them. Galenic practices that originated in the second century were still the prevailing medical theories some fourteen hundred years later, and with little advancement beyond the humoral theory that promoted exsanguinations as cure, further weakening those afflicted with fever and helping to assure they did not survive. The chapter entitled Deadly Fevers, Deadly Doctors is, by McNeill’s own admission, rife with modern criticism and judgment that, “are not up to the standards of the historical profession” (63). That being said, the humor he injects in this chapter keeps the reader from setting aside what could easily devolve into a depressing clinical narrative of the brutish death that accompanied yellow fever. The tone may not be up to academic standards, but the research is, at least for the European contribution. His commentary on local medical treatment is a bit thin. This is understandable for a population that had immunities to yellow fever, but malaria, once contracted, exhibited itself throughout the lifetime of the infected. The greater take away from this chapter is that confusion how the diseases were transmitted works to explain why imperial armies were sent over and over again in spite of the infectious doom that repeatedly cut through the ranks, at great expense both in men and resources.
The third section explores the importance of differential immunity in times of revolution and how yellow fever, and to a lesser extent, malaria, became dependable defenses, if given enough time to infiltrate non-immune invaders. He uses examples from the American Revolution and several Central and South American rebellions. His analysis of the military maneuvers and strategies feel a bit underemphasized, but given the focus of the book, this is not surprising.
Overall the structure of the book works well to bolster McNeill’s thesis. He starts each chapter with an introductory statement of purpose and ends each with a tidy conclusion. Given the repetitive nature of the work, and this is, to an extent, unavoidable as the vectors and environmental conditions need to be established for each case study and the conditions for outbreak are fairly specific, with little room for variable, make for useful check ins to pull the reader back on point. However, chapter eight, Conclusion: Vector and Virus Vanquished 1880-1914, feels a bit tacked on. He covers Gorgas’ abatement efforts in Cuba and Panama in few pages and then tries to extrapolate the process of disease control and power into a modern setting in which health, scientific research capacity and power are interconnected. He does not really develop this idea; it just lies there in the last few paragraphs of the book, as a possible thesis for another work, tenuously connected to Mosquito Empires.
McNeill’s contribution to colonial and environmental studies is significant. Disease is often glossed over when it ravages European powers and highlighted when it decimates indigenous populations. It is an important contribution to our understanding of just how important these colonies were to world power and how countries were willing to send waves of citizenry to their death in an effort to obtain territory.
May 15, 2012
Fascinating book. I am really starting to like environmental history- it is such a great way to forget about national borders and think about bigger picture history. This book is about mosquitoes, and how they know no borders. McNeill argues that in the 17th century the powers of Europe changed the ecology of the "Greater Caribbean"- everything from Virginia to the north coast of Brazil- and made it the perfect environment for mosquitoes to thrive. Lots of sugarcane, rice, crowded port cities, cattle...it was buggy as hell. Then, because mosquitoes carry yellow fever and malaria, those diseases became endemic. This had huge historical consequences. People who were born and raised in this places became resistant to the diseases, but outsiders died in huge numbers, so sending an army to conquer anyplace proved practically impossible. Thus, even though the Spanish were weak, it was very hard for the English to conquer any parts of New Spain. The poor Scots tried to carve out a new colony in Panama and died in droves. During the Haitian revolution, Toussaint L'Overture knew that he could outlast his enemies because any army sent to defeat him would start dying of yellow fever. In America, the British trying to defeat the Americans in the revolution had a terrible time with malaria. It just goes on and on. Mosquitoes were so important! Why didn't I know this already?
Plus, McNeill is witty. In this part, he is writing about the King of England getting sick..."The King faded. As a final measure [doctors] administered bezoars, crushed stones from the intestines of a Persian goat. The King- prudently, one is tempted to add- died...In the West Indies, European doctors followed similar practices when they could. Bezoars were no doubt scarce." Ha! Bezoars...
Plus, McNeill is witty. In this part, he is writing about the King of England getting sick..."The King faded. As a final measure [doctors] administered bezoars, crushed stones from the intestines of a Persian goat. The King- prudently, one is tempted to add- died...In the West Indies, European doctors followed similar practices when they could. Bezoars were no doubt scarce." Ha! Bezoars...
December 22, 2018
First, reading this book will make you very grateful that we have a vaccine for yellow fever. McNeill carefully traces the influences of mosquito borne viruses, primarily malaria and yellow fever, in the history of colonization on the American continents and in the Caribbean. Closely tied to plantation agriculture and slave labor, millions were killed by malaria and yellow fever introduced from the old world and quickly spread by mosquitoes and to a lesser degree monkeys in the region. Those who were exposed to the viruses in childhood in the Caribbean or Central America and survived had differing levels of immunity from newly arrived Europeans and from Africans who either developed immunity in Africa as children or may have had some genetic immunity. The differing effects of these diseases on the long established Spanish colonists versus the newly arrived British, for example, determined the outcome of many key conflicts.
McNeill's style of writing is scholarly but carefully organized and illustrated with concrete examples so that it is easy for the general reader to follow. The level of detail may be more than some readers want. I found it fascinating. McNeill's book provided much of the material about the effects of mosquito borne illnesses used by the popular historian Charles Mann in his book 1493.
McNeill's style of writing is scholarly but carefully organized and illustrated with concrete examples so that it is easy for the general reader to follow. The level of detail may be more than some readers want. I found it fascinating. McNeill's book provided much of the material about the effects of mosquito borne illnesses used by the popular historian Charles Mann in his book 1493.
April 14, 2025
Read for school
3.75/5 Extremely interesting but the writing is drier than the Saharan desert, however I think is unavoidable because of how much highly technical information needs to be conveyed
3.75/5 Extremely interesting but the writing is drier than the Saharan desert, however I think is unavoidable because of how much highly technical information needs to be conveyed
June 30, 2018
McNeill, J.R., Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean 1620-1914, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010
Topic: J.R. McNeil’s work Mosquito Empires gives seat to ecology as an actor on the geopolitical stage and observes how climate change and other environmental factors create an action/reaction observing how it can promote or hamper desirability, personal interest, or State prestige. Nature, and its species, is given voice to explain how disease, plants, animals, and insects mold humankind. This rectifies its being overlooked for centuries due to its inability to represent itself in chronicles written by the more sentient creatures of the earth. Human motives within the political theatre maybe contradictory and complicated, but those of the biosphere are observed to be simple, relating to the soul instincts of survival and reproduction.
Scope: McNeil focuses broadly on North and Central America during the period of 1620-1914, emphasizing the role of the Caribbean and West Indies. This emphasis gives the environmental, economic, and political actors in these locations agency that illustrates how they each affected the geopolitical theatre. It outlines how the Atlantic powers acted as rational actors, motivated by statecraft and old constructionist theory, to pursue realist interests of wealth and power. The Spanish Empire and Great Britain are observed as primary characters, vying for control of the Caribbean and the West Indies to spread their influence and tilt the balance of power toward their respective favors. This creates conflict due to Britain’s interests in usurping Spain’s control on its colonies and gaining access to the trade and resources of Central America. Mosquitoes, animals, and weather also acted on the geopolitical theatre, carrying the power of disease through the twin killers, yellow fever and malaria. These diseases created aspects like differential immunity and resistance, causing widespread death to whoever did not possess these qualities, which allowed Spain to keep control of areas like Havana and Cartagena, until debt and socioeconomic stressors primed colonial revolution.
Historical Question(s): Mosquito Empires observed humanity’s interaction with the environment through colonialism, statecraft, conflict, medicine, and survival. It poses the following historical questions: how do the linkages between ecology and politics influence geopolitics, what powers do ecology and disease have on framing pursuits of empire and wealth, what are the political and military implications of immunity, and what impact can something as small as the mosquito have on molding world politics? The voices discounted from history, such as those of indigenous peoples or disease, are also considered to observe the potential for new historical contexts for societal development and human progression.
Thesis(es): McNeil maintains several arguments that propose that nature has agency and maintains an action/reaction relationship with human processes. These arguments also assert that power politics was a motivation of conflict between the Atlantic powers. They also affirmed that disease did not necessarily determine the outcomes of political standoffs, but it did heavily influence the probability for success or failure. The power politics, pursuit of wealth, and settlements of humankind are all argued to have shaped the ecology of the Caribbean with an equally reciprocated effect of ecology shaping humanity. Immunity is observed to have tremendous political and militaristic consequences.
Sources: Mosquito Empires relies on numerous primary, secondary, and reference sources to detail the geopolitical decisions that were taking place around the world. Primary and secondary sources are utilized to illustrate the logic imperial actors and native inhabitants used to describe their situations, trade, fortify, and seek medicine. Reference sources are utilized to describe the stressors that disease caused through detailing deaths, and the effects that climate change had on imperial prestige through profitability of trade and resources.
Topic: J.R. McNeil’s work Mosquito Empires gives seat to ecology as an actor on the geopolitical stage and observes how climate change and other environmental factors create an action/reaction observing how it can promote or hamper desirability, personal interest, or State prestige. Nature, and its species, is given voice to explain how disease, plants, animals, and insects mold humankind. This rectifies its being overlooked for centuries due to its inability to represent itself in chronicles written by the more sentient creatures of the earth. Human motives within the political theatre maybe contradictory and complicated, but those of the biosphere are observed to be simple, relating to the soul instincts of survival and reproduction.
Scope: McNeil focuses broadly on North and Central America during the period of 1620-1914, emphasizing the role of the Caribbean and West Indies. This emphasis gives the environmental, economic, and political actors in these locations agency that illustrates how they each affected the geopolitical theatre. It outlines how the Atlantic powers acted as rational actors, motivated by statecraft and old constructionist theory, to pursue realist interests of wealth and power. The Spanish Empire and Great Britain are observed as primary characters, vying for control of the Caribbean and the West Indies to spread their influence and tilt the balance of power toward their respective favors. This creates conflict due to Britain’s interests in usurping Spain’s control on its colonies and gaining access to the trade and resources of Central America. Mosquitoes, animals, and weather also acted on the geopolitical theatre, carrying the power of disease through the twin killers, yellow fever and malaria. These diseases created aspects like differential immunity and resistance, causing widespread death to whoever did not possess these qualities, which allowed Spain to keep control of areas like Havana and Cartagena, until debt and socioeconomic stressors primed colonial revolution.
Historical Question(s): Mosquito Empires observed humanity’s interaction with the environment through colonialism, statecraft, conflict, medicine, and survival. It poses the following historical questions: how do the linkages between ecology and politics influence geopolitics, what powers do ecology and disease have on framing pursuits of empire and wealth, what are the political and military implications of immunity, and what impact can something as small as the mosquito have on molding world politics? The voices discounted from history, such as those of indigenous peoples or disease, are also considered to observe the potential for new historical contexts for societal development and human progression.
Thesis(es): McNeil maintains several arguments that propose that nature has agency and maintains an action/reaction relationship with human processes. These arguments also assert that power politics was a motivation of conflict between the Atlantic powers. They also affirmed that disease did not necessarily determine the outcomes of political standoffs, but it did heavily influence the probability for success or failure. The power politics, pursuit of wealth, and settlements of humankind are all argued to have shaped the ecology of the Caribbean with an equally reciprocated effect of ecology shaping humanity. Immunity is observed to have tremendous political and militaristic consequences.
Sources: Mosquito Empires relies on numerous primary, secondary, and reference sources to detail the geopolitical decisions that were taking place around the world. Primary and secondary sources are utilized to illustrate the logic imperial actors and native inhabitants used to describe their situations, trade, fortify, and seek medicine. Reference sources are utilized to describe the stressors that disease caused through detailing deaths, and the effects that climate change had on imperial prestige through profitability of trade and resources.
September 10, 2024
This is an absolute tour de force, one of the most incredible books I've read in a long time.
I should start out by saying that John Robert McNeill is the son of acclaimed pioneer in ecological history William Hardy McNeill, whose books are also very highly recommended.
The younger McNeill here does not disappoint in his particular focus on the effects of mosquito-borne pathogens on the history of the Caribbean and the Atlantic Seaboard of the North America.
Almost all of what he writes is unreported in other works, or played down. He starts by explaining the symptoms and mechanism of transmit for malaria and, particularly, yellow fever.
The latter is the main focus of the work, as it has extremely high mortality rates for nonimmunes and repeatedly destroyed large European expeditions.
But the influence is not so straightforward as that. As McNeill writes in the introduction, and explains very well throughout the work, the mosquito contributed mightily to the preservation of the Spanish Empire, but also made it difficult for European powers to reestablish their authority against rebels (e.g. in Haiti).
Particularly interesting to me was the knowledge that yellow fever is an import from Africa, and until the creation of large sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and the great demographic surge across the Atlantic that accompanied it (the Spanish Caribbean had only a very tiny population until the seventeenth century), there was no fear of these pestilences.
It was surprising to learn that the same pathogens that laid low the British at Cartagena and Havana were *still* ravaging Europeans at the turn of the twentieth century, and that it took so long to identify the vector and to initiate a campaign of sanitation against it.
This is an absolutely amazing glimpse into the way the environment and factors outside of human control can influence human history, and in a large measure explains why the Spanish Empire managed to survive for so long after the decline of the Spanish Navy.
It had always been a mystery to me why France's colonial empire was destroyed by England despite the fact that France was so much more robust than Spain, while Spain's empire, which was both richer than France's and more weakly defended, was not absorbed.
Every student of history should have this work on their shelf.
I should start out by saying that John Robert McNeill is the son of acclaimed pioneer in ecological history William Hardy McNeill, whose books are also very highly recommended.
The younger McNeill here does not disappoint in his particular focus on the effects of mosquito-borne pathogens on the history of the Caribbean and the Atlantic Seaboard of the North America.
Almost all of what he writes is unreported in other works, or played down. He starts by explaining the symptoms and mechanism of transmit for malaria and, particularly, yellow fever.
The latter is the main focus of the work, as it has extremely high mortality rates for nonimmunes and repeatedly destroyed large European expeditions.
But the influence is not so straightforward as that. As McNeill writes in the introduction, and explains very well throughout the work, the mosquito contributed mightily to the preservation of the Spanish Empire, but also made it difficult for European powers to reestablish their authority against rebels (e.g. in Haiti).
Particularly interesting to me was the knowledge that yellow fever is an import from Africa, and until the creation of large sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and the great demographic surge across the Atlantic that accompanied it (the Spanish Caribbean had only a very tiny population until the seventeenth century), there was no fear of these pestilences.
It was surprising to learn that the same pathogens that laid low the British at Cartagena and Havana were *still* ravaging Europeans at the turn of the twentieth century, and that it took so long to identify the vector and to initiate a campaign of sanitation against it.
This is an absolutely amazing glimpse into the way the environment and factors outside of human control can influence human history, and in a large measure explains why the Spanish Empire managed to survive for so long after the decline of the Spanish Navy.
It had always been a mystery to me why France's colonial empire was destroyed by England despite the fact that France was so much more robust than Spain, while Spain's empire, which was both richer than France's and more weakly defended, was not absorbed.
Every student of history should have this work on their shelf.
October 6, 2024
https://notevenpast.org/review-of-mos...
Cindia Arango Lopez
Book Review to NEP
McNeill, John Robert. Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
For approximately three centuries, the greater Caribbean hosted the Spanish empire's most important social, environmental, and political connections. People, the environment, and mosquitoes were essential to this history. The book Mosquito Empires by John McNeill the winner of the award of the Albert J. Beveridge prize of the American Historical Association in 2011. As a professor in the History Department at Georgetown University, McNeill explored the links between ecology, disease, and Atlantic politics in the Greater Caribbean from 1620 until 1914. The title of the book is suggestive and recreate the relevance of mosquitoes in an imperial age. This book is an important contribution to the field of environmental history with connections among different fields as history, politics, epidemiology, climatology, ecology, among others. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the field of environmental history. This book could be an exciting road to understanding how the past's ecological, political, and epidemic problems are impacting currently in our present.
Throughout the book, we can find that ecology shaped the history of the Americas because of environmental changes and human agency. For example, the transport of animals between continents. Or the way in which the fauna had an agency to influence the occupation or not of some territories. This book allows us the recognition of diseases role in human history and their existence on the environmental. This book may be more interesting now after the pandemic. As McNeill points out, humans prefer to understand and explain history based on human affairs as war, revolutions, or conquest. But sometimes we forget our agency in the environment as a part of our history. This book shows co-evolutionary processes between society and nature to understand that the mosquitoes agency is as important as the human agency.
With this book, we can comprehend how the significance and the sense of disease has change through the time. For instance, many diseases did not impact similarly all populations in the empires. There were different environments, immunities, and susceptibilities to face diseases. McNeill also considered some features to understand the particularity of malaria and yellow fever. For example, the transmission of diseases was not alone because they needed ecological conditions to be contagious, as the temperature, flora, and land conditions. As an ecological chain, these diseases depended on specific circumstances because their spread requires mosquitoes.
McNeill uses a scalar perspective (maybe not intentionality), that started with the Atlantic Empire perspective to focus on the Caribbean ecology. That means the author began the analyses from a global until a local space. From 1620 until 1820, the linkages between ecological and political affairs occupied most of the central historical interactions in the Caribbean. The creation of plantation systems helped the permanence and requirements of mosquitos. In ecological conditions, the interest of Atlantic American Geopolitics was focused by the authorities, almost the first centuries of colonialism, on preserving the indigenous and enslaved populations because they represented a labor force for Spanish Empire. However, the plantations occupied most territories in Brazil and the Americans more than silver and gold mines or other economic activity during this period. Plantations congregated most conditions for the existence of diseases. At the same time, McNeill pointed out how geopolitical turbulences in Atlantic America coincided with ecological transformations in the Greater Caribbean. Most of these impacts were related to introducing new plants and animals to the Americas, affecting the preexistence of previous environmental conditions.
One of the most exciting book contributions is the existence of a single historical and ecological framework for analyses of epidemiologic problems. McNeill explained how the yellow fever agency operates and its transmission and immunity on humans and/ or landscapes. Nonetheless, the disease did not make its history by itself. To McNeill, the disease acquired historical relevance only when it becomes an epidemic and has one persistently cycle of transmission. With this argument the author showed how to convert the diminutive organism into a historical and ecological concern for many years. In addition to the framework of historical and ecological analysis, one of the most outstanding aspects of the book is the diversity of manuscript sources in Iberic-American archives. Achieving this type of information gathering is just as valuable as the ability to cross it.
There are many variables in the book: demography, ecology, immunity, and climate changes which could affect the spread of diseases in the Caribbean. For instance, McNeill considered the impact of yellow fever on the local population compared with immigrants. In addition, the disease impacted rural areas more than urban ones because rural spaces were around plantations. Other factors such as climate change and European immigration to commercialize sugar or other products of plantation also generated the spread of the diseases, escalating the problems to other territories and other periods. With this book, we can expand the diseases comprehension in one ecological and historical context. The demographic and health features presented in the book are essential to consider the perception of the disease, but also the knowledge (scientific or empirical) to cure or resolve the epidemics. Study cases such as Brazil, Jamaica, Kourou, Darien, and The Viceroyalty of New Granada are critical to the book's central aim because these historical and political events show the significant disasters of geopolitical colonialism. According to McNeill, these events also represent "…the power of imported diseases, after the 1640s establishment of yellow fever in the region, to prevent new large-scale European settlement in the Greater Caribbean (p. 135)".
Mosquito Empires is a book to remind historians of the role of diseases in our environment. McNeill's book is a history of the Empire's strength in the links between ecological and political matters. McNeill mentioned the mosquitos as shields of the Empires, but readers should consider them as actors in this geopolitical puzzle. Mosquitoes were character protagonists with agency and specific power to defend (with immunity) or destroy (with mortality) an army or a population group and transform the environment.
Cindia Arango Lopez
Book Review to NEP
McNeill, John Robert. Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
For approximately three centuries, the greater Caribbean hosted the Spanish empire's most important social, environmental, and political connections. People, the environment, and mosquitoes were essential to this history. The book Mosquito Empires by John McNeill the winner of the award of the Albert J. Beveridge prize of the American Historical Association in 2011. As a professor in the History Department at Georgetown University, McNeill explored the links between ecology, disease, and Atlantic politics in the Greater Caribbean from 1620 until 1914. The title of the book is suggestive and recreate the relevance of mosquitoes in an imperial age. This book is an important contribution to the field of environmental history with connections among different fields as history, politics, epidemiology, climatology, ecology, among others. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the field of environmental history. This book could be an exciting road to understanding how the past's ecological, political, and epidemic problems are impacting currently in our present.
Throughout the book, we can find that ecology shaped the history of the Americas because of environmental changes and human agency. For example, the transport of animals between continents. Or the way in which the fauna had an agency to influence the occupation or not of some territories. This book allows us the recognition of diseases role in human history and their existence on the environmental. This book may be more interesting now after the pandemic. As McNeill points out, humans prefer to understand and explain history based on human affairs as war, revolutions, or conquest. But sometimes we forget our agency in the environment as a part of our history. This book shows co-evolutionary processes between society and nature to understand that the mosquitoes agency is as important as the human agency.
With this book, we can comprehend how the significance and the sense of disease has change through the time. For instance, many diseases did not impact similarly all populations in the empires. There were different environments, immunities, and susceptibilities to face diseases. McNeill also considered some features to understand the particularity of malaria and yellow fever. For example, the transmission of diseases was not alone because they needed ecological conditions to be contagious, as the temperature, flora, and land conditions. As an ecological chain, these diseases depended on specific circumstances because their spread requires mosquitoes.
McNeill uses a scalar perspective (maybe not intentionality), that started with the Atlantic Empire perspective to focus on the Caribbean ecology. That means the author began the analyses from a global until a local space. From 1620 until 1820, the linkages between ecological and political affairs occupied most of the central historical interactions in the Caribbean. The creation of plantation systems helped the permanence and requirements of mosquitos. In ecological conditions, the interest of Atlantic American Geopolitics was focused by the authorities, almost the first centuries of colonialism, on preserving the indigenous and enslaved populations because they represented a labor force for Spanish Empire. However, the plantations occupied most territories in Brazil and the Americans more than silver and gold mines or other economic activity during this period. Plantations congregated most conditions for the existence of diseases. At the same time, McNeill pointed out how geopolitical turbulences in Atlantic America coincided with ecological transformations in the Greater Caribbean. Most of these impacts were related to introducing new plants and animals to the Americas, affecting the preexistence of previous environmental conditions.
One of the most exciting book contributions is the existence of a single historical and ecological framework for analyses of epidemiologic problems. McNeill explained how the yellow fever agency operates and its transmission and immunity on humans and/ or landscapes. Nonetheless, the disease did not make its history by itself. To McNeill, the disease acquired historical relevance only when it becomes an epidemic and has one persistently cycle of transmission. With this argument the author showed how to convert the diminutive organism into a historical and ecological concern for many years. In addition to the framework of historical and ecological analysis, one of the most outstanding aspects of the book is the diversity of manuscript sources in Iberic-American archives. Achieving this type of information gathering is just as valuable as the ability to cross it.
There are many variables in the book: demography, ecology, immunity, and climate changes which could affect the spread of diseases in the Caribbean. For instance, McNeill considered the impact of yellow fever on the local population compared with immigrants. In addition, the disease impacted rural areas more than urban ones because rural spaces were around plantations. Other factors such as climate change and European immigration to commercialize sugar or other products of plantation also generated the spread of the diseases, escalating the problems to other territories and other periods. With this book, we can expand the diseases comprehension in one ecological and historical context. The demographic and health features presented in the book are essential to consider the perception of the disease, but also the knowledge (scientific or empirical) to cure or resolve the epidemics. Study cases such as Brazil, Jamaica, Kourou, Darien, and The Viceroyalty of New Granada are critical to the book's central aim because these historical and political events show the significant disasters of geopolitical colonialism. According to McNeill, these events also represent "…the power of imported diseases, after the 1640s establishment of yellow fever in the region, to prevent new large-scale European settlement in the Greater Caribbean (p. 135)".
Mosquito Empires is a book to remind historians of the role of diseases in our environment. McNeill's book is a history of the Empire's strength in the links between ecological and political matters. McNeill mentioned the mosquitos as shields of the Empires, but readers should consider them as actors in this geopolitical puzzle. Mosquitoes were character protagonists with agency and specific power to defend (with immunity) or destroy (with mortality) an army or a population group and transform the environment.
June 26, 2024
In Mosquito Empires, McNeill uses the history of yellow fever and malaria in the Americas from the 17th to the 19th century to argue that ecology/disease and human geopolitics/choices shape each other and make certain outcomes more likely, but they do not determine each other. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, yellow fever and malaria prevented many from conquering Spain's empire. By the late 18th century, however, they helped revolutionaries gain independence as American populations developed better immunity and resistance than Europeans. Some, including Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar, understood how to use yellow fever and malaria to their advantage and actively sought to force their opponents into swampy areas during times when they knew epidemics were likely.
I loved McNeill's in-depth explanations of the biology of the diseases and how humans shaped the ecology of the Caribbean and South America to create a paradise for mosquitoes, but there's also a fair amount of (to my mind quite excessive) military history to wade through here. I understood intellectually that diseases killed more soldiers in war than combat, but until now I don't think I grasped the magnitude. In some cases, more than ninety percent of military deaths were due to disease, and it wasn't uncommon for more than seventy-five percent of an entire army to die in an epidemic. You can't help but marvel at the willingness of colonists and empires to throw so many lives away so futilely. It's a wonder there were still men left alive to fight in all of these unending wars. It's also astonishing to me how much people were able to figure out about who was susceptible to yellow fever and malaria and where it was most likely to spread when they had no idea of how it was transmitted or how to treat it (and yet, despite that knowledge, they kept sending people to die!).
I loved McNeill's in-depth explanations of the biology of the diseases and how humans shaped the ecology of the Caribbean and South America to create a paradise for mosquitoes, but there's also a fair amount of (to my mind quite excessive) military history to wade through here. I understood intellectually that diseases killed more soldiers in war than combat, but until now I don't think I grasped the magnitude. In some cases, more than ninety percent of military deaths were due to disease, and it wasn't uncommon for more than seventy-five percent of an entire army to die in an epidemic. You can't help but marvel at the willingness of colonists and empires to throw so many lives away so futilely. It's a wonder there were still men left alive to fight in all of these unending wars. It's also astonishing to me how much people were able to figure out about who was susceptible to yellow fever and malaria and where it was most likely to spread when they had no idea of how it was transmitted or how to treat it (and yet, despite that knowledge, they kept sending people to die!).
November 29, 2020
Masterwork of environmental history. McNeill recasts the story of empire in the Greater Caribbean as a complex, evolving dynamic between humans, mosquitoes, geography, and disease. With elegance and eloquence, he reveals how mosquito diseases -- particularly yellow fever and malaria -- were a common thread behind many of the most impactful events of modern history, from the American Revolution to the Haitian Revolution to Winfield Scott's campaign in the Mexican-American War to the building of the Panama Canal. His account ultimately reveals a central irony: that in the 1600's, European empires established plantation systems in their Caribbean colonies (which transformed the environment in ways that were favorable to the breeding of mosquitoes), unknowingly creating the very conditions that centuries later, would help bring about their downfall, through the phenomenon of differential immunity enjoyed by slaves and settlers in these lands. This irony feels strikingly relevant today: as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, the transformations that we bring upon our environments have unintended, and sometimes highly deadly consequences.
March 20, 2025
I really appreciate how McNeill advocates and acts upon the need for ecological consideration in historical narratives. That being said, Mosquito Empires dedicates many of its pages to historical retellings, the natural components of the stories filling less than it could, in my opinion. Nonetheless, the argument is compelling and offers a suburb account of an ecological, etymological perspective of the colonization of the Americas that can challenge prevailing attributions of revolutionary/colonial victory strictly to political/military strategy alone. This is a great read for hard-core historians who want to get a taste for what environmental history can offer since it is heavy on the history.
February 6, 2018
Fascinating, but repetitive
The premise of this book is very interesting. I loved learning about how disease shaped the world of the Caribbean. However, there is far too much information about battles that could be summed up in the sentence "Most of them died". McNeill obviously put an incredible amount of work and effort into this book, but it isn't the most enjoyable read because of all of this (sometimes superfluous) information. He also tends to repeat his thoughts, which can get annoying. Despite all this, I am very glad I read through it. I would recommend to anyone interested in environmental history or military history of the greater Caribbean.
The premise of this book is very interesting. I loved learning about how disease shaped the world of the Caribbean. However, there is far too much information about battles that could be summed up in the sentence "Most of them died". McNeill obviously put an incredible amount of work and effort into this book, but it isn't the most enjoyable read because of all of this (sometimes superfluous) information. He also tends to repeat his thoughts, which can get annoying. Despite all this, I am very glad I read through it. I would recommend to anyone interested in environmental history or military history of the greater Caribbean.
June 5, 2019
J. R. McNeill gained my confidence immediately with a first chapter displaying a proper balance of confidence and humility about his thesis: roughly, that ecological changes created by Europeans in the Atlantic coastal regions of the New World increased the prevalence of malaria and yellow fever—which in turn helped to determine the outcome of later military conflicts in the region. McNeill is the master of his extensive research, yet he writes simply and clearly. Few books these days are both academically sound and easily approachable by the general reader. Bravo! May McNeill’s tribe increase.
November 12, 2019
id say 4-4.5 stars. The author is well read and has gathered an incredible collection of sources to organize his ideas around the agency of yellow fever i. the greater caribbean. It is a great leap of imagination to make the connections he does across different times and empires and to have perceived patterns of infection in the way that he has. Im not entirely sure the structure the chapters work for me, but the overall thesis and incredible research certainly provide much to think about in terms of scope and focus for historical works.
Read
January 17, 2024should we be imposing contemporary scientific knowledge onto historical situations/events? Yes AND no… It’s complicated. Learning about how yellow fever/malaria became inadvertent tools of empire was incredibly interesting, yet I’m still wondering how much it matters that we know certain historical illness WAS yellow fever/malaria/whatever or not. Doesn’t the historical context of healing sicknesses and illness in different regions and populations matter more than being able to give it a scientific name? not sure!
September 16, 2025
Thought-provoking and well-researched and with interesting things to say and (most importantly) very funny & full of hilariously dry passages to quote back and forth in our university study lounge
Fortunately for the sick, doctors were almost as scarce as bezoars. In Jamaica in 1750, two doctors with incompatible views about yellow fever got into a pamphlet war that escalated into a double murder, probably bringing a net improvement to public health on the island.
August 4, 2019
Actually started reading this when it first came out and was intrigued by the introduction and then got a little overwhelmed with the different mosquitoes and diseases.
It is a really interesting examination into the effects of mosquitoes on many wars and really a must read for students (and teachers) of history.
It is a really interesting examination into the effects of mosquitoes on many wars and really a must read for students (and teachers) of history.
January 9, 2020
An environmental/military history on how mosquitoes changed the landscape of the collide between Old World and New World. Disease became a main agent of war for New Spain, holding off intruding English, Dutch, and French empires. Indigenous and black peoples were not affected by malaria and yellow fever because they had a resistance to it.
June 1, 2019
An extensively researched and highly detailed look at the ecology, geopolitics, and disease transmission vectors that contributed to the imperial settlement and colonial revolutions of the Caribbean region. Reads well for what could have been a dry, academic subject.
March 15, 2024
Such a good book! It covered really interesting topics such as yellow fever, mosquitos, malaria, and how these impacted the Caribbean and Americas. McNeill writes in such an easy way that understanding medical terms associated with diseases is easy to pick up on.
June 8, 2019
It was interesting and well researched but drug at times. It was how history continued to repeat itself over and over again.
February 2, 2024
Stellar, I really enjoyed this book.
Read
December 10, 2024s'24 - 201E - final project
exams - caribbean - medicine
exams - caribbean - medicine
January 22, 2025
Matt Brooks recommendation- pandemics are old news
February 11, 2025
A pretty wordy but well researched documentary about how the mosquito influenced history in the new world.
September 1, 2025
Such a good and insightful read. Love the flow of it as well
November 21, 2019
Human beings imagine themselves the masters of their environment, but in changing that environment they sometimes create ideal conditions for creatures that in turn master them.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western Europeans transformed much of the Caribbean into a giant sugar factory, a source of profits and cheap (if empty) calories for the colonizers. In so doing they turned those colonies into ideal homes for mosquitos, both the ubiquitous anopheles and the fragile newcomer aedes aegypti, and for the pathogens - respectively, malaria and yellow fever - these prolific insects carried. Replacing the indigenous human inhabitants (whom they killed) with African slave laborers, Europeans provided an ocean of warm human blood for female mosquitos to drink and infect. Cutting down the forests, they destroyed the habitat of birds and small mammals who ate mosquitos. Planting cane fields, digging ditches, and building cisterns, the colonizers and their bondsmen created the pools of stagnant water where mosquitos bred. By 1700 the Caribbean and its shorelands had become not only a domain of wealth but a place of death: yellow fever can kill 60 percent of its victims and malaria, while less lethal, is both debilitating and chronic. Only “seasoned” settlers and slaves who had survived prior exposure to these diseases, and had built up resistance, could hope for more than an early grave.
McNeill argues that these basic biological facts became the principal determinants of the region’s subsequent history. Europeans coveted the Greater Caribbean for its hugely valuable exports, but their efforts to found new Caribbean colonies or conquer older ones almost inevitably failed in the eighteenth century. Newly arrived colonists and soldiers, attempting to found a Scottish settlement at Darien, build a French colony at Cayenne, or conquer Spanish ports like Cartagena, instead died by the tens of thousands, succumbing to fevers their bodies could not fight. By the end of the century colonial defenders had learned that mosquitos (or at least the infections they carried) were their best allies against European armies. If a seasoned local garrison force could hold out until summer, disease would destroy their adversaries.
In the Napoleonic era, revolutionaries throughout the hemisphere turned their differential immunity to advantage. Toussaint L’Ouverture, Simon Bolivar, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, and Antonio Maceo all used delaying tactics and strategic retreats to keep metropolitan armies in the lowlands until the mosquitos came and the dreaded agues and “black vomits” began. The norteamericanos managed to conquer Mexico in 1847 only by scrambling out of their lowland supply port (Veracruz) and into the highlands before the mosquito breeding season began. Half a century later, Cuban rebels’ and Cuban mosquitos’ debilitation of the Spanish garrison in Cuba helped the United States conquer than island and defeat the Spanish empire. The Americans could only hold their imperial gains, however, by applying newly discovered sanitation and insect eradication techniques, first in Havana and then in the Panama Canal Zone. With these serendipitous discoveries, a discrete epoch in Caribbean and imperial history came to a close.
John McNeill’s book benefits from a creative thesis, a clear writing style, and deep research. It attains its greatest successes by telling a story we all thought we knew - the early Caribbean was a place of profits and death - in a new and better way. Essentially, McNeill historicizes the Caribbean’s supposedly natural and eternal attributes. The deadly Caribbean disease environment was created not by God or evolution but by human intervention. Humans eventually discovered that they could turn that environment into an asset if they had manpower - seasoned colonial laborers (slave or free) with acquired immunities - who could withstand the fevers that killed invaders. This huge defensive advantage turned the Caribbean into a graveyard of imperial ambitions, even Napoleon’s. In a contemporaneous study of European empires (AFTER TAMERLANE, 2007), John Darwin argued that we should remain mindful not only of those empires’ conquest but also of the huge resistance they faced, chiefly from people who wanted to avoid being colonized. To the noble ranks of these anti-imperialists, John McNeill concludes, we should add a few members of the animal kingdom, particularly the despised but efficacious mosquito.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western Europeans transformed much of the Caribbean into a giant sugar factory, a source of profits and cheap (if empty) calories for the colonizers. In so doing they turned those colonies into ideal homes for mosquitos, both the ubiquitous anopheles and the fragile newcomer aedes aegypti, and for the pathogens - respectively, malaria and yellow fever - these prolific insects carried. Replacing the indigenous human inhabitants (whom they killed) with African slave laborers, Europeans provided an ocean of warm human blood for female mosquitos to drink and infect. Cutting down the forests, they destroyed the habitat of birds and small mammals who ate mosquitos. Planting cane fields, digging ditches, and building cisterns, the colonizers and their bondsmen created the pools of stagnant water where mosquitos bred. By 1700 the Caribbean and its shorelands had become not only a domain of wealth but a place of death: yellow fever can kill 60 percent of its victims and malaria, while less lethal, is both debilitating and chronic. Only “seasoned” settlers and slaves who had survived prior exposure to these diseases, and had built up resistance, could hope for more than an early grave.
McNeill argues that these basic biological facts became the principal determinants of the region’s subsequent history. Europeans coveted the Greater Caribbean for its hugely valuable exports, but their efforts to found new Caribbean colonies or conquer older ones almost inevitably failed in the eighteenth century. Newly arrived colonists and soldiers, attempting to found a Scottish settlement at Darien, build a French colony at Cayenne, or conquer Spanish ports like Cartagena, instead died by the tens of thousands, succumbing to fevers their bodies could not fight. By the end of the century colonial defenders had learned that mosquitos (or at least the infections they carried) were their best allies against European armies. If a seasoned local garrison force could hold out until summer, disease would destroy their adversaries.
In the Napoleonic era, revolutionaries throughout the hemisphere turned their differential immunity to advantage. Toussaint L’Ouverture, Simon Bolivar, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, and Antonio Maceo all used delaying tactics and strategic retreats to keep metropolitan armies in the lowlands until the mosquitos came and the dreaded agues and “black vomits” began. The norteamericanos managed to conquer Mexico in 1847 only by scrambling out of their lowland supply port (Veracruz) and into the highlands before the mosquito breeding season began. Half a century later, Cuban rebels’ and Cuban mosquitos’ debilitation of the Spanish garrison in Cuba helped the United States conquer than island and defeat the Spanish empire. The Americans could only hold their imperial gains, however, by applying newly discovered sanitation and insect eradication techniques, first in Havana and then in the Panama Canal Zone. With these serendipitous discoveries, a discrete epoch in Caribbean and imperial history came to a close.
John McNeill’s book benefits from a creative thesis, a clear writing style, and deep research. It attains its greatest successes by telling a story we all thought we knew - the early Caribbean was a place of profits and death - in a new and better way. Essentially, McNeill historicizes the Caribbean’s supposedly natural and eternal attributes. The deadly Caribbean disease environment was created not by God or evolution but by human intervention. Humans eventually discovered that they could turn that environment into an asset if they had manpower - seasoned colonial laborers (slave or free) with acquired immunities - who could withstand the fevers that killed invaders. This huge defensive advantage turned the Caribbean into a graveyard of imperial ambitions, even Napoleon’s. In a contemporaneous study of European empires (AFTER TAMERLANE, 2007), John Darwin argued that we should remain mindful not only of those empires’ conquest but also of the huge resistance they faced, chiefly from people who wanted to avoid being colonized. To the noble ranks of these anti-imperialists, John McNeill concludes, we should add a few members of the animal kingdom, particularly the despised but efficacious mosquito.
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