Description
This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics Within the context of the Greater Caribbean – the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake – Within the seventeenth via early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially appropriate 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 since malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles Within the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking a few populations more severely than others. Specifically, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped stay the Spanish Empire Spanish Within the face of predatory rivals Within the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Within the overdue eighteenth and in the course of the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to stop them.