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Mosquito Empires

ecology and war in the greater caribbean, 1620–1914

This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international poli-tics in the context of the Greater Caribbean – the landscapes lying betweenSurinam and the Chesapeake – in the seventeenth through early twentiethcenturies. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for themosquito vectors of yellow fever and malaria, helping these diseases to wreaksystematic havoc among invading armies and would-be settlers. Because yellowfever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confersresistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire andrevolution, consistently attacking some populations more severely than others.In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, whichhelped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in theseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth century andthrough the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions succeed bydecimating forces sent out from Europe to stop them.

J. R. McNeill is University Professor in the History Department and School ofForeign Service at Georgetown University. His books include The Mountainsof the Mediterranean World (Cambridge University Press, 1992); Something NewUnder the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000),co-winner of the World History Association book prize and the Forest HistorySociety book prize and runner-up for the BP Natural World book prize; and TheHuman Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (2003), co-authored with hisfather, William H. McNeill.

New Approaches to the Americas

Edited by Stuart Schwartz, Yale University

Also published in the series:

Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material CultureLaird Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the

United StatesNoble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest,

1492–1650Junia Ferreira Furtado, Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth

CenturySandra Lauderdale Graham, Caetana Says No: Women’s Stories from a

Brazilian Slave SocietyHerbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave TradeRobert M. Levine, Father of the Poor? Vargas and His EraShawn William Miller, An Environmental History of Latin AmericaSusan Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America

Mosquito Em p ires

ecology and war in thegreater caribbean,

1620–1914

J. R. McNeillGeorgetown University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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For Julie, once again

Contents

List of Maps page xi

List of Abbreviations Used in the Footnotes xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xvii

1 The Argument (and Its Limits) in Brief 1The Argument 2The Limits of the Argument 5The Limits of the Novelty of the Argument 8

Part I. Setting the Scene

2 Atlantic Empires and Caribbean Ecology 15Atlantic American Geopolitics, 1620–1820 15Ecological Transformation in the Caribbean,

1640–1750 22Yellow Fever and Caribbean Ecology 32Yellow Fever Transmission and Immunity 40Epidemic Yellow Fever and Plantation Sugar 47Malaria, Mosquitoes, and Plantations of

Sugar and Rice 52Climate Change, El Nino, Mosquitoes,

and Epidemics 58Conclusion 60

3 Deadly Fevers, Deadly Doctors 63Early Yellow Fever Epidemics and Their Victims 64A Virulent Strain of Medicine 68Conclusion 86

ix

x CONTENTS

Part II. Imperial Mosquitoes

4 Fevers Take Hold: From Recife to Kourou 91The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 92The English in Jamaica, 1655–1660 97The Scots at Darien, 1698–1699 105The French at Kourou, 1763–1764 123Conclusion 135

5 Yellow Fever Rampant and British Ambition Repulsed,1690–1780 137

Yellow Fever and the Defense of theSpanish Empire 137

The Deadly 1690s 144Siege Ecology at Cartagena, 1741 149The Seven Years’ War and the Siege Ecology of

Havana, 1762 169Conclusion 188

Part III. Revolutionary Mosquitoes

6 Lord Cornwallis vs. Anopheles quadrimaculatus,1780–1781 195

Introduction 195Slave Risings and Surinam’s Maroons 195Revolution and Malaria in the Southern Colonies 198Yorktown 220Conclusion 232

7 Revolutionary Fevers, 1790–1898: Haiti, New Granada,and Cuba 235

St. Domingue, 1790–1804 236New Granada, 1815–1820 267Immigration, Warfare, and Independence,

1830–1898: Mexico, the United States,and Cuba 287

Conclusion 303

8 Conclusion: Vector and Virus Vanquished, 1880–1914 304The Argument Recapitulated 304Vector and Virus Vanquished 306Disease and Power 312

Bibliography 315

Index 363

List of Maps

2.1 The Greater Caribbean page 224.1 Northeastern Brazil 934.2 Jamaica 974.3 Panama and Darien 1064.4 Guyana and Kourou 1235.1 Fortified Points in the Spanish Caribbean (c. 1750) 1395.2 Cartagena and Environs (c. 1741) 1505.3 Havana and Environs (c. 1762) 1726.1 The Carolinas and the Chesapeake (c. 1780) 1997.1 St. Domingue (c. 1790) 2367.2 The Viceroyalty of New Granada (c. 1810) 2677.3 Cuba 296

xi

List of Abbreviations

Used in the Footnotes

AGI Archivo General de IndiasAGI AP Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de PanamaAGI SD Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de Santo DomingoAGS Archivo General de SimancasAHN Archivo Historico NacionalBL British LibraryBL Add. MSS British Library, Additional ManuscriptsBN Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid)CSP Calendar of State PapersMHS Massachusetts Historical SocietyNLS National Library of ScotlandPRO Public Record OfficePRO ADM Public Record Office, Admiralty PapersPRO CO Public Record Office, Colonial Office PapersPRO PC Public Record Office, Privy Council PapersPRO SP Public Record Office, State PapersPRO WO Public Record Office, War OfficeSHM Servicio Historico Militar

(A full listing of manuscript collections used in this book appears in theBibliography.)

xiii

Preface

Few books can have had longer gestations than this one. I first becameaware of the devastating lethality of yellow fever in the winter of 1979–1980 when reading documents about eighteenth-century Cuba in theArchivo General de Indias in Seville. I was then a twenty-five-year-oldgraduate student researching a dissertation, trying to live on $125 amonth, lonely and often cold and hungry, aware that Seville had manycharms available in the hours after the archive had closed but that Icould not afford any more costly than walking the avenues and visitingthe glorious cathedral. Reading about yellow fever was good for myshaky morale: At least I was not in searing heat, plagued by mosquitoes,and wracked with a deadly virus.

My dissertation had a few references to yellow fever. In the two yearsafter I completed that justly neglected document, I had the good fortuneto be flamboyantly unsuccessful in the academic job market, providingme with an informal post-doc financed by odd jobs. I learned moreabout the etiology of yellow fever and, over some months, wrote my firstconference paper on the virus’s impacts on warfare in the Caribbean,delivered (shakily) to an audience in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Eventually,my luck changed in the job market and I began to teach European,Russian, and German history, which carried my mind far from theCaribbean. I gave yellow fever no more thought for three or more years.

In 1985, I moved to Georgetown University and began teachinginternational, world, and African history, which kept me too busy tothink about anything not needed for my next class. Soon after my arrival,while walking through the stacks of Lauinger Library, my eyes chancedon a black-jacketed book with an interesting title. I pulled it off the

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xvi PREFACE

shelf, opened it while still walking, and scanned the table of contents.To my surprise, I appeared as author of chapter two.

It was my Tuscaloosa conference paper, published without my knowl-edge and without any corrections. I cringed for a moment, aware of atleast some of the chapter’s imperfections. Then I scurried back to myoffice to enter a new publication on my scrawny C.V. I silently vowedone day to return to the subject and do it more carefully. Had I notaccidentally spotted the black-jacketed book, I would never have triedto write this one.

Years passed, devoted to teaching, other book projects, and raisingchildren (not necessarily in that order). In 1996, Richard Hoffmanand the late Elinor Melville invited me to an environmental historyconference at York University. In a feverish burst of scribbling and self-plagiarism, I wrote a rather better conference paper in thirty-six hours. Ilet the matter drop again, turning my attention to new projects and newchildren. But soon Richard Grove traipsed into my office, introducedhimself, and asked if I had anything he might want to publish in thejournal he founded and edited, Environment and History. I turned overthe York paper to him and, with my knowledge and a few corrections,he published it in 1998. But I knew it still wasn’t what it should be.

Further imperfect renditions of this paper followed, deepening myunease. But since 2004, I have made this project the main focus of myscholarly ambitions. Several new ideas have bubbled up in the processof new research, several more formal presentations of the subject, anddozens of conversations with amicable and patient historians, geog-raphers, biologists, friends, and relatives. At a certain point, authorsmust conquer their urge to do yet more research, and surrender to theinevitability that their work is imperfect. I have reconciled myself tothe fact that there are archives I did not visit, others that I visited toobriefly, and books and articles I should have read. But new projectsclamor for my time as, happily, do the same children. So here it is, longin the making but, I hope, less imperfect for it.

Acknowledgments

Writing this book has reminded me how fortunate I am. While con-ducting my research, I needed plenty of help and guidance. While tryingto form and sharpen my arguments, I needed many sounding boards.While struggling to put my ideas in clear prose, I needed several sharp-eyed readers. Several dozen friends and colleagues, and a few relatives,answered my needs, giving me and my book their precious time.

Helpful colleagues who answered amateurish questions or providedreferences about mosquitoes, diseases, and ecology include Peter Arm-bruster, Tim Beach, Heidi Elmendorf, Derwin Fish, David Krakauer,Todd Morell, Scott Norton, and Emilio Quevedo. Scholars who per-formed similar kindnesses, some of them so long ago they have likely for-gotten, concerning historical matters include Andrew Bell, Lisa Brady,the late Philip Curtin, Alejandro de la Fuente, Luis Fajardo, Lil Fenn,Reinaldo Funes, Ignacio Gallup-Dıaz, Sherry Johnson, Wim Klooster,Peter McCandless, Phil Morgan, Jean-Francois Mouhot, Matt Mulcahy,Celia Parcero, Anne Perotin-Dumon, Ernst Pijning, Lydia Pulsipher,Ben Vinson, Jim Webb, Xenia Wilkinson, and Drexel Woodson. Mydebt extends to my former students Juan-Luıs Simal and Vikram Tam-boli, who dug up documents on my behalf, as did Liz Shlala. I thankthem all.

Several historians, two political scientists, and one geomorpholo-gist read all or parts of the manuscript and provided helpful sugges-tions and sorely needed corrections. Those who read parts, in somecases most of it, include Trevor Burnard, Ronald Hoffman, Paolo Squa-triti, and my Georgetown colleagues Tommaso Astarita, Tim Beach,Carol Benedict, Jim Collins, David Goldfrank, Erick Langer, Chan-dra Manning, Bryan McCann, and Jim Millward. (Professor Burnard

xvii

xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

also lent my family his house and car one summer while I worked inBritish archives.) Colleagues who made the sacrifice of reading the fullmanuscript include Alan Karras, Steve Wrage, and from GeorgetownAlison Games, Charles King, Meredith McKittrick, Micah Muscolino,Aviel Roshwald, Adam Rothman, and John Tutino. No fewer than six-teen Georgetown colleagues read all or parts of the work, testimony toa generosity of spirit that I expect is not often equaled elsewhere.

No less remarkable is that my father, William McNeill, my sister RuthMcNeill, and my brother-in-law Bart Jones read it in full as well. Myfather sped the completion of the project by asking frequently whetherit was done yet. My sister, who twenty-five years ago told me my writingwould be improved if I sprinkled ten additional commas on each pageand it would hardly matter where they landed, excised scores of errantand unhelpful commas scattered throughout this text. Two anonymousreaders for Cambridge University Press also provided useful suggestionswhich I have heeded (and some others that I probably should haveheeded).

Audiences at several universities and conferences have politely satthrough presentations on themes in this book, and in every case madecomments or asked questions that refined my thinking. So I thank thepatient souls at the following universities: Akron, Canterbury, Duke,George Washington, Harvard, Helsinki, Johns Hopkins, Lund, Mary-land, Michigan, MIT, New Hampshire, Penn, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Wis-consin, Yale, and York.

At various stages, I needed not only time and expertise from gener-ous colleagues, but I also needed money. The MacArthur Foundationand the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown provided thenecessary funds for overseas research.

The greatest debt I save for last. Thank you, Julie.

C H A P T E R O N E

The Argument (and Its Limits) in Brief

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,That host with their banners at sunset were seen:Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d;And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

– Lord Byron, “The Destruction of Sennacherib”(1815), verses 1–3

[The] whole damn war business is about nine hundred and ninety-nine parts diarrhea to one part glory.

– Walt Whitman1

In 1727, the British Vice-Admiral Francis Hosier sailed with a navalsquadron to the shores of what is now Colombia and Panama. His supe-riors had instructed him to blockade this coast in hopes of preventing aSpanish treasure fleet laden with South American silver from reaching

1 Traubel (1906–61, 3:293). Whitman served as a nurse in the American CivilWar; Byron died in the Greek War of Independence – of malaria.

1

2 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

Spain. Yellow fever broke out on Hosier’s ships while they were cruis-ing off Portobelo, killing almost the entire crew. Hosier soon scrapedtogether another crew from Jamaica and returned to his duty, whereuponyellow fever killed the second crew along with the Vice-Admiral. Some4,000 sailors died without a shot fired. Fourteen years later, AdmiralEdward Vernon brought an amphibious strike force of about 29,000men to the Colombia coast to besiege the Spanish stronghold of Carta-gena. Within a few months 22,000 were dead, almost all from diseases,mainly yellow fever but probably malaria as well. The population of theSpanish colonies remained unaffected, and Spain’s grip on its Americanempire remained firm.

The enormous mortality of these expeditions and many more likethem was remarkably one-sided. Yellow fever and malaria attacked somepeople much more often than others, which had political consequences.Although always evolving, the ecological conditions that prevailed inthe Greater Caribbean after the 1640s reliably included these twinkillers. Strictly speaking, they did not determine the outcomes of strug-gles for power, but they governed the probabilities of success and failurein military expeditions and settlement schemes. It is perhaps a rude blowto the amour propre of our species to think that lowly mosquitoes andmindless viruses can shape our international affairs. But they can.

The Argument

This book aims to show how quests for wealth and power changedecologies in the Greater Caribbean, and how ecological changes in turnshaped the fortunes of empire, war, and revolution in the years between1620 and 1914. By “Greater Caribbean” I mean the Atlantic coastalregions of South, Central, and North America, as well as the Caribbeanislands themselves, that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies became plantation zones: from Surinam to the Chesapeake.The book provides a perspective that takes into account nature – viruses,plasmodia,2 mosquitoes, monkeys, swamps – as well as humankind inmaking political history.

From the sixteenth century forward, the great powers of the Atlanticworld – chiefly Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Britain – struggled

2 Plasmodia are parasites, a variety of protozoa. Certain species of plasmodia causemalaria in humans.

THE ARGUMENT (AND ITS LIMITS) IN BRIEF 3

among themselves for control over territories, resources, and peoplesin the American continents and the Caribbean islands. Additionally,from the late eighteenth century onward some of the peoples of theAmericas sought to achieve political independence from those greatpowers in a series of revolutions that created the United States, Haiti,and several republics in Spanish America. These were stirring events,the stuff of political history, replete with heroism and drama, provid-ing stages for characters such as George Washington, Toussaint Lou-verture, and Simon Bolıvar. They were also the stuff of ecologicalhistory.

A full and proper understanding of these events requires not only anappreciation of the social and economic forces at play – something his-torians have skillfully offered for a long time – but also an appreciationof ecological contexts and concurrent environmental trends, somethinghistorians have only lately tried to do. The geopolitical struggles of theGreater Caribbean were fought out mainly in landscapes undergoingrapid environmental change, replete with deforestation, soil erosion,and the installation of plantation agro-ecosystems based on crops such assugar and rice. The unstable evolving ecologies of the Greater Caribbeanprovided ideal incubators for the species of mosquitoes that carry twoof humankind’s most lethal diseases, yellow fever and malaria. The vec-tor of yellow fever is the female of the species Aedes aegypti. Althoughseveral Anopheles species transmit malaria, in the southern colonies ofwhat would become the United States (where malaria helped turn thefortunes of nations) one species, Anopheles quadrimaculatus, communi-cated the disease.3 Ecological change resulting from the establishmentof a plantation economy improved breeding and feeding conditions forboth mosquito species, helping them become key actors in the geopoliti-cal struggles of the early modern Atlantic world, if not, strictly speaking,dramatis personae.

The microbes behind yellow fever and malaria were also inadvertenthistorical actors. Humans often have complicated and contradictorymotivations. Microbes do not: they “want” to reproduce. The yellowfever virus and malarial plasmodia produced similar geopolitical effects,and they often afflicted the same people at once, but were differentorganisms with different impacts. In populations without immunities,

3 Aedes aegypti appears in the specialist literature as A. aegypti or as Ae. aegypti.Anopheles quadrimaculatus appears as A. quadrimaculatus or An. quadrimaculatus.

4 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

yellow fever was much more lethal than malaria. It plagued urban areas,whereas malaria haunted rural ones. Yellow fever conferred full immu-nity upon survivors, whereas malaria victims built up resistance throughrepeated bouts. The next chapter will say more about yellow fever andmalaria, but this much should suffice to understand their historical roles.This book will have more to say about yellow fever than about malariabecause yellow fever more often and more powerfully shaped the historyof empires and revolutions in the Greater Caribbean.

Mosquitoes and the diseases they carried wrought havoc in theGreater Caribbean, but not indiscriminate havoc. Some people car-ried no immunities to either disease and easily succumbed to sicknessand death. Others, by virtue of having survived childhood in times andplaces where yellow fever or malaria were commonplace, enjoyed someresistance to either or both, and as a result as adults were much lesslikely to fall ill or die. This distinction, which is at the heart of theargument, I will call “differential immunity” or, when it refers only tomalaria, “differential resistance.” I will explain the complexities of thisconcept in Chapter 2.

Once yellow fever and malaria became common in the Americas,differential immunity gave both diseases political importance. Theymade it extremely hazardous for outsiders with unprepared immunesystems to come to the Greater Caribbean, which in practice mainlymeant people from Europe and North America. The hazard escalated ifthey came in large groups for reasons addressed in Chapter 2. Large-scalesettlement schemes, such as those at Darien and Kourou (Chapter 4)routinely collapsed amid searing epidemics.

Large-scale military expeditions usually met the same fate. Before1800, the great powers tried to take strategic or wealthy colonies fromone another whenever suitable opportunity arose. Spanish possessionswere especially favored targets because Spain (after 1580 or so) oftenappeared weaker than its rivals, and because its assets in the Americas,notably its silver mines, seemed especially worth taking. But by relyingheavily on locally recruited men and on fortifications of key strongholds,the Spanish managed to retain their American empire despite frequentpredatory missions undertaken by imperial rivals. If they could hold outfor two months against an attacking force, they could expect yellow feverand malaria to destroy their foes – provided those foes had been recruitedfrom regions of the world that could not prepare human immune systemsfor the disease environment of the Greater Caribbean. Yellow feverformed a crucial part of Spanish imperial defense. Without it, Spain


might well have lost much of her American empire in the eighteenthcentury.

After 1770, the tenor of geopolitics in Atlantic America altered.Imperial rivalries persisted but now revolutionary struggles also reverber-ated throughout the Atlantic world, complicating the political picture.Populations mainly born and raised in the Americas began to agitate fortheir freedom from imperial control. Once again, differential immunityensured that yellow fever and malaria shaped the outcomes of these con-tests. By and large, revolutionary forces enjoyed far greater immunity tothese twin killers than did those sent out to quell revolutions, and theylearned to exploit that fact. If they could avoid losing quickly on thebattlefield, the revolutionaries could prevail in the long run thanks tothe systematically partisan attacks of epidemics. And prevail they did.

After successful revolutions between 1775 and 1825 created theUnited States, Haiti, and several republics in Spanish America, thegeopolitical significance of yellow fever and malaria in the Americanhemisphere abated, mainly because the intensity of conflict subsidedand the presence of foreign (and nonimmune) forces became rarer. Butit did not disappear entirely. In a scattering of conflicts, especially theinsurrections against Spain in late nineteenth-century Cuba, differen-tial immunity still exerted considerable sway. But gradually armies andsocieties grew more adept at reducing the toll of infectious diseases. Bythe early twentieth century, when medical researchers had shown thatmosquitoes spread both yellow fever and malaria, a new imperial powerhad arisen, the United States. With efficient mosquito control amongits weapons, the U.S. quickly established a small empire of its own inthe Caribbean in Puerto Rico, temporarily in Cuba, and most impor-tantly in the case of the Panama Canal. Part of the reason that the U.S.acquired its Caribbean empire when it did was that it could more easilyabsorb the manpower costs of a tropical empire once its forces learnedto keep mosquitoes at bay. In short, this book will argue that thosetiny amazons, the female Aedes aegypti and Anopheles quadrimaculatus,underpinned the geopolitical order in the Americas until the 1770s,after which they undermined it, ushering in a new era of independentstates.

The Limits of the Argument

On the first page of his artful polemic, The Eighteenth Brumaire of LouisNapoleon, published in 1852, Karl Marx wrote, “Men make their own

6 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

history, but they do not make it as they please.”4 He went on to explainthat the past powerfully constrains the present, shaping what peoplethink and do, and indeed what they are capable of thinking and doing.While not disputing the wisdom of that lapidary phrase, this book arguesthat in the Greater Caribbean not only did conditions inherited from theintellectual past constrain human affairs but so did conditions inherited,and evolving, in the ecological realm. People made their own historybut they did not make it as they pleased because ecology would not letthem.

This book also argues that the reverse was true as well: mosquitoesand viruses made history in the Greater Caribbean but they did soonly because soldiers and statesmen, slaves and revolutionaries acted incertain specific ways. Ecology shaped history with unusual force in thiscontext, but that it could do so was a result of both accidents of historyand environmental change brought about by human agency. Had theslave trade not brought yellow fever and malaria to the Americas, noneof the story offered here would have happened. The disease environmentof the Caribbean was a cultural artifact. Had American or Haitianrevolutionaries not taken their stands, malaria and yellow fever wouldhave had no chance to undermine empires in the Americas. Had doctorsnot proven helpless in the face of yellow fever, they might have erasedthe effects of differential immunity. Humankind and nature make theirown history together, but neither can make it as they please.

This, then, is not quite an essay in mosquito determinism, or evenenvironmental determinism, although at times it will seem just that. Intrying to highlight what is novel in this argument, I will, as authors oftendo, underplay other considerations. I will make my case in bold and baldterms, and not repeat endlessly the relevant caveats and qualifications.Passages taken on their own will seem far too deterministic for somereaders, with a simplistic sense of cause and effect. Some readers maytake offense, finding my interpretations downplay the heroics of Spanishforces at Cartagena in 1741, of insurgent slaves in Haiti, or of George

4 Consulted at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm. There are various translations from the original German, the otherleading one being: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it underconditions of their own choosing.” Translations in this book are mine, unlessotherwise indicated. Where I think the original words might be important tosome readers, they are provided.


Washington at Yorktown. But, I hope, the book taken as a whole willseem to provide a blended perspective that emphasizes the mutual andreciprocal impacts of geopolitics and ecology. Each guided the other inan ongoing process, a cotillion of co-evolution.

To some extent, almost all human history is really a co-evolutionaryprocess involving society and nature. But the degree to which this is truevaries greatly from context to context. Sometimes the two scarcely affectone another: The mid-nineteenth century intellectual and theologicaldebates surrounding the question of papal infallibility, for example,probably did not turn on any ecological considerations, nor did theirresolution have any discernible ecological effects. But in other timesand places, the links between human history and ecological history arerobust, sometimes to the point where mosquitoes and viruses infringe onthe fortunes of humankind in ways that seem unflattering to our species,making us seem mere playthings in dramas wrought (not directed) bytiny, mindless creatures.5

This is difficult to appreciate today – fortunately. We have recentlyexperienced a golden age of health and longevity never before attainedin human history. Certainly it has been much more golden for somethan others, and lately in some countries the modern trend is now inreverse and life expectancies are in decline. If the AIDS pandemic goesunchecked or is joined by other infections running rampant, it maybe that the golden age will come to a close. But for the moment, wemust recognize how unusual the last century or so has been for humanhealth, and for our human ability to bend the rest of the biosphere toour will – within limits and not without unintended consequences –and remember that it was not always so.6

It is not always easy to remember and to give yellow fever and malariatheir due. Mosquitoes and pathogens left no memoirs or manifestos.Before 1900, prevalent understandings of disease and health did notrecognize their roles, and no one alive grasped their full significance.So they left scant trace in the archives. Subsequently historians, livingin the golden age of health, normally failed to see their significanceeither. Historians, like other humans, typically prefer explanations forthe course of human affairs that emphasize human roles and agency (anddo not require forays into the domains of ecology or epidemiology). But

5 Cloudsley-Thompson (1976) pioneered insect-centric history.6 McNeill (2000: 194–211) explores this theme.

8 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

the mosquitoes and pathogens were there, flitting around the GreaterCaribbean, and in pursuit of their uncomplicated goals they had effectson human affairs that we can see reflected in archives and memoirs.

The Limits of the Novelty of the Argument

Two and a half millennia ago, Thucydides thought that an epidemicsurging through his native city of Athens was important enough towarrant careful discussion in his account of the Peloponnesian War(Book II, chapters 47–54). Since that time, observers of events and sub-sequent historians have often recognized that epidemics can interferein human affairs, including geopolitics, as Lord Byron’s stanzas atop thischapter attest. Contemporaries normally understood these cases as evi-dence of divine intervention, punishment for transgressions of a peopleor its leaders. Historians, often skeptical of such interpretations, tendedto regard epidemics as random and therefore not worth deep investiga-tion. Although their effects might be important, their causes seemed tolie outside the province of the historian. And, most historians supposed,their effects evened out over time, attacking one combatant force, thenanother, and in the end carrying no consequences beyond the earlydeaths of those affected. As a result, it is possible to find histories of theAmerican Revolution or the Napoleonic Wars that make no mentionof disease at all, even though diseases killed far more combatants thandid combat.7 For that matter, although he noted that the epidemic inquestion struck Athens and spared its enemies, Thucydides gave it littleweight in his effort to explain the Athenian defeat.

However, in the last half century historians acquainted with epidemi-ology have demonstrated how crucial disease often was in intersocietalencounters, as in all other aspects of human experience – often, butnot always.8 The reluctance to attribute importance to epidemic diseasein affairs of state had some basis as long as historians did not rangetoo far afield. When neighboring populations fought one another, they

7 In both these wars, the British army suffered about eight times as many deathsfrom disease as from battle. Smallman-Raynor and Cliff (2004: 34).

8 Among the pioneers were Alfred Crosby (1972, 1986), Philip Curtin (1968), andWilliam McNeill (1976). Medical authors with an interest in warfare precededthem, notably Prinzing (1916), Zinsser (1935), and Major (1940). The latestgeneral treatment is Smallman-Raynor and Cliff (2004).


often carried roughly the same sets of immunities and susceptibilities,so while typhus and dysentery might carry off thousands, they had nosystematically partisan effect and could safely be relegated to the foot-notes or even neglected altogether – although that would miss the hometruth of Whitman’s observation at the outset of this chapter. WhenEuropeans fought against other Europeans, or when Chinese foughtagainst other Chinese, in most cases diseases did not serve as arbiters ofprolonged struggles, even if they might destroy an army here and there.

The significance of disease in warfare changed when armies foughtfar from home in unfamiliar disease environments, or fought againstpeople with sharply different immunities and susceptibilities to dis-ease. For example, when armies of China’s Qing dynasty fought on theinner Asian steppe against Dzungar Mongols in the eighteenth century,the Qing troops enjoyed a systematic edge because they usually car-ried immunity to smallpox and the Dzungars generally did not.9 TheDzungars had been too isolated from the large populations of Eura-sia through which smallpox circulated to encounter it in childhood(when it is usually a milder disease) and thereby acquire immunity. Butalmost every Chinese who reached adulthood was immune. Similarly,when Spanish conquistadors fought Amerindians in sixteenth-centuryMexico or Peru, their immunities to smallpox, measles, mumps, whoop-ing cough, and influenza gave them a potent advantage over their ene-mies. These were situations in which populations carrying fuller arraysof immunities to the so-called “crowd diseases” enjoyed persistent sys-tematic advantages over more isolated populations who did not. Suchsituations were routine in world history before the twentieth century.10

The key to this phenomenon, the microbial sword of civilization, is thatthe crowd diseases were maintained as childhood infections by circu-lating among crowds, often millions, of people. They prevailed wherepopulations were dense and interactive, and immunized survivors; theydid not depend on specific environmental conditions.

9 Perdue (2005: 47–8, 91–2). The Chinese met their match in the southwest,in Yunnan. The Qing dynasty had to scale back its expansionist ambitions inYunnan because malaria was so lethal to its troops and administrators. As oneChinese diarist put it: “Its people are neither brave nor vigorous, their weaponsdull. They fall far short of Chinese troops and preserved themselves only becauseof rugged terrain and virulent malaria.” Cited in Bello (2005: 283).

10 Crosby (1986); McNeill (1976).

10 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

Less routine but common enough were situations in which armiesand navies operated far from home in hostile disease environments forwhich their backgrounds did not and could not prepare them. Themost conspicuous cases took place when invasion forces entered regionswith local diseases that could not spread around the world becausethey depended on specific environmental circumstances. Such diseasesthen served as shields for local populations. Malaria and yellow feverfall into this category because their spread requires mosquitoes, andthe mosquitoes require certain conditions (particularly of temperature).Where those conditions held, malaria and yellow fever might reign.Populations living in such zones paid a considerable price, mainly inthe form of high childhood mortality to malaria (and much lower toyellow fever). But in the bargain they acquired resistance (as adults)to lethal diseases that would help them against invaders. For example,most African societies between the Sahara and the Cape of Good Hopeenjoyed a systematic edge over invading foreigners because of theirresistance to malaria and (in some cases) to yellow fever – an edgethat modern military medicine reduced by the 1890s, thereby makingEuropean colonialism in Africa much more affordable, tempting – andlikely.11

Yellow fever and malaria in the Greater Caribbean were not swords ofcivilization like smallpox and measles, scything down hitherto isolatedpopulations. Nor were they in this case shields for indigenous popula-tions in the sense that they were in Africa because in the Americasthey were recently imported diseases. Their role in this context wasunusual in several respects. First, conditions conspired to create sharplydifferential immunity and frequent epidemics, so their power to shapeevents was magnified to extraordinary proportions. Second, unlike thecrowd diseases – which played a fairly consistent role in world history –their geopolitical significance shifted sharply in the late eighteenth cen-tury as a result of new currents in Atlantic world politics. Third, with theexception of Haiti, yellow fever and malaria – both originally Africandiseases – mainly shaped political struggles among Europeans and people

11 Curtin (1998). Even as late as the Second World War, malaria proved animportant factor in campaigns in southeast Asia and the South Pacific, despitethe best efforts of military doctors in the Japanese, British, and American armies.But in this case it was not systematically partisan, as all of these armies sufferedseverely from it because their manpower was mainly recruited from zones thatdid not provide soldiers with experience of and resistance to malaria.


of European descent. This was true despite the fact that (and in somecases because of it) people of African birth or descent played prominentroles in nearly every case.

With that, let us turn to the tandem careers of two of the fourhorsemen of the apocalypse, war and pestilence, as they galloped alongthe coasts of the Greater Caribbean.

P A R T O N E

SETTING THE SCENE

A n influx of European settlers and African slaves to the GreaterCaribbean after 1620 steered ecological change onto new paths. In

particular, changes took place that made the region especially hospitableto the mosquito vectors of yellow fever and malaria. The next twochapters outline those ecological changes, the habits of the relevantmosquitoes, the character of those two diseases, and the ways in whichpeople tried, almost always fruitlessly, to cope with yellow fever andmalaria.

13

C H A P T E R TW O

Atlantic Empires and Caribbean Ecology

In the way of Nature there can be no evil.– Marcus Aurelius, The Communings with Himself of Marcus

Aurelius Antonius (C. R. Haines, trans. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1987[1916])

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 a.d.) liked to take astoic stance on most matters, and viewed human death with detachment.For the less detached among us, the yellow fever virus and its vector,the Aedes aegypti mosquito, might easily qualify as evil. Rarely, if ever,did they do as much mischief as in the West Indies between 1647 and1900. Malaria and its vectors probably did less damage, but quite enoughnonetheless. Mosquitoes and pathogens could not make history on theirown: human actions set the stage.

This chapter aims to sketch the links between politics and warfareon the one hand and environmental change on the other, within theconfines of the Caribbean basin of the seventeenth and early eighteenthcentury. It leaves for later consideration of the theme of environmentalchange in the southern colonies of British North America (Chapter 6).In the Caribbean, the creation of a plantation system featuring sugarabove all other crops fueled an ecological and demographic transfor-mation, making the region conform more fully to the preferences ofmosquitoes and requirements of pathogens. It also helped raise the stakesof imperial geopolitics in the Atlantic world.

Atlantic American Geopolitics, 1620–1820

In the centuries after Christopher Columbus established regular con-tact between the Americas and the rest of the world, one of the great

15

16 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

demographic catastrophes of human history befell the peoples of theAmericas. Amerindians may have numbered 40 million to 70 millionin 1492, maybe more, but had no prior experience with the crowd dis-eases of Eurasia and Africa, nor with malaria and yellow fever. After1492, in addition to suffering relentless rounds of epidemics, their soci-eties were hammered by war, forced migrations, and enslavement.1

By 1650, roughly 10 percent of the Amerindian population of 1492remained, no powerful Amerindian polity stood intact, and the resourcesof the Americas were primarily in European hands. The most importantresources were the gold and silver mines of the Andes and Mexico, andthe fertile soils suitable for growing sugarcane.

In the Caribbean basin – both the islands and surrounding lowlands –the demographic devastation was near total. Proximity to Europe andAfrica meant that ships, cargoes, and crews introduced alien diseasesmore frequently to the Caribbean than to, say, Peru. Whereas in Mexicoand Peru Amerindian people, language, and culture survived sufficientlyto contribute heavily to the formation of mestizo (mixed) societies,on most Caribbean islands and some mainland shores the indigenouscomponent, both culturally and genetically, dwindled almost to thepoint of extinction.2 The demography and culture of the Caribbeanregion became mainly a mixture of Western European and AtlanticAfrican elements, with a much smaller indigenous imprint than inMexico or the Andes. The demographic catastrophe of the Americasand the destruction of Amerindian polities created a vacuum of powerthat the states of Atlantic Europe aimed to fill.

Spain, of course, got there first. Thanks to the crowd diseases and con-quistadors, Spain quickly acquired a sprawling empire in the Americas.Large parts of it were only loosely held, but the important parts – themines and the ports through which precious metals flowed – were firmlyin Spanish hands by 1650. Spain had only 7–8 million people in 1650and modest domestic sources of wealth, but large ambitions. The Houseof Habsburg, Spain’s rulers until 1700, fought continually in pursuit ofdynastic claims and in support of Catholic populations in Europe. With-out the American mines, Spain could not afford to play the great powerin Europe or the Atlantic world. From the late sixteenth century on,

1 Livi Bacci (2005; 2006) reviews the data and emphasizes reduced fertility as wellas the toll of epidemics and other disruptions.

2 The effects of conquest in the Caribbean are reviewed in Whitehead (2000);the role of African diseases is summarized in Curtin (1993).

ATLANTIC EMPIRES AND CARIBBEAN ECOLOGY 17

when the mines of Latin America became the world’s most lucrative, thetopmost priority of Spanish imperial policy was to defend the wealth ofthe Indies. That required investment in naval ships and in fortifications,especially in the key ports of Callao, Cartagena, Portobelo, Veracruz,and Havana. The American empire, its silver and its trade, made Spaina great power.3

Portugal acquired an American presence in Brazil beginning in 1500,part of a seaborne empire that soon stretched to outposts in Africa, India,and Southeast Asia. There were fewer than 2 million Portuguese in 1650,with no substantial domestic sources of wealth. Nonetheless, its rulersentertained world-girdling ambitions (from 1580 to 1640, Portugal’srulers were the Spanish Habsburgs). Until the 1690s, when diamondand gold mines in central Brazil (Minas Gerais) changed the complex-ion of Brazil’s economy, the important parts of the territory were theplantations of the northeast, where slave labor mainly from Angolaraised sugarcane and other crops. Northeastern Brazil was lucrativeenough that the Dutch went to considerable effort to seize and holda good swathe of it early in the seventeenth century, departing only in1653. The Portuguese had no colonial holdings and little trade in theCaribbean itself.

France, home to some 17 million people in the mid-seventeenthcentury, had a scattered empire in the Americas.4 It did not dependon its empire financially because France itself contained much richfarmland, which formed the ultimate basis of most state revenues, anda growing textile trade. In the north, France claimed Quebec and partsof what are now the Canadian maritime provinces. In the Caribbean,France took and held a few small islands in the 1620s, and after 1697added the western third of the large island of Hispaniola, called St.Domingue. By 1700, the French were installing themselves in Louisiana,in the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes heartland of North America,but their imprint remained shallow and their control shaky. Before 1700,the Americas did not command much priority in French policy becausethey did not add much to the wealth or power of the kingdom, andbecause civil wars until the 1650s and foreign wars consistently keptthe government, its forces, and its finances fully occupied. France bothgarnered and squandered the lion’s share of its resources within Europe,

3 Of the countless tomes on the early Spanish Empire, an excellent one is Kamen(2003).

4 A most helpful survey is Boucher (2008).

18 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

with scant concern for the Americas. Until St. Domingue became animportant plantation colony, French traders became prominent in theAtlantic slave trade, and the northwest Atlantic cod fishery boomed –say, by the 1730s.

The Dutch played a most improbable role in Atlantic and world his-tory in the seventeenth century. They numbered only about 2 million,about the same as the Portuguese, and like them they engaged in trade,war, and colonization wherever ships could sail, from Japan and Taiwanto Java and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and South Africa – and the Americas.But unlike the Portuguese, they were almost constantly embroiled inland wars at home, first against the Spanish Habsburgs and then againstthe French. In the Americas, the Dutch held New York (until the1660s), Surinam (after the 1660s), and a dozen or so small Caribbeanislands, mainly acquired between 1620 and 1640. None of this producedgreat wealth but it did provide bases for Dutch traders and raiders, anda source of sea salt for the Dutch herring business, one of the founda-tions of the Dutch economy. They also held sugar-producing parts ofnortheastern Brazil from 1624 until 1653. With their trade-based econ-omy and worldwide commitments, the Dutch (both the governmentand the quasi-governmental private companies entrusted with trade,privateering, and colonization) invested heavily in ships more than for-tification in the Americas, although they built many fortresses at homein Europe.5 As a result, they often lost little colonies and settlements,especially around 1650–1670, by which time their economy had begunto lose its remarkable verve. Financial constraints meant the Dutchhad to stint on peripheral concerns in the Americas. It did not helpthat they had few friends and some powerful enemies. But even in thelate 1650s they entertained ambitions of taking all of northern SouthAmerica from Spain.6

England, a nation of about 5 million in 1650 (nearly 8 million count-ing Scots and Irish),7 was in many ways becoming the most disruptivepower in the Atlantic world – a rogue state. As an island kingdom,

5 Around 1648, the Dutch had more ships than the rest of Europe combinedaccording to Klooster (1997:3).

6 Klooster (1998:38).7 The English and Scottish crowns were united in 1603 and their parliaments in

1707. Ireland was gradually brought under English control over the course of theseventeenth century. Both Scots and Irish mounted occasional rebellions, butmany also made their careers in the service of the British crown.


once it settled its civil wars by 1660 it needed little in the way of armyand fortifications, and focused its military spending on the Royal Navy,which by the 1690s was the most formidable in the Atlantic world. Asof 1650, trade and colonization mattered less to the English than to theDutch or Portuguese or Spaniards, but far more than to the French. Butin the two centuries to come England (after 1707, Great Britain) wouldacquire the second largest empire in the history of the world. In NorthAmerica, it consisted of settlement colonies on the eastern seaboard,which by 1700 were growing fast in population. In the Caribbean, by1630 England held a few small islands and, after 1655, Jamaica, a largeone. None of this produced great wealth until well into the eighteenthcentury, when sugar plantations became especially lucrative. Seapower,both that of its Royal Navy and of its privateers, allowed England to playan outsized role in Atlantic geopolitics – mainly as predator, attackingrivals’ shipping and territories.

These five powers of the Atlantic world allied with one another andfought against one another in shifting patterns governed by dynasticinterests, religious antagonisms, and balance-of-power considerations.Resort to arms was routine. Monarchs sponsored seaborne terrorists,patriotically known as sea dogs in the English case and sea beggars inthe Dutch, who preyed upon ships and ports of all nationalities, usuallyexcepting their sponsors. When it broke out, peace was normally merelya hiatus until one or another ruler felt strong enough to try their luckagain.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the French and Englishfared best. The Dutch and English fought three wars (1652–1674),which lowered the Dutch while raising England in the balance. TheDutch suffered further at the hands of the French (1672–1679), whoemerged under Louis XIV as the strongest power in Atlantic Europe.As a result, France soon had many enemies as, for example, in the NineYears’ War (1688–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1715), in both of which it fought against large coalitions. All these warswere primarily fought in Europe, but they all involved campaigns in theAmericas.

The American campaigns involved small numbers of men and ships.No state in the world before 1650 could effectively project force acrossan ocean.8 The logistical and other challenges were still too great.Except for Spain’s, colonies in the Americas were not valuable enough

8 Fissel and Trim (2005).

20 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

to justify heavy expense for defense. As a result, when one or anotherpower did succeed in getting a sizeable force safely across the Atlantic, ormanaged to raise one from colonial populations and Amerindian allies,it often met with rapid success. But it rarely meant anything to Atlanticgeopolitics because before 1690 nothing in the Americas other thanSpanish silver mattered much. As long as Spain held onto the minesand the key ports, war in the Americas was a sideshow.

Between 1690 and 1750 this situation changed. After the 1620s,plantations of tobacco and, after the 1640s, of sugar seemed promisingsources of wealth, worth claiming and, if the costs were not great,defending. European navies and naval capability grew very fast after1660, especially their capacity to mount amphibious assaults across anocean. In addition, the leading naval power by the 1690s, England,became a consistent enemy of Spain, the state with the most to lose inthe Americas. So the incentive to conduct large-scale warfare in theAmericas increased at the same time as did the capacity to do so.9

A sea change in Atlantic geopolitics came when in 1700 the lastof the Habsburg kings of Spain died childless. In his will, he awardedSpain to one of Louis XIV’s grandsons, thereby creating dynastic sol-idarity between France and Spain – frequent enemies over the previ-ous centuries. The House of Bourbon henceforth ruled both countries,despite an effort (the War of the Spanish Succession) by other Euro-pean powers to contest the inheritance. With this development,the confusing and shifting patterns of Atlantic geopolitics becamemore stable. France and Spain became consistent allies for a cen-tury, and in every major war fought against Britain. The big wars tookplace in:10

� 1739–1748: The War of Jenkins’ Ear (merged in Europe with theWar of the Austrian Succession)

� 1756–1763: The Seven Years’ War (also called the French and IndianWar in U.S. history, beginning there in 1754)

� 1775–1782: The American Revolution (in which France and Spainjoined in 1778)

� 1792–1815: The Wars of the French Revolution and the NapoleonicWars

9 Rodger (2004); Glete (2006).10 A recent survey is Simms (2007).


This series of contests paved the way for the rise of Russia and Germanyin European politics, but in their Atlantic dimensions amounted to asecond hundred years war between Britain and France, which the Britishultimately won.

In the eighteenth century, with the decline of the Dutch and theformation of a durable French-Spanish axis called the Family Compact,Atlantic geopolitics became simpler but not simple. In addition to states’formal military operations, freebooters, pirates, and buccaneers engagedin their own escapades during both war and peace. They did the biddingof monarchs and ministers when it suited them, but followed their owninterests as well. The ongoing professionalization of war had not yetsidelined enthusiastic amateurs. Moreover, at least in certain times andplaces (not the Caribbean), Amerindian peoples managed to organizerebellions on scales large enough to weigh in the geopolitical balance.The largest took place in the Andes, where Tupac Amaru led a rebellionin 1780–1783 that temporarily shook Spanish control of the Indies. Inaddition, slave rebellions and maroon (i.e., escaped slave) communi-ties occasionally entered the lists, especially in Brazil. So geopoliticsin the Atlantic American arena was still a maelstrom of competitionamong many parties, not merely imperial states. But increasingly, nei-ther buccaneers, nor Amerindians, nor maroons could mount a durablechallenge to European state power.

The central reason for that shift was the Atlantic European powers’increasingly efficient military machines. After 1650, they combinedstreamlined state finance (war machines were expensive) with increas-ingly large, bureaucratized, professionalized armed forces equipped withexpensive weaponry – including, uniquely, oceanic navies. So in geo-political terms, the Atlantic European powers dominated the Americasin the eighteenth century. By and large, Britain proved the strongestbecause of its steadfast commitment to naval power and its resilientfinances.

That European domination came to an end between 1776 and 1825when some of the populations of the Americas successfully rose up inrevolution. These revolutions all had their own causes and contexts,which I will describe in later chapters. Revolutions in British NorthAmerica, Haiti, and Spanish America each created new states, trimmedback European empires, and together ushered in a new era in AtlanticAmerican geopolitics and world history. They all owed their success inpart to yellow fever or malaria.

22 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

Map 2.1. The Greater Caribbean

Ecological Transformation inthe Caribbean, 1640–1750

Geopolitical turbulence in Atlantic America coincided with ecologicalturbulence, and to some extent caused it.11 In the Caribbean basin, someof the ecological tumult involved forces specific to the Caribbean, butsome resulted from changes affecting the whole of Atlantic America.Like people everywhere, Amerindians before 1492 tried to manage their

11 The classic works here are Crosby’s (1972; 1986). But see also Cronon (1984),Silver (1990), Watts (1987), Dean (1995), Sauer (1969), Melville (1994),Anderson (2004), Funes (2004), and Harris (1962; 1965).


landscapes in their own interests. They had only one efficient tool forthis – fire – but no shortage of determination and ingenuity. Whentheir numbers declined after 1492, the landscapes they had periodicallyburned now went unburned. Their fields and villages shrank or van-ished. Between 1500 and 1620 throughout most of Atlantic America,a gradual reforestation took place. The majestic forests encountered byseventeenth-century travelers and settlers were often recent artifacts –not, as was easily supposed, primeval.

New animals and plants brought from Eurasia and Africa assisted inthe ecological transformation of the Americas. The most consequentialanimals were large domesticated mammals, notably horses, cattle, sheep,goats, and pigs. They provided new sources of protein in American diets,new means of traction for pulling plows or powering mills, and newmenaces to soils, crops, and horticulture. In many parts of the Americas,including Caribbean islands and surrounding lowlands, these exoticspecies ran free, forming wild herds. Early pirates and other visitors tothe Caribbean deliberately marooned them on islands so that later theycould hunt them, especially cattle and pigs, for food and hides.

The new plants included useful crops and irksome weeds. Settlers andsome indigenous Americans in temperate climes found wheat, rye, orbarley did well in their fields. In the Caribbean, the most important newplants were not food grains but bananas, citrus fruits, and sugarcane, alloriginally from South or Southeast Asia. Above all plants, sugar drovethe ecological transformation in the Caribbean, creating what I willcall “creole ecology,” a motley assemblage of indigenous and invadingspecies, jostling one another in unstable ecosystems.

sugar revolutions and demography

Botanically speaking, sugarcane is a grass, probably native to NewGuinea. It figured in the diets of Indian and Chinese peasants fromperhaps 500 b.c. but first became a plantation crop, raised for a marketwith slave labor, in the Mediterranean world, especially Egypt, Cyprus,Crete, southern Spain, and Morocco. Portuguese mariners in the fif-teenth century carried sugarcane to Atlantic islands such as Madeiraand Sao Tome, and then to Brazil in the early sixteenth century. Brazilsoon became the world’s leading sugar producer, refining the plantationmodel. Sugar in the Americas was more than a grass.

Whether it grew sugar, coffee, rice, tobacco, or indigo, the planta-tion complex involved imported slave labor, large-scale production, and

24 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

monoculture. It was a short-term strategy for turning sunlight and soilnutrients into money as fast as possible. It was the principle institu-tion in the Greater Caribbean, a way of life and a way of death. Sugarplantations were the most important part of it.12

As Brazil’s northeast became an increasingly profitable sugar land-scape in the early seventeenth century, it attracted the roving eye ofDutch entrepreneurs and soldiers in the employ of the newly createdDutch West India Company. They conquered, and held for decades,the best sugar lands in Brazil, and helped turn Amsterdam into a lead-ing center of sugar refining and marketing. When the fortunes of warswung against the Dutch in the late 1640s, refugees from northeast-ern Brazil settled in Barbados and brought their knowledge of thesugar business with them. They launched a sugar revolution, or moreaccurately several sugar revolutions, which in due course transformedthe West Indies’ demography, ecology, epidemiology, economy, andpolitics.13

Sugarcane grew well on Caribbean islands for reasons of soils andclimate. But a successful sugar industry had other requirements. Onewas cheap fuel. To form sugar crystals, cane juice must be boiled down.Plantations needed access to forests for fuelwood. Low fuel costs helpedmake American sugar (both Brazilian and Caribbean) competitive inEuropean markets against Mediterranean sugar. Smaller islands withless forest eventually became uncompetitive producers as a result of fuelscarcity as well as loss of soil nutrients.

Massive labor was the other main requirement for plantation sugar.Installing a sugar plantation took enormous amounts of work, mainlyfelling and burning trees then rooting out stumps, to create canefieldsfrom forestlands. Operating a plantation took plenty of work, too. Cut-ting fuelwood to fire sugar boilers was one major task, undertaken almostyear round. The harvest was another, a burst of seasonal labor under-taken in the dry months (December to May). It had to be done quicklybecause once the cane was cut, it had to be milled within a day ortwo before the cane juice began to ferment. And once milled, the juice

12 On the plantation complex, see Curtin (1990).13 Sugar history is summarized in Galloway (1989), Curtin (1990), and Mintz

(1985). On its establishment in the Atlantic in particular, see Schwartz (2004).On the term “sugar revolution,” see Higman (2000). Menard (2006) disputesthe suitability of this term. As regards the ecological significance of sugar (notMenard’s concern), the phrase is appropriate.


squeezed from the cane had to be boiled right away. So every sugarplantation had to have enough labor on hand to attend to the demandsof the harvest.

When sugar first came to the Caribbean, the islands generally hadplenty of fuel but they did not have enough people. The Amerindianpopulations had almost disappeared on most islands, and few immi-grants had come to replace them. The islands claimed by the Dutch,French, and English carried almost no population as late as 1620. TheSpanish Caribbean had been a backwater since about 1535, when theallure of riches in Mexico and Peru siphoned people away. In 1640,Jamaica, then a Spanish possession, had roughly 1,500 people. The firstEnglish census taken in 1661 showed 3,874 inhabitants.14 Cuba, thelargest island, probably had no more than 7,500 people in 1620.15 After1620, when tobacco from the small islands of the eastern Caribbeanfound a ready market in Atlantic Europe, tens of thousands of inden-tured laborers from Britain and France migrated to islands such asSt. Kitts, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. But the total population ofthe Caribbean islands as late as 1640 probably came to no more than200,000 people, many of whom expected to return to Europe at the firstopportunity.

Plantation sugar changed all that. Barbados was the first island to taketo cane cultivation in a big way. Its population soared from 1,400 in 1629to 40,000 in 1642, and more than 60,000 by 1713.16 Jamaican populationrose to 142,000 by 1750, of whom more than 90 percent were slaves.17

The French colony of St. Domingue, which counted about 8,000 souls aslate as 1687, hosted 92,000 by 1730 and 182,000 by 1750.18 Even Cuba,which was late to shift to sugar, tripled its population between 1700and 1755, reaching a total of about 160,000, of whom a quarter wereslaves.19 St. Lucia, to which sugar came even later, in the mid-1760s,

14 Jamaica population data from Morales Padron (2003:35) and Wells (1975:195–6).

15 Ortiz (1916:21–2); de la Fuente (1993:63).16 Watts (1987:173); Dunn (1972:312). Barbados was described as “the Dunghill

wharone England doth casts forth its rubidg” by one 1655 visitor, who went onto refer to the population as rogues and whores. British Library, Sloane MSS,3926, Journal of Henry Whistler.

17 Steckel (2000:494).18 Boucher (2008:239); Engerman and Higman (1997:48). Pritchard (2004:65–6)

has additional figures.19 McNeill (1985:35).

26 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

reported 5,021 people in 1760 but 19,295 by 1777.20 In a mature sugarcolony – one where most land suitable for sugar was already in sugar –the ratio of free Europeans to African slaves was generally around1:10.21 In the Caribbean islands as a whole, by 1750 human numbershad probably surpassed 1 million, three-quarters of whom were slaves.22

The population explosion that followed upon the emergence of thesugar economy was sustained only by high immigration, most of itthrough the Atlantic slave trade. Few women went to the region andeverywhere birth rates remained low, well below death rates in mostcases. Rough estimates of the total numbers of African slaves importedinto the Caribbean before 1750 center around 1.5 million,23 and thenumber of Europeans, maybe half a million. So by 1750, some twomillion people had crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean but total pop-ulation stood at just over 1 million. Despite its growing population, theCaribbean was a giant sinkhole for humanity – thanks mainly to sugarand slavery.

It was also a pot of gold. Lucky planters (there were many unluckyones, too) could make fabulous fortunes on the backs of slaves. In 1776,Adam Smith regarded the profits available in sugar “generally muchgreater than those of any other cultivation that is known either inEurope or America.”24 By 1750, sugar revenues made the West Indiesworth fighting over for their own sake, not merely as the avenue toSpanish silver.

sugar revolutions and creole ecology

The sugar revolutions created their own ecology as well as demography.Forests and savannas, roamed by feral livestock, gradually gave way to

20 St. Lucia data reported in Anne French, St. Lucia Up To Now, a typescript inthe St. Lucia National Archives, pp. 6–7. According to Breen (1844:277), thefirst sugar plantation began in St. Lucia in 1765, and by 1780 there were thirtyin operation.

21 Palmer (1997) has much useful data. The highest ratio seems to have obtainedin Dutch Surinam in the 1770s, about 1:35. Jamaica surpassed the 1:10 rationby 1722; St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, and Antigua all did so in the 1770s.St. Domingue passed the threshold by 1739. Of the major sugar islands, fourdid not attain a 1:10 ratio: Barbados, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cuba. Watts(1987:311–25).

22 Steckel (2000:494).23 Palmer (1997:22).24 Smith quoted in Watts (1987:382).


more domesticated landscapes. Broad areas were cleared for cane, forother crops, and for grazing. Sugar boiling consumed yet more forest: Ineighteenth-century Cuba, a good-sized sugar mill burned the equivalentof one huge tree per hour.25 Many local species dependent on the forestwent extinct while new plants and animals, suited to the emergingenvironment, prospered. Soil erosion and nutrient depletion acceleratedrapidly with clearance and cultivation. Ranches developed on the bigislands to provide horses, oxen, and other beasts of the field. Additionalland went to food and fiber crops to feed and clothe growing populations.But plantation sugar was the heart of the matter.26

Barbados was the first island to undergo this ecological transforma-tion. It happened quickly. In the 1620s, the island was uninhabited andfeatured dense forest down to the shoreline. Sir Henry Colt, who visitedin 1631, wrote “The whole Island is soe full of wood & trees, as I couldnot finde any place wher to trayne 40 musketteers.”27 In the early yearsof English settlement, when cotton, tobacco, and food crops dominatedBarbadian agriculture, pioneers cleared the western districts. As lateas 1647, forests still covered about 60 percent of the island.28 WhenRichard Ligon lived there (1647–1650), he found the woods irritatinglywidespread.29 But by the late 1650s, local councils had begun to restricttimber-cutting, suggesting anxieties over wood scarcity. Nevertheless,soon the woods were almost all gone. Surviving sources make no men-tion of forest after 1665, and by 1666 Barbados imported timber andfuelwood from Surinam.30 By 1671, planters found the fuel situationstill more dire: “at the Barbadoes all the trees are destroyed, so that

25 Twelve cubic meters of firewood, estimated from Moreno Fraginals (1978:74).Such a mill produced about 100 kilograms of sugar an hour, so as a rough average,every 8 kilograms of sugar required a cubic meter of firewood. New technology,known as the Jamaica train, doubled the fuel efficiency of sugar boiling in Cubaby 1820. Funes (2004:60–80) has more on the strain Cuban sugar put on forests,c. 1600–1771.

26 Watts (1987); Kimber (1988). Griggs (2007) gives a sense of the ecological effectsof sugar in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Queensland, a richly documentedcase.

27 Colt (2002:17).28 To judge from the map drawn by Watts (1966:42) with information from Ligon

(1657).29 Ligon (1657:41, 72–9) on trees, their uses and their heights.30 Watts (1966:45). On wood imports: Clarendon to Willoughby 13 April 1666.

Clarendon MSS 84, folios 134–5, Bodleian Library (Oxford).

28 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

wanting wood to boyle their sugar, they are forced to send for coalesfrom England.”31

The quick removal of forests on Barbados set in motion other eco-logical changes. Weeds that flourished on cleared ground and in strongsunshine, many of them invaders from across the Atlantic, colonizedmuch of Barbados. Invasive species, notably rats, flourished amid thenew canefields. Many of the island’s birds and tree-dwelling monkeysdisappeared.32 Even though Barbados has only gentle slopes, soil ero-sion and nutrient loss quickly lowered sugar yields, requiring plantersto deploy more slaves (some of whom were employed carrying erodedsoil back uphill in baskets on their heads, a true labor of Sisyphus).Gullies grew numerous and steep, so much so that horses had difficultyon the terrain and planters resorted to donkeys and, briefly, camels.33

One downpour in November 1668 opened a gully in the churchyard ofChrist Church parish that carried 1,500 coffins and their contents outto sea.34 Soil and silt carried to coastlands formed new marshes. Bar-bados became slightly more hospitable to mosquitoes.35 Miraculously,Barbados had neither malarial mosquitoes nor malaria, which accounted

31 “Memorial of the island of Tobago,” P.R.O., C.O 1/21, f. 171 (cited in Watts1996:45). Kimber (1988:212–13) reports coal imports to fire sugar boilers inMartinique in 1708. Importing coal from across the Atlantic was not economicand soon was abandoned in favor of fuelwood imports from closer locations. Ligon(1657:101) noted that Barbados had no coal “for which reason, we preserve ourWoods as much as we can.” Gragg (2003:18–19) notes the rapid deforestationon Barbados.

32 In 1631, Sir Henry Colt noted “diuers sorts of birds” including blackbirds, turtledoves, pigeons, and pelicans. Ligon (1657:60–1) recounted a dozen or morespecies, and allowed there were more he could not name. But a visitor in 1652,Heinrich von Utcheritz, claimed “one hears no birds” (see Gragg 2003:22–3).Kimber (1988:180–211) discusses introduced plants on Martinique in this period.Chanvalon (2004) is the key primary source for Martinique’s ecology (as of the1750s).

33 Ligon (1657:58). Ligon refers to “assinigoes,” a term used in the Azores fordonkeys.

34 Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh (1972:185).35 Watts (1987:219–23) on these changes. Handler (1969:6) reprints a 1661 vis-

itor’s complaint about night-biting mosquitoes. Barbados, as well as Antigua,St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Nevis, and Tobago, remained thoroughly deforested in1824–1825 to judge from the sketchbook of Robert McCormick, whose artistrywas meticulous with respect to ships, windmills, buildings, and the occasionalpalm tree. His sketches of these islands are in The Wellcome Library (London),Manuscript 3356.


for its reputation as a healthy island (by West Indies standards). Otherislands were less fortunate.

Montserrat underwent similar changes a few decades later. Theisland, which has elevations of about a thousand meters, was thor-oughly wooded in 1631 and carried scant settlement as late as 1650.However, hunger and English subjugation of Ireland drove many poorIrish to Montserrat in the 1650s. Sugar production, negligible as late as1654, burgeoned in subsequent decades. By 1676, a third of the forestwas cleared, African slaves had largely replaced the Irish, sugar was theeconomy’s mainstay, and by the 1770s the island was almost bare ofwoodlands.36

The environmental consequences of clearing the forest on Montser-rat were much the same as on Barbados, except the physical changes tothe soil were more pronounced because of Montserrat’s steeper slopes.Planters tried to check gullying as early as 1673 and passed laws aimedat conserving soil in 1702. By 1738, they tried to legislate actions toreduce the frequency of flash floods. But stabilizing a disturbed islandecosystem was no easy business and generally beyond the abilities ofeighteenth-century societies and governments.37

Other islands also followed the ecological path blazed by Barbados.On Martinique, a return visitor in 1656 noted that clearing had pro-gressed so far that one could ride horseback almost anywhere, whichwould have been unthinkable on his first visit fifteen years before.38 Asthe supervisor of the St. Vincent botanical gardens put it in 1791: “Itis a matter of astonishment to see the inconsideration or rather stupid-ity of West Indian planters, in extinguishing many useful woods thatspontaneously grow on all these islands except in this [St. Vincent] andDominica, hardly the vantage of a tree is to be seen of any sort, wherethe planters’ axe could get at. Barbados, Antigua, St. Kitts are almostrendered unfit for cultivation by the destruction of woods. . . . ”39

36 Pulsipher (1986). On the pace of deforestation in Martinique, see Kimber (1988),especially pp. 176, 209.

37 Pulsipher (1986). Further useful account of deforestation (and conserva-tion efforts) on Barbados and Montserrat is in Grove (1995:63–71). Kimber(1988:181) calls eighteenth-century erosion on Martinique “severe.” On forestpolicy, including efforts at conservation, in the Spanish Caribbean, see Giraldo(1991).

38 Du Tertre (1667–1671, 2:28).39 Alexander Anderson to Sir George Yonge, 10 October 1791, PRO, War Office

Papers, 4/4.

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Settlers on these and other islands cleared far more land than theyintended to use for sugarcane. They tried to recreate the open vistasof the British Isles (or France or Spain) for aesthetic reasons. Theyneeded room for their livestock to roam. And they thought that clearedland would be less conducive to disease because it had less in the wayof rotting vegetation, humidity, and other factors thought to create“miasmas,” from which fevers emanated.

Plantation sugar was the main driving force behind both the newdemography of the West Indies and the new landscapes: slave societiesand creole ecologies. These social and biological revolutions happenedfirst and most thoroughly on the small islands of the eastern Antilles –at least those on which sugar became king – as on Madeira and theCanary Islands before them.40 On the large islands such as Hispaniolaand Jamaica, sugar’s ecological transformation happened only after 1713(and on Cuba only after 1740). As the smaller islands’ soils grew poorerand their fuelwood scarcer, planters gradually shifted investment to thebigger and more forested islands. It took far longer to deforest broadswathes of the big islands, and it was much more difficult to drivelocal species to extinction. To Nicolas Joseph de Ribera, Cuba in 1755seemed “entirely covered with a continuous forest of precious woods.”41

Nonetheless, in those parts of Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba wheresugar reigned, it taxed the forest. When Ribera wrote of “continuousforest” in Cuba, clearing was proceeding apace, much to the concern ofauthorities worried about timber supplies for Spain’s naval arsenal. Bythe end of the eighteenth century, fuelwood requirements of the sugarboilers cleared nearly one square kilometer per year.42 On Cuba, as on allthe bigger islands, slaves escaped from the plantations formed marooncommunities in the mountain forests, giving planters further reasons tocut and burn forest. Whatever the motives, for fuel, for land, or to denycover to maroons, deforestation brought a similar suite of social andecological effects on the large islands as on the small, albeit affecting

40 On Madeira, Vieira (1999:88–113); on St. Kitts and Nevis, Merrill (1958); onMartinique, Kimber (1988:171–80).

41 Quoted in Funes (2004:49).42 Figures elaborated from Funes (2004:106–13) et passim. Forest conservation

measures were rare but not unknown, even on the big islands. Gabriel Debien(cited in Boomgaard 1992:214) says planters on St. Domingue in the eighteenthcentury sometimes set aside land for sustainable wood production to feed theirsugar boilers.


smaller proportions of the larger islands’ territory and eliminating fewerspecies.43

Sugar’s ecological transformation brought its share of indirect effectstoo, touching even the flora and fauna of the sea. For example, theCaribbean had supported tens of millions of hawksbill and green turtlesbefore the eighteenth century, but energetic harvesting nearly obliter-ated them, changing reef ecologies in fundamental ways. Passing throughHavana in 1637, Thomas Gage found turtle the only affordable meat.44

Richard Ligon, after 30 months on Barbados in the mid-1650s, recalledfondly “the green turtle, which is the best food the Sea affords.” Turtlehunters, said Ligon, “take infinite numbers of them, by turning them ontheir backs with staves, where they lye till they are fetcht away.”45 Onesea captain apparently landed 25 tons of salted turtle meat on Jamaicain 1657, and 22 tons in 1659.46 According to a Spanish manuscript fromabout 1670, “The regular diet of the English [on Jamaica] is made upof turtle.”47 Father Labat, who lived on Martinique in the 1690s, notedthe importance of turtle harvesting on that island.48 Slaves and poorwhites ate turtle meat in the British West Indies, and by one accountturtles provided most of the meat eaten in Jamaica around 1700–1730.Eventually, turtle meat became a delicacy in England, served at thefinest tables, prized for its taste and its alleged aphrodisiac qualities. By1800, green turtles had grown scarce in parts of the Caribbean, notablythe Cayman Islands, where they had formerly been most abundant. Pop-ulation growth and links to European markets, both outgrowths of the

43 Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh (1972:268–72) provide a useful discussion ofdeforestation on English Caribbean islands, 1640–1690. On maroons in theforests of eastern Cuba, see La Rosa Corzo (1988). The importance of woodlandsto Jamaican maroons emerges from the pages of Dallas (1803). The clearing offorests in the Danish West Indies pushed maroon communities there to escapeto Puerto Rico (Hall 1985). For the (modest) impact of sugar plantations onthe forests and environment of Surinam, see Boomgaard (1992) and Stiprian(1993). Descourlitz (1935) provides information on St. Domingue ecology as of1803.

44 Gage (1648:196).45 Ligon (1657:36). Ligon went on: “Sure, there is no creature on Earth, nor in the

Seas, that enjoyes life with so much sweetness and delight, as this poor fish theTurtle, nor none more delicate in taste, and more nourishing, than he.”

46 Parsons (1962:28).47 Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), MSS 17,635, ff. 228–32, Descripcion de la Isla

de Xamaica.48 Labat (1722, 1:296–305); du Tertre (1973, 2:214–19).

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plantation complex, spelled catastrophe for turtles and a new ecologyfor Caribbean reefs.49

Small and bounded ecosystems, whether aquatic or terrestrial, arenormally highly sensitive to perturbation, and easily shifted from onestate to another. A few people, a few goats – even in special circum-stances, a few thousand mosquitoes – could bring profound effects. In theCaribbean, the plantation economy and the influx of tens of thousandsof people brought far-reaching changes – but at variable speeds. Onthe small islands, the ecological transformation of sugar and plantationswas thorough and fast. In the Caribbean as a whole it was thorough butslow. Forest clearances for sugar (and other) plantations continued intothe nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at least on the bigger islands ofHispaniola and Cuba.

Yellow Fever and Caribbean Ecology

Ecological transformations, like social ones, bring unintended conse-quences. Among the unintended consequences of the sugar revolutionin the Caribbean were soil erosion, fuel shortages, and rat infestations,all of which caught the attention of planters. One they did not noticebut that affected their world more than all the rest was the creationof environments favorable for A. aegypti mosquitoes. Another conse-quence they did not recognize was the creation of social, demographic,and military circumstances favorable for the circulation of the yellowfever virus.

Viruses are strange creatures. They amount to a few ribbons of geneticmaterial encased in a protein wrapper. They cannot reproduce on theirown, but must seize control of cells in other creatures and convert theminto copying machines. A single virus can become millions in shortorder. One Nobel laureate in biology thought that the “single biggestthreat to man’s continued dominance on this planet is the virus.”50

The yellow fever virus is one among the flaviviruses, a genus thatincludes dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Japanese encephalitis,among about 70 others. In its present form, the yellow fever virus is prob-ably about 3,000 years old, judging from genomic evidence. The virusis native to Africa, probably East or Central Africa. Within Africa, thevirus shows considerable genetic variety, but in the Americas it showsalmost none at all. The American version is genetically nearly identical

49 Jackson (1997).50 Crawford (2003:2).


to the West African one, implying it arrived in the Americas from WestAfrica only after Columbus.51

yellow jack and black vomit: symptoms andsusceptibility

For the 250 years before 1900, yellow fever was the most feared diseaseamong whites in the Greater Caribbean. Called yellow fever becausejaundice is one of its symptoms, it went by many names. By the nine-teenth century when quarantine regulations required hoisting yellowflags, it was often called “yellow jack.”52 Spanish speakers called it“black vomit” for its signature symptom.

The symptoms of yellow fever make for grisly reading but hold oneadvantage for the historian. In fortunate cases, yellow fever brings onhigh fever, muscle pains, and headache, sometimes nausea and dizzinessas well. These symptoms last for three or four days but then disappear.In these happy cases, it is easy to confuse yellow fever with any of anumber of other diseases. In unfortunate cases, these symptoms abatebut then recur after about a day’s respite, joined by jaundice and byinternal hemorrhage in what is sometimes called a “toxic phase.” Inlethal cases, victims generally ooze blood through the nose and ears,suffer delirium, and vomit up partly coagulated blood, often roughly thecolor and consistency of coffee grounds: the black vomit.53 The goodthing about this symptom is that untrained observers easily noticed it

51 On the virus and the disease, I relied on Barrett and Monath (2003), Monath(1999), Monath (2001), Vasconcelos (2003), Tsai (2000), Vainio and Cutts(1998), Tomori (2004), Restrepo (2004), and Barrett and Higgs (2007). Theclassic studies, outdated in several respects now, are Carter (1931) and Strode(1951). Once in doubt and now confirmed by genomic analysis, the Africanorigin is also suggested by the fact that the virus is more deadly in South Americanmonkeys than it is in African ones (Marianneau et al. 1999). As far as I know, thefirst writer to suggest an African origin for the disease was Mackrill (1796:17),who wrote it should be called “African fever.” Wilkinson’s (1995) ingeniouslinking of yellow fever and Maya collapse is no longer plausible.

52 Moreau de Jonnes (1820:7–10) lists dozens of terms for yellow fever in French,Spanish, and English.

53 A vivid description of a fatal case, using the image of coffee grounds, appears inPinckard (1806, 2:262–3). Warren (1741:12–18) has a detailed account of yellowfever symptoms, as does Pouppe-Desportes (1770, 1:191–201) and Labat (1722,1:72–4, 435–40, 4:2–6). Labat had what he termed “Mal de Siam” (usuallyconsidered yellow fever) twice, in June 1694 and May 1697. Because repeatbouts of yellow fever are unknown, one or more of these illnesses was probablysomething else.

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and often mentioned it, so that retrospective diagnosis of lethal yellowfever from textual accounts is easier than for almost any other disease.54

Coma and death normally follow the black vomit. Many victims, Iimagine, would have regarded death as a welcome escape from misery.55

Yellow fever kills people via organ failure, usually of the liver andkidneys, and by circulatory collapse. From the onset of symptoms toeventual demise takes about two weeks. Typically, the immune systemforms antibodies within a week, which does not always help and in somecases may paradoxically hinder recovery. As one medical authority putsit, “it is unclear whether immune mechanisms during the acute stage ofthe disease contribute to pathogenesis.”56 In other words, their immunesystems might make victims sicker still, and a specially vigorous immunesystem might be a liability (also considered a possibility in the 1918influenza pandemic).

Young adults in the prime of life (“strong, full, youthful”) are atthe greatest risk of death, which suggests that a lusty immune responsemay be part of the problem.57 A French doctor on Martinique in 1818

54 But it is not foolproof. Retrospective diagnosis is always uncertain to some degree.Dengue is also sometimes a hemorrhagic fever, with all the same symptomsexcept the black vomit. Louse-borne relapsing fever also mimics yellow feversymptoms fairly closely, and even malaria and typhoid can be mistaken for yellowfever. Infections manifest themselves differently in different victims; pathogensevolve; seventeenth- and eighteenth-century observers leaped to conclusions.Even with yellow fever, there is a real possibility of confusion and mistakenhistorical diagnosis.

Patch (1996) found a most ingenious diagnostic tool in his study of epidemicsin the Yucatan. Priests refused to give all three last rites to those dying of yellowfever because they found the implications of parishioners vomiting up the body ofChrist too disturbing. Patch believes one can tell the difference between yellowfever epidemics and others in the records of priestly conduct. Those dying ofyellow fever got only two of the three last rites, penance and extreme unction,but not viaticum – as the Eucharist is called when administered to the dying.

55 In the Cook Islands, I once contracted hemorrhagic dengue fever, a sister fla-vivirus to yellow fever, and for a few unspeakably miserable days viewed theprospect of my own death with delirious equanimity. George Pinckard, a Britishmedical officer serving in Guyana in 1796–1797, recorded similar ambivalencesin his account of a bout with what he believed was yellow fever. Pinckard (1806,3:135–50).

56 Monath (1999:1262).57 Moseley (1795:416–17). As Pinckard (1806, 3:231), put it: “Nor do health

and vigour give any security; for he who to-day boasts the greatest strength,to-morrow, perhaps, is extended in his coffin.” A Father Lapey, observing the


observed that the most vulnerable were “Americans of an athletic con-stitution,” which he put down to the “abuse they make of spirituousliquors.”58 Although it kills a few of them, children often experienceyellow fever mildly and may not even notice they are sick, a commonpattern with infectious diseases. A certain Dr. Thurston writing fromSt. Kitts in 1818 claimed, “I have only in one or two instances seen anyone [suffer?] from this complaint under ten or upwards of fifty five yearsof age.”59 The apparent hardihood of the elderly probably representstheir higher likelihood of prior exposure and acquired immunity ratherthan any particular vigor on their part. The yellow fever virus leavesvictims whom it does not kill weak as a kitten for weeks – but immunefor life.

Gender as well as age may have affected yellow fever risk. Seven-teenth- and eighteenth-century observers often claimed that men weremore vulnerable than women, although one must bear in mind theyusually saw vulnerability as a consequence of intemperance, which theytypically associated with males. Hence they generally wished to findmales more susceptible than females:60

In the yeare 1647 there was a great Plague in Barbados, whichraged violently especially at Saint Michaels or the Indian Bridg, itswept away abundance of people, but it was observed it fell mostupon the men, as all other Epidemicall deseases, ordinarily doo,showing something of favour to the other sex.

One of the most celebrated doctors of the eighteenth century, JamesLind, put it this way: “It is a general observation that women enjoy a

Yucatan outbreak in 1648, noted “The most healthy and robust of the young menwere most violently attacked and died soonest.” Quoted in Ziperman (1973:105).

58 Wellcome Library, American MSS 113, Certificats de Guadeloupe, ff. 56–7,Gardey a Chervin, 6 fevrier 1818.

59 Wellcome Library, American MSS 113, Certificats de Guadeloupe, ff. 60–2,Thurston to Chervin 20 March 1818. Buchet (1997) shows that ship’s appren-tices (“mousses”) survived Caribbean cruises more often than did regular sailorsin the French navy. The Inspector General of Hospitals on Barbados, recallingan 1819 yellow fever epidemic there, noted the elderly seemed less affected.PRO, WO 334/165, ff.20, “Extract of Annual Report to Accompany the AnnualReturn of Sick,” 30 July 1839.

60 BL Sloane MSS 3662, ff. 62–54 [this part of the manuscript is written back tofront], “Description of Barbados.”

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much better state of health, in the West Indies, than men, and are notso subject to the yellow fever as them, owing probably to their moretemperate way of living.”61 A French doctor who lived in St. Dominguefrom 1732 to 1747 put it in even stronger terms: “Yellow fever has putan infinitude of men in their graves quickly, but I have seen only onewoman attacked by it.”62 If indeed men contracted yellow fever moreoften than women, this difference is probably best explained by greaterrisk of exposure rather than bodily susceptibility.63 The modern medicalliterature, usually mute on this point, occasionally notes “a slight excessof cases in males.”64

61 Lind (1716–1794) was a naval doctor famous for making the case that citrus fruitscould prevent scurvy, which he showed in 1747 through what were perhaps thefirst clinical trials (Lind 1788:117–18). John Hunter, who served with the BritishArmy in Jamaica in 1779–1783, agreed with Lind, saying the “life of a woman isat least twice as good as that of a man, to speak in the terms of those, who makesuch things matter of calculation.” He added that women were also protectedby “their . . . temperance in living” (Hunter 1788:25–6). The sole countervailingview I have found is that of the planter Matthew Lewis, who in an 1817 epidemicon Jamaica noted it spread “particularly among the wives of the soldiers” (Lewis1999:209). Winterbottom (1803, 1:14) notes that in West Africa Europeanwomen were less likely to succumb to fevers than European men. These authorsoften connected disease to intemperance, and thus found it convenient to reportthat men suffered more often than women.

62 Pouppe-Desportes (1770, 1:40). The original: “Le mal de Siam a mis une infinited’hommes au tombeau en tres-peu de temps; mais je n’ai vu qu’une femme qui en aitete attaquee.” Moseley (1795:416–17) thought women, children, and thin peoplewere less affected by yellow fever.

63 Lind (1788:117–18). Pinckard (1806, 3:426–7): “The strongest men – those withthe most dense or rigid fibre are most subject to the high degrees of the continued,or yellow fever; and are most frequently, and most rapidly destroyed by it. Women,children, convalescents from former malady, and those who have been reducedby the use of mercurial remedies are less frequently the objects of its attack; andwhen it does seize them, it is commonly milder, and less rapid in its progress.” Seealso Jackson (1791:250) and Rodrıguez Arguelles (1804:unpaginated prologue).Bajon (1777–1778, 1:34, 88–114) on the diseases of women in French Guyanaalso finds women in general healthier than men, although he does not mentionyellow fever specifically.

64 Monath (2001:12). Conceivably, any difference in incidence of the disease is areflection of vector preferences. I have seen no evidence concerning A. aegypti,but apparently the primary malarial mosquito of the Caribbean, An. albimanus,much prefers to bite men over women (Frederickson 1993:14). Waddell (1990–1992) reports several yellow fever epidemics in nineteenth-century Spain thatshowed far greater incidence among men than among women.


yellow fever mortality

Today, about 75 to 85 percent of yellow fever victims are lucky enoughto be sick only briefly, and of those who get the full one-two punch only20 to 50 percent die from it. In total, about 3 to 13 percent of casesare fatal. There still is no known cure. Mercifully, it is now among theeasiest of viruses to control because its vector is among the fussiest ofmosquitoes (as we shall see) and because since the 1930s an extremelyeffective and safe vaccine has been available.65

In historical epidemics, the case mortality (i.e., the percentage ofinfected victims who died) was probably much greater – some accountssuggest 85 percent or more.66 In most instances, reporting was so sketchythat many more people had the disease than found their way into offi-cial statistics, and recovered without fanfare. Therefore, reported casemortality rates deserve some skepticism.

Six well-documented yellow fever outbreaks, albeit minor ones, givecredence to reports of high case mortality. In 1853, yellow fever attackedthe British garrison on Bermuda: of 829 infected, 360 died (43%).67 In1856, three British steamships called at Haitian ports and left with ayellow fever epidemic aboard, which killed 30 percent of those whofell ill on the luckiest ship and 48 percent on the unluckiest.68 Thispercentage was not case mortality (the proportion of those infectedwho died) but overall mortality in an isolated population. In 1861 inthe French port of St. Nazaire, 44 people fell ill with yellow fever and 26died (59% case mortality). In 1900, an Italian opera company visited theBrazilian city of Belem to perform Aida on the 400th anniversary of thefounding of Brazil. Twenty-nine of the Italians contracted yellow fever,and nineteen (65%) died of it, a matter of acute embarrassment to localauthorities who provided the best medical care available.69 In 1920,

65 Barrett (1997). The vaccine is manufactured in chicken eggs and cannot easilybe mass-produced.

66 Slosek (1986:249) offers 94.5% as the upper limit. Monath (1999) gives 1–80%as the range of case mortality but emphasizes the unreliability of all such figures.

67 PRO CO 37/150, f. 81, “Report of the Commissioners on the Yellow Fever atBermuda 1853.”

68 “Report upon Yellow Fever in HM Ships on the West Indies Station in 1856”by Sir John Liddell, 19 July 1856. National Maritime Museum (Greenwich),MLN/153/9/.

69 Hillemand (2006); Coleman (1984); Costa (1973:71–3). I owe this latter refer-ence to Xenia Wilkinson. Curtin (1998:3–5, 9–11) reports some mortality figures

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Mexican authorities recorded 505 cases of yellow fever and 249 (49%)deaths.70 In 1995, an outbreak in Peru killed 38 percent of 800 peoplewho fell ill.71 For comparison, in the days before effective prevention,case mortality rates for smallpox ranged about 20 to 50 percent, and forbubonic plague as much as 80 percent.72

Why might mortality have been greater in the past? Two main pos-sibilities might explain it. First, it could be that the risk of exposurehas declined so that fewer people in a given population get infected.Second, perhaps case mortality has dropped, and among those infectedfewer people die. The first possibility is surely part of any explanation.Certainly, the virus today no longer gets the chance to run amok amonghighly susceptible populations because of mosquito control and the vac-cine. Rarely if ever do large contingents of unvaccinated people travelto places where yellow fever presents a risk.

In addition, many of the historical data, especially those used in thisbook, come from populations including large proportions of militarymen or indentured servants. In an ordinary epidemic, whether of yellowfever or anything else, many people avoided infection by fleeing. Forexample, in the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia some 20,000Philadelphians, between a third and a half of the city’s population,left the city.73 But in the Caribbean, soldiers, sailors, and indenturedservants – and, of course, slaves – were not normally at liberty to fleein the face of epidemics, so fewer of them did so and more stood theirground and took their chances. They could not reduce their risk ofexposure.74

for European troops in West Africa in the nineteenth century that support thenotion of extreme mortality in yellow fever epidemics. In one case, in Gambiain 1825–1826 yellow fever killed 279 men of a force that numbered about 120,a statistical oddity made possible only by frequent (doomed) reinforcements.

70 Solorzano Ramos (1997:173).71 Barrett and Higgs (2007).72 Livi-Bacci (2006:206). Plague mortality rarely achieved this level, however.73 Kornfeld (1984:189). As many as 10,000 Philadelphians died in the epidemic.74 Desertion rates in the West Indies ran highest in the French and British navies

in times of epidemics (Buchet 1997b). A French doctor claimed that in histen years working in the Port-au-Prince military hospital, yellow fever killedat least seven-eighths of those admitted. Wellcome Library, American MSS133, ff. 35–6, Leuren a Chervin, 17 Avril 1818. Moreover, soldiers, sailors, andperhaps servants may have made themselves more vulnerable to yellow fever bydamaging their livers through heavy use of alcohol. Buckley (1998:293) offersthis suggestion, and documents (281–94) the view that the British soldier was a


Beyond exposure risk, there is the possibility that modern yellowfever kills fewer of those people it does infect. It is theoretically possiblethat the virus has evolved in the last century or two so as to become lessvirulent, which would explain the conundrum neatly. But this seemsnot to be the case. Evidence from the virus’ genome implies that it hasbeen very stable for the last 500 years.75 Although viruses and otherpathogens have an evolutionary stake in allowing their host to surviveuntil they find the next one, if high levels of virulence are required forprolific reproduction within a host’s body, the evolutionary payoff is notalways for reduced virulence. And in any case, the arboviruses (thosecommunicated by ticks or insects) are under less pressure to evolve so asto flourish within their human habitat: The primary habitat of the yellowfever virus, for example, is mosquitoes, not people. So the evolutionarypressure to maximize transmission has been stronger within the bodiesof A. aegypti, not within us. Indeed, by making us so sick and listlessthat we cannot swat their mobile habitat, mosquito-borne pathogensprobably benefit from being virulent in humans.76 The dengue virus,which unlike yellow fever has mutated freely in the last 200 years, hasevolved more rather than less virulent strains.77 So this possibility seemsremote.

Another biological hypothesis is that in many parts of the world,potential yellow fever victims are protected by experience with denguefever. Dengue, another flavivirus, is ordinarily transmitted by the samemosquito, and seems to confer some “cross-immunization” for yellowfever. Dengue probably arrived in the Caribbean in the seventeenthcentury, like yellow fever, and has been widespread since 1827.78 Sincethe 1970s, it has grown still more common in the Caribbean and Brazil.

brobdignanian swiller. However, the frequent observation that young men diedmore readily than their elders of yellow fever runs counter to this suggestion, asyounger livers on average should have been less damaged by alcohol.

75 Barrett and Higgs (2007).76 For an accessible account of how pathogens might evolve, see Ewald (1994:36–

55). Ewald is controversial among evolutionary biologists, I am told. My viewshere are largely extrapolation based on de Roode et al. (2008), for which referenceI thank David Krakauer.

77 Tabachnik (1998:413). Dengue has undergone “explosive radiation,” evolvingmany new forms.

78 Frederiksen (1955); Downs (1982); Slosek (1986:253); Vainio and Cutts (1998).Ashcroft (1979a) finds that British soldiers who served in India, and likelyencountered dengue, were less likely to suffer from yellow fever if subsequentlyposted to the West Indies.

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Its prevalence (in recent centuries) in Asia is the leading hypothesisto explain the absence of yellow fever there, despite the presence ofA. aegypti. This hypothesis looks much more likely.

Today, yellow fever mortality is minor. According to official data,it kills 2,000 to 5,000 people annually in Africa and a few hundredin South America, mainly in the Amazonian regions of Peru, Bolivia,and Brazil. In all, counting those victims who never make into officialreports, it probably kills about 30,000 people annually and sickens some200,000, mainly in Africa.79 Malaria and AIDS each kill 100 times morepeople. Yellow fever today ranks so far down the list of deadly diseasesthat almost no yellow fever research takes place outside of Brazil.

Yellow Fever Transmission and Immunity

Historically, yellow fever epidemics happened in the Americas whenthe virus somehow got into the vicinity of sizeable populations of non-immune people and of A. aegypti. Yellow fever’s outsized importance inthe Greater Caribbean owed a great deal to the vector.

vectors of the caribbean: aedes aegypti

The A. aegypti’s habits govern the range of yellow fever.80 Like thevirus, the mosquito is of African origin, and presumably first came tothe Americas aboard slaving ships.81 No native American mosquitooccupied A. aegypti’s favored niche, so it had no direct competition.It may also have left some of its parasites behind when crossing theAtlantic, a frequent stroke of luck for invasive species.82

Like all mosquitoes, A. aegypti pass their short lives in four stages.They start out as eggs, and if all goes well graduate to become larvae,pupae, and then adult mosquitoes. Unlike most mosquitoes, A. aegypti

79 World Health Organization estimates reported in Barrett and Higgs (2007) andRestrepo (2004).

80 On A. aegypti: Christophers (1960); Clements (2004); Rodhain and Leon (1997);and more accessibly, Spielman and D’Antonio (2001). I have learned aboutmosquitoes by buzzing around my colleague Peter Armbruster of the GeorgetownUniversity Biology Department, an authority on a dengue vector, A. albopictus.

81 The evidence for African origin is that A. aegypti has many close relatives amongAfrican mosquito species but none in the Americas (Slosek 1986:251).

82 On disease vectors as invasive species, see Lounibos (2002), esp. 235–6 onA. aegypti.


prefer to breed in water vessels rather than swamps or puddles. Wells,cisterns, open barrels, buckets, or pots suit it nicely. According to somereports, it has the further preference for clay-bottomed or clay-linedwater containers.83 In an ideal A. aegypti world, females lay their eggs onthe damp walls of water containers, not on the surface of the water itself.The eggs can survive for several weeks in dry conditions if necessary.If the containers fill with water, the eggs will hatch. Thus the onset ofthe Caribbean rainy season, or the end of a drought, normally brought asurge in mosquito populations. For example, in Veracruz in 1817 a diaristnoted that little more than a week after heavy rains, “such an abundanceof mosquitoes resulted . . . that all the walls of the houses . . . appearedblack.”84

Unlike many mosquitoes, A. aegypti eggs require clean, unpollutedwater to mature into larvae and pupae. A. aegypti eggs often make mealsfor birds, fish, frogs, spiders, dragonflies, and wasps. They are also subjectto several parasites. Eggs that avoid these perils last seven to nine daysas larvae, then another two to three days as pupae before maturing intofledgling mosquitoes. The entire progression is slowed by cool weatherand accelerated by warm weather.

Once full-fledged and aloft, A. aegypti like to stay low to the ground.They are stealthy creatures. The females are silent, unlike their buzzingbrethren, and bite people around the ankles, often at dawn or dusk.A. aegypti bite more frequently in warm and humid weather. As with allmosquitoes, only females require a blood meal, which is necessary foroviposition, that is, making eggs.

When hungry, the female A. aegypti can drink up to three timestheir weight in human blood. A full meal requires two to five minutes,counting the time needed to find a blood vessel. Sated A. aegypti aretoo bloated to fly well and will seek out a wall or other secure surface

83 Ramenofsky (1993:325), following Carter (1931). The modern medical litera-ture makes no mention of clay in this connection. I have asked mosquito expertsand soil chemists if there could have been anything about clay that particularlysuited A. aegypti eggs or larvae, thinking maybe somehow nutrients from theclay might leach into water and help feed mosquito larvae, but no one thoughtthis plausible. It could be that there was no attraction to clay itself, merely thatclay was in common use as a water container when Carter made his studies. Inthe modern world, say, since 1950, metal and plastic has replaced clay so widelythat A. aegypti rarely get the chance to lay eggs in clay containers.

84 Antonio Lopez Matoso, quoted in Knaut (1997:627). Veracruz presumably hadmany species of mosquitoes, not merely A. aegypti.

42 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

for a rest, and not bite again for three to four days. After two or threeblood meals, they seek out a suitable spot for laying eggs. Ordinarily,female A. aegypti can lay a batch of eggs per week in their two- to four-week lifespans, but again warmer weather speeds everything up – flying,eating, digestion, oviposition. Some long-lived individuals last for sixor eight weeks.

Hungry A. aegypti find human victims by sight and chemical sensors.Their sensors work much better in humid air. They can detect movingobjects as far as 10 meters away, and are attracted to warmth and exhala-tions of water vapor and carbon dioxide. They are especially attuned toammonia and lactic acid in concentrations typical of human sweat.85 Itmay be that adult men, more inclined to sweat than women or children,hold a special attraction for A. aegypti. A hard-working, hard-breathing,sweaty human body close to the ground, such as a sugarcane cutter or adigging soldier, made the most conspicuous and enticing target. FemaleA. aegypti are finicky eaters: They bite humans over 90 percent of thetime. Only in desperation will they turn to another mammal for a bloodmeal. This feeding focus, as specialists call it, makes them highly effi-cient vectors for human disease because they rarely inject a load of virusinto cattle, pigs, or horses and more often ingest virus with their mealsthan would more eclectic feeders.

Although A. aegypti are homebodies, timid flyers reluctant to ven-ture far on their own, they traveled widely by accident. Their affinityfor water casks made them good stowaways onboard ships, allowingeggs, larvae, and full-grown mosquitoes to travel across seas and oceans.Indeed, the reluctance to fly far improved A. aegypti chances of crossingthe sea in convoy with a ship; a more adventuresome species would oftenfly off on its own and soon starve to death or drown. Wherever shipssailed A. aegypti could settle, if there were people, water containers, andwarmth.

Their need for wet and warm weather limited A. aegypti’s range. Incool or dry conditions they prefer to relax rather than fly and bite,and so are ineffective at propagating yellow fever. By and large, theyneed temperatures above 10◦C (50◦F) to survive, above 17◦C (63◦F)to bite, and above 24◦C (75◦F) to feel their best. The ideal range is27◦–31◦C (81◦–88◦F). Anything above 40◦C (104◦F) is unhealthful,even fatal. Their eggs can tolerate wider temperature ranges, even frost,

85 Kent et al. (2008); Ghaninia et al. (2008).


but to hatch they need water and to mature the larvae need warmwater. These temperature requirements mean that A. aegypti can existyear-round throughout the lowland Caribbean, especially on the coasts(where the cities are) and South America about as far south as Rio deJaneiro. In North America, A. aegypti eggs can survive a mild winterand can hatch in spring warmth. Ships from warmer climes could bringreinforcement mosquitoes every summer. Thus, yellow fever could makerare seasonal appearances at latitudes as high as Quebec, for example,where it appeared in 1711, or in Dublin in 1726. It could make frequentsummer calls at subtropical latitudes, as it did at Charleston, SouthCarolina, and Buenos Aires.

Yellow fever acquired historical importance only when it burst outas an epidemic, and epidemics had more stringent requirements thandid mere appearances. The temperature and moisture requirements andeccentricities of the A. aegypti limited the scope for yellow fever. Humanfactors did as well. A sustained cycle of transmission (in the absenceof an abundance of monkeys) required human beings, and not just anyhuman beings.86

Whether the yellow fever virus spreads and kills many people ratherthan just a few depends on the efficiency of transmission from mosquitoto human to mosquito. With mosquito-borne diseases, the cycle’s effi-ciency depends chiefly on three things: the population densities of peo-ple and vectors; the feeding focus of the vector, that is, whether ornot it bites only people or bites people among other mammals; and thelongevity of the vector. Old mosquitoes are the most dangerous becausethey are more likely to have bitten an infectious person and thus harborthe virus. The feeding focus is important because indiscriminate biterswill often inject the virus harmlessly into unaffected mammals.

With yellow fever, the vector populations are especially important.Only about 60 percent of A. aegypti are able to transmit the yellow fevervirus (“vector competence”), so abundance of the vector is crucial. Peo-ple have the disease for about two weeks, after which they are eitherdead or immune. Although A. aegypti will bite anyone, even recentlydeceased corpses, yellow fever victims’ blood is infective for only threeto six days toward the beginning of their illness, and each mosquito

86 Although it is possible for the virus to be transmitted directly, from mothermosquito to daughter (“vertical transmission”), this is rare. Fewer than 1% ofinfected A. aegypti do it.

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only bites a few times (maybe ten or twenty) in her life. The transmis-sion cycle can be robust only when there are plenty of mosquitoes toensure that enough infective people are bitten so that the virus can getfrom person to person. This helps explain why yellow fever was gener-ally seasonal, in a rhythm connected to the summertime abundance ofA. aegypti.

Epidemic yellow fever also requires an abundant, closely packedhuman population or the virus will not get from mosquito to mosquitofast enough. The vector’s limited flying range, the brief infective periodof human sufferers, and other factors make it difficult for yellow feverto circulate among dispersed populations. Hence, in part, its urbancharacter. Moreover, epidemic yellow fever needs a favorable ratio ofsusceptible people to immune people because immunes are virus killers.

yellow fever immunity

The cycle of transmission is broken when mosquitoes inject virus onlyinto immunized bloodstreams. To judge by modern vaccination pro-grams in Africa and Brazil, a population with 60 percent immunes canstill host a yellow fever epidemic, but one with 80 percent immunes can-not because infected mosquitoes too frequently expire without bitinga susceptible person.87 This phenomenon, by which a high proportionof immunes can serve as a shield for susceptibles, is known as “herdimmunity.” In a community recently visited by yellow fever, too fewsusceptible bodies remained, making the community invulnerable. In acommunity with many people, say 80 percent, who grew up in yellowfever zones, whether in Africa or America, the virus could rarely getto the vulnerable 20 percent who were protected by their neighbors’immunity. Herd immunity was an unknown concept in the GreaterCaribbean, but it was crucial for its history.

Complicating these matters is the possibility of heritable resistanceto, or even full immunity against, yellow fever. Over the long haul,evolutionary pressures can select genetic traits that offer resistance tospecific infections, generally those prevalent over many centuries amida geographically stable population. Many people of African (especiallyWest African) descent carry the so-called sickle cell trait, which con-fers strong resistance to the deadliest form of malaria – about a quarter

87 Massad et al. (2003).


of West Africans carry this trait, and a tenth of African-Americans.If yellow fever in its present form has been present in West Africa forat least 3,000 years as the genomic evidence implies, it would be asto-nishing to evolutionary biologists if human populations living in itsmidst did not evolve some form of resistance to such a virulent disease.Moreover, in many epidemics in the U.S., Cuba, and Brazil, records showfar greater mortality among people of European descent than amongpeople of African descent. But there is no direct evidence of resistance,and no identifiable mechanism (like the sickle cell trait) to explain it.Some students of the question, aware that the argument applies only topeople of African descent or origin, regard such arguments skepticallybecause they seem to imply inherent biological differences among peo-ple of different skin colors.88 There are other possible explanations forrecorded differences among blacks and whites in disease morbidity andmortality, such as uneven reporting, differential exposure to disease, ordifferent patterns of acquired immunities. In the slave societies of theCaribbean, the great majority of blacks were recent arrivals from partsof Africa – Senegambia, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra,northern Angola – with endemic yellow fever.89 If they did not carrygenetic resistance, most of them were immune to yellow fever throughchildhood experience of the virus. So the historical evidence does not

88 For a recent such statement, Watts (2001), and in response, Kiple (2001). Thebiologists I have consulted on this point uniformly accepted the idea of heritableimmunity.

89 Burnard (2001; 2008:144) has data on geographic and ethnic origins of 130,000slaves arriving in Jamaica, 1655–1725, many of whom were sold to SpanishCaribbean settlements. About 93% were shipped from the zone between GoldCoast and Angola, which by the nineteenth century (and I expect long before)was rife with yellow fever. Some of these slaves spent their childhoods far inland,and in some cases perhaps not in yellow fever zones. But if they survived a stayin the barracoons of West Africa, they probably also survived yellow fever. Byvirtue of childhood exposure, or by enslavement and subsequent exposure, thoseAfricans sent to the Americas if not genetically resistant to yellow fever would inalmost all cases have acquired immunity. The maps in the Trans-Atlantic SlaveTrade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.com/tast/assessment/estimates.faces)also suggest an overwhelming proportion of slaves came from areas of Africawhere yellow fever was widespread in recent times, and probably during the slavetrade as well. Inevitably, some uncertainty surrounds this issue as it impossibleto know the local geography of yellow fever or of slave origins (as opposed toports of embarkation) with precision.

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resolve the question of heritable immunity to yellow fever. The WorldHealth Organization’s pronouncements on the issue are cautiouslyagnostic, calling only for more research.90

If there is a heritable resistance or immunity to yellow fever, it is aresult of the disease environment of one’s ancestors – not a matter of raceor skin color. West and Central Africans and people of West and CentralAfrican ancestry probably often did carry some measure of resistance toyellow fever; people in and from other parts of Africa generally didand do not. Wherever there was yellow fever there were people withimmunity to it – whether acquired or, in some cases, inherited as well.

Genetic immunity (or resistance) to yellow fever is not necessary forthe arguments in this book. It could be that there is none whatsoever,and that the immunity (or resistance) in populations of African descentis all acquired. Even those slaves who were born and raised outsideof yellow fever zones had to pass through the towns, ports, and barra-coons of West or West-Central Africa. They spent weeks and monthsin the most intensive yellow fever environments in the world. Mortality(from all causes) during this stage of the slave trade was enormous, per-haps 15 to 30 percent. Quite plausibly, almost all who made it throughthis experience acquired yellow fever immunity if they did not have itpreviously. Most of their descendants in the Greater Caribbean expe-rienced yellow fever in childhood (if they were indeed not geneticallyshielded) and survived as immunes. Heritable resistance, in my inex-pert judgment, probably does exist. But what mattered for the fate ofempires and revolutions was the existence of differential immunity andresistance, not whether immunity was genetic or acquired.

It is among Atlantic history’s crueler ironies that in their bodiesslaves brought new infections to the Americas – yellow fever, falci-parum malaria, and hookworm among them – to which they also carried(inherited or acquired) resistance or immunity, which in turn raised thevalue of slaves against other forms of labor (such as European inden-tured servants or wage-earners). Differential immunity improved theeconomic logic of slavery and the slave trade, making it larger geo-graphically, longer chronologically, and more intensive than it wouldotherwise have been.

90 Vainio and Cutts (1998:30). These authors suggest that in Cuba, race is a factorin dengue resistance, but this merely reflects the land of the ancestors of Cubanblacks – a dengue zone – as opposed to that of other Cubans. Halstead (1997:37)makes a case (of which I am skeptical) for heritable resistance to dengue amongblacks generally, acknowledging that there is no known mechanism for this.


sylvan yellow fever

For the moment at least, yellow fever in the Americas is almost com-pletely confined to a form called sylvan (or sylvatic, or jungle) yellowfever.91 In this form, the identical virus causes disease among tree-dwelling monkeys – it kills howler monkeys but not other species –transmitted among them by mosquito species of the genus Haemagogus.92

It infects people only when they climb into the forest canopy or cutdown trees, bringing down infected mosquitoes in the bargain. Today,it mainly affects Amazonian loggers. It normally cannot trigger anepidemic because people, especially unvaccinated people, are too fewwithin the range of infected mosquitoes.93 Moreover, the mosquitoes inquestion usually disdain human blood. However, if an infected persontravels to a city with an active population of A. aegypti, sylvan yel-low fever can spark an epidemic, as happened in 1998 in Santa Cruz,Bolivia. The existence of the sylvan form of yellow fever ensures thatthere is always a reservoir of virus, making it an unlikely candidate foreradication. Indeed, outbreaks have been increasing since 1985 in bothAfrica and South America, probably because people have encroachedmore steadily upon the forests where Haemagogus mosquitoes, over-coming their prejudice, bite them from time to time. Other changeshave assisted in yellow fever’s modest comeback: Mosquito control pro-grams have lapsed, and global warming has extended the range of thevector.94

Epidemic Yellow Fever and Plantation Sugar

From the virus’ point of view, its opportunities were sadly limited inthe Caribbean before 1640. Despite suitable warmth and rainfall forthe vector, conditions left a lot to be desired: not enough water storagecontainers for vector breeding sites, not enough vectors, and definitelynot enough people for mosquitoes to bite. Before it could exert any sway

91 On sylvan yellow fever, Vasconcelos (2003:280–1).92 This raises another possibility concerning yellow fever’s dismal failure to evolve

toward benignity in humans: For most of its history, it may have been more usefulto the virus to evolve toward benignity in monkeys (as well as mosquitoes). Ihave not encountered this idea in the medical literature but if it has merit, nodoubt someone else has already thought of it.

93 Brazil in particular has tried hard to encourage vaccination for people movinginto its (enormous) yellow fever zones (Massad et al. 2003).

94 Barrett and Higgs (2007).

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over Caribbean history, yellow fever had to become established in theregion. The virus could not do so on its own, but in the middle of theseventeenth century it got the help it needed.

The sugar revolutions helped A. aegypti prosper and gave yellow feverits foothold. The widespread deforestation reduced the habitat of islandbirds. For the grim purpose of sustaining epidemics, old mosquitoes arethe most effective, so landscapes with fewer insectivorous birds andmore veteran mosquitoes probably had more virus in circulation (otherthings being equal). Predation on mosquito eggs and larvae may haveabated too, although a confident assessment would require historicalcensuses of dragonflies, frogs, and the many smaller aggressive creaturesresiding in stagnant water.

Whatever the effects of the sugar revolutions on mosquito predators,sugar plantations did wonders for A. aegypti breeding and feeding. Plan-tations and the ports that sent sugar to Europe made ideal incubatorsand larders for A. aegypti. Like cities, sugar plantations were humancommunities where people had to store water. Unless situated on areliable stream, people needed to keep water for the dry season in cis-terns, kegs, barrels, or buckets. Small islands especially had few or noreliable streams in the dry season, requiring people to store water.95

In addition, sugar plantations had clay pots that captured water, too.In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sugar processing requiredputting partly crystallized sugar into clay pots for a month or two whilemolasses drained out, leaving semi-refined sugar. The pots were shapedlike cheerleaders’ megaphones, cones with a small hole at the narrowend. A small plantation needed hundreds of these, and large ones usedtens of thousands. The pots were empty except for three to five monthsafter the sugar harvest. Presumably they often broke, as they were madeof clay and handled by slaves, who often treated their masters’ (other)property with less than loving care. Clay pots and fragments of clay potscaught the rain easily. They had residues of sugar in them, ideal formaximizing bacteria populations on which A. aegypti larvae could feed.Whether or not sugar assisted indirectly in larval nutrition, the sugarplantation assisted generously in nursing A. aegypti populations. After

95 Ligon (1657:28–9) notes the shortage of streams on Barbados and the prevalenceof cisterns and ponds. Writing in the 1670s, Trapham noted that Jamaicancolonists drank water infested with mosquito eggs, to which he attributed theirdifficulties with intestinal worms (Kupperman 1984:231).


1640, with each passing year the Caribbean became more and moresuitable for A. aegypti breeding.96

It also became better for feeding. Sugar meant population growth,urbanization, and hence more frequent blood meals for mosquitoes,especially those like A. aegypti that hanker for human blood. Moreover,A. aegypti like sucrose, too. Any sweet fluid will do, and few are sweeterthan cane juice. Any individual mosquito can survive on cane juice orhoney, although mosquito populations of course required blood meals.Nonetheless, the spread of sugar plantations made cane juice easier tofind, providing energy for flight, prolonging mosquito lives (improvingmales’ chances of finding mates), and raising the odds that females wouldlast long enough to find enough blood meals. Thus, the local ecologyof sugar plantations boosted A. aegypti food supply and populations. Inaddition, sugar meant slaves and slave ships from West Africa, and somore opportunities for stowaway mosquitoes to arrive and found newcolonies of A. aegypti.97

A further ecological change may also have helped make yellowfever a scourge of the Caribbean: monkey immigration.98 On manyof the thousands of slaving voyages from West Africa, monkeys crossedthe Atlantic. Several different species of African monkeys made it tothe Antilles between 1640 and 1690, including some such as green mon-keys, capable of hosting the yellow fever virus. In the West Indies, theyinitially found a monkey paradise: plenty of woodland and no predatorsexcept people and dogs. They lived in the vanishing forests, subsistingon woodland fruits and vegetation and making frequent raids on crop-lands, including canefields. They, too, enjoyed eating sugarcane. As thewoodlands shrank back and croplands expanded, the monkey popula-tions presumably found it necessary to risk raiding the plantations moreoften, thereby coming closer to human settlements (on the small islandsthey could never be very far from settlements). They became notoriouspests on Barbados by the 1680s, where there was scant woodland to

96 Goodyear (1978:10–13). The speculation about sugar residues is my own.97 Laboratory evidence suggests that if plentifully supplied with sugars, A. aegypti

bite less frequently, which would make them less effective as disease vectors.Whether this holds outside of lab conditions is uncertain. In any case, if abundantsugar doubled A. aegypti populations, that would more than offset their reducedappetites for blood (Foster and Eischen 1987).

98 The following paragraph is speculation based on data from Denham (1987).

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house them, and soon thereafter on Nevis and St. Kitts as well. More-over, the habit of keeping monkeys as pets would also have allowedeasier communication of the yellow fever virus between monkeys andpeople, as vector mosquitoes would not have to travel far to serve asconduits.

If this reconstruction of Caribbean monkey ecology is correct – andthere are many uncertainties in historical monkey ecology – then it islikely that on many islands a reservoir of the virus built up in the mon-key populations. With each passing decade after 1640, the likelihoodthat an island hosted sylvan yellow fever improved until such time asmonkey populations crashed for want of suitable forest habitat. For halfa century perhaps, maybe more, conditions were right for the establish-ment of sylvan yellow fever in the smaller islands. On the larger islandsof Cuba, Jamaica, and Hispaniola, and on the South and Central Amer-ican mainlands (where there were indigenous monkey species capableof carrying the virus), suitable habitat survived and monkey populationsprobably did as well. If true, all this could help explain how local pop-ulations developed immunities to yellow fever even in times when thevirus was not brought anew from Africa. It suggests that especially onthe big islands and the mainland, yellow fever could be endemic in thecountryside and on the plantations, not merely in the cities.

Lastly, whether monkeys mattered or not sugar and economic growthgenerally meant more shipping, more sailors, and more urban settle-ments within the Caribbean. Large, dense populations meant a steadysupply of newborns and toddlers – that is, from the virus’ point of view,bloodstreams without antibodies. To survive in any given location, thevirus needed to get quickly from one such naıve bloodstream to another,so densely packed cities made good habitat for the virus. They also suitedthe vector because cities held vast quantities of human blood, a groan-ing smorgasbord for A. aegypti. And because city folk invariably storedwater in casks, troughs, barrels, buckets, pots, and cisterns in the timesbefore piped water systems, Caribbean cities met the breeding as well aseating preferences of A. aegypti nicely.

Sugar exports inspired the growth of Caribbean port cities. As thesugar revolutions progressed more and bigger ports emerged, capable ofhandling and supplying larger and larger merchant ships. As planta-tion revenues mounted, the logic of lodging more soldiers, sailors, andofficials improved, as did the capacity to do so. The plantation eco-nomy helped commercial, military, and governmental establishmentsgrow.


In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the West Indies hadonly one big city, Havana, with about 30,000 people in 1700. In allthe Americas, only Mexico City was larger. But there were many smallcities with between 2,000 and 10,000 people. The plantation econ-omy encouraged decentralization and dispersal, especially where sugarwas involved. Semi-refined sugar did not store well, so planters needednearby ports to get their product to European refineries quickly. Planta-tion crops in general could not support the cost of land travel for long,and so needed ports close to the plantations. This pattern of numer-ous scattered ports kept the virus in circulation – as long as there wereenough ships.

Every transatlantic ship required dozens of barrels of water, and evenlocal vessels needed a few, so every port and ship was a storehouseof fresh water and a nursery for A. aegypti.99 As sugar gradually madethe Caribbean richer, and increasingly a theater of large-scale warfare,select port cities built the water storage infrastructure – cisterns, ponds,wells, canals, and so forth – to service naval fleets requiring hundredsor thousands of barrels of water. A. aegypti could scarcely have designedmore suitable cities than Caribbean ports.

Better still for both vector and virus, the ports were all linked byever-more frequent shipping. Ships, warm and humid below decks andwith plenty of water casks, amounted to limousines for A. aegypti. Ascommerce grew, connecting all the ports in one web of regular contact,the Caribbean ports in effect provided a super-city for the purposes ofa virus needing to get from one body to the next. Sailors helped movethe virus in their bloodstreams while ships transported the vectors. Thesugar trade (as well as others) brought thousands of sailors to the WestIndies every year, many of them with inexperienced immune systems.They easily fell ill and, while infectious, served to move the virus frommosquito to mosquito and port to port. Not for nothing did yellow fevergo by the name mal des matelots (“sailors’ disease”) in the French WestIndies.100 Ships in effect were super-vectors, efficiently moving both

99 Small sailing craft in Gambia have been found to breed A. aegpyti at the rate of2,000 per week according to a 1902 study cited in Smith and Gibson (1986:331).

100 Henry Warren (1741:73–4) noted yellow fever’s impact on sailors: “ . . . [W]ithinthese last six Years, or thereabouts, His Majesty has lost, by means of thisMalignancy, in and about his Sugar-Colonies, upward of Twenty Thousand veryuseful Subjects, the greatest Part of whom were Sea-faring People . . . ” Thisremark refers to 1733–1738.

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mosquito and virus from port to port. And ports in effect were super-hosts, providing warm welcomes for mosquito and virus alike. Thusthe sugar revolutions created a new world of plantations, populationincrease, ships, and ports – a world almost tailor-made for the yellowfever vector and virus.

Malaria, Mosquitoes, and Plantationsof Sugar and Rice

The ecological and social changes described previously, so helpful tothe propagation of yellow fever, also assisted malarial parasites and theirmosquitoes. Here I will only sketch some of the basics, but will returnto the connection between ecology and malaria in the specific contextswhere it mattered most, in Jamaica (Chapter 4) and the AmericanRevolution (Chapter 6).

Malaria is among the most ancient of human diseases and the mostdeadly.101 Today, it kills upwards of 2 million people a year, mainlychildren, mainly in Africa. It is caused by a parasite, a plasmodium thatcomes in four varieties, the two most important of which are Plasmod-ium vivax, which causes a milder form of malaria, and Plasmodium falci-parum, the most deadly. The parasite has a complex life cycle, dividedbetween time spent in humans and in female anopheles. The time spentinside mosquitoes, called the extrinsic cycle, lasts for nine to twenty-one days. In warmer temperatures, the parasite reproduces faster withinmosquitoes. The extrinsic cycle requires temperatures of 15◦C, in thecase of P. vivax, and 20◦C for P. falciparum. The parasite does mos-quitoes no harm.

When infected anopheles mosquitoes bite a person, they inject par-asites into the bloodstream, beginning the intrinsic cycle. The parasitesthen migrate to the liver, reproduce exuberantly, and then move intored blood cells. They spend seven to thirty days incubating in humanbodies before symptoms appear. In these weeks, if not checked by a vig-ilant immune system, the parasites can reproduce prolifically within thered blood cells, so that an initial sortie by a few dozen parasites becomesa few trillion invaders.

The symptoms of malaria include shivering chills, high fever, sweats,bodily pains and malaise – not easy to distinguish from a variety of otherdiseases. The on-and-off pattern of fever, with sharp spikes and welcome

101 Webb (2008); Packard (2007).


breaks, is more distinctive. Different forms of malaria bring fevers andchills at different intervals, hence the old terms such as “intermittentfever” and “tertian fever,” in which the sufferer has an intermission ofone day between fevers, and “quartan” (two days between fevers). It ispossible to be infected with more than one strain of malaria at a time,complicating the rhythms of fevers and chills. Malaria often brings anelevated heart rate, a mild jaundice, and an enlarged spleen or liver.In severe cases of falciparum malaria, the parasites turn one’s red bloodcells into a sticky plaque that clogs the circulatory system, bringingon organ failure, seizures, coma, severe anemia, and cardiovascular col-lapse, among other grave symptoms. Malaria often kills people who arealready weakened by other conditions, such as malnutrition, anotherdisease, or a compromised immune system. Unlike yellow fever, it ismore dangerous to children than to adults.

Immunity to malaria is hard won. Most people in Africa betweenthe Sahara and the Kalahari are immune to P. vivax because of geneticcharacteristics (the absence of Duffy antigen in red blood cells), asare many people of African descent elsewhere. This immunity is theresult of hundreds of human generations of exposure to malaria andrigorous selection for resistance to P. vivax. Moreover, long exposure tothe deadly falciparum strain has favored the evolution and survival ofgenetic resistance among West and Central Africans, even at the cost ofgreater risk of anemia. This comes in the form of the so-called sickle celltrait, common but not universal among people of West African originand descent. The sickle cell makes one’s hemoglobin indigestible toP. falciparum. People from other parts of the world in which malaria haslong been present have also evolved genetic shields in other forms.

Regardless of ancestry, anyone can acquire conferred resistance (notimmunity) by surviving repeated bouts of malaria. Acquired resistanceis a complicated matter, not fully understood even today, because theparasites pass through different stages and different antibodies pro-vide protection against them in these different phases. But in short,the more often one has hosted malaria, the more resistant one is likelyto be, although rarely if ever fully immune. The structure of resistancemeans malaria is most dangerous to people whose genetic inheritancedoes not include either of the two heritable shields, to small children ingeneral, and to adults whose background does not equip them with thenecessary antibodies through prior exposure to malaria.

Hence, people born and raised in endemic malaria regions who hostedthe parasite frequently (and survived childhood) by adulthood enjoyed

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strong resistance to infection. People born and raised elsewhere, unlesstheir ancestors came from malarial regions, carried no immunity and ifinfected with P. falciparum stood a strong chance of falling severely illand a good chance of dying.

Whether malaria sickens and kills a lot of people rather than just afew depends not only on immunity but on the efficiency of transmis-sion from mosquito to human to mosquito. As with yellow fever and allmosquito-borne diseases, this efficiency depends chiefly on the popula-tion densities of people and vectors, the feeding focus of the vector, andthe longevity of the vector. Of these it is longevity that matters most.Old mosquitoes are the most dangerous because they are more likely tohave bitten an infectious person and to harbor malarial parasites. As ithappens, under suitable conditions – warm, humid weather with plentyof aged anophelines – one infected person can easily spread malaria toanother 100, making it far easier to spread than most diseases.102

About 400 mosquito species of the genus Anopheles walk this earth, ofwhich perhaps 30 or 40 can transmit malaria.103 They are distant cousinsto the yellow fever mosquitoes; the genus Aedes and genus Anophelesdiverged perhaps 150 million years ago in Africa.104 Some anophelinespecies strongly prefer human blood, and thus are highly efficient vectorsof malaria, such as Africa’s An. gambiae, the world’s most deadly insect.Some prefer other mammals, and only rarely bite humans. Whereas theyellow fever vector had to colonize the Americas before that diseasecould become established in the West Indies, anophelines existed allover the Americas before the Columbian Exchange, and several Speciesof them were capable of hosting malarial parasites. Most West Africanscrossing the Atlantic carried malarial plasmodia in their bloodstreams,so once the slave trade began malaria was constantly re-introduced toAmerican Anopheles populations. Thus, malaria was likelier to spreadsooner than yellow fever in suitable locations in the Americas, and

102 On average, an AIDS victim is likely to infect only slightly more than one otherperson; a measles sufferer about twelve to fourteen people. The vector makesdiseases like malaria (and yellow fever) much easier to communicate and thusmuch more likely to take epidemic form – if enough nonimmune people areavailable (Spielman and D’Antonio 2001:96–7).

103 On the habits of the anopheles, see Clements (2004); or for laymen, Spiel-man and D’Antonio (2001). Also useful is the Center for Disease Con-trol and Prevention website: http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/biology/mosquito/#generalinformation.

104 Kent et al. (2008).


probably did so soon after Columbus. Several accounts suggest malariahad arrived in the West Indies by the early sixteenth century.105

The chief carriers of malaria in the Caribbean were An. albimanusand, secondarily, An. darlingi.106 Neither is an efficient malaria vec-tor compared to the North American species, An. quadrimaculatus (seeChapter 6), let alone the African An. gambiae. The smaller islands ofthe eastern Caribbean were the domain of a still less effective vector,An. aquasalis.107 Its indifference to human blood made those islandssomewhat healthier than the larger islands and coastlands. The ineffi-ciency of the vectors in the Caribbean meant that malaria transmissionrequired very dense vector populations, as well as plentiful susceptiblehosts.

The changes sugar plantations brought helped malaria transmissionin both respects. The strongest factor governing mosquito populationdynamics is normally breeding conditions, which is especially true of An.albimanus. Landscape changes, such as the creation of ditches, canals,and irrigated fields, have outsized effects on its numbers.108 An. albi-manus is a short-lived mosquito, normally lasting no more than twenty-seven days, so good breeding conditions are especially important for itssurvival in any given locale. It rarely flies more than a kilometer from itsbirthplace (even less in the dry season). Deforestation and soil erosioncreated new lowland freshwater (or brackish) swamps, good breedinghabitat. An. albimanus in particular likes to breed amid aquatic plantsand algal mats, preferably open to the sun. Rice fields in Surinam andelsewhere proved especially suitable. Dutch planters there re-arrangedland and water (a Dutch specialty) to create irrigated plantations. Eventheir sugar plantations used irrigation canals on which small watercraftcould carry sugar stalks to the mills. Inadvertently, they created acresof stagnant ditchwater, full of aquatic vegetation and open to sunlight,inviting anopheline breeding sprees.109

Indeed, the ecological tumult associated with the plantation econ-omy helped improve breeding prospects for An. albimanus acrossthe board. Anything that pockmarked the landscape and created

105 Webb (2008:66–91).106 Komp (1942) on anophelines; Frederickson (1993) on An. albimanus.107 Flores-Mendoza et al. (1996) on feeding preferences of An. aquasalis.108 Frederickson (1993:55). All An. albimanus data here are from Frederickson.109 Stiprian (1993:81–98); Debien (1941:107) on irrigation in St. Domingue;

Guerra, Snow and Hay (2006) on deforestation and anophelines.

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catchments for rainwater, and thereby puddles inaccessible to fish andother predators of mosquito larvae, was a boon for any anophelinemosquito. Felling trees, putting up buildings, digging wells, plantingcrops – all this made conditions more promising.

Everywhere sugar plantations maintained livestock, especially oxenand mules, which improved Anopheles nutrition. These animals wereuseful for hauling loads of cut cane to the sugar mills and for poweringthe mills themselves.110 Most anopheline species like horse and cattleblood as much or more than the human variety. An. albimanus and An.darlingi are both much fonder of cattle and horses than of humans –although in deforested environments, An. darlingi at least becomes farmore eager to bite humans.111 With more blood within easy reach,thanks to plantation livestock, anophelines lived longer and reproducedmore prolifically.

Livestock could also have indirectly helped Anopheles breedingbecause the mosquitoes like to lay their eggs in puddles and wateringholes of the sort that cattle use and people sometimes maintain for theirherds. Richard Ligon noted that on Barbados landowners maintainedponds to water their cattle because the island had so few streams.112 Healso listed among the torments of Barbados, “Musketos, who bite andsting worse than the Gnats and Stouts, that sting Cattle in England(and are commonly felt in marish ground).”113 The Caribbean regionhad suitable habitat for An. albimanus and An. darlingi before sugar, butthe plantations, irrigation, and livestock made it all the more welcom-ing.

Plentiful livestock meant more Anopheles but not necessarily moremalaria. Where people lived among their livestock, they appar-ently sometimes thereby raised their malaria rates, a process called

110 Debien (1941:40) mentions oxen, mules, and horses on a St. Domingue planta-tion in the early eighteenth century, with a ratio of roughly two slaves per beastof burden.

111 Frederickson (1993:12–14) on An. albimanus’ host selection. Vittor et al. (2006)find in experiments in Peruvian Amazonia that An. darlingi proved 278 timesmore likely to bite humans when in deforested environments.

112 Ligon (1657:28–9). Frederickson (1993:2) notes that animal watering ponds andrice fields are the landscapes most hospitable to An. albimanus larvae.

113 Ligon (1657:62). “Stout” meant horsefly and “marish” meant marshy. However,his mosquitoes were not anophelines, which Barbados seems miraculously tohave lacked until 1927 (Webb 2008:78).


“zoopotentiation.” But where people penned their livestock or livedat a distance from it, the livestock usually attracted the anophelines andthereby lowered the chances of malaria transmission among humans, across-species form of herd immunity known as “zooprophylaxis.” In theCaribbean, livestock sometimes was penned at night (the Anopheles’preferred meal time) and sometimes let loose in forests. It is temptingto guess that on Caribbean plantations, livestock lowered rather thanraised the risks of malaria, although one cannot know for sure. In anycase, the presence of abundant mammals raised the total populations ofAnopheles species, and in the unusual event that the livestock shouldsuddenly disappear, the thirsty Anopheles would descend on the humanswith desperate abandon.114

The impacts of livestock on plantations for Anopheles populationsmay carry ambiguities, but there are none when it comes to plantationrice. Chapter 6 addresses this issue for South Carolina in particular; a fewgeneral remarks will do here. Many landscapes in the Greater Caribbeanproduced irrigated rice. Outside South Carolina, it was usually not anexport crop but a subsistence one, often grown to feed slaves. Whereverirrigated rice is raised, Anopheles are raised along with it. The calm,warm water, replete with algae and other organic matter, is just whatanophelines look for when laying their eggs. The frequent floodings thatrice needs allow nearly year-round crops of anophelines, which tendsto make malaria less seasonal and more constant throughout the year.The rhythm of flooding and drying up in rice fields keeps down thepredator populations that might otherwise batten on mosquito larvae.Different rice varieties, raised in different fashions, suit different sortsof Anopheles. But the link is strong all around the world between rice,mosquitoes, and malaria.115

114 On zooprophylaxis and zoopotentiation, I consulted Sota and Mogi (1989),Bouma and Rowland (1995), Bøgh et al. (2001), and Saul (2003). I thank JimWebb of Colby College for discussing the issues with me.

115 Webb (2008:40, 56, 76); Packard (2007:55–61, 76–9). On West Africa specifi-cally, Briet et al. (2003) and several articles in the special issue on malaria andagriculture in Acta Tropica vol. 89, no. 2 (January 2004); on Brazil, Dos Santoset al. (2004). See also Fernando (1993). The link between malaria and rice wasfirst established by Italian researchers: Italy. Ministerio dell’Economia Nazionale,Direzione Generale dell’Agricoltura (1925), but Spaniards in Valencia in theeighteenth century saw a connection (Riera 1982). Frederickson (1993) notes arice-Anopheles link in the Caribbean.

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Climate Change, El Nino, Mosquitoes,and Epidemics

In addition to ecology, demography, and immunity, climate changeand climate anomalies affected the frequency and severity of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks. Weather, especially rainfall and humidity butalso temperature, powerfully affected mosquito strength. These mattersare fraught with uncertainty, and surely local variability must be great.

In general, temperatures in the northern hemisphere have warmedsince the depths of the Little Ice Age in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. During the Little Ice Age, the Caribbean apparently was con-siderably cooler and drier than today, so that over time as the Little IceAge waned climate improved for mosquitoes.116 Although it was alwayswarm enough for A. aegypti, warming trends after about 1750 meantthat temperatures would attain the mosquito’s ideal range more oftenand more enduringly, encouraging more frequent biting, faster mosquitoreproduction, and faster reproduction of the yellow fever virus withinmosquitoes. It also meant A. aegypti felt comfortable at higher elevationsand at higher latitudes too, so that A. aegypti’s range probably expanded.(It is expanding rapidly nowadays because of climate warming.)117 Inshort, it is likely that warming climate conditions gradually improvedthe odds of yellow fever epidemics after the middle of the seventeenthcentury.

116 Winter et al. (2000); Watanabe et al. (2001). Judging from oxygen isotopes incorals around Puerto Rico, it seems that sea surface temperatures were 2–3◦Ccooler than today in the coldest intervals sampled (1700–1705, 1780–1785,and 1810–1815). The authors attribute this to air masses, implying that airtemperatures would likewise have been much cooler. Regrettably, their data donot shed light on the seventeenth century, which if the Caribbean conformed tohemispheric patterns would have been colder still. The inferences of Haug et al.(2001), based on sediments off the Venezuelan coast, support the view that theLittle Ice Age was unusually dry in the Caribbean, as do those of Hodell et al.(2005) for the Yucatan. For an overview of Caribbean climate history, see Curtiset al. (2001); a potentially useful source I have not seen is Talman (1906).

117 Apparently, minor changes in average temperature can have large effects on theefficiency of disease transmission. In South America, a rise in temperature of 2◦Cis expected to translate into increases of two- to five-fold in vector efficiencyfor dengue; see Githeko et al. (2000:1140). Of course, this is a projection, nota measurement, and dengue, although normally carried by the same A. aegyptimosquito, is not yellow fever. Nonetheless, the estimate gives some idea of thesensitivity to temperature of the infection cycle.


The other way in which climate might affect disease is through thefrequency and severity of anomalies, notably of rainfall and drought.The Caribbean has a fairly reliable rainy season from April or Maythrough November, with peaks in May-June and September-October,but droughts are not rare. Sometimes they are associated with El Ninoevents, but they can occur independently as well.118 Where reliablestreams (or later, piped water) existed and no one bothered to storewater, drought suppressed A. aegypti populations by limiting the avail-ability of good breeding sites, and therefore must have lowered the oddsof yellow fever (or dengue) outbreaks. On the other hand, prolongedrainy seasons raised the odds sharply. But where no year-round streams(and no piped water) existed, drought paradoxically improved breed-ing conditions for A. aegypti because people took pains to store watereverywhere they could. Depending on the situation, particularly theincentives to store water, either drought or abundant rains could leadto a bumper crop of A. aegypti. Rainy periods after a drought probablyled to maximum mosquito populations and the greatest risk of yellowfever. Recent research suggests that in the year following an El Nino(known in the trade as ENSO+1 because specialists prefer the term “ElNino/Southern Oscillation,” or ENSO), Caribbean rains come early,last long, and maximize the A. aegypti crop. In short, El Nino years andtheir immediate successors brought conditions ideal for epidemics.119

Perhaps the best conclusion is that El Nino provided helpful but by nomeans necessary conditions for yellow fever epidemics.120 As we shallsee, several of the politically important epidemics did come in the wake

118 Malmgren et al. (1998) attribute rainfall fluctuations in Puerto Rico since 1911not to El Nino but to North Atlantic air currents. See Giannini et al. (2000) andJury et al. (2007) for overviews. In general, the Gulf of Mexico and northwesternCaribbean is strongly affected by oscillations in the North Atlantic High as wellas by ENSO events. ENSO typically brings heavier rains to the Gulf of Mexicoand northwestern Caribbean but drought to northern South America and thesouthern Caribbean.

119 Chen and Taylor (2002); Jury et al. (2007); Amarakoon et al. (2004); Gagnon,Bush and Smoyer-Tomic (2001).

120 There are at least two possible reasons for this effect. One is vector abundance,as this paragraph proposes. But in addition (or as an alternative), warmer con-ditions accelerate the growth and activity of mosquitoes and the rate of virusreproduction; in the case of malaria, warmth accelerates the reproduction ofplasmodium within mosquitoes. Poveda et al. (2001), in a study of malaria andENSO in Colombia, suggest that warmer temperatures during El Nino shortenthe sporogenic period in malarial mosquitoes, increasing malarial transmission.

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of an El Nino, and the chronology of yellow fever epidemics in theAmerican South (where El Nino years are very wet) seems to match upfairly well with El Nino.121

Similarly, with Anopheles mosquitoes drought can help create popu-lation surges that intensify risks of malaria. Serious drought kills off mostAnopheles mosquitoes but eliminates most of their predators, too. In theaftermath, once rains return Anopheles are much quicker to re-colonizeformerly dried-up wetlands than are their enemies. In a wet year aftera drought year, Anopheles strength can be twenty times greater thannormal, which would often create malaria epidemics where none couldexist otherwise.122

Conclusion

All these variables – demography, ecology, immunity, climate – affectedthe probability of yellow fever and malaria epidemics occurring in theCaribbean. Considering them together, it is plausible to draw four broadconclusions.

First, because of differential immunity yellow fever weighed lightlyon locally born and raised populations compared to invaders and immi-grants from outside the A. aegypti domain. It went easy on populationswith children as opposed to those made up exclusively of adults, andon populations with West and West-Central Africans as opposed tothose without them. Yellow fever was most dangerous to unadulteratedpopulations of young adults who had grown up outside of yellow fever ordengue zones. Thus, bursts of European immigration to the West Indiescould easily ignite epidemics.

Second, because of A. aegypti ecology yellow fever spared rural pop-ulations more than urban ones, spared those far from sugar zones moreoften than those on or around plantations, and spared those in (notthose from) cool and dry lands. At the same time, because of probable

Also on Colombia, see Pabon and Nicholls (2005). A general review of pos-sible linkages between climate and mosquito-borne disease is Sutherst (2004).Warmer temperatures during El Nino might have been more important in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries than today because overall temperatureswere lower, especially 1680–1720.

121 Diaz and McCabe (1999). Their work connects warmer temperatures and greaterrainfall (not drought) to greater vector abundance.

122 Chase and Knight (2003). This counterintuitive finding is based on both obser-vation and controlled experiments in North America.


childhood exposure, those living their whole lives in Caribbean cities oron Caribbean plantations were more likely to carry acquired immunityto yellow fever.

Third, as a result of climate change, growing European immigration,the spread of sugar cultivation, and of ship traffic it is likely that yellowfever risk escalated over time – other things being equal.

Fourth, malaria in general was more a rural disease than an urban one,more prevalent in deforested and cultivated landscapes, especially ricezones. It was harder on children than on adults. Many people of Westand Central African descent carried powerful genetic shields againstit. Other people acquired resistance, but not immunity, to malaria thehard way through bitter experience. As with yellow fever, surges ofimmigration from malaria-free lands invited epidemics.

The ecological changes wrought by the plantation economy in theGreater Caribbean after the mid-seventeenth century created creoleecologies that improved prospects for searing epidemics of both yellowfever and malaria, but especially yellow fever because of its links with thesugar economy. The sugar plantation economy had three main pillars:the slave trade as a source of labor, the plantation as a unit of production,the port city as the organizer of exports. All three combined to improveconditions for the vector of yellow fever.

For the virus, the new landscapes and demography were not quite ashelpful. Of course, the bodies of A. aegypti provided good habitat forthe virus, and the port cities improved the odds of getting around theregion. Monkey populations on some forested islands (and in mainlandforests) may have helped the virus get from mosquito to mosquito. Thegrowing human populations brought about by the sugar revolutionssuited the virus, but unhappily from its point of view too many ofthose people were immune and thus barriers to the virus’ reproductionand spread. It could survive for a while circulating among port citypopulations and briefly on plantations, but unless there were lots ofchildren (more likely to be nonimmunes), the virus would exhaust theavailable susceptible human bodies, leaving it nowhere – except perhapsto monkeys – to go. Environments with a large proportion of West andCentral African-born people (likeliest to be immunes) were especiallyhazardous to the virus. So for the virus, sugar revolutions were a mixedblessing.

All this left the virus in a highly unstable situation in which itssurvival in any given location in the Caribbean remained uncertain,given the perils posed by herd immunity. But its survival somewhere in

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the Caribbean was almost assured because A. aegypti guts and humanbloodstreams were so widespread. Its best chances lay in the biggestports, partly because they would have more small children but mainlybecause they welcomed the most newcomers from distant shores andhigh latitudes. When newcomers descended en masse, the virus had anexcellent chance of commandeering countless human cells for an orgy ofmass replication, and converting countless mosquitoes into virus-ladendarts – in other words, launching what humans regard as an epidemic.

Sugar’s demographic and ecological revolutions assisted in the estab-lishment of malaria as well, but here they were less crucial. Anophe-line mosquitoes already existed in the Caribbean before Columbus.The plasmodia probably arrived soon after 1492. Sugar’s changes ledto more deforestation, erosion, silting, and swamps, of some help inanopheline breeding. More important, sugar brought more people and,indirectly, more livestock, on which anophelines might feed. Rice cul-tivation proved much more supportive of anophelines, but outside ofSouth Carolina and Surinam its extent remained modest.

Malaria took a large toll as an endemic disease in the greaterCaribbean from the early sixteenth century. But as long as there werefew people, most parts of the region rarely hosted malaria. As more andmore people arrived, especially Africans carrying more and more plas-modia, malaria gradually colonized more and more of the region. Whereand when people congregated in the presence of anophelines, malariawas likely to break out unless the congregation included a strong pro-portion of highly resistant people to provide herd immunity. In this waymalaria, like yellow fever, helped make history by blunting efforts toconquer or colonize parts of the Caribbean.

Between the two diseases, yellow fever had the more dramatic effects.The most deadly form of malaria, falciparum, normally kills only about10 percent of those whom it attacks. Vivax malaria, a more widespreadstrain, usually kills only about 1 percent. Thus, malaria rarely if everswept away entire armies as yellow fever could. Unhappily for visitors tothe seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Caribbean, nothing preventedA. aegypti and anophelines from sharing the available supply of humanblood and infecting people with both yellow fever virus and malarialplasmodia. Many people probably had both diseases at once. Manyarmies hosted both simultaneously. Together, but with yellow fever inthe lead, they made life for nonimmune and nonresistant newcomersto the Caribbean perilous and, more often than not, nasty, brutish, andshort.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

Deadly Fevers, Deadly Doctors

This chapter is about the early history of yellow fever and malaria inthe Greater Caribbean and the mainly futile efforts to check or curethese fevers. After 1650, the Greater Caribbean hosted multiple medicaltraditions from Atlantic Europe, Atlantic Africa, and from indigenousAmerindian society. None of these could help anyone who had con-tracted yellow fever. One drug, quinine, in the form of powdered barkfrom the cinchona tree helped against malaria and won wide acceptance.Those most likely to suffer from yellow fever and malaria, newly arrivedEuropeans, were likely to get what medical attention they received fromEuropean doctors, usually to their misfortune. The least unfortunateamong fever victims avoided doctors altogether and found themselvesin the care of local women, often Afro-Caribbean women, who providedbasic nursing. The dismal record of medicine in the face of yellow fever,and to a lesser extent malaria, allowed these two infections to achievegeopolitical importance in the Greater Caribbean for 250 years.

Here I must freely admit that the discussion of medical ideas and prac-tices here is not up to the standards of the historical profession. I havesometimes succumbed to the temptation to reveal my amusement atseventeenth- and eighteenth-century medical writers and practitioners.Many historians, especially historians of medicine, will find this “ahis-torical.” They are correct to insist that medical knowledge is anchoredin its historical context, that its adherents deserve better than conde-scending smiles, and that some of the practices we now follow will in 200years seem laughable. I certainly hope that even sooner than that, peo-ple will be chuckling with ahistorical amusement at the ineffectivenessof early twenty-first century medicine.

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Early Yellow Fever Epidemicsand Their Victims

There was nothing amusing about yellow fever epidemics. Conceivably,yellow fever had made sporadic appearances in earlier centuries, butthe first general epidemic hit in 1647–1652.1 Twenty or thirty yearsof heightened immigration by nonimmunes, more slaving voyages fromWest Africa bringing more Aedes aegypti, and improved breeding andfeeding conditions for the vector set the stage. A strong El Nino in 1647may also have raised the odds.

The epidemic began in Barbados, then the leading sugar island, whereit killed some 6,000 people, perhaps one in seven on the island. RichardLigon, who arrived in the middle of the epidemic, wrote: “the livingcould hardly bury the dead.”2 It then visited Guadeloupe, St. Kitts,Cuba, Curacao, the Yucatan, Florida, and some ports along the coast ofCentral America. The spotty evidence suggests it killed some 20 to 50percent of local populations.3 But after this catastrophe, yellow feverseems to have disappeared for nearly forty years before returning witha vengeance in the 1690s. Presumably, it worked its way through thesusceptible hosts, killing some and immunizing the rest. That left behinda high proportion of immunes, narrowing the scope for the virus for yearsthereafter. Without a new influx of inexperienced bloodstreams, yellowfever could circulate only among small children, who often showed nosymptoms and quickly became virus-stopping immunes.

The fact that the virus confers strong immunity on survivors com-bined with the fragility of the transmission cycle gave yellow fever anirregular, episodic, and terrifying pattern in the Caribbean. When con-ditions were just right, it might sweep through the region, as in thelate 1640s. But then it might vanish for decades, perhaps lying low asa childhood (endemic) disease, perhaps absent entirely or confined to

1 Cordero del Campillo (2001) reviews the evidence for early yellow fever epi-demics. Bustamente (1958:35–64) and Guerra (1966; 1999), perhaps too confi-dently, find yellow fever outbreaks in the West Indies soon after Columbus. SeeCurtin (1993) for a general view.

2 Gragg (2003:166). Ligon (1657:25).3 In Havana, where the evidence is better, it killed about one third of the popu-

lation, says de la Fuente (1993:67); in the Yucatan, perhaps 50% (Patch 1996).Bustamente (1958:70) says yellow fever became endemic at Veracruz and Merida(Yucatan) from the 1640s. This is quite possible, even if there were no recordedoutbreaks until the 1690s due to a lack of susceptible adults.

DEADLY FEVERS, DEADLY DOCTORS 65

forest monkeys, until a large enough population of susceptibles grew up,either through natural increase in the absence of the disease or throughimmigration of nonimmunes. If enough nonimmunes arrived, enoughA. aegypti hatched, and the virus was either present or re-introducedby ship traffic, then another epidemic would almost surely result. Thenecessary circumstances for an outbreak are easy to understand in ret-rospect with today’s knowledge of yellow fever, but from the 1690s to1900 its apparent randomness and unpredictability, combined with highmortality, made yellow jack the Caribbean’s most feared disease.4

In two conspicuous respects, yellow fever attacks did not appearrandom. Yellow fever – and malaria, too – were diseases above all ofnewcomers from cool climates. From the 1730s if not before, this fact waswidely recognized. As early as 1708, a Brazilian medical text noted thata yellow fever epidemic there (1685–1692) affected newcomers moreoften than longtime residents.5 The Spanish naval officers Jorge Juanand Antonio de Ulloa, who visited Cartagena in 1735, noted how dan-gerous chapetonada was to newcomers, how it decimated ships’ crews butleft Creoles unharmed.6 A French doctor who lived in St. Dominguefrom 1732 to 1746 found that yellow fever “broke out constantly inthese towns upon the arrival of new-comers from France, and amongthese, only such as had not been formerly in that climate. . . . ”7 A Span-ish physician writing from Cartagena in 1753 noted that yellow fever“only attacked newly arrived Europeans, and not residents of the city.”8

4 Nowadays, epidemiologists have mathematical formulae involving a handful ofvariables to model the cycles of outbreak and quiescence of various diseases. SeeHay et al. (2000) for a review of such modeling in light of climate variability.

5 Dias Pimenta (1708), cited in Brazil. Ministerio da Saude (1971:76). If this wasthe first yellow fever epidemic in Brazil, as most authors agree, then it ought notto have discriminated against newcomers in its early months because all in Brazil(except those from yellow fever zones in Africa) would have been susceptible.But after a few months, survivors with immunity had better chances than thosenewly arrived.

6 Juan and Ulloa (1748, 1:59–61). “Chapetonada” (“newcomer’s disease”) was oneof the Spanish terms for yellow fever, used especially in what is now Colombiaand Venezuela.

7 Cited in Clark (1797:53–4). Clark gives the author as M. Disportes, presumablyPouppe-Desportes (1770). Pinckard (1806, 3:415–46) makes the point clearly.So did Alcedo (1786–1789) as quoted by Sanchez-Albornoz (1974:102), whowrote that yellow fever “regularly attacked newly arrived Europeans. . . . ”

8 Gastelbondo (1753:2): “solamente assalta a los Europeos recien venidos, y no a losPopulares de esta Ciudad.”

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Dr. Robert Jackson, who lived in Jamaica from 1774 to 1779, also con-nected it with residence in the tropics: “ . . . this disease seldom discoversitself among those people who have lived any length of time in a tropicalcountry.”9 In the Carolina coastlands, part of the Greater Caribbean,clergymen newly sent out to minister to the locals complained of thehorrific health risks they faced. Military personnel from Europe dreadedduty in the West Indies, and on occasion mutinied when informed ofCaribbean destinations.10 Two British sailors in 1755 opted for 1,000lashes rather than risk a West Indian cruise. Officers routinely refusedWest Indies duty.11 Everyone in the West Indies in the eighteenth cen-tury believed yellow fever conferred immunity on survivors or, to putit in their terms, in “seasoning” that allowed a body (if it survived) toadjust to the climate.

Doctors, sailors, and soldiers all recognized what black Jamaicansunderstood when they taunted white newcomers with the song:12

New-come buckra,He get sick,He tak fever,He be die,He be die.

This appreciation of the partiality of yellow fever for newcomers fromcooler lands probably developed gradually and grew firmer with time. Anappropriate fear of the region’s fevers discouraged countless immigrants

9 Jackson (1791:250). So did Moseley (1795:393). Rodrıguez Arguelles (1804:1)emphasized residence as key to resistance. In recounting a yellow fever outbreakon Dominica in 1793, Clark (1797:2–3) ignored race and emphasized seasoningamong both Europeans and Africans: “Few new-comers escaped an attack, andvery few of these recovered. It spared neither age nor sex among the Europeansand emigrants who arrived, and not only the people of colour from other islands,but the new negroes who had been lately imported from the coast of Africa, wereall attacked with it. . . . The negroes who had been long in the town, or on theisland, escaped.” This is the only view I have come across stating that freshlyarrived Africans were susceptible to yellow fever.

10 Houlding (1981:73).11 Brumwell (2002:155–6).12 Song quoted in Renny (1807:241), where it is credited to black women fruit-

sellers of Port Royal. “Buckra” in the British West Indies, among the Gullahspeakers of coastal Georgia and in parts of West Africa, means a white person,often used disparagingly. A French doctor on Guadeloupe noted that locals calledyellow fever “fievre Europeenne” because it attacked newcomers from Europeso preferentially. Wellcome Library, American MSS 113, ff. 33–4, Lorillard aChervin, 8 janvier 1818.


and visitors who had a choice in the matter (not slaves, sailors, andsoldiers) and thereby saved many lives. Fear of fevers also probablyfiltered out the cautious and the well-informed, making the volunteerimmigrant population younger, poorer, less literate, and more male thanit would otherwise have been.

The second respect in which yellow fever and malaria seemed predic-table was in their apparent animus against white people.13 Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century West Indians noticed the effects of differentialimmunity but understood it as a matter of the bodily constitutions ofdifferent races of humankind – not as a result of genetic selection onone’s ancestors or prior exposure among different populations. Mosteighteenth-century observers were convinced that yellow fever affecteddifferent people differently for reasons both of race and “seasoning.”Henry Warren of Barbados wondered in 1741: “How is it that thenegroes, whose Food is mostly rancid Fish or Flesh, nay often the Flesh ofDogs, Cats, Asses, Horses, Rats, &c., who mostly lead very intemperateLives, and who are always worse clad, and most exposed to Surfeits,Heats, Colds and all the Injuries of the Air, are so little subject to thisDanger?”14 Writing about a yellow fever outbreak in 1748 in Charleston,South Carolina, Dr. John Lining captured things succinctly:

The subjects which were susceptible to this fever, were both sexesof the white colour, especially strangers recently arrived from coldclimates, Indians, Mistees, Mulattoes of all ages, excepting youngchildren and of those only such as had formerly escaped the infec-tion. And indeed it is a great happiness that our constitutionsundergo such alterations in the small-pox, measles, and yellowfever, as for ever afterwards secure us from a second attack ofthose diseases. There is something very singular in the constitu-tion of the Negroes, which renders them not liable to this fever;for though many of these were as much exposed as the nurses tothe infection, yet I never knew one instance of this fever amongstthem. . . . 15

13 As early as the beginning of sixteenth century, when there was no yellow feveryet, the Spanish churchman Bartolome de las Casas wrote that Spaniards in theCaribbean believed the only way an African would die was if he were hanged, per-haps an indication of belief in African disease resistance (Honigsbaum 2001:41).

14 Warren (1741:13–14). Bertin (1778:7–8) also thought race was important, butexplained this in terms of different diets.

15 Lining (1799:7).

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A typical view was that of Dr. Jackson from Jamaica: “It has neverbeen observed that a negroe, immediately from the coast of Africa, hasbeen attacked with this disease.”16 Given the medical ideas of the age, inwhich a body’s “constitution” had much to do with its vulnerability, andthe social ideology of the Greater Caribbean, in which notions of racemattered in every sphere, the interpretation of differential immunity(and vulnerability) as characteristics of race was well-nigh universal.

A Virulent Strain of Medicine

In the Greater Caribbean, sick people usually got little in the wayof medical attention. If they sought it, they had two choices, broadlyspeaking: European medicine and Afro-Creole medicine.

The arrival of yellow fever to the Americas in the 1640s posed aprofessional and intellectual challenge to European doctors as well asa biological one to susceptibles. European medical thinkers emphasizedenvironmental explanations of health and disease – suitable environ-ments for particular bodies – and in the Greater Caribbean they met anunfamiliar and unstable environment. Their efforts to make sense of itbore scant fruit, especially in the matter of yellow fever. With malaria,a more familiar disease, their interpretations remained traditional buttheir practices proved slightly more helpful.

For 250 years, victims of yellow fever expected scant help from themedical profession. Indeed, many prudent sufferers from disease madea point of keeping their distance from doctors, especially military ones.At the end of the seventeenth century, the English army’s medicalchests contained remedies “of the most loathsome ingredients usuallycompounded from parts of different animals,” including “oil of vipers,and angle worms, beetles, earwigs and powdered mummy.”17 A centurylater, military medicine still inspired no trust. While serving as a medicalofficer with the British army in what is now Guyana in 1797, GeorgePinckard encountered a grenadier named Chapman, who he thoughtlooked feverishly ill. Pinckard recommended he go to the regimentalhospital. Chapman replied: “I am not ill: if you take me to the hospitalI shall catch the fever and die. . . . Indeed I am not bad, and if I was,

16 Jackson (1791:249–50); Hunter (1788:24–5) for a similar view. Pouppe-Desportes (1770, 1:192) notes the differential vulnerability of Europeans andCreoles in St. Domingue.

17 Cantlie (1974, 1:57).


I would rather stab myself at once, than go where so many are dyingevery day of yellow fever.” Chapman succeeded in avoiding the hospital,but even so was dead within hours.18 More fortunate was John Grantof the Black Watch, who fell ill with fever on Guadeloupe in 1759.He survived to write that the Royal Navy surgeons “bled us profusely[and] would have killed us but luckily their ships were order’d and wewere saved.”19 A planter, Edward Long, accused ill-trained doctors ofdepopulating Jamaica with their deadly cures.20 Soldiers and sailors andcivilians too – even kings – had every reason to keep their distance fromdoctors.

medical ideas

When confronted with yellow fever or malaria, European doctors gen-erally relied on medical traditions that extended back to Aristotle,Hippocrates, and, above all, Galen.21 These worthies had come up witha marvelously versatile scheme that could be adjusted to fit almostany observations. Health consisted of proper balance among the four“humors” (bodily fluids) and disease of humoral imbalance. Therefore,treatment consisted in restoring a suitable balance among phlegm, yel-low bile, black bile, and blood, which in happy cases could be achievedthrough a change of diet. In Protestant countries especially, a modestdose of Paracelsus – who believed in the efficacy of small amounts ofpoisons such as mercury – was added to the mix of ideas.

According to prevailing views, fevers generally resulted from anexcess of blood and thus were best treated by venesection – opening an

18 Pinckard (1806, 3:112–14). In the novel Roderick Random, published in 1748 andbased on the author’s experiences in the Cartagena campaign of 1741, TobiasSmollett suggests the lengths to which men would go to avoid ship’s doctorsand their medicines. Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random (Oxford:Blackwell, 1925), vol. I, pp. 266–8.

19 “Journal of Lieutenant John Grant” cited in Brumwell (2002:160). Duncan(1931:20) quotes an American doctor, James Tilton, who noted that in theContinental Army during the American Revolution surgeons died at higherrates than officers because serving continually in hospitals was more dangerousthan fighting the occasional battle.

20 Long (1778, 2:591).21 Riera (1981); Porter (1997); Foster (1987); Santos Filho (1977–1991); Sheridan

(1985); Porter (1997: chs, 9–10). Helpful reviews of British ideas about diseasesof hot climates are Kupperman (1984), Kiple and Ornelas (1996), and Harrison(1996).

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artery in the arm and “bleeding” the patient. One’s constitution mightbe weak in any number of ways, predisposing one to certain imbalances;one’s diet might affect one’s humoral balance in ways bad or good; somight unusual heat or cold, or rapid alteration between hot and cold.Excited passions could upset the balance, so several medical authoritiesurged that men refrain from an “excess of the pleasures of Venus.”22

And all these variables might interact in mysterious ways, allowing fora rich menu of diagnoses and explanations.23

These ideas and associated cures survived among medical expertsfor centuries. In Europe, humoral theory acquired renewed authorityin the sixteenth century with the worship of all things ancient andnew vernacular translations of the classical texts. In the seventeenthcentury, the emergence of a more experimental approach to sciencebrought many challenges to humoral theory. It seemed incompatiblewith William Harvey’s proof of the circulation of the blood (1628).Acquaintance with Asian medical traditions, mainly from India, raiseddoubts. Humoral theory and its followers were ridiculed by the play-wright Moliere, and no doubt by millions of less eloquent sufferingpatients.24 By 1750, few scientists still believed in it but plenty of doc-tors still behaved as if they did. And many patients expected to be bled orpurged, so doctors obliged, whether they believed in Galenic medicine ornot. In 1807, Thomas Jefferson expressed what many had long felt aboutthe reigning ideas when he wrote, “The patient, treated on the fashion-able theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.”25 However,puzzlement, disenchantment, and experimentation did not lead to fun-damental changes in belief or practice until a convincing alternativesynthesis emerged at the very end of the nineteenth century.26

22 Rodrıguez Arguelles (1804:8). Moreau de Jonnes (1817:5–7) listed “les plaisirsde l’amour” among the thirteen reasons fevers beset Europeans in the WestIndies (he included electrical charges in the atmosphere, too). The Frenchdoctor Antoine Poissonnier-Desperrieres (1763) recommended that one mustavoid “les commerces des femmes, surtout des negresses.” Cited in Eymeri (1992:234–5).

23 Kuriyama (1995) provides a useful discussion of the logic and endurance ofvenesection.

24 Moliere wrote three plays that mocked the cupidity and ineffectiveness of doc-tors. Brockliss and Jones (1997:336–44) analyze his views.

25 Quoted in Shryock (1960:73).26 Temkin (1973:134–92); Porter (1997:163–303); Urteaga (1997:11–21). Guerra

(1968) considers early yellow fever publications.


In the West Indies, some medical professionals with long experiencewondered whether Caribbean diseases were indeed the same as thosefamiliar in Europe and discussed in hallowed texts. The glaring ineffec-tiveness of their remedies in the face of yellow fever inspired occasionalself-doubt. But the majority of European doctors held tightly to theireducations, their traditions, and their cures. Their conventional wisdomheld that tropical fevers resulted from the effects of heat and strong sun,combined with inherently unhealthy landscapes and their exhalations.Anyone whose constitution was unsuited for such rigors would likelysuffer humoral imbalances in these conditions.

Unconventional wisdom was no further from the truth, and some-times closer. The great scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who obser-ved yellow fever outbreaks in lowland Mexico, thought that the rigorsof traveling on Mexico’s awful roads also made a body more vulnerableto yellow fever. Ordinary Mexicans believed foreigners fell ill by eatingbananas together with rum.27 One Mexican medical author, Diego Por-cell, writing in the 1760s suggested yellow fever might be connected tothe “seed of invisible insects,” whereas a contemporary, Jose de Patriciode los Rıos, thought it originated in tiny insects coming from lagoons.Connecting yellow fever with insects was a maverick idea, proved cor-rect only some 140 years later.28

In summary, to Europeans it seemed vulnerability and resistance toyellow fever and malaria were related to a person’s constitution, behav-ior, and environment. Some people naturally had their humors poorlybalanced, making them vulnerable. By their nature (or by intemper-ance), men seemed more vulnerable than women. By their constitutions,whites seemed more vulnerable than blacks (although long residence inthe West Indies could shield even whites). Those in the prime of lifeseemed more vulnerable to yellow fever than the very young, whereas

27 Archer (1987:51, 77).28 Porcell and de los Rıos manuscripts in AGI, Audiencia de Mexico, leg. 1681,

quoted in Guijarro Olivares (1948:370, 375). Pinckard (1804, 3:454) also con-nected mosquitoes and health: “with respect to the bites of musquitoes andother insects, the difference of effect upon the Europeans, and the people ofthe climate, is peculiarly marked, as it is with respect to yellow fever. The smallpuncture made in the skin of a robust European by a musquito, or a sand fly, fre-quently becomes inflamed, tumefies, breaks into a sore, spreads into a malignantulcer, and, ultimately, robs the hardy son of the North of his life – while thelanguid creole, or the negro, quietly lets the insect bite, without apprehendingany of this sad train of consequences.”

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the reverse held true for malaria. All these were matters of an individual’sor a group’s nature or constitution. Beyond one’s constitution, behaviormattered, also. Those too active put themselves at risk, whereas thosemore sedentary did not.29 The wrong diet, dress, or drink and exces-sive devotion to the “pleasures of Venus” raised one’s risk. Lastly, one’sphysical environment influenced risk as well. Filth, decaying vegeta-tion, swamps, humidity, heat, and low elevation30 seemed connected toyellow fever and malaria, whereas cleanliness, cool temperatures, andaltitude seemed to provide protection. These last observations aboutenvironment were on the right track, but they did not suffice to shieldsufferers from doctors.

medical practices: venesection and the bark

When confronted with yellow fever or malaria, believers in humoraltheory adhered to a set of medical practices that followed more orless logically from their mostly erroneous premises. A fine and famousexample of medical wisdom in action against malaria was the case ofKing Charles II of England, age 54. He awoke one morning in 1685feeling poorly. When the first of his several physicians arrived, he fellinto convulsions, whereupon a doctor drained sixteen ounces of bloodfrom the royal arm. Further doctors joined in the treatment, and decidedon scarification – cuts on his shoulders through which another eightounces of blood were drawn. The king had now sacrificed about 15percent of his blood supply. Cupping, a harmless practice in whichcups filled with heated air were applied to the skin, followed next. Thedoctors then gave the King an emetic derived from antimony to makehim vomit, another of zinc sulphate, and a series of enemas to purgehis bowels. Next, they shaved the King’s head to prepare his scalp forblistering, achieved by pressing a hot cautering iron to his skin. By thispoint, Charles II was in helpless convulsions. To draw humors from hishead, his doctors applied plasters to his feet. They then administered asneezing powder and a laxative and left him for the night.

The King rallied the next day and enjoyed black cherry syrup. Buton the third day of his illness he relapsed, and his doctors elected to

29 Emphasized by Bertin (1778) and Sanchez Rubio (1814).30 Clark (1797:59–60) found little yellow fever above 1,400 feet (which he

attributed to the lack of thunderstorms); Leblond (1805) emphasized elevationin his discussions of vulnerability to yellow fever.


feed him a powder made from the skull of a man who had never beenburied. This nourishment seemed to bolster the kingly condition but onthe fourth day another relapse occurred, which led the attending physi-cians to a diagnosis of ague (malaria). They quickly turned to cinchonabark, which contains alkaloids that alleviate malaria’s symptoms. Thisthe King resisted with what strength he had left. The bark was newlyintroduced into England’s medicine chest and was controversial. LikeOliver Cromwell in his day, some fervent Protestants refused it becausethey thought it papist – Jesuits had first introduced it to Europe. KingCharles II’s religious convictions apparently were in flux in his momentof crisis. A lifelong Protestant, if a rather relaxed one, he seemed toembrace Catholicism in his delirium but still resisted the bark. Perhapshe was merely developing skepticism about his doctors’ skills. But thedoctors prevailed and the King took the bark. Sadly it did not help, andthe King faded. As a final measure, the heirs of Hippocrates adminis-tered bezoars, crushed stones from the intestines of a Persian goat. TheKing – prudently, one is tempted to add – died. His treatment had beenorthodox, following the best practices of the day.31

A luckier patient was the Marquis de Montebelo, newly arrived gov-ernor in Recife in 1690 amid a yellow fever epidemic. He fell ill in hissecond week in Brazil. A Portuguese doctor who had accompanied himfrom Lisbon tried bloodletting, purges, enemas, and potions. The Gov-ernor grew worse and vomited up black blood (“rust” as the Brazilianscalled it). The attending physician willingly turned his patient over toa more experienced Brazilian colleague, who had been treating yellowfever victims for three years. The Governor’s stomach humors were (itseemed) too cold, so he was instructed to swallow the juice of a yellowflower (“escorcioneira”) with kermes oak seeds in it, as hot as he couldstand it. Despite crying out for Portuguese wine, he finally drank thepotion. The Governor survived.32

In the West Indies, European doctors followed similar practices whenthey could. Bezoars were no doubt scarce. They typically prescribedbleeding as the best remedy for fevers of all sorts. They generally tookabout 20 ounces at the onset of a fever, more than 10 percent of an adult’s

31 Woolley (2005:345–6) and Porter (1997:234), both of whom rely on Crawfurd(1909). Malaria also afflicted Louis XIV from 1686 onward, but he survivedfollowing doctors’ instructions to consume quinine regularly (Brockliss and Jones1997:312–13).

32 Brazil. Ministerio da Saude (1971:91).

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total. If fever persisted, they might do this several times on successivedays, depriving fever victims of as much as half of their blood. HansSloane, a plantation doctor in Jamaica at the end of the seventeenthcentury, bled and purged almost all his fever patients, but in somecases administered the bark and various drugs and potions as well.33

As late as 1843, one British doctor wrote: “In Europeans, particularlySoldiers, a timely and free use of the Lancet is the anchor of hope.”34 Forpeople suffering from dehydration or anemia, this cure could easily killthem.

If they had it, doctors often administered “Jesuit bark.” Powderderived from the bark of some species of the cinchona tree, native tothe eastern slopes of the northern Andes, offered some real protectionagainst malaria. Its alkaloids – commonly called quinine – could kill fal-ciparum and vivax malarial plasmodia in human red blood cells (but notin human livers), and therefore worked as a prophylactic and sometimesas a cure. Andean healers had used the bark for some unknown lengthof time before Jesuits brought it to Europe by the middle of the seven-teenth century. It was part of common doctors’ knowledge by the 1680s.The indefatigable sexagenarian Swiss Col. Louis Henry Fourgeoud, whocampaigned in the Surinam bush for several years in the 1770s chasingmaroons on behalf of Dutch planters, drank a potion each morning of“jesuit’s bark, cream of tartar and stick-licorice, boiled together.” Therepulsive taste prevented his men from imitating him, but he survivedwhile more than 90 percent of them died from diseases, probably malariaabove all others.35 The bark tasted bitter and made people nauseous,but if they could keep it down it could cure them. It was the only helpfulthing doctors did by way of treatment for fevers in the West Indies. Itseemed little short of a miracle.

But the bark was expensive. The cinchona tree grew naturally onlyin remote parts of the Andes, at elevations above 1,500 meters. Tropi-cal forests feature great varieties of tree species but few representativesof any single species, and so the cinchona tree proved difficult to find

33 Sloane (1707–1725, 1:xci–cli). Sloane summarized his preferred cures onpp. cxxxiv–cxxxvi. Du Tertre (1973, 2:447–52) explains cures preferred in theFrench West Indies as of 1670.

34 S. Gordon Warner, “The Fever Prevailing in the Bermudas during the summerof 1843.” This pamphlet is in PRO/CO/37/164, at folio 262.

35 Collis (1965:180). Cream of tartar is an acidic salt used in cooking and cleaning.


even in the right places. Anyhow, some cinchona trees lacked theright alkaloids. But a strong market for the bark developed once itsefficacy had been shown. Some Spanish naturalists in the eighteenthcentury thought the cinchona would soon disappear through over-harvesting.36

Precious though it was, doctors often wasted the bark. They pre-scribed it liberally, for malaria and for a raft of other diseases againstwhich it had no effect. Pinckard noted with respect to yellow fever: “Ifind that here, as at Berbische [Berbice in today’s British Guyana], thedisease is treated in the same manner as the common remittent feverof the country [malaria], and nearly the whole reliance confided to thebark – that great sheet anchor of West India practice. This was pre-scribed in ample quantity, and in various forms, but it wholly failedof success.”37 In the 1780s, another British military doctor in the WestIndies, Thomas Dancer, advised sprinkling the bark over feverish bodies,a waste of an expensive medicine.38

Others agreed that the bark and bleeding worked best together withother remedies against fevers. Joao Ferreira da Rosa, a Brazilian doc-tor of the 1690s, recommended above all else drinking water in whichred-hot gold had been plunged. He also advised applying freshly killedpigeons to the soles of the feet, so as to absorb their warmth.39 Accom-panying a British expedition in what is now Nicaragua in 1781, Dancerrecommended opium against “intermittent fever” (malaria) and maltliquor or wine in any case: claret in mild cases of fever and Madeira forsevere ones.40 Treating himself for yellow fever in Guyana, Pinckardasked a comrade to draw “twelve or fourteen ounces of blood” from hisarm and administer calomel as an “evacuant,” together with the bark,

36 Cinchona history from Stuart (2004:28–32), Sumner (2000:64, 202), Webb(2008:94–5), Rocco (2003), and Honigsbaum (2001).

37 Pinckard (1806:3, 79).38 Dancer (1781:49–53).39 Brazil. Ministerio da Saude (1971:98). In some cases, copal oil applied to the

patient’s anus or plasters of pigeon dung on the feet were deemed advisable.40 Dancer (1781:48, 57). Interestingly, some Chinese doctors recommended opium-

smoking as a cure for malaria (Bello 2005:299). In his novel, The Commodore,Patrick O’Brian has one of his central characters, the learned Stephen Maturin,treat his own case of yellow fever with coca leaves. I have not encountered thisinnovative cure elsewhere. This reference I owe to Prof. Brent Haddad of theUniversity of California at Santa Cruz.

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opium, wine, and a cold bath. Pinckard found the wine “heavenly.”41

(A Spanish doctor, Anacleto Rodrıguez Arguelles, recommended strictteetotaling.42) The British army surgeon Robert Jackson favored opiates,bleeding the patient, shaving his head, and wrapping him in a blanketsoaked in seawater or brandy.43 James Lind, the renowned naval doctor,recommended cinchona bark, bleeding, opiates, purging, and antimonyfor fevers in the West Indies, with blistering of the patient’s back incases of delirium and occasionally doses of snake-root. Moreover, Lindbelieved, “leeches applied to the temples, and cupping-glasses to thenape of the neck, have also proved serviceable.”44 Lesser doctors pre-scribed cream of tartar to go with the orthodox measures.45

For a few decades, roughly 1790 to 1830, British army doctors inthe West Indies often prescribed mercury for yellow fever and malaria

41 Pinckard (1803, 3:139–43). Pinckard was unusual in admitting how uselesshis efforts against yellow fever were: “bark, mercury, bleeding, bathing and avariety of other remedies have been amply tried – but tried in vain, for all haveproved equally ineffectual” (3:83); and “my utmost powers can offer only a feebleresistance to the yellow-visaged destroyer, who now wields his autumn scytheamongst us” (3:85).

42 Rodrıguez Arguelles (1804:3–4, 8, 20). John Bell (1791:122–3) agreed thatalcohol made yellow fever fatal. William Hillary (1766:146) thought it attacked“those who use vinous or spirituous liquors too freely.” Sloane (1707–1725,1:cxliv) seemed to agree: “John Parker, about thirty-five years of age, a lusty full-blooded Fellow, was much given to drink. He had been taken ill of the Epidemiccontinual Fever, reigning at first when I came to [ Jamaica], and recovered, asothers out of it, of which before. Soon after he committed a great debauch ofRum Punch, after it lying on a cold Marble Floor. He fell from these causes intoa Mania, so that he was observ’d to speak and act very incoherently, and to getup in the night, etc. His rage increas’d to a very high degree and he died in avery few days, notwithstanding all the methods usually followed in these cases.”John Thurston, a doctor on St. Kitts, thought intemperance could even makeotherwise invulnerable Creoles susceptible to yellow fever. Wellcome Library,American MSS 113, ff. 60–2, Thurston to Chervin, 20 March 1818.

43 Jackson (1791:268–72). Jackson must have grown unpopular with healthy sol-diers who imagined more conventional uses for brandy.

44 Lind (1788:240–2, 260). Ferreira da Rosa in the 1690s also recommended cup-ping and leeches (imported preferably from Portugal and covered over withspider’s webs). Brazil. Ministerio da Saude (1971:98).

45 For example, Mackrill (1796:26). He was a British military doctor in Trinidad inthe 1790s. Bertin (1778); Cordoba (1790); Oyarvide y Samartın (1801); SanchezRubio (1814) also subscribed to similar views.


patients before concluding that bleeding alone yielded better results.46

James Clark, a doctor on Dominica, recommended as yellow fever curespurgatives, blistering of the skull and abdomen, opiates (sometimes withMadeira wine), and occasionally sprinkling the sick with vinegar. Hewas against bleeding but relied on “[o]ur greatest dependence, or, in thenautical style, our sheet-anchor, [which] was mercury.”47 Although thebark if properly administered helped against malaria, nothing doctorsrecommended helped anyone with yellow fever. And most of theirremedies, especially venesection and mercury, sapped the resistance oftheir patients.48

In addition to the cures of medical science, soldiers and sailors end-ured folk remedies. None existed in Europe against yellow fever, but formalaria, or “ague” in the English vernacular, there were several becausethe disease was a common one in warm months in much of Europe.These remedies included, for example, consuming spiders and cobwebs,drinking one’s own urine, and tying one’s hair to a tree and yanking itout, theoretically leaving both hair and ague on the tree. More commonbut no more helpful except as pain relievers were alcohol, opium, andcannabis. Unhelpful as these measures were, they probably did less harmthan those preferred by doctors.49

Fortunately for the sick, doctors were almost as scarce as bezoars. InJamaica in 1750, two doctors with incompatible views about yellow fevergot into a pamphlet war that escalated into a double murder, probablybringing a net improvement to public health on the island.50 In 1780,Jamaica had about 75 doctors, of whom 10 had M.D. degrees. Cubain the 1790s had about 100 doctors. The entire British West Indies in1834 had a little more than 400. Given the distances and difficulties of

46 Harrison (2007); Alsop (2007:31–2). The use of mercury, which emerged inIndia, did not become popular in the Royal Navy according to Harrison; Alsopdisagrees. Mercury was routinely prescribed for smallpox according to Hamilton(2005:119).

47 Clark (1797:27–37). Quotation from p. 37.48 Sheridan (1985:19–41) summarizes the views of prominent doctors in the British

West Indies; Alsop (2007) reviews major British military medical texts. MartınezCerro (2001) gives an idea of medical practice in the Spanish navy in the earlyeighteenth century.

49 Dobson (1997:303–5, 318–19).50 Ashcroft (1979).

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transport, few patients would have been exposed to the risks posed byphysicians.51

Military men by the eighteenth century stood a greater risk of encoun-tering doctors than did the general public. By the 1750s, British regi-ments often had their own surgeon and surgeon’s mates. Large expedi-tions came fitted out with a field hospital and physicians, some of whomwere educated at the finest medical schools such as the University ofEdinburgh. Others finagled their way into appointments via connec-tions or money. The examination board was notoriously lax, prone toan eighteenth-century version of grade inflation: “Often I have heardthe president of a board of examiners address a young man in the fol-lowing terms: ‘You seem, Sir, to be exceedingly ignorant in many veryimportant matters, but you are young and may improve, we have grantedyou a diploma with this expectation. . . . ”52 As a rule, military medicinewas “the lowest step of professional drudgery and degradation.”53

Hospitals too were rare, even in navies, which suffered severely fromyellow fever and malaria. The French built the first hospitals in theWest Indies in St. Domingue in 1698 and Martinique in 1702. TheBritish Royal Navy had none in Jamaica until 1729, and that was asmall one built near marshy ground, which at least one admiral thoughtwas so dangerous to his sickly sailors that he preferred to rent housesfor them. A larger hospital in Jamaica was built during the Seven Years’War. One reason hospitals remained rare is that no one entered onewillingly. Their justified reputation as antechambers to the cemeterystifled demand for their services.54

preventive medicine

Although doctors misunderstood the nature of yellow fever and malaria,and usually harmed the sick more than helped them, they were not

51 Numbers from Sheridan (1985:46, 53). De Barros (2004:29) has figures showingthat in the early nineteenth-century British Caribbean, the ratio of populationto doctors varied between 700:1 and 1,800:1.

52 Kopperman (2007:58).53 Hennen (1829:2), cited in Alsop (2007:33); Harrison (2004:64–8) reviews mil-

itary medical institutions. For French military medicine, see Comite d’Histoiredu Service de Sante 1982, vols. 1–2; for Spanish, Massons (1994, vols 1–2).

54 Buchet (1997b:179–80). French and British fleets operating in the Caribbeantypically lost 10% of their crews to disease in the first year of a cruise, and 5% inthe second. Ibid, p. 185.


always detrimental. As noted, cinchona bark if deployed properly washelpful against malaria symptoms. Beyond that, by the eighteenth cen-tury doctors knew, as did everyone else, what the healthy and unhealthyseasons were. They knew that newcomers to the West Indies stoodgreater risks, and that large contingents of newcomers invited havoc.55

They knew that lowlands were more dangerous than highlands,56 andbeginning in 1840 the British Army began to put some of its Jamaicagarrison at altitude specifically for health reasons.57 Doctors knewthat swamps brought poor health. Naval doctors knew that sendingmen ashore was risky.58 They knew that stiff sea breezes (which keptmosquitoes from flying) portended better health.59

When it came to diseases other than yellow fever and malaria, by theend of the eighteenth century at least, doctors did have some useful pre-ventive measures and cures. Rigorous hygiene could check dysentery andtyphus, inoculation usually worked against smallpox, and citrus provedhighly effective against scurvy, for example. Doctors and officials oftenfavored quarantines, which although they could not stop mosquitoessometimes surely kept local mosquitoes from acquiring a deadly loadof virus or plasmodium by keeping shiploads of infective humans at adistance.60

55 Lind, the most widely read of medical writers on tropical climes, noted: “There isa large field for medical observations during a very sickly season the West Indies,when thousands of Europeans are sent thither at once, in case of a war in thatpart of the world.” This quotation appears in the 1768 edition of Lind’s book (p.121), but not in the 1788 edition. I encountered it first in Alsop (2007:31).

56 Jackson (1798:96–7); Gilbert (1803:80); and Moreau de Jonnes (1817:41, 44)were among the first to point this out in print.

57 Buckley (1998:19). The salubrity of highlands was known to a relative newcomerto Jamaica, Lady Mary Nugent, in 1805 (Nugent 2002:230).

58 For example, Sir Gilbert Blane, who thought only “hired negroes” should goashore (Lloyd 1965:193–4).

59 For example, Lind (1788:113–31, 206–16). According to Crewe (1993:38),Admiral Vernon said sailors referred to sea breezes as “the doctor.” Pinckard(1806:3:81) noted that when the trade wind picked up at the end of thewet season, longtime residents of British Guyana would say, “here comes thedoctor.”

60 Quarantine measures are mentioned in the Old Testament and became rou-tine in Europe during the fourteenth-century plague epidemics. Some portsemployed them in the 1640s yellow fever epidemics. Sehdev (2002); Moreaude St. Mery (1797–1798, 1:701–2) mentions quarantine against yellow fever onSt. Domingue in the 1690s. Grmek (1997) on quarantine history.

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Preventive measures extended to prescribing ecological changes.Europeans normally thought that thorough deforestation would makea landscape healthier, opening it to the wind. “The healthy air of Bar-badoes is owing to that island’s being entirely cleared of wood,” wrotethe Jamaican planter Edward Long. In the 1760s, Diego Porcell, theMexican medical writer, recommended both deforestation and swampdrainage as a means to make landscapes healthier. Some Spanish medi-cal opinion concluded the opposite: that forests were healthy and forestsoils unlikely to emit noxious miasmatic vapors. But this view remained aminority one.61 The environmental engineering endorsed by these med-ical men rarely took place because of the labor and expense involved.But doctors could urge commanders to seek out treeless landscapes asquarters for their troops.

Governors and generals outranked doctors, however, and often pre-ferred their own wisdom about preventive measures. For example, inBrazil in the early 1690s the Governor of Pernambuco, the Marquisde Montebelo, who had miraculously survived his doctors’ yellow fevertreatments, ordered that Recife should be purified by thirty days of firein the streets, artillery discharges at dusk, compulsory street cleaning,and the expulsion of prostitutes from the city (lest their presence angerGod), among other measures. The epidemic continued, although firesin the street might have discouraged mosquitoes somewhat.62 Amida yellow fever epidemic among his regiments on St. Lucia in 1795,Sir John Moore insisted that his troops would be healthy if they atemore, drank and bathed less, and took “Roman, instead of a modernexercise.”63 Moore’s law did not help: He himself fell ill, and one ofhis regiments lost 841 of its 915 men in its first twelve months on theisland.64

61 Long (1774, 2:508) and Pinckard (1804, 2:79–80) on Barbados; Porcell’s original:“Se deve tambien obligar a los Pueblos de la Yndias a tener limpieza en sus Casas yCalles, dar curso a las aguas secar los pantanos, desmontar los Montes a una legua dedistancia de las poblaciones para dar curso a los Ayres, cultivar estas tierras: Este seriael modo de vicar sanos.” This is from a manuscript in AGI, Audiencia de Mexico,leg. 1681, quoted in Guijarro Olivares (1948:371). Urteaga (1987:168–73) forminority views.

62 Brazil. Ministerio da Saude (1971:91–3).63 Oman (1953:157); at least one British army doctor also subscribed to the Roman

exercise theory: Jackson (1798:360–3). Roman military exercises, as describedby the authors Vegetius and Josephus, emphasized running, leaping, swimming,lifting heavy objects, and throwing and handling various weapons.

64 Breen (1844:103).


By far, the most cost-effective preventive measure available was tokeep the troops at mosquito-free altitudes. Doing so was normally bothpointless on campaign because nothing of strategic value lay at such ele-vations, and politically impossible for peacetime garrisons whose dutiesincluded deterring slave insurrection on lowland plantations. But theSpanish army in Mexico from the 1780s relocated sickly troops from thetierra caliente around Veracruz to higher elevations.65 In an interestingtwist, the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies improved thehealth of the British Army. Prior to abolition in 1833, British garrisonslived in the lowlands, close to the plantations they were there to protect.On Jamaica in the early nineteenth century, about one in seven in thegarrison died each year; other British Caribbean islands were slightlyless lethal.66 Although everyone knew highlands were healthier, indeedthat above 2,500 feet (800 meters) there was no yellow fever, Jamaicanplanters successfully foiled every effort to move garrisons away fromplantations. Dr. Jackson in 1798 recommended a policy for the defenseof the British West Indies whereby British garrisons would abandon thelow coastlands and inhabit only the fever-free mountainous interiors.By stationing troops in the lowlands, British policy “lavishly sacrificed”human life, as Jackson put it. His plea fell on deaf ears until abolitionmoderated the planters’ anxieties about slave revolts and recruitmentof blacks into the British army raised their anxieties about having reg-iments close by. In 1838, a detailed report by statistically astute armyofficers confirmed Dr. Jackson’s claims. In the meantime, abolition andthe erosion of planter power in British politics made a new policy feasi-ble. In 1840, the first companies of redcoats climbed up into Jamaica’sBlue Mountains, and their annual mortality plummeted.67

afro-caribbean medicine

The European and Galenic approach to health and medicine was notthe only one current in the Greater Caribbean. Indeed, as the region’s

65 Massons (1994, 1:473).66 British Guyana was the most dangerous post. Pinckard’s regiment lost a quarter

of its strength to fevers in one year. Pinckard (1804, 3:452).67 Jackson (1798:96–7, 101); Buckley (1998:17–19, 23, 299), citing Marshall and

Tulloch (1838). PRO PC 1/4565, Staff Surgeon’s Report on Yellow Fever,29 May 1850, has detailed accounts of the fate of regiments newly postedto Jamaica, 1816–1848, showing the decisive importance of elevation. Clyde(1980:21) says on Dominica, regimental doctors by the 1780s urged moving thegarrison to high ground and draining swamps.

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population became increasingly African in descent and Afro-Caribbeanin culture, most treatments for most ailments more closely followedWest African traditions than Galenic ones. African healers used herbsand medicinal plants, often improvising in the Caribbean because thefamiliar favored West African plants could not be found.68 On WestAfrican coasts, the preferred treatment for fevers involved bathing suf-ferers and applying wet cloths to their foreheads, sometimes togetherwith lime bush leaves. Slaves used the same methods in eighteenth-century St. Domingue.69 Afro-Caribbean healers also routinely usedspells and incantations, and probably learned some cures from the dwin-dling Amerindian populations.70 Many of them achieved good resultswhen treating wounds and sores, more likely with herbs than with spells.Although none of this helped against yellow fever, it surely did less harmthan bleeding patients or administering mercury.71

Afro-Caribbean medicine attracted some interest from whites. IfAfricans suffered less from deadly fevers, then (to some observers) itseemed logical to credit their medicines and healers. Poor whites some-times went to Africans for affordable health care. A few Europeandoctors tried to acquire African expertise. One, Nicolas Bourgeois, aphysician in St. Domingue in the 1760s, wrote, “The slaves are moreingenious than we in the art of maintaining and obtaining health. . . . ”72

In Surinam in the 1770s an elderly African, Graman Quacy, main-tained a lively business selling roots thought to be effective against

68 Using local plants for cures against local diseases may have seemed logical toAfrican healers, as it did to the French military doctor N. P. Gilbert (1803:33–9)in St. Domingue.

69 On West African fever treatment, see Winterbottom (1803, 2:17–18). I owethis reference to John Rankin. Weaver (2006:72–3) on St. Domingue.

70 Pinckard (1804, 3:377–8). One of Pinckard’s friends recommended that he use“Indian” cures against yellow fever in Guyana, consisting of alternating hot andcold baths.

71 Eymeri (1992:61–83, 267–70) has general remarks on Afro-Creole medicine;on slave women healers in the French West Indies generally, Moitt (2001:62–8). On parallel matters in the nineteenth-century U.S. South, see Fett (2002:60–83, 111–41); on British Guiana, De Barros (2004; 2007).

72 Bourgeois (1788), quoted in Weaver (2002:429). Another example was theyoung French doctor Jean-Baptiste Patris, active in Guyana in the 1760s and1770s, who showed interest in slave medicine (Touchet 2004:72). AnotherFrench doctor in Guyana, Bertrand Bajon, did as well (Bajon 1777–1778). Thedisaster at Kourou (see Chapter 4) may have been so severe as to open the mindsof doctors to unfamiliar ideas about health and disease.


fevers.73 George Pinckard, the British military doctor in Guyana in the1790s, endorsed the (inaccurate) views of “Doctor Bob, the residentnegro physician at the black hospital,” that fevers ebbed and flowedwith the tides.74 Edward Long, a planter who normally held Africansin disdain, thought some slave herbal remedies “wonderfully powerful”against local diseases “which have foiled the art of European surgeons.”75

Some planters in South Carolina also admired the medical skills ofslaves.76

But for the most part, European planters like Father Labat77 heldslave and African medicine in contempt, regarding it as superstitionand its practitioners as charlatans. Doctors generally agreed, an outlookbolstered by their own financial self-interest. In St. Domingue, thecolonial legislature legally forbade slaves and people of African descentfrom practicing medicine. In any case, although African medicine had itssuccesses with various conditions – Guinea worm, sores, and wounds, forexample – yellow fever remained beyond anyone’s ability to cure, as didmalaria until the discovery of the ameliorative properties of cinchonabark. Moreover, soldiers and sailors on expeditions, if less fortunatethan John Grant of the Black Watch, normally found themselves inthe clutches of military medical corps, a guild that, while often open toexperimentation, was probably little inclined to learn from Africans.78

Disdain and prejudice notwithstanding, soldiers in garrisons (at leastofficers) sometimes did benefit from the nursing skills of women ofAfrican descent. The half-Scottish, half-Dutch soldier-of-fortune JohnStedman fell ill frequently while in Surinam in the 1770s, but recoveredeach time with the help of Joanna, a half-African, half-Dutch teenagerwhom Stedman eventually “married.”79 In Jamaica in 1780, a black

73 Collis (1965:207).74 Pinckard (1806, 3:82).75 Long (1774, 2:381).76 Morgan (1998:624–9).77 Labat (1722, 1:449–51). Labat, a man of science as well as religion, found slave

remedies “bizarre.”78 Handler (2000); Weaver (2002); Bougerol (1985); Sheridan (1985:77–97). See

also Pluchon (1987); Pluchon (1985). De Barros (2007) is instructive on frictionsamong medical practitioners in nineteenth-century British Guiana.

79 Collis (1965) features their relationship. Stedman (1988:47–8) describes “Suri-nam marriage,” a custom whereby European men paid for African or more oftenCreole young women to serve as their “wives” while they remained in Surinam.Stedman presents his own relationship with Joanna in a more romantic light.

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woman named Cuba Cornwallis nursed the future Lord Nelson, aged22, back to tolerable health after a fever bout.80 Suffering from feverduring the occupation of St. Domingue in 1797, Lt. Thomas PhippsHoward felt no better for the attentions of the distinguished army doctorRobert Jackson, and credited his survival to his “black Girl, VictoireDieudonne, who had never quitted [his] bed side from the moment[he] was taken ill.”81 Officers often justified taking local mistresses onthe (fully plausible) grounds that these women would see them throughfevers more skillfully than would military physicians. Serving in Guyanaearly in the nineteenth century, Lt. Thomas Staunton St. Clair testifiedto the importance of keeping a nurse/mistress, even if it was expensive:82

Two of our officers were living in barracks with two of thesegirls; one in Demerara, Lieutenant Myers, had a beautiful youngmulatto, and Lieutenant Clark, in Berbice, had with him a finehandsome black woman. Though I disapproved of this system,which, on first arrival, appeared to me an outrage on commondecency and propriety, it being necessary to set a good example tothe soldiers – for how was Hannibal’s army ruined but by womenand luxury? – yet I was at last obliged to alter my opinion, as Isaw both the above-mentioned officers saved from certain deathby the uncommon care and attention which these two girls paidto them during a violent attack of fever.

Rank and file could not afford these tender attentions, and probably diedat slightly higher rates than officers as a result; mere provision of waterand food to a fever-stricken soldier would have done much more goodthan bleeding and mercury. Soldiers on expedition did not normallyhave time to recruit or money to buy women euphemistically called“housekeepers” in the British West India regiments.83

80 Keevil, Lloyd and Coulter (1957–1963, 3:141).81 Howard (1985:116). Jacques Norvins recalled that he survived yellow fever

during the Haitian Revolution thanks to the devotions of a “mulatresse, ZaboLariviere.” Norvins (1896), cited in Roussier (1937:13). In the same campaigns,Polish officers fighting for France maintained that black women’s herbs andpoultices worked better against yellow fever than the efforts of French doctors(Pachonski and Wilson 1986:55).

82 St. Clair (1947:15–16), cited in Buckley (1998:165).83 Buckley (1998:164–5, 343–4). Captain C. Brown, campaigning in Venezuela in

1818, recovered from fever thanks to “an old negro-woman” (Brown 1819:152).Women followed every regiment in the British Army in the eighteenth century,


Although not intended to keep yellow fever or malaria in check, onepractice of West Indian slaves could have helped everyone: lightingsmoky fires in the evenings to keep mosquitoes at bay. Long noted thispractice among Jamaican slaves, and even linked it to human health:

The custom of the Negroes in this respect, perhaps, may conduceas much as any thing to their enjoying health in such marshy soils,when white persons are affected by the malignant effluvia, andcontract sickness; few of their huts have any other floor than thebare earth, which might possibly transmit noxious exhalations inthe night, if they did not keep up a constant fire in their principalroom or hall; the smoak of which, though intended to dispersemuskeetos, has another good effect, the correcting of the night air,and disarming of its damp and chill, which might be prejudicial totheir healths.84

The llaneros of Venezuela, people of slave ancestry (of whom morein Chapter 7), purposely used green wood to make their fires smokierwith the intent of deterring mosquitoes.85 Some Europeans too reliedon smoke as mosquito repellent. A 1687 visitor to Jamaica noted thatsome planters “shut up their windows and make a smoak in all theirlodging romes to drive and keep [mosquitoes] hence.” Ship captainssometimes used smoke to improve the air below decks.86 Perhaps theappeal of tobacco smoking had something to do with its mosquito-repellent properties. Of course, inhaling smoke would in the long rundamage smokers’ lungs, but if it prevented a few bites from mosquitoesloaded with virus or plasmodium, the practice prolonged lives ratherthan shortened them.

In short, African health practices probably proved more effectivethan European medicine against several of the maladies prevalent in theGreater Caribbean. With respect to yellow fever, no remedies worked,

so acquiring slave women in the West Indies amounted to an adaptation of afamiliar pattern. Even Dr. William Gorgas, the American sanitarian (see Chap-ter 8) and reflexive racist, could write: “ . . . [I]n my experience the measuresgenerally advocated by the negro mammy did little or no harm, and in lookingback over a yellow-fever experience of thirty years, I cannot by any means makeso strong a statement with regard to my professional brethren” (Gorgas 1915:65).

84 Long (1774, 2:510).85 Vowell (1831, 1:41).86 Taylor (2008:175); Clark (1797:67–8). Sloane (1707–1725, 1:xxxvi) mentions

that Jamaican planters also used mosquito nets over their beds.

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but Afro-creole ones probably hewed more closely to the medical pro-fession’s Hippocratic principle (“First, do no harm”). The rank and fileof European armies as opposed to their officers, perhaps the most vulner-able of populations in these environments, had minimal contact withAfro-creole cures, and if so unfortunate as to get any medical care at allgot it from the heirs of Galen.

Conclusion

Yellow fever announced itself loud and clear in the Greater Caribbeanin the late 1640s. It revealed its selective lethality, killing adults andpeople of European ancestry more often than children or people ofAfrican origin. But having killed many and immunized the remainder,the virus lay low (and in places surely disappeared) for half a century.When it came back with a vengeance in the 1690s (of which more in thenext chapter), it came to stay. Henceforth, it would demonstrate furtherpartisanship, attacking newcomers and often sparing those born or longresident in the West Indies. Its presence, its demographic partisanship,and its perilousness posed a problem for susceptibles that neither Euro-pean nor African medicine could solve. Medical science did score asurprising success against malaria with the adoption of cinchona bark,and basic nursing could raise the odds of surviving any fever. With timeand observation, medical thinkers and practitioners accidentally figuredout ways to limit exposure to disease-bearing mosquitoes by encourag-ing people to stay away from swamps and other landscapes that theythought emitted harmful vapors.

The inability of medical science to do much of anything in the faceof yellow fever, and the expense of doing anything useful about malaria,were two necessary conditions in the stories that follow. Ineffectivemedicine allowed yellow fever and malaria to exert brutal influenceover imperial struggles and colonization schemes in the warm lowlandsof the Greater Caribbean.

The inability of medical thinkers to advance a convincing explana-tion of yellow fever and malaria, their high lethality and their parti-sanship, may also have carried important consequences. For Europeans,the baffling West Indies disease environment perhaps made it easier tosuppose that the hand of God was at work, in which case surely righteouscauses ought to prevail. For confirmed Protestants, of whom there wereseveral in the corridors of British power, it seemed unlikely that Godwould smite them down and thereby help Spanish Catholics. Instead,


surely He would protect them if they chose to attack Havana or Carta-gena. When in the 1770s populations in the Americas began to rebelagainst European rule, surely God would not send down plagues on Euro-pean armies dispatched to restore the proper political order. Moreover,in the absence of a clear logical explanation for epidemics, it may havebeen easier to believe that what had happened once or twice would nothappen again. Thus, perhaps the intellectual confusion about yellowfever and malaria helps to explain why, time and again, European statessent armies to their fate in the Greater Caribbean. The intellectual andgeopolitical environments encouraged such expeditions, whereas thedisease environment usually doomed them.

P A R T T W O

IMPERIAL MOSQUITOES

B efore yellow fever took root in the Americas, invading expeditionsand settlement schemes enjoyed much greater chances of success.

After it was firmly entrenched, they failed routinely amid scorchingfevers. The next two chapters explain how expeditions, both of con-quest and of settlement, fared in the evolving ecological and diseaseenvironments of the Greater Caribbean.

89

C H A P T E R F O U R

Fevers Take Hold: From Recife to Kourou

From Canada to Chile, the Americas in the seventeenth century servedas a playing field for the ambitions of several European statesmenand countless independent warrior-entrepreneurs. The great prizes wereland, labor and, above all, Spanish silver from Mexico and Peru. Onthe high seas, Spanish treasure fleets attracted relentless attention frompirates and privateers. On land, the most appealing targets were richlands suitable for plantations and strategic points from which to domi-nate trade or undertake piracy. Early in the seventeenth century, someof these targets were poorly defended and thinly populated. Even modestforces might hope to take them.

As long as there was no yellow fever and little or no malaria, theprospects for success in assaults in the Greater Caribbean were highlyencouraging. The small island of St. Kitts changed hands seven timesbetween English and French in the years before 1665. St. Kitts had goodsoils and held promise as a plantation island, so it was worth the trou-ble to take. Without much in the way of fortifications or population,St. Kitts could scarcely hold out against a force of a couple of hun-dred determined armed men. Slaves formed a potential fifth column onalmost every island, inspiring efforts at conquest and sometimes helpingthem succeed.

This chapter presents brief stories of two early episodes, the Dutch atRecife in Brazil, 1624–1654, and the English on Jamaica, 1655–1660, inwhich invading armies achieved significant conquests in the absence ofyellow fever. In both cases, malaria hampered the invaders but not badlyenough to prevent military success. It then presents two more stories,of Scots at Darien in Panama, 1698–1699, and of French at Kourou inGuyana, 1763–1764, in which state-sponsored colonization efforts failed

91

92 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

disastrously because of deadly fevers. These were not efforts at conquestbut they were intended as military colonies and led by soldiers. Therewas no sharp line between settlement and conquest. This tale of twocatastrophes shows how yellow fever in particular, once it had takenfirm hold by the 1690s, could foil geopolitical ambitions. As the Dutchand English found, until the 1690s opportunities for colonial expansionbeckoned and risks, while often enough deadly, brought reward.

The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654

The poorly defended but agriculturally promising landscapes ofnortheastern Brazil attracted the avaricious eye of the Dutch WestIndia Company early in the seventeenth century.1 Northeastern Brazilwas the sugar capital of the Atlantic world and sugar prices were rising.The Dutch were embroiled in a long war (1567–1648) with the SpanishHabsburgs and looking for ways to use their sea power to damageSpanish interests. The West India Company was founded in 1621 withthe express purpose of making money and mischief at the expense ofHabsburg holdings in the Americas. This included Brazil because after1580, the crowns of Portugal and Spain were temporarily united when aPortuguese dynasty died out. A Dutch expedition in 1624 capturedBahia, the largest city in Brazil, but had to surrender it within a yearunder pressure from a large Spanish-Portuguese fleet. Retaining Brazilcommanded a high priority for Habsburg Spain. The prospect of takingit, as a first step to seizing all of Habsburg America, tantalized thesober directors of the West India Company, commercially mindedmen often collectively known as The Nineteen. In 1628, when theiremployee Piet Heyn took a treasure fleet off the Cuban coast, filling theCompany’s coffers as never before, the directors decided the momentto strike had come.

the dutch assault on brazil

In 1630, the Dutch returned to Brazil with some 7,000 men – a giantinvasion force for operations in the Americas – attacking the port townof Olinda and the surrounding area of Pernambuco.2 Pernambuco hosted

1 Boxer (1957), Cabral de Mello (1998), and Souza (1948) cover military details.For wider contexts, see Israel (1982).

2 Patriotic Brazilian historians sometimes give larger figures. Abreu (1997:74) saysthe Dutch force had 3,700 sailors and 13,500 soldiers. I follow Israel (1982:202)here.

FEVERS TAKE HOLD: FROM RECIFE TO KOUROU 93

Map 4.1. Northeastern Brazil

some 70,000–90,000 residents, by far the most populous part of Brazil,and the richest sugar zones.3 Pernambuco’s ports were not well fortified,

3 Cabral de Mello (1998:454) indicates that Pernambuco in 1637 had 107 ofBrazil’s 149 sugar plantations.

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and the Dutch assault soon succeeded. By 1635, they had expandedtheir domain to most of northeastern Brazil, although they could notpush the Portuguese out of Bahia. Under the leadership of JohanMaurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679), a remarkable humanist, lin-guist, diplomat, soldier, and patron of the arts and sciences, the Dutchfared well militarily and politically.4

Among Maurits’ challenges was preserving the health of the Dutchforces under his command. They suffered from dysentery, scurvy, andother ailments, and over a quarter century the Dutch lost perhaps20,000 men in their Brazilian adventure.5 But the forces arrayed againstthem, mostly Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, suffered in roughly equalmeasure from the same diseases. A revolt in Catalonia and the seces-sion of Portugal (both in 1640) severely hampered Habsburg efforts,easing the pressure on Maurits and his successors. In these circum-stances, and at no systematic disadvantage in health, the sea power,wealth, fighting skills, and leadership of the Dutch could prevail for ageneration.

They could not prevail forever. In 1640, the union of the Portugueseand Spanish crowns ended; the Dutch remained at war with Spain butmade peace, followed by an alliance, with Portugal. Nonetheless, theDutch declined to leave Brazil. They had invested in sugar productionand intended to reap the rewards.6 Portugal could do little about that.But in 1645 local planters, Luso-Brazilians (people of Portuguese descentbut born in Brazil), raised a revolt of local people against the Dutch,shortly after The Nineteen recalled Maurits for his failure to put profitahead of glory and science. The locals were better acclimated to local dis-eases than were Dutch forces.7 They did not rely on imported food, as the

4 An assessment drawing heavily on Maurits’ correspondence is Gouvea (1998).5 Guerra (1979), citing Raphael de Jesus, Castrioto Lusitano (Lisbon, 1679). The

“Dutch” included many Germans, Poles, locally recruited Indians, and others.Cabral de Mello (1998:244–5).

6 An excellent financial and economic history of Dutch sugar in Pernambuco isSouty (1988). Production spiked in 1640–1644.

7 A point made by the contemporary observer Pierre Moreau (1651:197–8). In1633, a Portuguese official, Vicente Campelo, wrote to King Philip IV that onesoldier born in Brazil was worth more than two from Iberia (“Vale mais um homemsoldado e natural do Brasil que dois do Reino.”) He even pointed out that localswere better able to withstand mosquitoes: local soldiers “sofrem estarem naguatodo o dia e noite e sofrem os mosquitos, o que nao podem sofrer os do Reino.” Cabralde Mello (1998:258), citing Livro primeiro do governo do Brasil (1633).


Dutch still did. And they were not vulnerable to wavering commitmentsby The Nineteen, who by the late 1640s were unhappy with the financialreturns on the Brazilian venture. In 1648–1649, The Nineteen couldscarcely pay their soldiers, who soon lost their devotion to the WestIndia Company and lost battles against the Luso-Brazilian armies.8 By1652, The Nineteen and the entire Dutch Republic were also distractedby the immediate dangers of the First Anglo-Dutch War. Their willing-ness and ability to support Maurits’ successors dwindled. In 1654, theDutch lost their last toehold in Brazil at Recife, their capital, where agarrison of 7,000 shrank to 1,300 before finally surrendering.

dutch health in brazil

The Dutch in Brazil were lucky to last as long as they did. Unlikelater would-be conquistadors, they did not suffer from yellow fever. Inthe sixteenth century, Brazil had been regarded as a healthy place forEuropeans. It may have briefly hosted yellow fever from time to time,but the first major epidemic seems to have come only in 1685.9 Noneof the detailed scientific works produced by Dutch scholars, some ofwhich comment at length on diseases of Brazil, give any indication ofyellow fever.10 The diary of Ambrosij Richshoffer, who spent nearlythree years in Brazil as a soldier of the Dutch West India Company,mentions numerous desertions and some combat losses but says littleof disease: He noted only that many newly arrived troops died becauseof the hot country and brackish water.11 They probably suffered frommalaria, even falciparum malaria, but not yellow fever.

Scattered records of the Dutch West India Company give some senseof the health of Dutch troops in Brazil. For example, in 1630 at Olinda

8 Detailed in van Hoboken (1955).9 Franco (1976:10).

10 For example, Willem Piso, Historia naturalis brasiliae (Leiden, 1648).11 Richshoffer (1978) [1677]. The Portuguese translation of the sole passage men-

tioning disease (from the original German) is: “A 13 [of May 1631] entrou noporto o navio Amsterdam, bem carregado com toda a sorte de objetos necessarios, eno qual veio uma forte companhia de soldados . . . que, entre todos os demais oficiaise soldados, teve a honra de trazer para esta terra o reumatismo. No dia seguinteossoldados foram desembarcados; eram todos bonitos rapazes e, queira Deus, suportemmelhor o clima que as outras tropas novas que ate agora tem chegado. Muitos morrempor nao poderem se habituar a esta terra quente e a pessima agua meio salgada.” VanHoboken (1955:74) says Dutch troops in 1648–1649 often fell sick upon arrivalin Brazil, but generally recovered.

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16 percent of Dutch troops were sick on any given day. Between 1631and 1634 at Recife, Dutch forces lost about 6 percent of their comple-ment annually. In Brazil as a whole in 1634, about 13–15 percent ofDutch troops were sick at any given time; in 1639, 13 percent; and in1649, about 10 percent. They suffered from scurvy, dysentery, tetanus,and night blindness, among others diseases (including rheumatism, ifwe can believe Richshoffer). They were often short of food. But onbalance, their health was no worse than that of European armies sta-tioned in North America a century later. They were far healthier thanDutch forces sojourning on the coasts of West Africa, where, for exam-ple, annual mortality among Dutch West India Company personnel was11–21 percent in 1645 and 32 percent in 1646; or on the African islandof Sao Tome, which Dutch forces overran in 1641. In West Africa andon Sao Tome, both malaria and yellow fever prevailed. But in Brazil,there was no yellow fever.12

The success of the Dutch in taking and holding parts of northeasternBrazil for nearly three decades rested in part on Dutch seaborne supe-riority, Dutch money, and the extraordinary talents of Maurits. But italso rested on the comparative good health of their military forces inthe absence of yellow fever. Had the Dutch come a century later, orhad yellow fever come a century earlier, then it is inconceivable thatthe West India Company could have succeeded as it did, for as longas it did, in Brazil. That the Dutch ultimately departed from Brazil wasonly in small part a matter of losses from disease. The larger geopoliticalsituation had so changed after 1640, and especially after 1652, that thelogic of the effort in Brazil vanished. Their enemies in Brazil sufferedless from disease, but not radically less.

That the Dutch did not face yellow fever in Brazil was a matterof luck. Many of the slaving voyages to Brazil brought human cargoesfrom Angolan environments that did not host endemic yellow fever,limiting the frequency with which the virus and Aedes aegypti arrived in

12 Ratelband (1953:157–300); further data from Prof. Wim Klooster, personal com-munication, 26 June 2006; from Guerra (1979:474); and from Cabral de Mello(1998:255) citing a letter from Maurits to the States General of 18 February1639. One Dutch diarist, H. Haecxs, who may or may not have had system-atic data, reported 33% of Dutch forces in Brazil were sick in 1645 (Mello1998:255). For comparison, in the autumn of 1757 the British Army in NorthAmerica reported 16% of its 18,385 men sick (Brumwell 2002:151). To judgefrom Guerra (1979:478), malaria was not prominent among the Dutch in Brazil,although I suspect it was present.


Map 4.2. Jamaica

Brazil.13 But many other slaving ships came from West Africa and surelybrought both virus and mosquito to Brazil repeatedly, yet there is nounambiguous evidence of yellow fever in Brazil before 1685.14 Moreover,the sugar plantations and port cities of Bahia and Pernambuco wouldhave made ideal habitat for A. aegypti, just as did those of the Caribbean.Yellow fever could easily have been present in the 1620s, and could easilyhave killed thousands of Dutch troops in short order, as in Sao Tome,and ended the adventure in Brazil almost as soon as it began. But it didnot.

The English in Jamaica, 1655–1660

Eighteen months after the Dutch left Recife, the English attacked Span-ish Jamaica. In 1654, fresh off a war with the Dutch, Oliver Cromwell(1599–1658) found himself with an underemployed fleet and army andin an uneasy position within the cauldron of religious politics in Eng-land. Cromwell had emerged as generalissimo of a Puritan revolutionin England that had dislodged the monarchy, beheaded a king, ravagedthe countryside, and divided the country most bitterly. A successful

13 Today, yellow fever exists in parts of Angola. It probably did in the seventeenthcentury as well, and some slaves from Angola probably were immune to it –but not all. Thus it is possible, as Schwartz (1985:188) says, that yellow fever“decimated” Brazil’s slave population between 1686 and 1691 even if the majorityof slaves were Angolans. All depended on the local disease environment wherethey (and perhaps their ancestors) grew up.

14 Guerra (1965; 1979).

98 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

foreign war would be just the thing, keeping military men far away,suitably occupied and supplied with booty. It would also win furtherglory and sorely needed political legitimacy for Cromwell. By the 1650s,the armed forces of England had acquired the logistical capacity tolaunch an amphibious assault an ocean away from home.

cromwell’s assault on spanish jamaica

Cromwell meant to conquer and colonize (with loyal Protestants)Spanish possessions, striking a blow for his faith, much as his legionswere then doing in Ireland (and much as the Dutch West India Com-pany had planned to do in Brazil). His ambition extended not just to theseizure of the silver fleets but to the mines and all of Spanish America.15

This was not mere piracy or privateering, intent on sacking or looting.It was to be an invasion force, with instructions explicitly referring to“the Designe upon the Mayne land,” and advising the commander totake Cartagena and Havana once he had secured a useful base, prefer-ably on Hispaniola or Puerto Rico.16 Cromwell had in mind a grandstrategy that, although more religious in motivation and focused on theCaribbean rather than Brazil, bore strong resemblance to the unboundedambition of The Nineteen.

Cromwell and his council had found persuasive the arguments of oneThomas Gage (1597–1656), a former Dominican priest who had studiedin Spain and spent twelve years in the Caribbean and Central Americabefore renouncing Catholicism, returning to England, and aligning him-self with Puritans. Gage maintained that the Spanish hold on the Amer-icas was weak, that England could easily prevail in the Indies, and that,indeed, religious duty required that Puritans rescue Spanish Americafrom the grasp of wayward and corrupt priests. Gage was enthusiasticand optimistic about England’s chances: “The Spaniards cannot opposemuch, being a lazy, sinful people, feeding like beasts upon their lusts,and upon the fat of the land, and never trained up to wars.”17

15 Capp (1989:87–91). The best account of the expedition is Taylor (1969). Seealso Keevil, Lloyd, and Coulter (1957–1963, 2:55–67).

16 BL Add. MSS 11,410, f. 41ff, “Instructions unto Generall Robert Venablesgiven by his Highnes by Advice of his Councel upon his Expedition to the WestIndies.” Printed in Firth 1900:111–15.

17 A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe (London: F. Gyles, 1742, 3:60),quoted in Rodgers (2004:22). See also Gage (1648).


Meanwhile, Habsburg Spain had expended much blood and treasurein a losing cause in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Its fleet hadsuffered reverses at the hands of the English, and its army had lost severalbattles to the French. In the 1650s, further European wars and internalrevolts made Spain’s commitment to its empire in the Americas difficultto sustain, and its navy, especially, was unequal to the task. Its diplomatsand spies warned of an impending assault on the Indies from as early as1647. The only tangible result was modest improvements to the defensesof Hispaniola.18

Cromwell’s Western Design, launched in early 1655, included 38ships and some 9,000 men,19 more than had ever before been dis-patched in an expedition to the Americas. Gage was among them, aschaplain. Admiral William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania,and General Robert Venables led its naval and land forces, respectively.They quarreled from the outset, blaming one another for shortages ofsupplies. Better than half the rank and file came from England, includ-ing contingents of “knights of the blade, with common cheats, thieves,cutpurses, and such like lewd persons who had long time lived by sleightof hand, and dexterity of wit, and were now making a fair progress untoNewgate.”20 The remainder, some 3,000 to 4,000 men, mainly inden-tured servants discontented with their lot, were recruited in Barbadosand English settlements in the Leeward Islands. Venables referred tothem as “the most prophane debauch’d persons that we ever saw.”21

With this unpromising army, they attacked Santo Domingo inApril 1655. They quickly failed, thanks to stout Spanish defense andincompetent English leadership, as well as to hunger and losses fromunidentifiable diseases. A thousand Englishmen died, as did about fortydefenders.22

In May, the survivors attacked Jamaica, then home to about 2,500Spaniards and African slaves. Jamaica was a minor outpost in the

18 Morales Padron (2003:179–84).19 Estimates range from 7,000 to 9,500. Firth (1900:xix–xxx) reviews the evidence.

See also Taylor (1969:19).20 Firth (1900:xxiii), quoting an anonymous account from the Harleian Manu-

scripts, British Library. Newgate was a London prison.21 There are two copies of Venables’ narrative of the expedition in the BL (Add.

MSS 12,429, ff. 7–72 and Add. MSS. 11,140, ff. 56–143). The text is printed inFirth (1900:1–105).

22 A thorough account with published documents from the Spanish side isRodrıguez Demorizi (1956–1957).

100 MOSQUITO EMPIRES

Spanish Empire, of strategic importance because it lay upwind of thesailing routes traced by the treasure fleets. Its economy consisted mainlyof hunting wild hogs and cattle. Hides were the island’s chief export.Sugar production remained negligible. The island remained almostunfortified. The invading English army outnumbered the entire pop-ulation of Jamaica by 3:1 and managed to overwhelm the handful ofSpanish militia forces and take it in a week with almost no losses.Spaniards fled to Cuba or into the mountainous interior, taking theirportable wealth (such as livestock) with them. Guerilla resistance flick-ered on until 1660, but Spanish efforts to retake the island came tonaught.23

This was no pin-prick of the sort inflicted by pirates and priva-teers such as Raleigh, Hawkins, or Drake. The English had come tostay, although their bickering commanders quickly returned to Englandwhere Cromwell had them both cast into the Tower of London. TheEnglish consolidated their position on Jamaica, built fortifications,imported thousands of beggars, vagrants, and prisoners from the BritishIsles, and banished Spanish and maroon resistance to the mountain-ous interior. England had acquired a base from which to mount furtherattacks on Spanish coasts and shipping. Cromwell had no intention ofquitting after a single conquest.

the toll from disease

But Jamaica came at a cost that stymied Cromwell’s larger ambitions.24

Venables arrived as the seasonal rains began (having spent seven weeksin Barbados rounding up debauch’d men and inadequate supplies). Hismen complained of having to sleep in the rain while their comman-der stayed on shipboard. Predictably – at least Venables foresaw it –disease set in.25 Within three weeks some 3,000 men were sick, andin six months the original force of 9,000 men had dwindled to 3,720,of whom more than 2,000 were “sick and helpless.”26 Major-General

23 Morales Padron (2003:192–216); Taylor (1969:146–96); Wright (1930).24 Veterans of the Jamaica campaign did sack Santiago de Cuba and occupy it for

two weeks in October 1661.25 Venables to Mr. Noel, 13 June 1655 (Firth 1900:49), in which he writes of the

rains “which would kill us all.”26 Anonymous letter of 5 November 1655, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS,

D1208, printed in Firth (1900:142); and see Firth (1900:xxxii). “Never did my


Robert Sedgwick, an experienced soldier who arrived in October 1655with a fresh regiment, found it “strange to see young lusty men, inappearance well, and in three or four days in the grave, snatch’d away ina moment with fevers, agues, fluxes and dropsies . . . ”27 He did not knowit, but Sedgwick was witnessing the birth of a new ecological-militaryorder in the West Indies.

Sedgwick at first thought the failing lay with the men, who were “sounworthy, so slothful [and] desired rather to die than to live.”28 Sedgwickhimself died of fever within seven months of his arrival. By early 1656,most of the English on Jamaica, roughly 5,000 of the original 9,000, weredead, Thomas Gage among them. Cromwell – a frequent sufferer fromvivax malaria himself 29 – thought God was punishing the pride andavarice of his men, and sent 1,200 more veteran and presumably morevirtuous soldiers from his regiments in Ireland and Scotland. Virtuous ornot, they fared little better. By 1660, when the English hold on the islandwas secure and the army’s health finally sound, only some 2,200 troopsremained of the roughly 10,000 committed to the Jamaica campaign. Afew hundred were killed in action. Others deserted and a few, mainlyofficers, managed to get sent back to England. Probably 6,000 to 8,000died of disease.30 Soldiers who had survived every infection known toEngland fell to Jamaica’s “flux and feavors.”31

Flux and fevers did not spare the few civilians who took part.Cromwell wanted to settle Jamaica with farmers, and do it quicklyenough to feed the hungry occupying army. Efforts to recruit Massa-chusetts Puritans failed, but the small island of Nevis provided about1,500 bold pioneers who landed on Jamaica in December 1656. ByMarch 1657, two thirds of them were dead.32 Despite living in theCaribbean, these unfortunate pioneers, most of whom grew up in Eng-land rather than Nevis (which was settled beginning twenty yearsbefore), lacked sufficient resistance to the infections raging on Jamaica.

eyes see such a sickly time, nor soe many funerals, and graves all the towne overthat it is a very Golgotha.”

27 Thurloe Papers, vol. IV, pp. 153–4, quoted in Taylor (1969:91).28 Quoted in Long (1774, 1:254).29 Cromwell was raised in the Cambridge Fens, a low-lying and swampy part of

England, at a time when vivax was common in such environments. His death in1658 may have been due at least in part to malaria.

30 See Taylor (1969:205–6); Wright (1930:122).31 The figures are from Dunn (1972:153) and Taylor (1969:92).32 Taylor (1969:116–18).


clues and diagnosis: cattle, mosquitoes,englishmen, and malaria

Although descriptions of the diseases in question do not permitconfident diagnosis, falciparum malaria and dysentery are the primesuspects.33 The main malarial mosquito in Jamaica is Anopheles albi-manus. It likes to breed in water with abundant vegetation, scum, andalgae. Any size from puddles in wheel ruts and hoofprints to ponds andlakes will do. Its larvae tolerate salt water well, and do best in full orpartial sunlight. However, it is normally a poor vector of human diseasebecause it prefers cattle blood and on average only 2 percent of An.albimanus live long enough to transmit malaria. So it can sustain an epi-demic only when mosquito strength is very high (so weather is crucial)or when cattle are scarce.34

Cromwell’s centurions inadvertently did everything they could toraise the chances of suffering a malaria epidemic. Venables got toJamaica as the rains began, ensuring that his men would soon encountermany mosquitoes out for blood. They stayed through the dry season,when An. albimanus are more likely to shift their feeding focus from cat-tle to humans. Spanish Jamaica’s economy had featured cattle promi-nently, an ideal situation for An. albimanus reproduction. But hav-ing exhausted their scant provisions, Venables’ troops killed and atethe island’s remaining cattle and hogs, so presumably in desperationthe mosquitoes turned their attentions to men, the only other good-sized mammals around.35 The English soldiers by and large kept to the

33 An anonymous letter of 15 July 1655 mentions “flux and feavors (the usual dis-eases).” Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS D1208, printed in Firth (1900:140);Henry Whistler’s journal implies dysentery: “ . . . lieing in the raine did case mostof them to haue the Bluddie-flux, and now thayer harts wore got out of ThayerDublates into Thayer Breeches, and wos nothing but Shiting, for thay wose ina uery sad condichon, 50 or 60 stouls a day . . . ” BL Sloane MSS 3926, HenryWhistler, “Journal of Admiral Penn’s Expedition to the West Indies 1654–55”(19 April 1655), partially printed in Firth (1900:156).

34 Komp (1942); Pan-American Health Organization (1993); Molez (1998).According to Trapham (1679:103–10), the ponds that Jamaicans used for drink-ing water in the 1670s were infested with mosquito eggs.

35 According to Sedgwick, the island was “full of several sorts of cattle” untilthe English killed 20,000 head (Long 1774, 1:248). Keevil, Lloyd, and Coul-ter (1957–1963, 2:62) says undisciplined men “wantonly killed the cattle” onJamaica. The presence of cattle can mean more mosquitoes survive to maturityand high rates of malaria, but under some conditions can mean the opposite. SeeChapter 2 for discussion of the pitfalls of zooprophylaxis.


low-lying and often swampy coastlands, as the interior mountainsremained dangerous because of Spanish guerillas. The English occu-piers often slept outdoors, among anophelines (which feed at night)recently deprived of their usual sources of blood. In short, the Englishate the cattle, so the mosquitoes bit the English.

El Nino may have compounded English misfortune. The early 1650sfeatured an unusual run of El Nino events (1650, 1652, 1655). ENSOordinarily brings extra warm and wet weather to Jamaica so even thedry season is good for mosquitoes.36 Other things being equal (which wecannot know), this ought to have generated bumper crops of An. albi-manus in Jamaica, peaking in 1655–1656 just after the English arrived.

Jamaican mosquitoes were thirsty and numerous enough with orwithout El Nino. John Taylor, who visited in 1687, found “Jamaica inmost parts . . . miserabley plauged with stinging and tormenting insectswhich swarm in great aboundance everywhere, but chiefly near thewatterside and uncleared places . . . ”37 As Edward Long, planter andhistorian of Jamaica, put it, “[i]t is dangerous to pass the night in suchplaces, and it is at such time that these insects collect in swarms, andmake war on every daring intruder.”38

Venables’ soldiers might have had yellow fever, which had ricochetedaround the region in 1647–1652, but the ecology of Jamaica in 1655,with no real cities or sugar plantations, makes falciparum malaria a morelikely suspect despite the unusually high mortality. So do the impreciseaccounts of illnesses, none of which mention the signature symptoms ofyellow fever.39

Long suspected malaria. “It is probable,” he wrote, “the original dis-temper was an ague and fever, the consequence of heavy autumnal rains.At this time, the Jesuits Bark, the specific remedy in that disease, wasunknown to them. Bleeding was generally administered; which seldom

36 Quinn (1982).37 Taylor (2008:174–5).38 Long (1774, 2:506–7). Long did not refer to anophelines specifically, but in

general to “muskeetos, which seem as if placed by the hand of Providence,to assault with their stings, and drive away, every human being, whom mayignorantly venture to fix his abode among them.” Lady Maria Nugent (2002:22)in 1801 complained of the “innumerable musquitoes that have almost eaten usup . . . my face, neck, hands and arms have been martyrs.”

39 Guerra (1994:264–5) favors a yellow fever diagnosis. His view commands respect,as he is the foremost student of medical history of the West Indies, but I findthe textual evidence and environmental circumstances support a different view.Taylor (1969:90) votes for malaria.


failed of rendering the complaint more obstinate, if not mortal.”40 Longwrote more than a century after the events in question, but he wasprobably on the mark.

The extraordinary mortality likely reflects a combination of falci-parum malaria and other infections. Like HIV, malaria suppresses thehuman immune system. Thus, a malaria epidemic can raise mortalityfrom other infections, such as typhus or dysentery, killing people whowould otherwise survive. Typhus and dysentery were common diseaseswherever soldiers were on campaign, and correspond with some of thedescriptions of symptoms plaguing the army in Jamaica. Malaria madethem much more deadly than they were normally.

Many things had to fall into place to permit the disaster that befellthe English army on Jamaica. Venables blamed Penn, Penn blamedVenables, and some officers blamed Venables’ new wife for distract-ing him from his duties.41 But the English conquered the island withease, regardless of the deficiencies of their commanders. Had they beenthe equals of Julius Caesar and Lord Nelson, Venables and Penn couldnot have prevented the epidemics that followed. Bringing 9,000 out-siders within range of Caribbean mosquitoes in the rainy season almostguaranteed calamity.

a new regime

Despite the loss of most of the men involved, the English managed tohold Jamaica after 1655.42 That was the last occasion on which oneEuropean power took a large Caribbean possession from another andheld it (unless one counts Surinam, which changed hands by treaty notby invasion in 1667) until the British seizure of Trinidad in 1797. Onthe other hand, small and poorly fortified islands would continue tobe easy targets, and therefore attracted attention in almost every war.For example, St. Lucia shuttled back and forth between British andFrench control fourteen times between 1651 and 1814 – neither had anadvantage over the other in terms of resistance to the Caribbean disease

40 Long (1774, 1:247).41 Firth (1900:xl) quotes Edmund Hickeringill, Jamaica Viewed (1661, p. 67): “He is

unfit . . . to ride admiral of a fleet that cannot carry the flag at home but is forcedto lower his topsail to a petticoat.” Many women apparently accompanied theexpedition, serving as nurses, to judge from Venables’ remarks (Firth 1900:102).

42 It remained a graveyard for Englishmen (among others), especially new arrivals,for a long time to come (Burnard 1999).


environment. When one or another imperial power held commandof the sea in Caribbean waters, it could quickly rack up several smallconquests of unfortified ports and islands. The British lost more thanhalf a dozen small islands in 1780–1781 (although all were recoveredsoon). But fortified strongholds or big, populous islands proved nearlyinvulnerable once yellow fever and malaria had become endemic in theregion. Thereafter, despite dozens of attempts, all efforts proved in vain,although a few, such as Havana in 1762, met with initial success onlyto be followed by such appalling disease mortality that the victors choseto part with their new and pestilential conquests.43 A new eco-militaryregime was forming.

The campaigns and colonization efforts in Pernambuco and Jamaicaresulted in temporary success but ultimate failure for the Dutch, andenduring if costly success for the English. The Dutch enjoyed more thantwo decades of revenues from sugar production in Brazil, but in theend could not hold the region because of determined local resistancecoupled with urgent threats closer to home. That they lasted as long asthey did is testament to the relative health of the troops of the WestIndia Company. The English could hold Jamaica because local resis-tance amounted to little. No equivalent of the Luso-Brazilian campaignagainst the Dutch could develop. Jamaica was on the fringes of SpanishAmerica with a tiny population, whereas Pernambuco was the heartof Portuguese America. The English prevailed despite losing the greatmajority of their forces to disease, whereas the Dutch lost their colonydespite staying comparatively healthy. These episodes represent a tran-sitional time when large expeditionary forces could already be shippedacross the Atlantic, but when yellow fever had yet to become estab-lished. In Brazil, yellow fever probably did not exist yet, and malariaand other infections played only a modest role in ousting the Dutch.In Jamaica, malaria and dysentery ruined an English army, but too latefor Spain. The Spanish had left Jamaica almost undefended in 1655,allowing a quick conquest before diseases prevented one.

The Scots at Darien, 1698–1699

The civilians accompanying or following English soldiers to Jamaicasuffered acutely from disease, too. Whether connected to militaryinvasions or not, colonization efforts ran the risks attendant on bringing

43 Buchet (1991) offers the most complete description of imperial expeditions.


Map 4.3. Panama and Darien

thousands of nonimmunes within range of disease vectors. Two disas-trous examples are the Scottish attempt to found a colony at Darien inPanama and the French effort to rejuvenate one at Kourou in FrenchGuyana.44

the cold and hungry 1690s in scotland

Seventeenth-century Scotland was a miserably poor country in the bestof times, and in the worst was visited by strife, famine, and Englisharmies.45 In an age when the Dutch, English, and others seemed to be

44 Another example, about which too little is known, is the English attempt tocolonize Amazonia and Guyana in the early seventeenth century. The Guyanacolony apparently lost two thirds of its population to some pestilence in 1665–1666, “a violent feavor” which affected mainly Europeans. “The Description ofGuyana,” BL, Sloane MSS 3662. The sickness “cutt of [i.e., killed] about 200of our Men, and very many women and children and so universall and rainingwas the Contagion at one time that wee could not make a hundred sound menin the Country to oppose an enemie. . . . ” So wrote Lt. General Byams in “AnExact Narrative of the State of Guiana As It Stood Ano 1665 Particularly of theEnglish Collony of Surynam,” BL, Sloane MSS 3662, ff. 27–37. See Williamson(1923:164).

45 Useful general accounts of the Darien debacle and its Scottish backgroundinclude Barbour (1907), Prebble (1968), Insh (1932), and Hart (1929). All areepidemiologically unaware. For example, Hart in a chapter entitled “The Causes


getting rich through colonial trade, especially around the shores of theAtlantic, the Scots were by law excluded from such lucrative commerce.(After 1603, their kings were also kings of England, and usually moredevoted to the bigger, richer kingdom.) Scots whose loyalty to the kingwas open to question were sometimes massacred, as at Glencoe in 1692.Poverty and neglect peppered with oppression grew even harder tostomach in the hungry 1690s, when cold weather brought consecutiveharvest failures in 1695–1696 and another in 1698.46 As much as asixth of the Scottish population starved to death, or died from diseasesamplified by malnutrition.47 Tens of thousands of desperate young menpoured out of the country to fight for the monarchs of Europe in returnfor a few square meals. The English said Scotland needed only eight ofthe Bible’s ten commandments because the people had nothing to covetor steal.

William Paterson aimed to change all that. He was born in 1658 ona humble farm in the Lowlands, but from age seventeen had rambledthe wider world in search of his fortune. He visited the West Indies as ayoung man and heard tales of buccaneers who had crossed the isthmusof Panama (then often called Darien). Henry Morgan and a band of1,200 adventurers in 1670–1671 had spent several piratical weeks onthe isthmus and sacked the Spanish colonial city of Panama. In addition,Paterson noted how successful small Dutch Caribbean colonies were asentrepots, and he became a zealous convert to the eccentric notions offree trade and freedom of religion. He was himself a good Presbyterian,a teetotaler to boot, and through luck and industry became a wealthymerchant and financier in London in the 1680s. He played a centralrole in the foundation of the Bank of England (1694). But Paterson

of Failure” (pp. 148–69), does not mention disease. Helpful context is in Forrester(2004), Smout (1963), Armitage (1995), and Watt (2006). Crucial Scottish andEnglish documents appear in the collections edited by Insh (1924) and Cundall(1926). Hart and Cundall also provide translations of Spanish documents. Themost valuable and insightful eyewitness account is Borland (1715).

46 Smout (1963:245–9).47 Flinn (1977:7) gives 15% as the population decline in Scotland in the 1690s.

Detailed figures (pp. 164–86) range from 5% to 15%, but the most vulnera-ble parts of the country left no records behind, so the reality may conceivablyhave been worse. Harvests failed widely in northern Europe, so the prospectsof importing grain to make up for local shortfalls were poor. In Finland, whererecord-keeping was better, bad harvests brought early death to 23% of the pop-ulation in 1696–1697 (Jutikkala 1955).


nurtured grander dreams. He thought a settlement at Darien couldbecome a global emporium, a “key to the universe,” as he sometimesput it, uniting the trade of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, unlockingthe trade of China and Japan.48 If Morgan and his pirates could plunderSpanish outposts in Panama, how much more might sober Scots achievethrough peaceful commerce? Surely, they could realize the dream ofColumbus and tap the riches of China. Paterson contemplated a roadacross the isthmus and even a canal. He had never seen Panama himself.

In the 1680s and 1690s, Paterson shopped his Darien scheme in theports of northern Europe, finding no takers. He acquired a reputationas a talkative, humorless bore. His powers of persuasion found a will-ing audience mainly among his fellow Scots. In 1693, anxious to salveanger over Glencoe, King William III and Parliament sanctioned a lawthat permitted Scots to organize a trading company. Two years later,the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was born,with monopoly rights to trade between Scotland and Asia, Africa, andthe Americas for thirty-one years. Originally, its investors were bothScots and English but pressure from established English traders, fearingfor their monopoly, forced the fledgling company to rely exclusively onScottish funds. Paterson and the other moving spirits behind the Com-pany left London for Edinburgh and opened their subscription books.More than 1,400 Scots signed up, pledging some £400,000, estimatedvariously at a quarter or a half of the liquid capital in Scotland.49

During the course of 1696–1697, the directors of the Company,who initially had many other schemes in mind, agreed to Paterson’sproposal for a settlement at Darien. He had come into possession ofthe manuscript of Lionel Wafer, a buccaneer and ship’s surgeon whohad spent three months in the isthmus in 1681, and who wrote ofgold gathered from the riverbeds.50 Paterson used this text to bolsterhis view that Darien could be the salvation of a poor and hungryScotland. He claimed the plan would lay “the foundation of our trade,and improvement as large and extensive as his Majesty’s empire.”

48 For example, in his “A Proposal to Plant a Colony in Darien; to Protect theIndians against Spain and to Gain the Trade of South America to all Nations,1701.” Printed in Bannister (1858, 1:117).

49 Insh (1932:65) says half. These figures are mere guesswork, perhaps based onAdam Smith’s (1976 [1776], 315) guess that Scotland at this time contained£1,000,000 in circulation.

50 Wafer’s manuscript is in BL, Sloane MSS 3236. A slightly revised version waspublished in 1699 (see Wafer 1934).


Darien’s trade would “become bonds of union to the British kingdoms.”Moreover,

[t]he time and expense of navigation to China, Japan, the SpiceIsland and the far greatest part of the East Indies will be lessenedmore than half, and the consumption of European commoditiesand manufactories will soon be more than doubled. Trade willincrease trade, and money will beget money, and the trading worldshall need no more to want work for their hands, but will ratherwant hands for their work. Thus, this door of the seas, and the keyof the universe, with anything of a sort of reasonable management,will of course enable its proprietors to give laws to both oceans,and to become arbitrators of the commercial world, without beingliable to the fatigues, expenses, and dangers, or contracting theguilt and blood, of Alexander and Caesar.51

A vision such as this, of lucrative empire on the cheap, equality withEngland, and fulfillment of the ambitions of Columbus two centuriesbefore, easily appealed to the imagination in 1690s Scotland. In a decadewith July frosts, dreams of Darien must easily have warmed many aScottish heart. The directors consulted Lionel Wafer in the spring of1698, paid him to delay the publication of his manuscript lest the Englishget to Darien first,52 and then called in a quarter of the subscriptions,built ships, purchased supplies, and recruited volunteers. They wouldfind Darien a nightmare.

the first voyage

In mid-July of 1698, the Company’s five ships set sail for Panama.Three were well-armed, and altogether they mounted 175 cannon. Onboard were about 1,200 men, and a very few women and children.53

Each man was entitled to fifty acres of cultivable land, an irresistible

51 Quoted in Hart (1929:46–7).52 Working for the Board of Trade and Plantations, John Locke, the political

philosopher, had recommended that England settle Darien to block the Scots.The directors of the Scottish company when spiriting Wafer from London toEdinburgh equipped him with a false identity (“Mr. Brown”), lest the Englishget wind of their plans (Insh 1932:110).

53 A captive, Benjamin Spenser, under interrogation in Havana, said five womendeparted for the Darien colony. Massachusetts Historical Society, Hart Papers,Box 3, Item 48. Spanish documents say three women arrived alive (Hart1929:305).


lure to most Scots, and a plot in the main town settlement. WilliamPaterson and his family were among the colonists. So were hundreds ofyounger sons of the Scottish gentry, hundreds more footloose soldiersand sailors home from King William’s war with France – the king hadremoved about 20,000 Scots from the military payroll in 1698 – afew physicians, clerks, four clergymen, and one interpreter who knewSpanish. A third of the eager colonists were highlanders who spokeonly Gaelic. Presumably, many of the Scots were malnourished in thesummer of 1698, with weakened immune systems that months at seawere unlikely to strengthen. Thousands of other hungry or adventurousScots had wanted to go too but could not secure a place in the expedition.Spanish documents claim the company also included six Italian andthree French mercenaries.54

The fleet sailed with a year’s worth of supplies (biscuit, beef, beer,brandy, and Bibles) and stocks of trade goods, including wigs, woolenhose and tartans, 25,000 pairs of shoes, 14,000 needles as well as axes,knives, saws, weapons, and much more, including a printing press withwhich to print treaties with the Indians. Remembering Lionel Wafer’sdescription of the long-haired locals, they also brought thousands ofcombs.

The Scottish armada stopped at Madeira before crossing the Atlanticto the Danish island of St. Thomas, where it paused for a week, andthence to the Caribbean coast of Panama. The whole voyage took untilearly November, a crossing of 102 days, by which time forty-four of thewayfarers had died, twenty of “fever,” twenty-three of “flux,” and oneof “decay.” By the standards of the time, it was a healthy transatlanticcrossing, especially considering the likely condition of the passengersupon departure. The secretary of the Scottish Trading Company, whorecorded these deaths, noted that still more might have died had theystayed in Scotland.55 November was a good season to arrive, compara-tively dry and cool.

The coast around Darien looked green.56 Tall trees lined the shore.Rain forest here had grown up, as throughout the Caribbean region, after

54 Gallup-Diaz (2004:134), citing AGI, AP, legajo 161, fol. 230, and AGI, AP 164,ff. 604–18.

55 Mackenzie (1699). This extraordinary single-page document indicates that ofthe 44 who died on shipboard, 43 were men and one, listed only as Lt. JohnHay’s wife, was a woman.

56 What the Scots and subsequent historians called Darien is not the currentPanamanian province of Darien, but rather an ill-defined coastal region in today’sprovince of San Blas, around 9◦N latitude and 78◦W longitude. A description


the depopulation of the sixteenth century. To the Scots, accustomed tonearly treeless landscapes, it looked like forest primeval. They saw end-less timber and hoped to find lucrative dyewoods. One of the colonists,the churchman Francis Borland, wrote: “The Countrey is wholly cladwith thick & tall Woods, being a continued Forrest. . . . The trees hereare many of them of a vast bigness. . . . ”57 The riot of plant life includeddelicious pineapples, bananas, cassava, yams, and other edible fare. Justas Wafer had promised, it teemed with wildlife of every description,including tasty creatures such as peccaries, tapirs, red deer, rabbits, and“great Droves of Monkeys, which are extraordinary fat and good toeat.”58 The coast and lagoons hosted platoons of turtles, easily caughtand cooked, as well as shoals of edible fish and herds of manatees, giantslow-moving sea-cows that must have seemed heaven-sent to hungryScots. Less agreeably, there were also “monstruous adders,” and plentyof mosquitoes that “suck the Blood till they can no longer fly.”59

The local population, Cuna (Kuna, San Blas Kuna, and Tule areother terms for them) and Choco Amerindians, whom at least oneScot regarded as “civil and sagacious,” turned out to be hospitable toanyone not allied with the Spanish.60 For nearly 200 years they had

of the isthmus about 1680 is Wafer (1934); an account of the local populationand their uses of flora and fauna is Ventocilla, Herrera, and Nunez (1995).

57 Borland (1715:6). Borland was a prominent clergyman who had lived in DutchSurinam in his youth and may thereby have acquired helpful immunities todiseases prevalent in Panama (Insh 1932:172). Wafer, who saw the coast twentyyears previously, wrote of “extraordinary large woods with stately timber treeswhich overrun the whole Coast like a continual forest.” The extract of Wafer’smanuscript from which this is quoted is in Insh (1924:52).

58 Philo-Caledon (1699:47). According to another Scot, tree-dwelling monkeys“squirt their Excrements upon our Heads and Cloaths.” Anonymous, A Lettergiving a Description of the Isthmus of Darian (1699:10).

59 On adders and mosquitoes, Anonymous, A Letter Giving a Description of theIsthmus of Darian (1699:6).

60 The quotation is from a diary printed in Hart (1929:68). Borland (1715:13)was less charitable, regarding them as “slothfull” as they “subdue & plant butsmall parcels of land. . . . ” Captain Richard Long, an Englishman who visited thecolony in February 1699, also described the Cuna as “slothfull” because they didnot plant much, and women did most of the agricultural work. Long to the Dukeof Leeds, 15 February 1699, British Library, Additional MSS, 47,132, ff. 54–7,printed in Insh (1924:100–6; quot. p. 101). Long was described by another shipcaptain, Robert Pennicook as “a most ridiculous shallow pated fellow . . . [and]continually drunk” (British Library, Additional MSS, 47,132, fol 49bis). Scottishattitudes toward the Cuna are treated in McPhail (1994). Anonymous, A LetterGiving a Description of the Isthmus of Darian (1699:16–24) gives considerable


successfully resisted intermittent Spanish attempts to collect tributeand convert them to Christianity. By 1698, the population of the isth-mus was probably well under 20,000, and – despite Scottish beliefs –no Amerindian kingdom existed.61 Instead, political units were smalland mobile. Remarkably, they seem to have welcomed a settlement ofnear-helpless strangers in their midst, and did their best to restore ailingnewcomers to health, sharing their corn, plantains, and cassava.62 Theypresumably initially took the Scots for buccaneers – they had plenty ofexperience with French and English buccaneers – and hoped for helpfrom them against their enemies. They welcomed trade goods, especiallywhen offered at prices lower than those Spaniards wanted.63 When itbecame clear the Scots intended to stay forever, the Cuna sought touse this to their advantage in their diplomacy with Spanish authori-ties, with other Amerindian groups, and of course with one another.64

Although they showed interest in axes and knives, the abundant cargoesof shoes, wigs, and tartans left the Cuna cold. Local trade possibilitiesdisappointed the Scots.

The Scots had not come just to trade with the Indians but to build acolony, Caledonia, that would handle the trade of two oceans. They setabout clearing away the forest. Shortly after arrival, one diarist wroteof the colony’s location: “In short it may be made impregnable, andthere is bounds enough within it, if it were all cultivated, to afford10,000 Hogsheads of sugar every year. The Soil is rich, the Air goodand temperate, and the Water is sweet, and everything contributes tomake it healthful and convenient.”65 Although some of them clearlyhad visions of sugar plantations dancing in their heads, the Scots didnot in fact do much planting. Their first priority was defense for theirintended entrepot.

detail on the Cuna, although its reliability is open to question. Gallup-Diaz(2004) is the best modern source on the Cuna.

61 This figure is a scholarly guess based on Spanish documents. Gallup-Diaz(2004:xiv); Jaen Suarez (1998).

62 Philo-Caledon (1699:43–60).63 “Captain Pennijcook’s Journall from the Madera to New Caledonia” (1698),

British Library, Additonal MSS, 40,796, ff. 1–16. The same text appears as“Capt. Robt Pennicock’s Journal,” in British Library, Additonal MSS, 47,132,ff. 44bis–53.

64 On Cuna diplomacy, Gallup-Diaz (2004:77–116).65 “A Journal kept from Scotland by one of the Company who sailed on board the

‘Endeavour’ pink,” printed in (Insh 1924:74).


Despite unseasonable rains in November and December (1698),66

they began to build a fort, called St. Andrew, and the makings of atown, called New Edinburgh, on the shores of a broad and secluded bay.A neck of land fronted by cliffs guarded the eastern half of the bay, andsubmerged rocks in its entrance made it hazardous to the unknowingsea captain. It was a defensible place, with adequate fresh water. It wasa good choice from the military point of view, difficult to assault fromthe sea. Spanish forces learned of the fledgling colony, recognized itas a threat to their interests, and attacked from the landward side inFebruary 1699. The Scots fended them off at the cost of two dead.67

Spain could not tolerate a foreign colony on the isthmus. Most ofSpain’s South American silver – on which the monarchy depended –passed overland to Portobelo before being shipped to Havana andSeville. So it is no surprise that upon learning of the Scots’ inten-tions, Spanish authorities took action. Indeed, they would have attackedbefore February 1699 had not an outbreak of sickness among newlyarrived ships’ crews left their naval vessels short of manpower.68

The Scots’ choice of location made military sense but it was a dubiouschoice in other respects. Borland noted: “It was a spot of low groundwhere our men settled and built their Fort, a sort of Earth mixed withsand. It was wet marish [marshy] ground about it . . . ”69 In other words,good malaria country. Borland (at least in retrospect) recognized the

66 “Journal or Diary of the Most Remarkable Things that Happened during the ScotsAffrican and Indian fleet, in their Voyage from the Island Madera to their Land-ing in America, and since that Time.” NLS, Darien MSS, Item 52. This is thejournal of Hugh Rose, printed in Hart (1929:192–216); and in Burton (1849:98–116). Entries concerning November 12–19, 24–29, and December 1–9.Rose’s journal appears based on the record kept by Capt. Robert Pennycook(Pennicuik), which is printed in Insh (1924:78–96).

67 Many documents indicate Spanish authorities were well acquainted with theScots’ scheme, e.g., Consejo de Indias al Rey, 12 febrero 1699, AGI, AP, legajo160; “Memorandum Real, Apuntamiento de las providencias que S. Magestadha mandada dar para el desalojo de Escozes del Darien,” 30 octubre 1699, AGI,AP, legajo 161 summarizes Spanish knowledge and policy with respect to theScots’ settlement.

68 Canillas al Rey, 6 mayo 1699, AGI, AP legajo 162. A translation appears inHart (1929:261ff). Canillas al Rey, 25 abril 1700, AGI, AP 164, emphasizes thereligious worries of the Spanish, who feared the fire of heresy could spread inPanama because of the large numbers of “blacks, mulattoes and Indians whodesire to live in license.” See also Storrs (1999).

69 Borland (1715:7).


dangers: “The Rains here are sometimes very heavy and last severalldays together, being accompanied with much Thunder and Lightning:This wet season is the most sickly time of the year, which is probablycaused through the great stillness and calmness of the Air in this time;whence proceed sulphureous damps and vapours, arising from the Marishand Drowned ground, which render it very unhealthy especially toStrangers.”70

In the first seven weeks, to Christmas Day 1698, thirty-two Scots died.Among the first was Paterson’s wife, who succumbed to “fever” on Nov-ember 14th. Two boys and twenty-nine men died from fever (seven), flux(nineteen), drowning (four) and, in the case of Capt. Thomas Fullerton,“suddenly after warm walking.”71 The Scots were dying at the rate offive per week in the healthiest time of year, and at about ten times thepace typical of European populations at home.72 They probably sufferedfrom ordinary shipboard complaints carried ashore with them, perhapstyphus and dysenteries. In the remaining dry months, January throughMarch, their health improved – or so some colonists claimed:

As to the Country, we find it very healthful; for though we arrivedhere in the Rainy season, from which we had little or no shelter forseveral weeks together, and many sick among us, yet they are so farrecovered, and in so good a state of health as could hardly anywherebe expected among such a number of Men together; nor knowwe anything of those several dangerous and mortal distempers soprevalent in the English and other American Islands.73

But more deadly sickness soon haunted the settlement. By April1699 the rains returned, and with them the fever season. By late May,

70 Borland (1715:11).71 Mackenzie (1699). Also in Colin Campbell’s diary, in the National Library

of Scotland, Ms 846. An excerpt is printed in National Archives of Scotland(1998:10).

72 I estimate that rate at 30 per 1,000 per year. That figure was typical for populationsincluding the very old and the very young; had they stayed at home, the 1,200headed to Darien would probably have had a lower death rate because so manywere in the prime of life.

73 Letter of 28 December 1698 from the council in Caledonia to the directors ofthe Company, quoted in Hart (1929:79). On 18 February 1699, another letter-writer, perhaps Paterson, wrote “The country is healthful to a wonder; insomuchthat our own Sick, which were many when we Arrived, are now generally cured.”Quoted in Hart (1929:237). Bear in mind these authors were boosters.


three hundred had died and each day ten more perished. Constructionceased, and planting too. The Scots never harvested much, only a littlein the way of “yams, Indian corn, and Jamaica pease.”74 Food broughtfrom Scotland rotted quickly, obliging the Scots to resort to eating birdsand monkeys and, when fortunate, turtles. One noted, “it was a mercywe had a good many Highlanders in our legion who were not usedto feed on much of God’s creatures that’s hallowed.”75 The friendlyAmerindians visited less frequently, perhaps having concluded that theScots would not prove a useful ally after all. Hope withered; beer, brandy,and Madeira wine soon ran short,76 and argument and recriminationflourished. The feuds, class resentments, and clan rivalries of Scottishpolitics resurrected themselves on the Panama coast. Men who had oncethought fifty acres here would suit them nicely now wanted only to findgold and get home alive. Paterson fell ill with “intermitting feaver,”probably malaria, but survived.77 Efforts to secure relief from nearbyEnglish settlements came to grief through shipwreck.

Then a rude blow came: word that King William III had instructedall English colonies and settlements in the Americas to have no truckwith the Scots. Concerned about his vulnerability to threats posed byLouis XIV’s France, the King sought to improve relations with Spain,and preventing any relief from reaching the Scots in Panama fit hislarger geopolitical calculation.78 Trained in Realpolitik since childhood,William III could scarcely have been expected to do otherwise: Spaincould help him more against France than Scotland could. But Paterson

74 Memorandum of the Company Directors, 28 November 1699, printed in Insh(1924:110).

75 Walter Herries, quoted in Prebble (1968:144).76 A memorandum of 28 November 1699, recording a meeting of the Company

directors, indicates that the fleeing Scots thought that “their sickness and mor-tality happened through want of fresh provisions and strong liquors, which theysaid was the occasion of their coming away.” Printed in Insh (1924:108–12; quot.p. 109).

77 “Report by William Paterson to the Directors,” 19 December 1699, printed inBurton (1849:178–98). Paterson says he came down with “intermitting feaver”about 5 June 1698.

78 Sir Walter Scott, in Tales of a Grandfather, wrote that those “who perished forwant of provisions for which they were willing to pay, were as much murdered byKing William’s government, as if they had been shot in the snows of Glencoe.”Quoted in Cundall (1926:55). This lays too much at the King’s door: fever andfluxes killed the Scots, not starvation.


and his fellow enthusiasts had imprudently hoped for more from theirKing.

Prospects for the colony looked dim. Grumbling turned into insubor-dination and whispers of mutiny. In June 1699, further bad news arrived:A new Spanish assault force had assembled in Cartagena harbor and hadtargeted the Scots at Darien. After rancorous debate, the colony’s lead-ers chose to abandon the settlement and head home. Still wracked byfever, Paterson dissented, but when the ships weighed anchor, he wason board.

Three ships left the broad bay in late June with perhaps 700 men. Sixothers stayed behind, preferring to die of fever than subject themselvesto sea voyages. A few weeks later, there was no trace of them when aSpanish captain arrived and burned what remained of the settlement. Hereported finding about 400 graves.79 As one survivor saw it three monthslater, “The reason of their comeing away . . . was want of provisions andliquors, being forced to eat yams &c., which broght sickness amongstthem . . . dying 10 or 12 a day . . . ”80

Misadventure dogged the fleeing colonists in the form of continuingepidemics that killed several hundreds, mast-snapping storms, and hos-tility from English officials in the West Indies and the North Ameri-can mainland. The captain of one of the fleeing vessels wrote thatsickness was “so universal,” and “mortality so great that I have hoveoverboard 105 Corps.”81 The Governor of Jamaica, who rebuffed theScots’ requests for succor, wrote: “The Scotch are quite removed fromCallidonia, most of them dead and the rest in so lamentable a conditionthat deserves great compassion. . . . ”82 New York authorities showedmore compassion, and let the Scots stop there for a few weeks, wheremany of them recovered their health. A single ship sufficed to carry thesurvivors, fewer than 300 people, back to Scotland. Paterson again wason board.

79 His report is in AGI, AP 160, and cited in Gallup-Diaz (2004:139). Scottishsources put the total of deceased on shore from this expedition at around 300.

80 John Borland to Daniel McKay, 7 September 1699 (writing from Boston). Printedin Burton (1849:152).

81 Letter of 11 August 1699, National Library of Scotland, Darien Manuscripts.Quoted in Hart (1929:93).

82 Sir William Beeston, 24 August 1698, quoted in Cundall (1926:91). Jamaicanplanters were not inclined to help the Scots colony because they feared thatif it prospered, their Scottish indentured servants would flee to Darien (Insh1932:148n, 160). Captain Long reported this sentiment: Long to the Duke ofLeeds, 15 February 1699, printed in Insh (1924:105).


the second voyage

Only a few days before Paterson and his remnant colonists saw Scotlandagain, a second expedition had set sail for the Darien coast. Buoyedby optimistic (and dishonest) letters83 written by the first colonists intheir first days at Caledonia, the Company sought 500 further colonists.Eager volunteers exceeded demand, and the Company organized fourmore ships and 1,300 more settlers, including 100 women. After a swiftvoyage during which 160 died, 84 they anchored in the Caledonia bay inNovember 1699, just one year after the first settlers. They expected tofind a flourishing colony of compatriots and kinfolk. They found, wroteBorland, “nothing but a vast howling Wilderness, the Colony desertedand gone, their Hutts all burnt, their Fort most part ruined, the Groundwhich they had cleared adjoining to the Fort all overgrown with Shrubsand Weeds. . . . ”85 Despite this keen disappointment, the new settlersresolved to stay.

History then repeated itself, both as tragedy and farce. Rains cameand fevers followed. Supplies rotted and squabbles flourished. Ratherthan wait to be attacked, a party of Scots mounted a surprise assault onthe nearest Spanish position in February 1700. That went well for them,but fever proved a more formidable foe. “Sickness and Mortality . . . wasnow become epidemical and raging, whereby many even of our Officersand chief Men were taken away, which was a sore discouragement tous.”86 By March, several died each day. Survivors dumped the dead in acollective grave on a marshy shore of the bay.

At least a third of the surviving Scots were too sick to walk whenthe Spanish attack finally came. Despite suffering themselves fromyellow fever in the ports from Veracruz to Cartagena, the Spanishhad landed a force of more than 1,000 men, mainly militia, in aninlet a few hours’ march from Caledonia, and besieged the Scots’settlement.87 A brief war of attrition followed. By late March, feverskilled the Scots at the rate of 100 a week, and at the month’s end only

83 For example, Anonymous (1699). The History of Caledonia, pp. 18–20, whichpaints a picture of a land of milk, honey, and gold.

84 Borland (1715:30).85 Borland (1715:30).86 Borland (1715:49).87 A narrative appears in Canillas al Rey, 14 Abril 1700, AGI, AP legajo 164.

Canillas reports using five militia companies and two of garrison soldiers. Themilitiamen presumably carried greater resistance to local diseases than did theScots.


300 could stand to their posts.88 Borland recorded the mood: “The handof the Lord was heavy upon us at this time, our sickness and mortalitymuch increasing, and many dying daily, most of our able officers weretaken away by death. . . . ”89 His colleague Alexander Shields inter-preted the Scots misfortune in the conventional fashion, as “the angerof God plagueing us for our sins, and threatening to cause our Carcasesto fall in the Wilderness, wherein many are fallen already. . . . ”90 Thediary of the Spanish commander, Don Juan Dıaz de Pimienta, showsthat the Spaniards suffered heavily from fever as well, but new shipsbrought more men from Cartagena to make good their losses.91 Witha Spanish fleet anchored offshore, no relief was likely for the Scots.(Although the Scots did not know it, a much larger Spanish fleet wassailing from Spain with instructions to oust them from the isthmus.)92

They could only surrender or wait to die from fevers. The Scots surren-dered, and by mid-April 1700 had left their American Caledonia forgood.93

More horrors awaited the fugitive colonists. Fevers and fluxes carriedoff a dozen or more each day, 250 in all, en route to Jamaica.94 There, inMay and June, still more died of disease. A hurricane “staved to pieces”one refugee ship off the coast of Carolina in September, drowning 112.95

Of the 1,300 who had left Scotland nine months before, some 160 diedon the outward voyage, about 300 in the Darien colony, about 450 infleeing the Darien colony, and fewer than 100 made it home.96 In all,

88 Borland (1715:71).89 Borland (1715:64).90 Letter of Shields, Borland and Archibald Stobo, 2 February 1700, printed in

Borland (1715:55). Borland says the letter was written by Shields, although itwas signed by all three men.

91 Dıaz de Pimienta’s diary is in the Archivo General de Indias, AP, legajo 164.It is translated and printed in Hart (1929:353–93). Borland (1715:17–18) alsomentions Spanish ill health.

92 Storrs (1999:25–6). It arrived after the Scots had departed.93 Borland’s (1715:65) explanation of the decision to give up is instructive: “Shortly

after our Councellors and chief Officers being sensible they were not in aCondition and Capacity to hold out long against the Enemy, the contagioussickness raging so among us from within. . . . ”

94 Borland (1715:79).95 Borland (1715:83).96 This leaves about 290 unaccounted for, who presumably washed up in Jamaica

and the mainland colonies but did not continue home to Scotland. One whostayed in South Carolina was Jean Stobo, the great-great-great grandmother ofTheodore Roosevelt. Hart (1929:143–4); Cundall (1926:99–100).


the Darien venture killed about 2,000 of the 2,500 Scots who had sailedto the isthmus.97 It also cost the entire capital invested.

aftermath and diagnosis

Thousands of Scots had lost all their money. Angry mobs besieged theCompany’s offices in Edinburgh, and Scots the length and breadth ofthe country blamed the King for the settlement’s failure. A blizzard ofpamphlets blanketed the country, accusing all and sundry of incompe-tence and worse.98 The Company and its captains tried further venturesin the spice trade, slave trade, and even a little piracy in the IndianOcean. Unaccountably undaunted, Paterson tried to pitch a new Dariensettlement venture to authorities in England in 1701,99 but nothingcould make good the loss of £219,000 on the Darien scheme.100 WhenEngland offered to pay off the entire debt of the Scottish Parliamentand reimburse the shareholders of the Company in the proposed unionof the parliaments of England and Scotland, many Scots found this offerirresistible. Even some committed Scottish patriots such as Patersonendorsed the Act of Union of 1707.101 Thus Great Britain was born,with assistance from the fevers of Darien.102

Just what fevers were involved is impossible to say with certainty.Patrick MacDowall, part of the 1699 relief flotilla, wrote of his boutwith fever:

It was a very severe spotted fever, my whole body being entirelypale red. . . . I had, in the beginning, an extraordinary desire ofvomiting, and accordingly drunk warm water which did make me

97 According to the deposition of the prisoner Spenser in Havana, one of the fivewomen who went to Darien survived. MHS, Hart Papers, Box 3, Item 48.

98 Insh (1932:235) has details.99 William Paterson, “Proposal for Settling on the Isthmus of Darien releasing the

natives from the tyranny of Spain and throwing open the Indies of America toall nations” (1701), British Library, Additional MSS, 12,437.

100 Of the £400,000, only £219,000 had been called in before the scheme failed(Hart 1929:41).

101 After recovering his health, Paterson stood unsuccessfully for the British Par-liament, and made his living for some years in London as a mathematics tutorbefore in 1718 winning a settlement of £16,000 from Parliament for services tothe nation. He died in 1719 (Forrester 2004).

102 The Act of Union contained many other provisions that sweetened the loss ofindependence for the Scots, notably the freedom to trade anywhere in the King’sdominions. But many Scots could not cheerfully accept these terms, and foughtin doomed rebellions in 1715 and 1745.


vomit up some base, yellowish, bitter, unpleasant choleric sort ofstuff of which I found great ease. I continued very ill for four orfive days. I took with it a great headache, soreness of my eyes,and weariness of all my joints and bones, which continued allthe time with me. I was very inclined to fainting all the while ofmy sickness, and a considerable time afterwards it brought me soextraordinary weak that I am not yet able to walk alone now.103

MacDowall asked to be bled and purged, but instead was given blis-tering plasters on his temples and neck. He survived. Borland wrote of“malignant fevers and fluxes” and noted that “men were very speedilytaken away by this wasting sickness some in tolerable health to day andcut off by sudden violent Fevers and Fluxes in a very few days.”104

The Council in Darien mentioned “head and belly-aches, fevers,fluxes . . . ”105 Regrettably, the textual evidence is slender and incon-clusive.

A likely interpretation is as follows. The original expedition, whichlost only forty on the long voyage from Scotland, apparently lost mostof them between St. Thomas and the Darien coast. The initial spate ofmortality in the colony in November and December of 1698 was prob-ably the residual result of the combination of some infections pickedup during the week spent in St. Thomas plus whatever illnesses alreadyreigned on shipboard. But then, it seems, in January and February healthimproved. With the rains in April, May, and June, sickness returned,this time more severely. The Darien coast in general made good habitatfor An. albimanus, the chief malaria vector in the Caribbean, and themangrove and salt-marsh shores around the fort and settlement providedideal breeding grounds. They fed eagerly on the settlers, as there wererather few mammals to choose from. But malaria alone, even falciparummalaria, is highly unlikely to kill so many so quickly. It is more likelyto have been either yellow fever, which could plausibly have killed themajority of 1,200 strangers to the region, or some combination of severalsimultaneous diseases, probably including yellow fever, falciparummalaria, and dysentery.106

103 Prebble (1968:183). The original is in the National Library of Scotland, DarienPapers, 49/353–60.

104 Borland (1715:64, 78).105 Letter of 23 December 1699 to Company directors, quoted in Hart (1929:129).106 Men who stayed on board ship apparently enjoyed better health than those who

went ashore, which the Scots attributed to the easier availability of “Rum and


The second expedition suffered heavy mortality from soon after itsarrival in November 1699, which continued on shipboard as survivorsfled the isthmus. Very few died in combat with Spanish forces. As withthe first expedition, yellow fever in concert with dysentery and malaria,and possibly dengue as well, is the likeliest explanation. It matchesthe textual evidence as well as any other explanation. It is consistentwith the ecological conditions of the colony, and with the fact thathigh mortality persisted on the refugee ships. It is supported by the factthat in the 1690s yellow fever ricocheted around the ports and coastsof the greater Caribbean in the first widespread epidemic since that of1647–1652. And it can account for the high death rates among menwho had weathered the perils of years at sea or in Flanders’ camps andbarracks, both fine environments for improving one’s portfolio of diseaseimmunities.

Yellow fever is normally found in cities, and New Edinburgh was notmuch of a town. But mosquitoes had surely joined the fleet in St.Thomas. And within a few months of landing at Darien the Scots hadbuilt the necessary barrels, casks, and cisterns to store water for thedry season and thereby created good habitat for A. aegpyti larvae. Itis also possible that the “many monkies” of the Darien coast alreadyserved as a reservoir of the virus, which mosquitoes (imported or not)then transmitted to the Scots.107 One diary indicates the Scots hadtaken a monkey as a pet by November 4, 1698.108 It is uncertain ifthe virus lay in wait for the Scots or if they brought it with them fromSt. Thomas. But that it found them suitable hosts seems supported byseveral sorts of evidence, most suggestively the appalling mortality andthe virus’ undoubted presence throughout the Greater Caribbean at thattime. Something, either yellow fever or some combination of infections,killed maybe 70 percent of the 2,500 Scots who went to Darien.109

strong Liquors” on ship. Lesser exposure to mosquitoes is a likelier explanation.Memorandum of the Company Directors, 28 November 1699, printed in Insh(1924:110). McSherry (1986) favors dengue, using MacDowall’s description tomake his diagnosis, but considers yellow fever and malaria possible alternatives.

107 Borland (1715:15).108 “A Journal kept from Scotland by one of the Company who sailed on board the

‘Endeavour’ pink,” printed in Insh (1924:75); also quoted in Hart (1929:67).The monkey might have been from St. Thomas, or from Darien. And it mightor might not have carried the yellow fever virus.

109 This figure comes from National Archives of Scotland (1998:9).


The Scots were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They wereboth geopolitically and epidemiologically naıve in their ambition tobestride the isthmus of Panama. But they were also unlucky. The 1690spresented a trifecta of adverse circumstances for a venture of this sort.First, famine in Scotland, a result of the coldest weather of the LittleIce Age, meant that some of the colonists were already in poor physicalshape when setting out, and that the Company would have difficultyproviding the financial support and supplies that the Darien colonyneeded because provisions in Scotland were scarce and dear. Second,a yellow fever epidemic raging throughout the Caribbean meant thatnewcomers to the region were almost assured of falling prey to one of themost deadly viruses on earth. The 1690s also witnessed plenty of extremeweather in Mexico and the Caribbean – droughts, floods, frosts – and thealternation of drought and flood probably helped boost populations ofdisease vectors.110 And third, the larger geopolitical situation of Europeand the Atlantic world meant that not only would Spain necessarilyresist anyone’s attempt to settle the isthmus but that, in addition, theScots’ king, in his more important roles as king of England and defenderof the Netherlands, would necessarily take a hostile view of the Scots’ambitions. Had the Scots made the attempt in another decade, some ofthese adverse circumstances would not have obtained, and their chancesof success might have been better. As it was, they were both naıve andunlucky, and suffered the consequences.

Even had the geopolitical conditions been favorable, the Scots wouldhave died from fever. Borland, after recounting the health problems atDarien at the outset of his book, wrote: “So it seems it may be saidof Darien, thou Land devourest Men, and eatest up the Inhabitants.No wonder then though our Colonie neither did, nor could thrivethere, suppose no other Enemy in the World had molested them.”He returned to his lugubrious theme at the close of his book: “OurSettlement in Darien, was in a very sickly and unwholesome Climateas is marked above, therefore the Spaniards deserted it long ago, andcould our People of a far more Northerly Latitude than Spain is, expecthere long to thrive and prosper, this Consideration alone, would soonhave made our People weary of it, as a Place too hot for them, and

110 On weather: Endfield (2008). On weather and disease vectors, Acuna-Sotoet al. (2002) and Chapter 2, in which the argument is made that droughtfollowed by heavy rains is a pattern most favorable for A. aegypti.


Map 4.4. Guyana and Kourou

too costly and chargable to maintain.”111 Whereas at healthier latitudesfrom New Zealand to Nova Scotia, millions of descendants of Scotswalk the Earth, at Darien today nothing remains of the Scots but fainttraces of Fort St. Andrew and the place name Punta Escoces, sometimesused for the promontory beside the broad bay.

The French at Kourou, 1763–1764

Kourou is a modest town in French Guyana, situated where the broadKourou River meets the Atlantic. Today it is known chiefly as the launchsite of the European Space Agency. From 1852 until 1952, it formedpart of a penal colony collectively known in the Anglophone world asDevil’s Island. In 1763–1765, it was the scene of the most spectacularlydeadly colonization effort in the history of the Americas.112

111 Borland (1715:19, 100).112 The most complete modern account is Michel (1989). A medical account (to my

mind unconvincing) is Chaia (1958). Survivors’ accounts include Bajon (1777).Campet (1802) is a military doctor’s report on the disaster. The French govern-ment in 1842 published an account of the failed settlement with excerpts fromcontemporary documents (Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies, 1842), the


kourou in the eighteenth century

The region that is now French Guyana has hosted human population forsome 6,000 years. It became French only in 1664, after some six decadesof desultory competition among handfuls of Dutch, English, and Frenchpirates and settlers. The French settlement centered on Cayenne, butincluded tiny clusters at the mouths of the main rivers. Cayenne fellbriefly to English forces in 1667 and Dutch in 1676. The indigenouspopulation of French Guyana, as everywhere in the Americas, haddeclined quickly under the impact of Eurasian and African diseases. By1700, some 30,000 remained, and by 1800 only 2,000.113 Few peoplecame to take their places. In 1716, only 3,000 Europeans and Africanslived in French Guyana, and in 1737 about 4,800, of whom 89 percentwere of African descent, almost all slaves. Yellow fever epidemics sweptthrough every twenty years or so in the eighteenth century.114 Becauseof a shortage of females and the lethal disease environment, birth ratestrailed death rates in French Guyana, and only continued immigrationkept it alive – normal in the plantation zones of the Americas. Thecolony was a backwater, neglected by French authorities and badlyrun by a single family with good political connections. In 1749, anofficial report concluded that Guyana had “made little progress sinceits inception and, consisting of an inert group of derelict colonists, hasgenerally been a curse to the King.”115

The land struck most of those who saw it as unpromising, if notaccursed.116 The coastal plain, which extended 10 to 60 kilometers

originals of which are mainly in the Bibliotheque Nationale, nouvelles acquisi-tions francaises, MSS 2,571–2,583 and in the Collection Moreau de St. Mery,Archives Nationales, Serie Colonies, C14. A full sense of the context is pro-vided by Polderman (2004), which also (pp. 596–698) prints many of the originaldocuments. The most helpful recent articles are Pouliquen (2002), Rothschild(2006), and Hodson (2007), but see also Epstein (1984) and Lowenthal (1952).

113 Polderman (2004:166) has lower figures for Amerindians in French Guyana:about 17,000 for 1676 and only a few hundred in 1763.

114 Cardoso (1999:336). Artur (2002:581, 693) noted an outbreak of measles in 1747and smallpox epidemics in 1717 and 1760. Demographic data from Thurmes(2006:81–90). Thibaudault (1995:37) has similar data.

115 “Memoire concernant la colonie de Guyane,” 27 Mars 1749, quoted and trans-lated in Epstein (1984:85).

116 Michel (1989:28–34) for geographic description based on eighteenth-centurysources. Bajon (1777–1778, 2:177–402) describes flora, fauna, and agriculture inFrench Guyana of the 1760s and 1770s.


inland, consisted mainly of tidal salt marshes covered with grasses andmangroves. The soils along the coast, coated with alluvium from theAmazon brought around the shoulder of South America by ocean cur-rents, often contained excessive sulfur and salt. They did not supportcultivation well. The coastal plain was so flat that the tide washed into a distance of 15 or more kilometers from the coast. The climate wasalways hot and unrelentingly humid. Rain fell, often in torrents, on 200–250 days of the year; March to June were the wettest months. August,September, and October might be entirely rainless.117 Strong windsand currents, and the lack of conspicuous landmarks, made the coasthard to navigate. However, for all its uninviting features the coastalplain was a flourishing corner of the biosphere, with a plethora of plantspecies,118 throngs of birds, fish, shellfish, reptiles, turtles, monkeys,tapirs, peccaries, jaguars, alligators, caymans, snakes galore, and manyother creatures, most of them unfamiliar to European naturalists whorisked life and limb to inspect them.119 Equally flourishing, and equallyunfamiliar to Europeans, was the inland forest, which began where thecoastal marsh grasses ended and extended southward into Amazonia.The coast and the forest both were good mosquito country.120

The only town of consequence was Cayenne, about 150 or 200 woodor earthen buildings in 1760, standing on an island just off the coast,one of the few outcrops of higher ground. A few plantations surroundedthe town, growing sugar, indigo, annatto (a source of dye), cacao, andcotton. They, too, stood just above the tidemarshes. The sugar plan-tations went into decline from the 1740s, and by 1760 only eight ornine remained.121 French planters lacked the capital and expertise thattheir Dutch counterparts used to dike and exploit coastal tidemarshes innearby Surinam, and consequently found most of the landscape uselessexcept for hunting and fishing. They had learned from experience tobuild their homes at a distance from the swamps. As a veteran planternoted, “ . . . it would be very imprudent to situate the house in such away that it would receive the exhalations from these stagnant places.”122

117 Cardoso (1999:46–50) has climate details.118 Aublet (1775) catalogued and illustrated hundreds of them.119 Touchet (2004); Cardoso (1999:53–60).120 Aublet (1775, 4:xv–xviii) complained of mosquitoes, among much else. He

collected plants there in 1762–1764.121 Cardoso (1999:217). On cotton and cacao, Cardoso (1999:231–4).122 Prefontaine (1764:7), quoted in and translated by Lowenthal (1952:26).


The few French settlers had come to live well, not to labor. An Englishvisitor who enjoyed their hospitality in the 1750s reported: “Their prin-cipal business is to find pleasures, and if they have any disquietude it isfor the lack of them.”123 In 1763, almost all the French population ofGuyana, about 575 people in all, lived in and around Cayenne, as didthe majority of Africans, who numbered about 7,000.124

Almost no one lived at Kourou. A Jesuit mission had been foundedthere in 1713–1714. At times, it found itself at odds with the colonialgovernment in Cayenne, but more often than not it was left to its owndevices, a tiny world apart: a handful of Jesuit priests and a few Indiansand Africans in various stages of conversion to Christianity, perhaps 200people in all. Kourou was on the fringes of a backwater.125 Geopoliticswould soon change that.

choiseul’s plan

The Seven Years War ended badly for France. In Europe, its coalitionagainst Prussia had fallen apart; in India, it had lost almost everythingto Britain; on the high seas, its navy had suffered crushing defeats tothe Royal Navy; and still more bitter disappointments came in Amer-ica. British forces had taken Canada, Cape Breton Island, the Louisianaterritory, and three small Caribbean islands, Dominica, Grenada, andTobago. In the Peace of Paris in 1763, the British got Spanish Florida,and France had to donate Louisiana to Spain. Only St. Domingue, Mar-tinique, Guadeloupe, and two tiny islets off of Newfoundland remainedto France, aside from the struggling colony of alleged pleasure-seekersin Guyana.

The minister responsible for French grand strategy, the Duc de Choi-seul (1719–1785), noticed that thousands of colonists had foughtin Britain’s victories in North America. With the loss of Canada,France had no loyal populations to draw on in the Americas. Slaves,presumed politically unreliable, dominated demographically in St.Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Choiseul feared that the

123 Jefferys (1760:234). The officers of the French garrison lived “en orgie,” accordingto Aublet. Cited in Thibaudault (1995:75).

124 Michel (1989:37–9); Cardoso (1999:329); Polderman (2004:269–453) on plan-tations, and p. 281 on population.

125 Polderman (2004:232–53) and Thibaudault (1995:33–9) on the Kourou Jesuitmission. An eyewitness account is Artur (2002:555–6).


latter two islands would easily fall to Britain when war next broke out,which everyone expected would be soon. His solution to this strategicquandary was Kourou.126

Choiseul secretly planned a new colony for Guyana, something alongthe lines of a tropical Quebec. He wanted it composed of white set-tlers, with no slaves, and rejected proposals for a more conventionalsugar-and-slave colony.127 This preference for white settlers came notso much from moral objections to the inhumanity of slavery,128 butfrom the view that Europeans became lazy where they had slaves todo all the work, and most importantly that a slave colony could notprovide loyal military manpower in the way that Massachusetts, NewYork, and Pennsylvania, among others, had done for Britain in theSeven Years War. A robust colony of hardy white settlers would safe-guard Martinique and Guadeloupe and, in time, allow France to takerevenge on Britain, conquering some of her American possessions.Given the difficulties the French navy experienced against Britain inthe war, it seemed especially prudent to have a military populationalready across the Atlantic. Choiseul thought a thriving colony mightalso provide a market for French manufactures. He hoped to recruit18,000 settlers and get them set up in Guyana quickly, lest the Britishinterfere.

While Choiseul schemed to restore French power in the Americas, aplanter, the Chevalier Antoine Bruletout de Prefontaine (1717–1787),had come to the conclusion that the time was ripe for state-sponsoredcolonization in Guyana. A military man, Prefontaine had lived inGuyana for two decades since age twenty-two, and knew conditionswell. He retailed them in Physiocratic salons in Paris in 1762 and in aninterview with Choiseul at Versailles. He detailed them in a book thatChoiseul and his advisors consulted.129 Choiseul thought he had foundthe man to bring about his geopolitical dream, awarded the planter a

126 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:3–4).127 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:3, 6–12). He also rejected the

idea, advanced by a baron from Alsace, of creating a lord-and-vassal societyin Guyana. Ibid, 12–14 Larin (2006:70). Choiseul’s plans: Daubigny (1892);Marcus (1905).

128 Choiseul did write that his plan was in line with “the view of justice andhumanity that animates His Majesty . . . ” Choiseul memorandum quoted inDaubigny (1892:42); and in Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:4).

129 Prefontaine (1763). By some accounts (e.g., Chaia 1958:6), the book was pub-lished by Choiseul’s order.


medal, and charged him with finding the right location in Guyana. ButChoiseul did not heed Prefontaine’s detailed suggestions: small num-bers of colonists, sent out in increments over many years, together withimports of African slaves. Prefontaine had wanted an ordinary WestIndian slave colony, but was entrusted with the salvation of Frenchpower in the Americas. He chose a spot on the banks of the KourouRiver, which had a passable anchorage, a few livestock kept at the Jesuitmission, and about a hundred slaves.130

Choiseul chose a forty-two-year-old cavalry man and botany enthu-siast, who had spent fifteen years on the Mediterranean island of Maltabut knew nothing of Guyana, to lead the settlement as its governor.Etienne Francois Turgot (1721–89) came from a prominent family; hisyounger brother would later ascend to the highest ranks of Louis XVI’sbureaucracy. It was Turgot connections that had helped Prefontainegain entry to Parisian salons and political circles.

Turgot’s first task was to recruit 18,000 settlers. He and his agentsmet with remarkable success. With extravagant promises of free land,bounteous harvests, government support for thirty months, and so forth,they found over 15,000 men, women, and children ready to take achance on life in Guyana.131 Most came from Alsace and the Rhineland(lands recently ravaged by competing armies in the Seven Years War),some from Belgium, and a few from Switzerland, Malta, Ireland, Austria,and Canada. A tiny few were Acadian refugees, families of Frenchdescent, language, and culture, expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755 andliving off government largesse in France. Choiseul regarded them ashardy colonists.132

Documents in French archives preserve the names of more than13,000 luckless souls who passed through St.-Jean d’Angely (nearRochefort) en route to Kourou. A large proportion of the family namesare German; many of the migrants appear to be young families.133

130 Prefontaine’s life is recounted in Thibaudault (1995:47–56). Michel (1989:44)says he may have chosen Kourou because it was far from Surinam and unlikelyto arouse the ire of the Dutch. The royal instructions given Turgot indicate thatFrench settlers were intended as a bulwark against possible Dutch incursions.Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:15).

131 The official text explaining the conditions of recruitment and settlement appearsin Artur (2002:713–15).

132 On Canadians and Acadians, Larin (2006). Hodson (2007:109–16) details therecruitment of Acadians and Germans.

133 Thibaudault (1995:248–503) lists the names and sometimes the occupations ofsome 15,000 recruits whose names appear in the seven official registers, housed


Choiseul approved the recruitment of foreigners because he shared theprevailing notions that state power lay in population, and he worriedthat French population might be in decline (it was not). Jews and Protes-tants were also welcome to go. Choiseul sought miners, in hopes thatuseful minerals would be found, tobacco-growers, and others with spe-cialized skills, including bakers, carpenters, and, strangely, ten familiesof musicians, a few actors and jesters, and even an economist. Withadmirable attention to detail, the French foreign minister specificallyasked for six tambourine players to keep up the spirits of settlers in thelight of the homesickness he expected they might face. A French navalofficial, the youthful Baron Malouet, who reviewed a contingent of set-tlers gathered in the chief embarkation port, Rochefort, thought it “adeplorable spectacle . . . to see this crowd of imbeciles of all classes whocounted on making a fortune overnight, and among whom, in additionto agricultural workers, there were capitalists, youths of good family,entire families of artisans, city folk, gentlemen, a crowd of civil andmilitary servants, and finally a troup of clowns and musicians. . . . ”134

Some 40 percent of the 13,000 or 14,000 who sailed for Kourou wereunder eighteen years old.135 Kourou settlers outnumbered the maximumannual European emigration to all of French America before 1763 byabout 20:1, and roughly equaled the annual number of slaves importedinto all French colonies put together (c. 1749–1777).136

settlement and sickness

Choiseul and Turgot wanted their new colony up and running in a hurry.In February 1763, Choiseul explained that the king “proposes to send a

in four archives (p. 243). Larin (2006:179–232) lists Canadians recruited forKourou (not all went) and gives brief biographies of many.

134 Malouet (1802, 1:5). A slightly different translation from mine appears in Lowen-thal (1952:29). On musicians and clowns, see also Ministere de la Marine et desColonies (1842:5). Rothschild (2006:79) mentions an economist; Thibaudault’slists show the great majority were laborers, with a leavening of bakers, carpen-ters, masons, and the odd wigmaker or two. On tambourine players, ArchivesNationales d’Outre-Mer, Colonies, B 117, Choiseul a de Fraignes, 13 fevrier1763. I owe this reference to Jean-Francois Mouhot.

135 Michel (1989:56, 89). Many were foundlings and bastards (ibid, pp. 66–9).Thibaudault’s (1995:248–334) list of nearly 8,000 names of colonists destinedfor Guyana show large numbers of children and young families. Estimates of thetotal number of migrants vary from 10,000 to 16,000. Malouet (1802, 1:6) wrote14,000. See also the review in Larin (2006:74–5).

136 French slave trade data from Stein (1979:211). See also Klein (1999:211).


large number of families incessantly to clear and cultivate the land.”137

Prefontaine and some 300 woodsmen arrived in October 1763 to preparethe chosen site. His instructions urged him to assemble the local Indiansand persuade them to marry their daughters to French colonists, in hopesof maximizing population.138 The first eight shiploads of colonists (1,429people) began to arrive at Kourou on Christmas Day after seven weeksat sea. They were led by Jean-Baptiste Thibault de Chanvalon (1725–85), civil governor (intendant) of the colony. Officially, he was second incommand to Turgot, who stayed in France. Chanvalon found a half-builttown, which he referred to as a camp, with a few acres cleared but fullof waist-high tree stumps. Initially, he waxed cheerfully about immenseand beautiful prairies with fertile soils on which settlers would needonly to “build their homes and release some livestock” to prosper.139

Chanvalon surveyed some suitable sites for settlers’ estates along thebanks of the Kourou as far as 90 kilometers upriver during the winterand early spring of 1764. But in February, another 413 settlers arrived,and Chanvalon complained he had no space to put them.140

Soon, another 1,650 settlers disembarked. Chanvalon, who was bornand raised in Martinique and knew something of the Greater Caribbean,complained that too many people were coming too soon to a colonystill unprepared to receive them, and that those sent were malcontentsunwilling to work without the threat of imprisonment or firing squads.141

But Chanvalon’s letters arrived late and legions of further volunteerswere piling up in French ports, where they proved unpopular with thelocals. So the ships kept sailing. Between February and June of 1764,some 7,000 more landed before any crops could be harvested.142 Theysubsisted on supplies brought from France. Each convoy was a latter-day Noah’s ark with cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, donkeys, goats, chickens,

137 Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Colonies, B 117, Choiseul a de Fraignes,13 fevrier 1763.

138 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:29).139 Correspondance de l’intendant (Chanvalon), lettre numero 4 (quoted in Min-

istere de la Marine et des Colonies 1842:37). The original, written in December1763: “il ne s’agit que d’y construire leurs logements et d’y jeter des bestiaux.”

140 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:40, 44–5).141 Chanvalon au Ministre, 18 fevrier 1764, quoted in Michel (1989:63); and Chan-

valon au Ministre, 29 Mars 1764, quoted in ibid (p. 79). Chanvalon (2004) evenpublished a natural history book about Martinique in 1763.

142 Michel (1989:81). Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:51) gives 9,000for the year 1764.


ducks, geese, and more. Intended to breed flocks and herds to sustain thefuture colony, most of these unwilling creatures were eaten within daysor weeks of disembarking in Guyana. Chanvalon asked for clothing,tools, and wine, but got more mouths to feed. He also got wool capsand ice skates intended for Canada but sent to Guyana, while promisedmedicine chests never arrived.143 One contingent of settlers, describedas the “scum of eastern France,” was turned away by the authoritiesat Cayenne, normally the first port of arrival in Guyana.144 The fewpatches of cleared land at Kourou could not accommodate them all, soChanvalon parked new arrivals on three offshore islets known as theIles du Diable, which he deviously rebaptised the Iles du Salut. In April1764, Chanvalon reported 150 colonists were sick.

Deadly epidemics took hold in June 1764. According to the Frenchdoctor Jacques Francois Artur, the rainy season had lasted longer thanusual. Thousands had to live and sleep outdoors owing to a lack ofbuildings and tents, thus maximally exposed to what was likely a bumpercrop of mosquitoes.145 No hospital had yet been built on the Iles duSalut, and that on the mainland was incomplete, overstuffed with thesick, and bereft of medical supplies – not that most medicines couldhave helped.146 Almost all the apothecaries and surgeons at Kouroufell ill.147 The remainder bled the sick, following normal practice, sothe lack of medical care probably proved a mercy. Chanvalon himselffell sick by late June 1764. The crisis prevented planting until August.Chanvalon tried to bolster spirits by sponsoring weddings and banquets,and by building an open-air theatre, and by appealing to authorities inhis native Martinique to send young women of good family but poorfortune to be brides in Kourou. He suppressed a small rebellion.148

But his greatest enemy remained microbial. In July 1764, allegedlyonly 50 fully fit men could be found at Kourou. By December, some6,000 were ill with “fievres malignes.” Food ran short, as too few healthy

143 Larin (2006:72).144 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:48).145 On the rainy season and tent shortage, Artur to Turgot quoted in Artur

(2002:68).146 A document cited in Polderman (2004:483) indicates Turgot ordered medicines

for Kourou in June 1764, including licorice powder, absinthe, rosewater, flowerof the elder tree, and others of equal uselessness.

147 According to a letter from Artur to Turgot, quoted in Artur (2002:47).148 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:53–5). No evidence suggests any

demoiselles of Martinique actually went to Kourou.


men remained to hunt.149 His immune system primed by two decadesof prior exposure to Guyana’s infections, Prefontaine remained amongthe living.150

Governor Turgot, who had sailed as far as Cayenne but prudentlycame no closer to Kourou, quarreled with Chanvalon – they both knewsomeone would be held responsible for the budding fiasco – and had himarrested on Christmas Day 1764. Turgot stayed for three months, longenough to secure title to 12,000 hectares for himself, before decidingearly in 1765 that Kourou should be abandoned. Abandonment cametoo late for almost all concerned. The first and only census at Kourou,conducted in January 1765 by a certain Chevalier de Balzac, counted918 living souls among the ghosts.151

Somewhere between 10,400 and 10,900 European settlers came toKourou in 1764–1765. Together with military personnel, the totalnumber of migrants came to at least 12,000, and some sources prefer14,000 or more. About 1,200 civilians survived Kourou and returned toFrance, including Chanvalon. A few others washed up on Martinique,St. Domingue, and elsewhere. About 11,000 Europeans died in Kourouand its environs, mainly between June 1764 and April 1765.152 Presum-ably, some Amerindians and Africans died as well, although the Frenchsources do not mention them, and they were few in number to beginwith at Kourou.153 Among Europeans, the death rate came to 85 or90 percent. Thus ended the single most abysmal failure, in terms of totallives lost, in the annals of American colonization.

diagnosis and aftermath

As usual, no certain retrospective diagnosis is possible. But as with thesettlers at Darien, the likeliest explanation is that a few infections raged

149 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:62–3); Thibaudault (1995:121).150 Michel (1989:82–4). See also a letter from a royal doctor in Guyana printed

in Michel (1989:171–2). Thibaudault (1995:56) indicates Prefontaine fell ill inAugust 1764, contrary to Michel, but has him reconnoitering nearby districts inSeptember. Thibaudault’s book is a strange one, with imagined dialogue mixedwith long (unsourced) quotations from archival documents.

151 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies (1842:72). Balzac, a relative of Turgotwho lost his health at Kourou but lived until 1777, probably missed some.

152 Larin (2006:129). Raynal (1770, 1:26–9) gives 10,000, saying 12,000 arrivedand 2,000 returned while 60 families stayed.

153 Michel (1989:89–91); Eymeri (1992:236) says 10,000 Europeans died and about14,000 altogether. The latter figure at least is likely to be high.


simultaneously, yellow fever chief among them. The textual evidencefingering yellow fever is strong. A botanist and royal physician, Jean-Baptiste Patris, who as Inspector General of Hospitals helped inventorythe dead at Kourou, wrote of “a fever, accompanied by black and bloodyvomit, which kills within five days.”154 He referred to this as analogousto “mal de Siam,” a frequent term for yellow fever. This could havebeen hemorrhagic dengue, or more likely yellow fever itself. Denguealone could not plausibly cause the mortality recorded at Kourou,although it could well have been present. Patris also mentioned “fievrestierces et quartes” (tertian and quartian malaria, to be expected in amarshy landscape), typhus (a normal companion on ocean voyages),and “benign” dysentery. The chief surgeon at the French military hos-pital at Cayenne, Pierre Campet, who treated hundreds of refugees fromKourou in November 1764, found they suffered from “an epidemic dis-ease in which one vomits material black like ink,” which also stronglysuggests yellow fever.155 Campet also noted that a colleague in Cayennedied of “vomissement noir” in early 1765.156

Another doctor who treated the sufferers at Kourou, Bertrand Bajon,denied the infection in question was yellow fever. But Bajon was some-thing of a promoter of French Guyana, and was concerned to makeit sound healthy. Quite implausibly, he claimed it never had yellowfever, smallpox, or measles. However, he noted the epidemic of 1764–1765 included symptoms such as hemorrhage and jaundice, copiousvomiting, and the facts that it affected the most robust, and that itdisappeared completely by 1766. These details caused the French poly-math Alexandre Moreau de Jonnes, who had witnessed several epi-demics in the West Indies, to conclude that Bajon had either acciden-tally or deliberately failed to identify the epidemic properly as yellowfever.157

154 Letter of 2 mars 1766, printed in Michel (1989:171–2); and quoted in partin Thibaudault (1995:119). The original: “Les fievres aigues accompagnees devomissements noirs et sanguins qui emportent en cinq jours. . . . ” Patris noted thisfever had not recurred since April 1765.

155 Campet (1802:73). The original: “une maladie epidemique dans laquelle on vomitune materielle noir comme l’encre.”

156 Campet (1802:78).157 Moreau de Jonnes (1820:75–80); Bajon (1777–1778, 1:58–71). Bajon also noted

that almost all those who suffered “hemorrhages par le nez” (p. 69) died verysoon. This argues against dengue, which like yellow fever often involves nasalbleeding, as in hemorrhagic form it (today) kills only about 10% of its victims.


Beyond these textual clues, there is circumstantial evidence thatimplicates yellow fever but not acting alone. Apparently, the epi-demic attacked only the newcomers, not the tiny local population.158

Prefontaine and Chanvalon’s survival in the midst of the pestilence isanother argument for a diagnosis of yellow fever because it alone of thelikely infections confers full immunity, and they had each spent decadesin the region. Yellow fever, the most deadly of all the plausible diseases,might alone have killed 85 to 90 percent of a highly vulnerable popula-tion, although it is more reasonable to assume, especially because manychildren died at Kourou, that more than one ailment scythed down theunlucky thousands.159

The Kourou catastrophe naturally had reverberations in France.Some 30 million livres, as well as about 11,000 lives, had been squan-dered. Charges of incompetence and financial mismanagement werebrought against Chanvalon, and in 1767 he was thrown into theBastille, and later confined to a room at Mont St. Michel. His wifewas sent to a convent. Turgot, whom Choiseul now called a “madmanand a scoundrel,” also faced charges, and was exiled from Paris.160 Hisbrother, serving the crown as intendant of Limoges (he later was a promi-nent economist and finance minister), used his connections at court tosoften the punishment. Choiseul managed to shunt all blame for Kourouonto his underlings, and remained in power until 1770. After he passedfrom the political scene, judgments on Chanvalon and Turgot wererevised, and Chanvalon was freed and awarded damages. Turgot settled

Bajon (p. 70) wrote that the epidemic killed old and new colonists alike, whichseems unlikely in the case of malaria but plausible for dengue or yellow fever, ifit had been absent for many years, as Bajon claimed. Finally, Bajon (p. 63) wrotethat the epidemic typically killed people 13–16 days after they fell sick, consistentwith yellow fever (see Chapter 2). Campet (1802:74) mentions “fevers, scurvy,dysenteries” at Kourou.

158 Thibaudault (1995:121).159 Bancroft (1769:396–7) gives an account of malaria and yellow fever in Guyana.

Polderman (2004:564–6) shows that in 1764 French Guyana was reconnectedwith the West African disease pool after six years’ isolation. In the half centuryafter 1709, French Guyana typically received one or two ships annually fromWest Africa, packed with slaves. None at all came in the war years 1758–1763.But in 1764, three ships (and 420 slaves) arrived at Cayenne, reconnectingthe colony with West Africa’s Guinea coast. These ships might have broughtinfections and vectors with them.

160 Choiseul (1904:410), cited in Rothschild (2006:84).


quietly in Normandy, his family’s base, and followed his interests inagriculture and botany by planting Guyanan pepper trees on his estate.Prefontaine, whose property had been confiscated, returned to Guyanain 1770 and lived amid the ghosts on his rice and indigo plantationuntil his death in 1787. Choiseul died in 1785, leaving a mountain ofdebt. For decades after the Kourou catastrophe, French Guyana held areputation as a death trap for Europeans, which made it a suitable des-tination for the French state to ship criminals and political dissidents,begun on a modest scale during the most turbulent years of the FrenchRevolution and then more consistently after a penal colony opened in1852. The penal colony lasted a century. Like the settlers before them,most prisoners lasted only months.161

Conclusion

Darien and Kourou are now forgotten. Only a few historians have anyidea of what happened there. But in their time, these were major disastersthat brought political turmoil in Scotland and France, and helped shapefuture events in the Americas. They also represent the power of importeddiseases, after the 1640s establishment of yellow fever in the region, toprevent new large-scale European settlement in the Greater Caribbean.

Before the entrenchment of yellow fever, European settlements andconquests proceeded in the Americas with only modest obstacles fromthe microbial world. Like the Dutch in Brazil, the settlers and conquerorssuffered little if any more from disease than those whom they aimedto displace. This situation endured (barely) through the middle of theseventeenth century, when the English took Jamaica before malaria (anddysentery) laid them low. Had Jamaica been fortified or more stoutlydefended, the conquest would not have succeeded before malaria madeit impossible. Had the English sent their army in 1647 or 1648, rampantyellow fever would likely have killed most of its men even faster thandid the diseases circulating in 1655–1656. But Cromwell had the goodfortune to launch his assault just a few years after yellow fever hadburned its way through the Greater Caribbean.

161 The official inquests and aftermath of Kourou are treated in Michel (1989:107–51), and in Rothschild (2006). For the effects on French approaches to Guyana,Mam-Lam Fouck (1996:66). Toth (2006) explores the history of the penalcolony.


By the 1690s, when yellow fever was again raging throughout theGreater Caribbean (and as far north as Boston in summertime), evenunfortified landscapes such as Darien’s were well-defended from Euro-pean settlers by mosquitoes and virus. Subsequent attempts to settle ona large scale came to grief, as at Kourou. The Spanish hold on the region,shaky for most of the seventeenth century, was now inexpensively but-tressed by mosquitoes and microbes. Fever had taken hold.

C H A P T E R F I V E

Yellow Fever Rampant and British

Ambition Repulsed, 1690–1780

If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks.– Frederick the Great1

From the 1690s, yellow fever again and again hampered military opera-tions as well as settlement schemes in the West Indies. Malaria did too,but much less so. The largest armed expeditions were those mountedby Britain in attempts on Cartagena in 1741 and Havana in 1762. Thesiege of Cartagena involved the largest amphibious operation in historyuntil the 1790s, and represented a genuine attempt to seize the trade,production, and territory of Spanish America. Had it not been for yel-low fever, Britain almost surely would have prevailed at Cartagena, andpursued the dream Cromwell conceived a century before. At Havanayellow fever destroyed an army, converting a British conquest into apyrrhic victory and a dead end.

Yellow Fever and the Defenseof the Spanish Empire

In the first century of its American empire, the Spanish Crown hadavoided heavy investment in imperial defense, relying on distance andthe logistical difficulties its enemies would face. By and large, this wasenough. Sea rovers and buccaneers like Francis Drake or John Hawkinsmight intercept a few ships now and again, might sweep down on a

1 Quoted in Houlding (1981:v).

137


poorly defended settlement and sack it. But Spain’s enemies did nothave the resources to take and hold anything of consequence.2

fortification and disease

Once streams of silver from the Andes and Mexico began to flow throughthe Caribbean, the Spanish commitment to imperial defense in theAmericas deepened. More frequent and determined Dutch, English, andFrench piracy required a more active policy. Moreover, all of Spain’srivals ratcheted up their predatory ambitions and hatched repeatedplans to take and hold parts or all of Spanish America. Opinion wasdivided as to how best to safeguard the Indies. One strategy was to buildnaval power sufficient to defend all important sea routes. This had theadvantage that the ships and squadrons in question could be shifted tohome waters in moments of crisis, but had the disadvantage of costinglots of money to maintain. The Spanish Crown from the 1580s was inperpetual danger of bankruptcy, despite the influx of American silver,because of its military ambitions within Europe. While the Crown inthe 1580s paid for a few galleys to patrol the waters off of Cartagenaand Havana, it resisted the temptation to establish a squadron in theCaribbean until 1641, and funded it securely only from the 1680s.3 Ingeneral, Spain let its navy languish from the disastrous attempt to invadeEngland in 1588 until the 1720s.

Instead, Spain put its money in masonry. Fortification was also expen-sive, but once built required less maintenance than naval squadrons, andwith luck could bring great savings if manned mainly by local militia.Moreover, with sufficient persuasion local populations in the Americaswould help pay for fortifications, which they would never voluntarily dofor ships that might at any moment be recalled to the Bay of Biscay orthe Mediterranean.

From the late sixteenth century, Spain slowly built up a networkof fortified strongholds in the Americas. The underlying idea was toprotect choke points along the sea routes used by the trade and treasurefleets (flotas and galeones) rather than to defend territory. Cartagena andHavana got the most attention because of their roles in the Spanishtrade system. In theory, trade with the Indies was confined to a convoythat left Seville (or after 1717, Cadiz) and stopped first at Cartagena

2 Hoffman (1980); Andrews (1978).3 Torres Ramırez (1981).

YELLOW FEVER RAMPANT AND BRITISH AMBITION REPULSED 139

Map 5.1. Fortified Points in the Spanish Caribbean (c. 1750)

before disbursing its goods throughout Spanish America. Cartagena –when it had naval ships – also protected the Caribbean coasts of theIsthmus of Panama, across which the silver from the Andes traveled.Havana, sometimes called “the key to the New World” for its strategicposition, served as the final port of call for treasure ships en route hometo Spain. San Juan in Puerto Rico also acquired fortifications, as didVeracruz somewhat later.4 Minor ports received little or nothing in theway of defenses. Even an important post such as Portobelo in Panamahad little in the way of fortification until the 1770s, perhaps becauseno local militia could be recruited and garrisons from Spain died tooquickly from disease.5

Money was always short. Military engineers and governors alwayscomplained that defenses were too weak. Local councils and the SpanishCrown seemed ready to pay only in time of crisis, or only after an attackhad already demonstrated vulnerability. French corsairs even sackedHavana (in the 1550s) and Cartagena (1697), and English pirates sacked

4 Calderon Quijano (1984b).5 Kuethe (1983:14). Gastelbondo (1753) notes that the crews of the flota suffered

heavily from yellow fever at Cartagena and Portobelo; so did Alcedo (1786–1789), as cited in Sanchez-Albornoz (1974:102–3).


Cartagena in 1668. But gradually, Cartagena and Havana acquired in-depth defenses with multiple castles, walls, redoubts, bulwarks, and soforth, built according to the latest standards. No other cities in theAmericas could boast such fortifications.6

Fortification by the late seventeenth century was a refined art.Between 1450 and 1800, European engineers developed a precise sci-ence of siegecraft and fortification. By the 1670s, the French engineerSebastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633–1707) set the standard with mam-moth artillery fortresses intended to hold out against any imaginableassault for a period of eight weeks, after which time (the thinking went)French columns could march to the rescue and relieve any siege.7 InEurope, fortresses did hold out successfully in more than three fourthsof sieges attempted between 1683 and 1815.8 Vauban’s fortresses werevery costly and needed proper garrisons, artillery, and supplies, but kingscould not expect to hold territory without them. Every power, Spainincluded, developed the requisite engineering expertise to build them.9

Building expensive fortifications in the Americas made less sense.Relief columns would likely not arrive within eight weeks. Mobilizinga rescue across the Atlantic took several months in the best of circum-stances, by which time even a well-supplied and well-garrisoned fortresswould fall if competently besieged. When the French built one in whatis now Nova Scotia at Louisbourg, it amounted to a waste of money andwas taken twice, in 1745 and 1758, after sieges lasting seven weeks.

Only in one circumstance did reliance on fortifications make sense inthe Americas: if the defenders could reasonably expect decisive inter-vention within eight weeks. In the Caribbean basin after the 1690s,they could. Battalions of bloodthirsty mosquitoes could intervene whenand where soldiers could not.

No one knew about the role of mosquitoes, but everyone, includingSpanish military planners, knew that yellow fever and other diseases

6 Parcero Torre (1998:18–34); Albi (1987:130–5); Segovia Salas (1982); CalderonQuijano (1984); Kagan (2000); Parker (2000).

7 Vauban (1968:12). See also Duffy (1985).8 According to a list in Landers (2004:401–3), defenders won 67 of 87 sieges. The

success ratio stayed fairly steady in the various wars between 1683 and 1815, butdipped somewhat in the War of the Austrian Succession.

9 Zapatero (1978) reviews Spanish military engineering in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries. See also Duffy (1979); Albi (1987:127–40); Pares(1936:240–52) on the often poor quality of French and British fortification inthe West Indies.


preyed on newcomers to the Caribbean. From experience and observa-tion, they knew that expeditionary forces from afar would eventuallyfall sick and die. One military engineer, Don Silvestre Abarca, thoughtdisease would take its toll beginning in the second week of a siege.10

Jose de Galvez, president of the Council of the Indies, in 1779 explainedhow much Spain relied on “the climate” to defeat her enemies in theCaribbean: “Taking into account that apart from good garrisons, sup-plies, and preparedness, the enemy will encounter a climate so dangerousthat it will weaken his forces, ruin his men and food supply. . . . ”11

In Veracruz, on the eastern shore of New Spain, the role of yellowfever in Spanish imperial defense was especially prominent but unusu-ally complicated. The torrid lowlands around Veracruz hosted endemicyellow fever from perhaps the 1640s. As a British officer noted in 1740,visitors risked their lives in summers:

Vera Cruz is reckoned unhealthy, especially when the flota is there,or any great concourse of people . . . ; and when a great numberof peoples loges in the Town together during these heats they arevisited with a pestilential distemper called the vomito prieto, ofwhich disease many people die.12

Throughout the coastal lowlands in the summer months, a “rain showerwas enough to destroy a European army divison.”13 Maintaining a gar-rison in Veracruz proved difficult because troops recruited in uplandregions of Mexico or from Spain – men who had never encountered yel-low fever and perhaps not malaria – fell ill and died at appalling rates,in the worst year (1799), 50 percent annually. Recruits from highlandMexico baulked at service in Veracruz.14 Locally recruited troops fared

10 SHM-Madrid, Seccion Historica del Deposito de la Guerra (4.1.1.1), Defensa deLa Habana y sus castillos por el brigadier ingeniero director D. Silvestre Abarca;AHN, Estado, leg. 3025, Relacion del estado actual de las fortificaciones de laPlaza de San Cristobal de La Habana y demas fuertes y castillos dependientespor el ingeniero D. Francisco Ricaud de Tirgale, 8 Julio 1761.

11 AGI, Santa Fe, 577-A, Don Jose de Galvez a Manuel Antonio Florez, cited inMarchena Fernandez (1983:195).

12 British Library, Additional MSS 32,694, “An Account of the Havanna andOther Principal Places belonging to the Spaniards in the West Indies,” 14 April1740, fol. 76. The view that yellow fever was endemic here from the 1640s isBustamente’s (1958:70).

13 Informe del brigadier Fernando Miyares, 21 Junio 1815, SHM-Madrid, c. 97,quoted in Ortiz Escamilla (2008:39).

14 Castro Gutierrez (1996:98). I owe this citation to my colleague John Tutino.


much better, but they were in short supply as the region was sparselyinhabited. In the late eighteenth century, the disease toll among Euro-pean (and Central Mexican) troops became the rationale for using blackmilitia, who were regarded, probably correctly, as more disease-resistant.When invasion threats loomed, authorities brought regiments downfrom the mountains and within reach of Aedes aegypti. Because every-one knew that Veracruz was a death trap for new arrivals, any marchtoward the coast brought mass desertions. Eventually, senior comman-ders developed the doctrine that Veracruz should not be defended inwar, indeed that the surest way to destroy an enemy force would be for itto land and stay at the port while the forces of New Spain dug in aroundthe mountain passes on the way to Mexico City. This was brilliant strat-egy, and roughly analogous to the Russian reliance on “General Winter”to destroy invaders. But especially after 1778, the merchants of Veracruzwere powerful enough to ensure that the city and their property wouldbe defended, a policy that cost the lives of countless highland peas-ants serving in the Spanish army or colonial militia – without a shotfired.15 In this respect, the Veracruz merchants resembled the plantersof Jamaica, whose investments the British Army protected at the costof several thousand deaths to fevers.

garrisons and diseases

Reliance on the power of “the climate” made perfect sense as long asattackers hailed from regions free from yellow fever and most defenderswere already immune. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,when fortifications were meager, attackers came in the form of corsairsand privateers, normally with only a single ship or two, and crewsnumbering less than a hundred. With the English, Dutch, and Frenchsettlement of several of the islands of the Lesser Antilles after the 1620s,larger expeditions of locally recruited men became imaginable. Indeed,in 1655 Barbados and other islands provided some 3,000 men for the

15 Archer (1977:38–60); Archer (1971); Archer (1987); Albi (1987:132); Booker(1993); Bustamente (1958:80–3); Knaut (1997); Ortiz Escamilla (2008:52, 77–80). In 1778, new regulations liberalized trade within the Spanish Empire, tothe great advantage of Veracruz, which grew quickly thereafter and became aprosperous trading center. Lind (1788:115) noted how much healthier MexicoCity was than Veracruz.


assault on Hispaniola and Jamaica. But soon the English, Dutch, andFrench islands had slave majorities and their political stability requiredthe ongoing presence of armed Europeans. After 1670, no slavemaster onBarbados or Martinique could cheerfully countenance the departure of asizeable contingent of white men in an attempt on a Spanish possession.Arming either slaves or free blacks for military adventures scared mostwhites, although eventually, as we shall see, it happened. If large-scaleattacks against Spanish strongholds came, they could come only in theform of amphibious assaults manned by luckless virus-fodder sent fromEurope.

Successful defense against such attacks required garrisons com-posed of men resistant to yellow fever (and malaria). Troops freshlyarrived from Spain would prove as vulnerable as anyone, a fact provedrepeatedly.16 New Spanish troops sent to the West Indies could expectto lose about a quarter of their men to disease, mainly in the first severalmonths.17 Locally recruited militia, men who had spent their childhoodssurviving Caribbean diseases, held up best. The fact that populations inthe Spanish Caribbean were highly urban meant that the proportion ofmilitiamen who had weathered yellow fever in childhood was unusuallyhigh. But seasoned troops from Spain, who had lasted a few years in thelowland Caribbean, were likely to be just as fever-resistant, and nor-mally far better soldiers than militiamen, who were notorious for theirpoor training and discipline. Veteran commanders preferred such sea-soned troops, and dreaded the health consequences of new arrivals – justas experienced plantation owners preferred seasoned slaves and wouldpay less for new arrivals. Although no one understood it at the time,“herd immunity” meant that a few new arrivals could likely be absorbedinto a garrison in Cartagena, Havana, or Veracruz, with little risk ofyellow fever. A large influx, however, set the stage for a yellow feveroutbreak.

The ideal arrangement for Spanish imperial defense in the Caribbeanconsisted of stout fortifications that would oblige attackers to halt for

16 For example, among the garrison at Caracas in 1756–1757: “Notose que sololos soldados espanoles sucumbieron, mientras que no eran atacados por la epidemianinguno de los hijos de Caracas” Archila (1961:375). Caracas suffered yellow feverepidemics in 1694, 1756–1757, 1787, 1793, and 1798. Writing from Havana,Cordoba (1790) noted that yellow fever was the single most deadly disease amongSpaniards.

17 Marchena Fernandez (1983:213).


weeks while mounting a siege, combined with garrisons composed ofeither militia and seasoned regular troops or both.18 Any port or colonythus defended was as secure as Spain could possibly make it fromamphibious attack. After 1764, reforms in Spanish imperial defenseparticularly emphasized militia and fortification in the Americas.19 Ittook many decades and several wars, but by the 1760s the Spanish hadadjusted their defense posture to the new ecological and epidemiologicalregime of the West Indies.

The Deadly 1690s

The significance of the new ecological regime for imperial rivalriesbegan to show only in the 1690s with the advent of large-scale warfarein the West Indies. When Louis XIV’s power grew too great for hisneighbors’ comfort, they formed an alliance against France and wentto war. In the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697), also known as the Warof the League of Augsburg and as King William’s War, England, Spain,and the Netherlands (and some lesser powers) fought France on landand at sea, including in the West Indies. At this time, the balance ofsea power increasingly favored England over France, and the Lords ofthe Admiralty decided to mount amphibious assaults on French sugarislands. Like everyone else, they failed to account properly for yellowfever, which at least in epidemic form had spared the Greater Caribbeansince 1652.

The result was grim in 1690, Captain Lawrence Wright managedto recapture St. Kitts from the French but lost half his men to yellowfever.20 Commodore Ralph Wrenn in 1692 lost his own life and morethan half of his crews to yellow fever; some of his ships sank amid shoals

18 In the late eighteenth century, regular troops cost the Spanish Crown seventimes as much to maintain as militia, also a crucial consideration (Albi 1987:97).Regular troops were always in short supply, even when there was money to paythem.

19 Albi (1987:93–140); Parcero Torrre (1998); Archer (1997:10); McAlister(1954); Kuethe (1978); Kuethe (1984). Buchet (1997b:191) says, without cita-tion, that the Spanish understood the defense value of yellow fever and called it“fievre patriotique.” I have not seen such a term in Spanish sources but the termwould be fully appropriate.

20 Guerra (1996:27) says yellow fever; the textual evidence is slender. The mortalityof the expedition is noted in Ehrman (1953:609); Buchet (1992, 2:782). A fulleraccount in most respects but blind to disease is Moss (1966:14–26).


and reefs because of a shortage of sailors to maneuver them.21 Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Wheler, sent to attack the French West Indies andCanada in 1693, lost nearly half his men to a fever acquired in Barbados,and as a result gave up on a brief attempt to take Martinique. Feverdogged his fleet on his way to attack Canada. He stopped in Boston andtold Cotton Mather he had lost 1,300 of 2,100 sailors (62%) and 1,800 of2,400 soldiers (75%) to sickness.22 He fired off a few cannon at Frenchfishing villages on Newfoundland before limping home. Mosquitoeswere not yet through with the Royal Navy: In 1695, Admiral RobertWilmot lost 61 percent of his men (77% of those who went ashore)while failing in a desultory attack on St. Domingue. These were allmodest campaigns in the grand strategy of King William’s War, but byfar the most deadly for the Royal Navy.23 The habit of sending out freshfleets each year (or two) ensured that thousands of hapless sailors withno yellow fever immunity would make the acquaintance of A. aegypti,and large numbers of them would die. This bleak fact seems to havetroubled the Lords of the Admiralty little if at all. French cruises tothe Caribbean suffered heavy mortality, too.24 That did not worry theMinistry of Marine enough to forestall French designs on Cartagena.

Cartagena de Indias, on the Caribbean coast of what is today Colom-bia, was founded in 1533. Within a few decades, it had become thechief entrepot of South America’s Caribbean coast because its broad andsheltered bay was one of the best harbors in the Americas. Its strategicand commercial importance inspired attacks by Elizabethan sea dogsJohn Hawkins (1568) and Francis Drake (1586). After 1598, when theSpanish organized their convoy system for trade to the Indies, Carta-gena was the first port of call for ships coming from Europe to Spain’scolonies. In these early days, Cartagena had scant fortifications and noyellow fever to protect it.

21 Details appear in Nathaniel Champney’s untitled account in BL, Harleian MSS,6378; Kendall to Blathwayt, 20 April 1692, CSP, Colonial Series, America andWest Indies (1689–1692, 13:627). Moss (1966:26–7).

22 Keevil, Lloyd and Coulter (1957–1963, 2:182–3), citing Mather, The Ecclesias-tical History of New England (Hartford 1854, 1:226). Moss (1966:27–9).

23 Ehrman (1953); Keevil, Lloyd, and Coulter (1957–1963, 2:181–4); Moss (1966).Details appear in CSP (1693–1696:31–101). See for example pp. 100–1, Codring-ton to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, 10 May 1693, in which he explainsthe failures of Wheler’s efforts as a result of the rainy season, the weakness ofEuropean troops, and the insufficiency of local ones.

24 Buchet (1991, 2:782–4).


It had more of both by 1697,25 when a French fleet targeted Carta-gena. Led by a career naval man, Jean Bernard Louis Desjeans, Baronde Pointis, this expedition included seven warships and about 5,000men, including 650 buccaneers from St. Domingue. The Baron hopedto take the city and establish a commanding French position on themainland, upwind of the all-important isthmus of Panama. Aided bysurprise and a late onset of the rainy season,26 the French landed unop-posed near Cartagena on April 12, 1697, and managed to storm thedilapidated bulwarks and outer fortifications within days. The Spanishquickly abandoned other outposts and agreed to surrender on the con-dition that only the army, not the pirates, be allowed to sack the city.In early May, Pointis took control of Cartagena, having lost only sixtymen. But heavy downpours began soon after the surrender at Cartagena,and with them rose swarms of A. aegypti.

French regulars pillaged the city for two weeks while the pirates werecooped up in an outlying fort. However, the soldiers got more than theybargained for, acquiring yellow fever as well as booty. The virus afflicted800 men in less than a week and killed most of them. Troops fresh fromFrance suffered more than the pirates and those already resident in theWest Indies. Pointis left on May 24th. In his account of the expedition,Pointis made it clear that he departed in haste and with regret: “Allmy thoughts of triumph and wealth were erased by ones of sickness anddeath. I feared I would lose, in the most beautiful port in the world,not only the fruits of my labors but the squadron entrusted to me bythe king.”27 Laden with loot but beset by fever, the Baron decided tomake haste for France rather than share his booty with the pirates. Theyresponded by sacking the city a second time, subjecting the inhabitantsto a spasm of atrocities. The Cartageneros, however, were luckier thanthe departing French.

25 Solano Alonso (1998:79) says the “vomito negro” had become common inCartagena in the seventeenth century, where it attacked newcomers regularly(and went by the name “chapetonadas”). Modern scholars note yellow fever out-breaks in 1651–1652, part of the first general epidemic in the Greater Caribbean,and enough smaller ones to judge the disease endemic in the later seventeenthcentury. Soriano Lleras (1966:52); Valtierra (1954:751–4). On the history of thecity’s fortifications, Segovia Salas (1996); Zapatero (1979); Marco Dorta (1960).

26 Pointis (1698:140).27 Pointis (1698:141). “Toutes les idees de triomphe et richesse etaient effacees par celles

de la maladie et de la mort. Je me croyais en etat de perdre dans le plus beau port dumonde, non seulement le fruit de mes peines, mais l’escadre que le roi m’avait confiee.”


On its way home, the French squadron encountered an Anglo-Dutchfleet commanded by Admiral John Nevill, sent out to find the Frenchfleet in the West Indies. Nevill found it after the sack of Cartagena,but the French managed to escape with the loss of one ship: a hospitalship carrying yellow fever victims. Nevill in his journal doubted theFrench fleet could make it home because it “hath lost so many peopleby sickness.”28 The virus spread to the English and Dutch, who lost1,800 men to it, including their admiral. The French fleet returned toBrest in August, having tossed overboard 24 percent of the remainingforce, lost to fever. Another 34 percent were sick but still alive whenthey disembarked. Many soon died. But Baron de Pointis survived, gaveKing Louis XIV his share of the spoils, continued to serve in the navyuntil 1705, and lived out his days a wealthy man. Cartagena remainedSpanish: Pointis could sack the city but he could not stay there.29

The bad luck that befell the soldiers and sailors under the commandsof Wright, Wrenn, Wheler, Wilmot, Pointis, and Nevill was all of a piecewith that which laid low the Scots at Darien. They had the misfortune tobe newcomers to the Caribbean in the 1690s, when yellow fever seemedto surge through every port. Civilians suffered too in the 1690s.30 Morethan anything else, this reflected the influx of newcomers occasionedby war and colonization. But it may also have resulted from unusuallygood mosquito weather, leading to vector abundance. Recent research(see Chapter 2) shows that vector abundance peaks in El Nino andENSO+1 years. El Nino in 1692 and 1694–1696 brought conditionsideal for hatching and sustaining A. aegypti, so the years 1692–1697

28 Nevill’s journal is in Merriman (1950:299–311), quotation from p. 306. Heanchored for a day at Cartagena and his crews could have acquired the yellowfever virus there.

29 Accounts include the memoirs of the principals (Pointis 1698; Ducasse 1699);as well as historical narratives (Morgan 1932; Porras Troconis 1942; Pritchard2004:326–31) and the analysis of Buchet (1991, 1:482–6, 508, and 2:181, 193,784). A detailed roster of Pointis’ armament and equipment appears in Buchet(1991, 2:1162–230), from Archives Nationales, Marine, 662/36, “Armament encourse de l’escadre de M. le Baron de Pointis, 1697.” Matta Rodrıguez (1979)and Ruız Rivera (2001) for views using Spanish documents. The fullest study isNerzic and Buchet (2002).

30 PRO, CO 37/164, f.250 “Epidemic Fevers at Bermuda,” notes that a “very malig-nant fever” killed a large proportion of Bermuda’s population in 1699. FatherLabat (1722, 4:211–12, 251–3) noted yellow fever in Martinique and Guade-loupe in 1698–1699. Moreau de St. Mery (1797–1798, 1:701–2) recounts yellowfever outbreaks on St. Domingue in the 1690s.


were good for mosquitoes and bad for people – worse for some than forothers – in the Caribbean.31

The danger from yellow fever persisted, if not so acutely, after thedeadly 1690s. Several naval expeditions during the War of the SpanishSuccession (1701–1713) suffered catastrophic mortality – sometimesfrom yellow fever, and sometimes not.32 The worst luck belonged toVice-Admiral Francis Hosier, with whom this book began. During a cri-sis in Anglo-Spanish relations he was sent to patrol Spanish Caribbeancoasts in 1726 (a year after another El Nino).33 After visits to a few WestIndian ports, his crews contracted yellow fever, which raged aboard hisships for months. He never commanded more than 3,300 men at a time,but because of replacements dragged off the shores of Jamaica, in allthe expedition lost over 4,000 of 4,750 men who served (over 84%),including Hosier himself who died aboard ship cruising off Cartagena.34

This gruesome episode became legendary among British mariners, thestuff of mournful ballads, helping the West Indies to acquire the repu-tation as a place where men went to die.35 A Spanish fleet sent – quiteunnecessarily, as it turned out – to hamper Hosier in 1730 lost 2,200men to yellow fever.36

The decades from 1690 to 1730 had made clear to one and all thedeadly hazards of military operations in the West Indies. They also

31 Quinn and Neal (1992) and Quinn (1992) for ENSO chronology. Poveda et al.(2001) show that in Colombia both vivax and falciparum malaria spike duringENSO and ENSO+1 years.

32 Buchet (1991, 2:784–8).33 According to a new ENSO chronology, the 1720s were an especially active

decade. Garcia-Herrera et al. (2008).34 PRO, Admiralty 1/230 contains several letters and reports from Hosier from

June 1726 to August 1727, including details on health. His last signed missivewas 14 August 1727, “State of HM’s Ships at Cartagena,” in which he noted793 of 2,776 surviving men were sick. Most would soon be dead, like Hosierhimself, who died on 25 August (some reports indicate in Jamaica, not at sea).Papers relating to Hosier’s command are in British Library, Additional MSS33028, ff. 48–174. Long (1774, 2:111) has a brief account, as do Keevil, Lloyd,and Coulter (1957–1963, 3:97–100). Correspondence in the Calendar of StatePapers (1728–1729:164) notes Hosier was worried about rum shortages in July1727.

35 For example, the popular ballad, “Admiral Hosier’s Ghost,” penned in 1739 byRichard Glover. A version appears in Keevil, Lloyd, and Coulter (1957–1963,3:99–100).

36 Guerra (1966:27), citing Gastelbondo (1753).


probably established the yellow fever virus firmly among the monkey andmosquito populations of the region’s forests, so that enduring reservoirsof virus existed almost everywhere, but especially on the mainland andthe big islands, where the biggest forests and most monkeys were. It isreasonable to say that from the 1690s onward, yellow fever was reliablyendemic in the Greater Caribbean region, and needed only large influxesof nonimmunes amid swarms of A. aegypti to become epidemic. But thisprospect did nothing to quell the ambitions of those making strategy inLondon, where a sense of Spanish weakness was matched by a growingfaith in British power. Those ambitions soon focused on Cartagena.

Siege Ecology at Cartagena, 1741

In the decades after Pointis’ attack, Cartagena resumed its roles asregional entrepot and hub of Spanish imperial trade. But the convoy sys-tem was winding down, inadequate to the burgeoning demand of Span-ish America for European goods. The last fleet left in 1739. Throughoutthe early eighteenth century, Cartagena hosted a lively smuggling busi-ness with British and Dutch merchants. Local officials found connivingat contraband more rewarding than enforcing regulations.37 Cartagena’shinterland yielded silver, gold, pearls, emeralds, sugar, cotton, cacao,hides, botanical drugs, and excellent timber. In addition to its commer-cial role, Cartagena served as a center of the naval and military estab-lishment of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (established in 1717),a sprawling territory comprising what is today Venezuela, Colombia,Panama, and most of Ecuador.38

Like every trading and naval port, Cartagena had a mobile and fluc-tuating population. That population was usually smaller than 10,000,made up mainly of people of mixed Amerindian, African, and Europeanancestry.39 As the port of first arrival for most African slaves enteringthe Spanish Empire, Cartagena hosted a sizeable West African pop-ulation. Between 1714 and 1736, Cartagena imported 10,475 slaves

37 Grahn (1997).38 The list of exports is from Zapatero (1957). In 1740 New Granada was almost all

forested, and most of its population lived in the highlands of Colombia (Palacio2006:35, 171); (Gordon 1977:69–70). On Cartagena’s military role, MarchenaFernandez (1982:15–57); Segovia Salas (1996:14–34).

39 Gomez Perez (1983) says 6,000 for 1708 and 12,000 for 1778, based on archivalcensus materials. Zulueta (1992:132) gives 20,000 as the city’s population in1741, surely too high.


Cartagena Bay

Map 5.2. Cartagena and Environs (c. 1741)


officially through the British South Sea Company, which then held alegal monopoly. The great majority were Akan and Ewe, shipped via ElMina or Ouidah on the coast of West Africa and arriving via Jamaica.Illegal slave imports, via Jamaica and Curacao, amounted to at leastthree times this figure, bringing the total to perhaps 40,000 or some2,000 per year.40 With the slave ships from West Africa and Jamaicapresumably came additional immigrant A. aegypti, so the city was neverin short supply of yellow fever vectors.

Cartagena received immigrant mosquitoes, but it and its hinterlandalso efficiently grew their own. Like other ports, Cartagena stored plentyof water. In 1735, the Spanish naval officers Jorge Juan and AntonioUlloa noted the city’s numerous cisterns, which provided water dur-ing the four- to five-month dry season, which in Cartagena is almostcompletely without rain.41 Where there were cisterns, there were surelyA. aegypti. Cartagena had its own modest agricultural hinterland, withsugar and cattle as the chief products. All the plantations in this cornerof the Spanish Empire (in practice, chiefly those of the Cauca valley)shipped their sugar through Cartagena, so the city was in regular com-munication with A. aegypti incubators in the countryside.42 What withfrequent ship traffic from Jamaica and the West African coasts until1739, and suitable breeding grounds in the city and its upriver hinter-land, Cartagena was surely a buzzing metropolis for A. aegypti. Thus,one essential condition for yellow fever outbreaks was fulfilled.

With its sizable transient population, especially when the galeonesstopped in, Cartagena was a crossroads of contagion of almost everysort.43 Infections easily found new hosts, and newcomers and residentsalike often encountered unfamiliar diseases. Nearby Portobelo, usu-ally the next stop for the galleons, earned the sobriquet “sepultura deEspanoles” (graveyard of Spaniards) by regularly killing a third to ahalf of the galleons’ crews.44 Portobelo in the mid-eighteenth centurycould boast only about 500 houses and came to life only during theweeks of market fair, when people flocked there to do business (as fast aspossible). With its larger resident and transient population, Cartagenapresumably hosted a wider variety of diseases than Portobelo.

40 Castillo Mathieu (1981:266–70, 275–6).41 Juan and Ulloa (1748, 1:ch. 5); Uprimmy and Lobo Guerrero (2007).42 McFarlane (1993:39, 41, 45–7) on sugar in the Cartagena hinterland.43 Dıaz Pardo (2006); Chandler (1981).44 Juan and Ulloa (1748, 1:129–30). See also Gastelbondo (1753).


With the necessary mosquitoes and people available, the yellow fevervirus could stay in circulation in Cartagena, but not without difficulty.What with sailors from all over the Atlantic world, not to mention agarrison from Spain that was often topped up with new recruits, thecity offered at times a sizable population of nonimmunes for the yellowfever virus. Inconveniently, from the virus’ point of view, Cartagena’sresident population consisted substantially of people either partially orfully of West African descent – and probably either fully or partiallyimmune. Moreover, many Cartageneros had been born and raised thereor elsewhere in the Caribbean region, and had likely survived yellowfever. These populations would be impervious to the virus, and couldprovide herd immunity to the susceptibles. The proportion of youngchildren remained modest because the city’s population included ratherfew women and families. The virus might have disappeared altogetherfrom the city at times: Juan and Ulloa wrote that it had no yellowfever before an outbreak of 1729 that killed 2,200, mostly sailors.45 Buteven if it did disappear from the city, the nearby forests hosted monkeysserving as a reservoir for the virus. Perhaps at times it was endemic inthe city, circulating among children, newcomers, and A. aegypti of thecity; perhaps at other times it was not, but maintained in Cartagenaonly via occasional links to infected monkeys. In any case, the yellowfever virus lurked in or around Cartagena, able to exploit the oppor-tunity of any good-sized contingent of nonimmunes that sailed withinrange.46

Cartagena’s surroundings also hosted plenty of Anopheles mosquitoes.The local topography of marshes, mangrove swamps, and lagoons suitedanopheline breeding specifications nicely. The many moats dug forthe fortifications, filled with stagnant water, algae mats, and aquaticplants, could not have been better designed for anopheline larvae. Theimmigrant slaves brought malarial parasites to the region in a steadystream, so Cartagena’s hinterland featured endemic malaria, both vivaxand falciparum, and had done so since the sixteenth century. Anyonenot resistant to malaria stood an excellent chance of falling ill uponarriving near Cartagena, especially during the rainy season.

45 Juan and Ulloa (1748, 1:59–61); Restrepo (2004:71). Moseley (1795:402) alsosays Spanish sailors suffered heavily in this outbreak.

46 Gast Galvis (1982) has scattered information on yellow fever in and aroundCartagena; see Bates (1946) on sylvan yellow fever in Colombia in the earlytwentieth century.


admiral vernon goes to the caribbean

After nearly a quarter century of peace between Britain and the Bour-bons, war broke out again in 1739. British merchants objected to con-straints on trade with Spanish America, and foisted an aggressive waron a reluctant prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Spanish mercan-tile interests objected to British smuggling in the Spanish Empire andinsisted on their legal privileges. The war eventually fused with a dynas-tic struggle in Europe. The Atlantic dimensions go by the name of theWar of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1748), based on the story of a sea captain’ssevered ear, allegedly brandished in pickled form by its former ownerbefore a committee of the House of Commons in 1738 to illustrateSpanish atrocities. In Spain it is known less colorfully as La Guerra delAsiento, referring to the trade treaty of 1713 regulating British com-mercial activity in Spanish America. Campaigns in Europe came to beknown as the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), involvingcoalitions of all major European powers. Fighting between Britain andFrance also took place in India, North America, and at sea.

As Britain and Spain slid into war in 1739, schemes sprouted all overBritain for expeditions to the West Indies. Blockades of the treasureports such as Hosier’s in 1726–1727 had achieved worse than nothing.Eager armchair warriors planned to seize and hold big chunks of theSpanish Empire – just as Cromwell had planned in his day. Almosteverywhere from Cuba to Chile came under consideration.47

An expedition to the West Indies came together late in 1739. Nohigh-ranking naval officer wanted to go to the West Indies, so the honorfell to an enthusiastic supporter of the war, Edward Vernon (1684–1757), a well-connected opposition politician and semi-retired navalofficer. Vernon had joined the navy as a teenager and been a captain atage twenty-one. He acquired considerable experience of the Caribbeanbut had not seen active service since 1728, and he had made a secondcareer as an inconspicuous member of parliament. Probably his bestqualification for the job was unacknowledged: acquired immunity toyellow fever.

After two decades of inaction, it took the British military bureaucracysome time to creak into action. But in a few months, it had assembled anassault force of nine ships of the line. Vernon sailed in July 1739 – before

47 BL, Additional MSS 32694, Newcastle Papers, ff. 1–100, contains proposals fortaking various targets in Spanish America.


war had been declared – and arrived in Jamaica in October, having lostabout seven percent of his men, a little more than average for such acrossing.

After consultations in Jamaica, Vernon chose to tackle Portobelo,where he hoped to find Spanish treasure ships. He found only a meagergarrison that put up token resistance for two days before surrendering.Vernon lingered for a few weeks – this was November and Decem-ber, the dry season – to destroy the modest fortifications. He thenreturned, triumphantly, to Jamaica to refit his fleet. Word of his suc-cess reached Britain, prompting celebration. A medal was struck in hishonor. Portobello Road in London acquired its present name (latelyhome to a famous flea market).

By March, Vernon was ready to sail again. He wanted a closer lookat the defenses of Cartagena and to attack the small port of Chagres.Seven hours’ bombardment sufficed to persuade the defenders of Cha-gres’ small castle to submit. Many Spaniards along these coasts wel-comed the trading opportunities that the British represented and coop-erated with Vernon after token resistance. After taking Chagres, Vernonlearned that London, dizzy with his success, had sent reinforcements. Sohe decided to wait before attempting anything grander than harryingSpanish shipping.

He waited and waited because finding enough men and supplies tookmany months. The reinforcements, led by Lord Cathcart, a Scot whohad served with distinction in the War of the Spanish Succession andin suppressing a Scots’ rebellion in 1715, sailed from England in Octo-ber 1740. They arrived in Jamaica in January 1741, without Cathcart,who died en route at Dominica. The army command fell to ThomasWentworth, a soldier who had never exercised independent commandand never heard a shot fired in anger. Vernon later said Wentworthwas more fit to be an attorney than a general.48 After spending a fewweeks getting organized and chasing a French fleet in vain, Vernon andWentworth sailed for Cartagena, arriving on March 4th. They came inforce, with 29 ships of the line, 186 vessels of all descriptions, 15,000sailors, and about 29,000 men in all. This was the largest agglomera-tion of military men yet seen in these waters, and possibly the largestamphibious assault force yet assembled in world history.

The land army included 8,000 men in eight regiments from Britain,almost all of them recently mobilized and new to combat. The novelist

48 Houstoun (1747:241).


Tobias Smollett, who took part in the campaign, wrote in Roderick Ran-dom (Chapter 31) they were “not as yet much used to discipline, mostof them having been taken from the plough-tail a few months before.”Some 3,400 more were recruited from the North American coloniesfrom Massachusetts to North Carolina. A British naval officer describedthem as “Blacksmiths, Tailors, Barbers, Shoemakers, and all the Ban-ditry the colonies afforded.”49 Among them was Lawrence Washington,elder half-brother of George and captain of a Virginia company. TheBritish would have done better to recruit yellow fever veterans fromCharleston and Savanna, but South Carolina and Georgia militiamenwere otherwise engaged in a fruitless campaign against Spanish Florida.All in all it was, by the standards of Britain in the eighteenth century,an inexperienced army with unprepared immune systems.50

the spanish defense at cartagena

As war approached in 1739, Cartagena prepared for attack. Blas Lezo yOlavarrieta (1689–1741), a Basque who began his career at age twelve,commanded the meager naval forces.51 Lezo lost his left leg in combatat fifteen, and lost his left eye and right arm in battles before his twenty-fifth birthday. Undeterred, he rose rapidly in the Spanish navy, spendingmost of his career in the Mediterranean. In 1737, he took the assignmentto defend Cartagena, where he would fight his twenty-second and finalbattle. The Army command at Cartagena belonged to a lifelong soldier,Sebastian de Eslava (1684–1759), also a Basque, and newly appointedas Viceroy of New Granada. He arrived in April of 1740 with about 600additional soldiers for the garrison. Lezo from 1737, and Eslava from1740, oversaw a refurbishing of the fortifications of Cartagena, workstill unfinished when combat began. Some friction existed betweenthe two men, perhaps natural given Lezo’s record and Eslava’s politicalseniority.

Cartagena and its surroundings featured formidable fortifications,upgraded since 1697 under the supervision of some of Spain’s best mili-tary engineers. It had even acquired a school of military engineering in1731. The area afforded abundant limestone, which slaves had hacked,hauled, and installed in a system of walls, bulwarks, and forts. Tall

49 Charles Knowles, quoted in Harding (1991:70).50 Houlding (1981:408) on regiments sent to Cartagena just after being raised.51 Quintero Saravia (2002) for a biography.


and thick stone walls surrounded the city itself. The harbor and itsapproaches bristled with batteries. Half a dozen stone forts guarded thelikeliest avenues of attack.52

Spanish military engineers had learned that places like Cartagenawere not the same as Flanders. They built their defense systems in depth,expecting that in the event of attack Spanish forces would retreat bystages, slowing the assault, so as to let the disease climate work itshavoc on the attackers. At Cartagena, engineers estimated they neededdefenses that could delay an assault for six to eight weeks before, as oneengineer later put it, besiegers fell to the “diseases in these lands that arealmost unfailing among recently arrived Europeans, and all the more soamong those who get no rest.”53 Vernon thought six weeks was all thetime attackers would have at Cartagena.54

When Vernon and Wentworth brought their armada within view inMarch 1741, Lezo and Eslava had at their disposal six frigates, about1,000 artillery pieces, and some 2,100 army regulars (of whom 282 weresick, according to the return of December 24, 1740). Most of theseregulars formed the permanent battalion (fijo) that Cartagena acquiredin 1736. Their immune systems had already passed several tests. Lezothought everything was scarce, especially rifles, powder, and food. Eslavafeared the city might be starved out (an unlikely strategy for the Britishin this environment) but the distinguished Spanish Admiral Rodrigode Torres, who left Cartagena early in 1741, thought the city’s defenseswere in good shape.55 Supplementing the regulars were about 1,000 mili-tia, 600 Amerindian bowmen, and 1,000 sailors.56 Of these (roughly)4,700 men, only about 700 were new to the local disease environment.

52 Marco Dorta (1960:210–15): Segovia Salas (1996); Zapatero (1989).53 Engineer Antonio de Arevalo, quoted in Segovia Salas (1996:30). Segovia Salas

gives no citation for this, and I do not know its date. Arevalo worked on Carta-gena fortifications for several decades beginning in 1742 according to MarcoDorta (1960:281–5).

54 Vernon to Newcastle and Wager, 15 April 1741 (26 April old style), printed inRanft (1958:229).

55 Torres a Marquis de Larnage, 26 fevrier 1741, Library of Congress, Vernon-WagerMSS. On shortages: Quintero Saravia (2002:169–70).

56 AGI, Audiencia de Santa Fe, leg. 572, f. 685, Estado de la Infanterıa, 24 diciembre1740. Different accounts give different figures. Bermudez (1912:16) says 3,300in all; Zapatero (1957:132) says 2,800, the lowest figure I have seen (his is a verypatriotic account); Segovia Salas (1996:54) has 6,000 in all, the highest, whichcorresponds to the paper strength of five Spanish regiments.


Almost all, militia and regulars alike, had likely acquired resistanceor immunity to local infections. Moreover, except those confined tothe outer forts, the regulars lived among a population of 10,000 over-whelmingly immune Cartageneros. Although not distinguished for itsdiscipline or valor, the Cartagena militia was composed of men, manyof them African or of African descent,57 with vigilant immune systemsespecially attuned to yellow fever. Supplementing these fever-resistanttroops, after the spring rains began, Lezo and Eslava would soon haveon their side countless squadrons of A. aegypti.58

The walled city stood against the Caribbean surf on a shore opento strong winds and currents, where shallow water imperiled navalships.59 The easiest approach involved passing through a channelcalled Bocachica, between islands about 15 kilometers south of the cityitself. The Bocachica passage opened onto a broad interior lagoon, thenorthern part of which served as Cartagena’s harbor. Vernon’s armadaarrived off of the city on March 13, 1741, and after a few preliminary

57 Kuethe (1983:16); Helg (2004:100–5); Zapatero (1957:130) says of five militiacompanies, two were “pardos,” or blacks.

58 A Briton familiar with the region warned that around Cartagena “heat, sandflys, Musquitoes and other vermin is almost intolerable.” BL Additional MSS32,694, f. 92, “An Account of the Havannah and Other Principal Places . . . ”(1740). The female mosquitoes might have been especially attentive to humansin 1741 because the Spanish had driven all the cattle into the interior to denybeef to their enemies (Nowell 1962:481).

59 Narratives of the siege include: Beatson (1804, 1:89–109); Fortescue (1910:63–74); Bermudez (1912); Ranft (1958:15–19); Nowell (1962); Kempthorne (1935);Richmond (1920, 1:101–37); Restrepo Canal (1941); Zapatero (1957:134–54);Harding (1991:83–122); Zulueta (1992); Quintero Saravia (2002:230–72); auseful day-by-day chronology appears in Marchena Fernandez (1982:127–38).Documents from participants include Eslava (1894); AGI, Audiencia de SantaFe, legajo 1009, “Informe de Navarrete sobre el Ataque de Vernon,” 27 mayo1741; Servicio Historico Militar (Madrid), Signatura 52116, “Diario Puntual delo acaecido en la defensa que hizo la Plaza de Cartagena de Yndias, sitiada yatacada por la nunca vista y formidable Esquadra Ynglesa”; Vernon’s papers inRanft (1958) and the Vernon-Wager Correspondence in the Library of Congress,Manuscript Division; BL Additional MSS 40830, ff. 1–12, “An Account of theExpedition to Cartagena.” This manuscript, a copy of which is in the Vernon-Wager manuscripts, is attributed to naval engineer Charles Knowles. A publishedversion appeared as a pamphlet (Dublin: Faulkner, 1743). Many useful Spanishdocuments, including a diary of Blas de Lezo, appear in AHN Estado 2335. Adiscussion of the Spanish siege diaries appears in Lucena Salmoral (1973).


bombardments, troops began to disembark on March 20th.60 In theintervening week, the Spanish reinforced their outer forts with sailorsand militia.

Had all gone as British planners wished, Cathcart’s army would haveleft England two or three months sooner and would have begun opera-tions at Cartagena in late December, at the beginning of the dry season,rather than near its end in late March. But assembling and outfittinga gigantic amphibious force after decades of peace and inactivity (andamid legendary corruption in both government and military) could notbe done on a crisp schedule. Vernon, among others, knew the risks ofarriving too late and staying too long.61

To approach Cartagena through Bocachica required disabling foursmall forts and a battery, and then a larger fort called San Felipe on ahill called San Lazaro, perhaps 20 meters in elevation and overlookingthe city.62 Baron de Pointis had followed this route in 1697, taken SanFelipe, and used its commanding position to blast a breach through thecity walls. Vernon recommended it now, unaware of how much strongerthe defenses had become since 1697. General Wentworth had studiedsieges and took an orthodox approach. He wanted to reduce the littleforts one by one in the classic manner by erecting artillery batteriesand smashing the stone walls long enough to create breaches throughwhich troops might dash. (The first through a breach, most of whomcould expect to be shot, were in the British Army called the “forlorn

60 A note on dates: Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar, the one we use today,in 1752. I use those dates here, although the British documents of the timeused the Julian calendar, which dated everything eleven days earlier. Becauseunderstanding the season of events and documents is important, I have changedthe dates from the old calendar to the new in citing documents, but given theold style dates in parentheses. Spain has used the modern calendar since the1580s.

61 Vernon to Cathcart, 1 October 1740 (21 September old style), printed in Ranft(1958:127); Vernon and Ogle to Wentworth, 22 March 1741 (11 March oldstyle), printed in Ranft (1958:185); Vernon and Ogle to Wentworth, 17 April1741 (6 April old style): “ . . . we can’t but in regard to the interest of our royalmaster and friendship to you, repeat what we have often mentioned to you, thatthe most fatal enemy to be apprehended is from delay exposing your troops tothe approaching rains.” Printed in Ranft (1958:217).

62 Descriptions are in Eslava al Marques de Villadarias, 9 mayo 1741, and CarlosDesnaux, “Descripcion de la Fortaleza o Castillo de San Phelipe de Barajas . . . ”3 mayo 1741, both in AHN, Estado 2335.


hope.”) Wentworth’s approach suited conditions in northern Europe,where there was no yellow fever.

Sickness spread in the first few days after the troops landed.63 Vernonurged his fellow Admiral, Chaloner Ogle, to level his guns quickly onthe outermost forts because the army was “daily decreasing by sickness,so that slow measures are certain ruin.”64 With the navy’s help, Britishtroops took the small forts guarding Bocachica and the bay, but it tooksixteen days’ bombardment before the Spanish relinquished the first one.After the first five days, Lezo considered retreating from the Bocachicafort (San Luıs) to save what was left of its 400 men, but he was dissuadedby the fort’s engineer, a certain Carlos Desnoux, who perhaps saw moreclearly than his superiors the value of trading men for time.65 Lezoand Eslava convened on a ship in the bay on April 4th to confer ona situation that seemed to be turning against them. A cannonball hittheir cabin, sending a hail of splinters into one of Eslava’s legs and Lezo’sremaining arm.

Matters soon grew worse. By early April, Spanish troops were with-drawing from their battered positions, Lezo scuttled his ships, and a fewof Vernon’s ships were through Bocachica and on the bay. AdmiralVernon sent confident messages to London predicting final success andattributing the reduction of the first fort to “the Lord’s doing.”66 Whenthese words reached London, victory bells rang out across England andmore medals were struck in Vernon’s honor, showing him receiving thesurrender of a kneeling Blas Lezo. But the Spaniards put obstacles intheir attackers’ way, sinking merchant vessels in the navigable channelsof the bay, for example. They reasoned that if they could slow the Britishadvance a bit longer, time and the “climate” were on their side.

Wentworth took his time securing the inner forts, disembarking hisremaining troops, and taking up positions near San Lazaro hill. By somecareless error, the soldiers’ tents did not make it ashore and they hadto sleep in the open, easy targets for mosquitoes. Sickness mountedwithin the ranks. Vernon’s letters to Wentworth urged haste in view ofthe advancing season, but also show him unwilling to contribute much

63 Anonymous (1744:8) mentions sickness on the diary entry for 20 March (9March old style).

64 PRO, SP, 42/90, f. 59, Vernon to Ogle, 28 March 1741 (17 March old style).65 Zuniga Angel (1997) on the Bocachica struggle.66 Vernon to Newcastle and Wager, 12 April 1741 (1 April old style), printed in

Ranft (1958:211).


(i.e., no sailors) to the effort. Wentworth wanted a breach in the fort’swalls and irritated Vernon by asking the navy to bombard San Lazaro,which Vernon thought a “paltry” fort,67 and anyway beyond the effec-tive range of his guns. By one account attributed to a Spanish officer,Wentworth’s engineers had never smelled gunpowder and were fitter to“form hay stacks than to erect batteries.”68 The venerable problem ofrivalry and friction between army and navy had begun to hamstring theBritish and to exacerbate delays. Every day, hundreds died of fever.

Eventually, Wentworth saw the logic of trying his luck without wait-ing for a breach in the walls atop San Lazaro. Perhaps Vernon browbeathim into this decision,69 or perhaps Wentworth recognized that hisarmy would almost all die of fever before he could expect batteries tosmash a hole in the fort. It was a desperate gamble, contrary to ordinarysiege procedures, but the best of the bad choices available given thedaily losses to disease.70 Before dawn on April 20th, some 1,500 Britishsoldiers (Spanish accounts usually give 3,500) began the assault on SanLazaro, defended by some 250 Spaniards.71 Many of the attackers gotlost in the woods, thanks to the incompetence or cunning of their localguides. The North Americans allegedly tossed aside their siege laddersrather than drag them up the twisting paths to the fort. Those whodid haul their ladders into position found they were too short to reachthe ramparts. After a few hours of fierce but futile fighting the Britishwithdrew, leaving behind most of their equipment, 179 dead, and someof their 475 wounded.72 The Spanish reported their losses as 2 killed

67 Vernon and Ogle to Wentworth, 18 April 1741 (7 April old style), printed inRanft (1958:219).

68 BL, Additional MSS 22680, ff. 5–7, “A Brief Relation of the Expedition toCartagena being an Extract of a Letter wrote by a Spanish Officer” (no date).The authenticity of this as a Spanish opinion is open to question.

69 In the most careful analysis of this decision I have seen, Harding (1991:112–14)opts for the view that Wentworth was driven to a bad decision by Vernon’sengineer, Charles Knowles. Harding accuses Vernon, probably rightfully, ofcalculated deletions and emphases in his correspondence, all with an eye toavoiding blame.

70 Anonymous (1744:40), in a diary entry for 21 April (10 April old style) sayssickness “hourly encreased.”

71 Zapatero (1957:137) says 500 defenders.72 Lezo’s account says 600 British dead. “Diario de lo acontecido en Cartagena de

Indias desde el dıa 15 de marzo de 1741 hasta el 20 de mayo del mismo ano,”AHN, Estado 2335. He says the British left their ladders, picks, shovels, andrifles behind when fleeing.


and 13 wounded.73 Shortly before dying, a British colonel allegedly said,“The General ought to hang the guides and the King ought to hang theGeneral.”74

In the next few days, amid flying accusations and recriminations,Vernon and Wentworth continued the bombardment of both the cityand the fort atop San Lazaro. They contemplated a second assault.Further down the chain of command, “all thoughts of taking Cartha-gena ceas’d: the rainy season coming on, made us think of nothingbut leaving the place. . . . ”75 Yellow fever raged more lethally each day,complemented, according to Spanish accounts, by dysentery the Britishacquired by drinking from wells of captured forts.76 Between April 18thand April 21st, the army lost 3,400 of the 6,600 men put ashore, leavingonly 3,200 fit for duty. Some 2,500 were dead. Heavy downpours onApril 21st signaled worse conditions to come (although it seems dailyrains came only after May 7th).77 Some thirty-three days after the siegebegan in earnest, Vernon and Wentworth agreed to abandon the entireenterprise “on account of the general sickness in the army.”78 On April26th, Wentworth wrote that he had 1,700 men fit for duty, of whomonly 1,000 he considered reliable.79 Wrote one participant, “The armysickened surprisingly fast, and those that were killed being esteemed

73 Carlos Desnaux al Marques de Villadarias, 27 mayo 1741, AHN Estado 2335.74 According to Fortescue (1910, 2:71). In the novel Roderick Random (Chapter

33), Smollett wrote that in storming San Lazaro, British soldiers “behaved liketheir own country mastiffs, which shut their eyes, run into the jaws of a bear, andhave their heads crushed for their valour.” One of the survivors was the fatherof James Wolfe, the British hero of Quebec; the younger Wolfe had intended toship out for Cartagena with his father’s regiment but stayed in England, owing,ironically, to illness (Keevil, Lloyd, and Coulter, 1957–1963, 2:106).

75 BL, Sloane MSS 3970, “An Account of Admiral Vernon’s Attempt UponCarthagena in the West Indies.”

76 “Diario Puntual de lo acaecido en la defensa que hizo de la plaza de Cartagenade Indias,” Servicio Historico Militar (Madrid), Signatura 52116.

77 I infer this from the “Log of HMS Windsor,” in the National Maritime Museum,ADM/L/W123. Onset of the rains in late April would be normal for today’sCartagena.

78 Vernon to Newcastle and Wager, 7 May 1741 (26 April old style), printedin Ranft (1958:229). A copy of the Memorandum of a Council of War of6 May 1741 (25 April old style), noted: “That the troops are . . . daily falling sickby great Numbers, which is each day increasing more than other.” Library ofCongress, Vernon-Wager MSS.

79 Wentworth to Newcastle, 7 May 1741 (26 April old style), cited in Fortescue(1910:2:74).


the Flower of the Flock, the General declared he was no longer in aposition to defend himself, much more to carry on the siege against theplace. . . . ”80 By April 27th, it seemed the army risked annihilation:

The sickness amongst the Troops increased to so great a Degree,that any longer Continuance in that unhealthy Situation, seemedto threaten no less than their total Ruin; the General therefore,and the principal Land Officers, agreed to the Admiral’s Proposal,for demolishing the Forts, &c which commanded the Harbour;that being done, and Water taken in for the Voyage, the wholeFleet set sail for Jamaica.81

By April 28th, the last shots had been fired and the last of the survivorsre-embarked, although for eight more days officers of the fleet workedto destroy the remaining Spanish fortifications around Bocachica andarranged exchanges of prisoners. By this point the British force, soldiersand sailors, had lost upwards of 8,000 dead.

Hundreds more sailors as well as soldiers died at anchor before thefleet set sail for Jamaica on May 7th, some fifty-four days after it appearedin front of Cartagena. Colonel Harry Burnard wrote that his friends ingood health one day were often dead the next, that 600 of the 700 wholeft England in his regiment were now dead, and those left alive weresuffering from “a melancholy destruction this climate makes amongstus.”82 Smollett, who worked among Vernon’s sailors as a surgeon’s mate,fell ill himself with the “bilious fever” that “raged with such violencethat three-fourths of those whom it invaded, died. . . . ”83 He and Vernonwrote that dead soldiers were tossed overboard to the sharks.

80 BL, Additional MSS, 40830, “An Account of the Expedition to Carthagena.”This text is attributed to Charles Knowles, always critical of Wentworth and thearmy.

81 Anonymous (1744:47).82 Burnard to [his brother?], 6 May 1741 (April 26 old style) BL, Additional MSS,

34207, ff. 9–12.83 Smollett, Roderick Random, Chapter 34. Smollett’s account of the Cartagena

campaign (Chapters 31–34) is wickedly sarcastic in tone, hard on Vernon andWentworth both, accurate in many respects but wantonly exaggerated in others.As a surgeon’s mate, Smollett stayed onboard ship and learned only secondhandof events ashore. He exaggerated British losses in writing that at the storming ofSan Lazaro “the greatest part of the detachment took up their everlasting abodeon the spot.” He did experience an artillery duel while afloat, which appears inhis novel as a hectic swirl of rum, splinters, and amputations.


A participant, Lord Elibank, indicated the sharks could thank yellowfever for their extra rations:84

Thus ended the fatiguing part of the Campaign & it certainlywas the most disagreeable one that has been known. This Peoplewere more sensible of, that it had none of the Comforts of War,with all the Inconveniences of it, & many others not known tothose who take the Field in Peopled Countries and temperateclimates. The Distructive part of it ought to take its Date from ourdisembarkation. The sickness amongst us till then, was no morethan might be accounted for by our great fatigue, the excessiveHeats, bad water, and salt provisions, and without respect officerand soldier shared alike but hardly were we on board again, whenwe became sensible how impossible it would have been to havekept the Field much longer, the excessive rains and Thunder thatare constantly expected here at this time of the year, and canbe compared to nothing of the kind felt in Europe, begun totake place, & as they ever do, brought along with them universalSickness & Death. We lost above a 3d of our People as well officersas Soldiers, in 3 weeks that we remained in Carthagena Harbour.Everybody was taken alike; they call the distemper a bilious fever,it kills in 5 days; if the patient lives longer it’s only to die of greateragonies of what they then call Black Vomit.

The black vomit left the Spanish untouched. The defense of Cartagenacost the Spanish between 200 and 600 men.85 No accounts mentionyellow fever in their ranks during the siege. Those who had fallenill in late 1740 and early 1741, when yellow fever killed a third of therecent arrivals from Spain, had died or recovered by the time of Vernon’sattack.86 In an epidemiological irony probably lost on all those involved,

84 BL Additional MSS, 35898, “A Journal Written of the Expedition that sailedfrom Spithead in the West Indies under the command of the Right HonourableLord Cathcart, in the Month of Oct. 1740,” f.120. A part of this quotation is inLewis (1940:263).

85 Eslava (1894:214) wrote 200; most later historians prefer 600.86 “Diario Puntual de lo acaecido en la defensa que hizo de la plaza de Carta-

gena de Indias,” Servicio Historico Militar (Madrid), Signatura 52116. See also:Marchena Fernandez (1982:138). No other writer (to my knowledge) considershealth among the Spanish troops at Cartagena. Marchena Fernandez (1983:194–237) treats the health of the entire Spanish army in America in the eighteenthcentury.


Cartagena’s defense was more secure because no large contingent ofreinforcements from Spain had joined the garrison. A few hundredreinforcements amid an urban population of 10,000, who provided herdimmunity, gave the yellow fever virus no foothold among them. Lezoand Eslava may have wished for many more troops, but they were betteroff without them.

Lezo died of his wounds in September 1741. Eslava lived until 1759,and held many high posts in government. Both men received titles ofnobility from their grateful king and became national heroes in bothSpain and, when it became a country, in Colombia, with their facesgracing postage stamps and their names on city streets. Despite theirfrictions,87 they had played for time successfully, used their advantagesshrewdly, gambled on “the climate” calculatingly, and won a great vic-tory for Spanish arms, perhaps saving Spain’s American empire.88 TheA. aegypti and yellow fever virus received no honors.

Yellow fever continued to take its toll on the British fleet after itreturned to Jamaica. Another 1,100 soldiers died in the next threeweeks, and by early June 1741 only 3,000 of Cathcart’s original 9,000soldiers remained fit for service; by the end of the month, only 2,100.89

death at guantanamo, 1741

Vernon and Wentworth survived. After much dispute they agreed,ambitiously and desperately, to use what few men they had left inan attack on Santiago de Cuba.90 Santiago de Cuba was a fortifiedport and privateers’ lair in southeastern Cuba, a perpetual menace toJamaican shipping. Jamaican planters and merchants hoped that control

87 AGI, Audiencia de Santa Fe, legajos 572 and 940, include many letters toauthorities in Spain accusing one another of malfeasance and cowardice.

88 No one can say whether the loss of Cartagena would have led to the loss of muchor all of the Spanish American Empire. Backers of the War of Jenkins’ Ear hopedit would. The Spanish naval historian Cesareo Fernandez Duro claimed it would(cited in Nowell 1962:501). Britain absorbed French Canada and Dutch SouthAfrica soon after, and they held much less allure (at the time) than did SpanishAmerica.

89 For the return of 10 June (30 May old style), Harding (1991:124) says 1,909British and 1,086 Americans; Fortescue (1910, 2:74) says 1,400 British and1,300 Americans. Return of 30 June (19 June old style) has 2,142.

90 Council of War, June 6, 1741 (26 May old style), Vernon-Wager MSS, Libraryof Congress.


over eastern Cuba would eliminate Spanish privateering and piracy ontheir merchandise, and secure access to the Windward Passage (betweenCuba and Hispaniola), the best route from Jamaica to North Americaand Europe. Vernon’s superiors in London wanted him to take Santiago,hold it, and settle it with loyal British subjects from North America, sothat eastern Cuba would become a British colony (as western Hispan-iola had become French half a century before). Indeed, Vernon wantedWentworth’s North American troops to settle there and start the Britishcolonization of Cuba.91

Santiago de Cuba made a tempting target. English buccaneers hadsacked it with ease in 1662. In 1741, it had a population of about10,000 people. Its garrison consisted of only about 700 men, countingmilitia and two companies of “Indios.”92 Although strengthened sincethe outbreak of war in 1739, its fortifications remained modest comparedto those of Cartagena. But it lay on a small bay with a narrow mouth,surrounded by almost uninhabited mountains. Vernon and Wentworth(or perhaps only Vernon) decided to attack overland, using the broad,almost unpopulated, and undefended bay of Guantanamo, 80 kilometersto the east, as their base. At the end of August 1741, their fleet rodeinto the bay, where it would spend four futile months.93

Attacking Santiago de Cuba from the landward side proved imprac-tical. The track linking it to Guantanamo was long and passed throughnear-empty savanna and woodlands, meaning a British army would haveto carry all its supplies. Explorations of the terrain attracted guerillaraids by Spanish forces and Cuban militia. Despite Vernon’s urgings,Wentworth refused to make the attempt by land; and despite Went-worth’s pleadings, Vernon refused to try to force Santiago de Cuba’s

91 Vernon to Newcastle and Wager, 7 May 1741 (26 April old style), printed inRanft (1958:229–30): “And think if the Americans could be settled there, itwould be much better than their returning home to a country over-peopledalready, which runs them setting up manufactures, to the prejudice of theirmother country.” See also Newcastle to Vernon, 26 October 1741 (15 Octoberold style) and 10 November 1741 (31 October old style), BL, Additional MSS32698, ff. 138, 240; Wager to Vernon, 2 July 1741 (21 June old style), printedin Ranft (1958:242–3). See also Pares (1936:92).

92 Numbers from Portuondo Zuniga (1996:59, 68).93 Narratives of this campaign include “Diario de lo occurido en Santiago de Cuba

desde la primera noticia de la intentada invasion por los ingleses,” AGI, Audi-encia de Santo Domingo, leg. 364; Portuondo Zuniga (1996:69–72); Harding(1991:123–37); Perez de la Riva (1935).


harbor by sea. So the army stayed put, trying to fortify positions aroundGuantanamo and giving everything in sight an English name as befittedan British colony.

The late summer rains came and, predictably, yellow fever surgedthrough the army. In early September, Wentworth had reported over2,300 men fit for duty, but a month later only 1,400.94 The end of therains in November brought no immediate relief from yellow fever –it would take weeks for the last generation of A. aegypti to expire.By mid-November, Wentworth wrote Vernon (they were no longer onspeaking terms) that he did not have enough men left to defend positionsaround Guantanamo.95 At the end of the month, Wentworth led theremnants of his army, a little over a thousand men, back to Jamaica. InDecember, Col. Burnard wrote his brother that his regiment had losttwenty more officers than had originally come out from England, thatis, most of the original officers and most of their replacements had died.Of 388 men alive (most of whom were replacements, if Burnard’s earliercorrespondence can be trusted), 383 were sick.96

Unaccountably undeterred, Vernon and Wentworth in the spring of1742 planned an attack on coastal Panama, probably the most fever-infested shore of the Spanish Empire. Some 2,000 soldiers had arrivedfrom Britain as reinforcements but began to fall sick in Jamaica. Theexpedition to Panama lasted only a few days, as once the transportsarrived on the coast the commanders deemed the mission impossible, sothey turned around and headed back to Jamaica, having lost 200 mento disease.97 At this point, Vernon and Wentworth elected to cut theirlosses and call it quits.

reckoning dead, 1740–1742

Of the 10,000 British soldiers sent to the West Indies in the years1740–1742, about 74 percent had died by October 1742. Around sixpercent died in combat. Of the original cohort that sailed with Cathcart,

94 PRO SP 42/90, f. 320, Wentworth to Vernon, 7 September 1741 (27 Augustold style); and PRO SP 42/90, ff. 332–3 Council of War 9 October 1741 (29September old style).

95 BL, Additional MSS, 40829, f. 35, Wentworth to Vernon 14 November 1741 (3November old style). Many reports suggest that officers were especially scarce.

96 BL, Additional MSS, 34207, Harry Burnard to his brother, 18 December 1741(7 December old style).

97 Harding (1991:137–48).


90 percent died.98 The North Americans fared slightly better. Of some4,200 who served, 65 percent died in the West Indies, about 3 percentof them in action. If one takes into account the North Americans’lower casualties in combat (a result of their perceived incompetenceand unreliability) and the much shorter trip to the West Indies andcorrespondingly fewer deaths en route, it seems the Americans diedjust as fast as did British soldiers – after all, they came from Virginiaand points north, and had no yellow fever immunities. Altogether,about 10,000 of 14,000 soldiers perished in trying to win Cartagena andSantiago de Cuba for Britain, and no doubt a few more died trying to gethome.99

No official figures exist for the losses among the sailors, but the factthat Vernon kept drafting soldiers from Wentworth’s ranks to fill outhis crews implies severe mortality on shipboard as well. This stands toreason: sailors and soldiers mingled at sea and in ports; ships often hostedtheir own swarms of A. aegypti in the warm and humid quarters belowdecks; and Vernon’s fleet anchored for weeks in bays at Cartagena andGuantanamo, where sailors rowed ashore and mosquitoes surely flewaboard ships. If the proportion of sailors lost was equal to that in thearmy,100 then of roughly 15,000 sailors about three quarters, or 11,750,died of all causes. Adding soldiers and sailors together, a reasonableestimate is that 22,000 of 29,000 died on Vernon’s expedition, andperhaps 21,000 of those died of disease.

Interestingly, nowhere in the extensive correspondence of Vernon,Wentworth, and their superiors in London did any of them express anyremorse over the sufferings and deaths of so many Britons and colonials.Vernon did use some of his own money to expand hospital facilities inJamaica at the outset of the campaign, but this he took as a practicalmeasure more than a sympathetic one. Writing to his brother from hisflagship in Guantanamo Bay, the Admiral did seem relieved to be alive:“[I]t has pleased God wonderfully to preserve me in health, in the midst

98 Keevil, Lloyd, and Coulter (1957–63, 1:78).99 The official returns are in PRO CO 5/41 and 5/42. Harding (1991:202–6) has

arranged the data in useful tables. Of the Massachusetts contingent to Cartagena,only 10% returned home according to Ames (1881:365). Yellow fever probablydid cross the Atlantic, albeit in Spanish ships, because there was an epidemic inMalaga in 1741 (Reyes Sahagun 1742).

100 Harding (1991:149) believes mortality among the sailors was “at least as severe”as among soldiers.


of such sickness and divided councils.”101 He and those like him livedin a ruthless social order in which callousness toward the less fortunatewas a well-honed trait. One did not make admiral or general, or becomea planter or slaver, without a reservoir of indifference to the sufferingsof others. Whatever their reasons, the commanders’ and strategists’apparent nonchalance did not derive from experience seeing such largeproportions of armies die. In the European campaigns of the War of theAustrian Succession, about eight percent of the British Army died fromwounds and disease combined. In the Jacobite rising of 1745–1746, whenthe Crown sent an army of 16,000 men to suppress Scottish rebels, about300 (under 2%) died of diseases in the six-month campaign. For soldiersand sailors alike, the Caribbean disease environment proved far moredangerous than military service in the British Isles or Europe (or NorthAmerica). Taking part in a large expedition, although perhaps safer interms of the risks of death via combat, was the most dangerous serviceof all because thousands upon thousands of susceptibles gave the yellowfever virus admirable opportunity to establish cycles of transmission andreproduce uninhibitedly.102

These grim odds were not lost on officers and men, even if the makersof British strategy seemed unperturbed. From the 1730s onward, soldiersincreasingly paid for others to take their place to avoid West Indiesduty, and officers resigned commissions or connived to stay home whentheir regiments shipped out. Gradually, the high command refrainedfrom risking elite regiments in the West Indies and used duty there aspunishment for units or officers that did not match expectations.103

In any case, at Cartagena and Santiago de Cuba, British ambitionsfor territorial conquest at the expense of Spain came to naught. Britishbumbling and bickering, and Spanish valor of course, had something to

101 Vernon to James Vernon, 7 December 1741 (26 November old style), printedin Ranft (1958:250).

102 Mortality figures from Cantlie (1974, 1:93, 100). The seven major battles ofthe War of the Austrian Succession listed in Raudzens (1997:11) show totalcasualties, killed and wounded together, of 3–16% among winners and 6–26%among losers. Raudzens’ figures are for battles, not lengthy campaigns.

103 O’Shaughnessy (1996:106–11). British naval crews in 1738 in the West Indieslost 8–16% on six- to nine-month cruises in peacetime owing to disease (Crewes1993:63–98). Army regiments also died fast in the West Indies even whensafe from combat; on Antigua, one lost 150% of its original strength, 1738–1745 (O’Shaughnessy 1996:110). Using West Indies duty as punishment wasanalogous to the practice of “transportation” of convicts to disease-ridden penalcolonies such as Georgia or Australia, where they were out of sight, out of mind,and likely to die within a year.


do with it. But had it not been for yellow fever, British forces probablywould have prevailed anyhow, with long-term consequences of themagnitude that Vernon and his superiors had eagerly envisioned whenthey went to war in 1739.

The Seven Years’ War and the Siege Ecologyof Havana, 1762

With their barracks and treasuries sorely depleted, the monarchs ofEurope consented to peace in 1748. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle wasin effect only a truce, and the renewal of hostilities in 1754 surprisedno one. The Seven Years’ War (often known in the U.S. as the Frenchand Indian War) began slowly, in the backcountry of Pennsylvania.It became a world war, with campaigns in North America, Europe,India, the Philippines, the West Indies, and at sea. Britain and Prussiaheaded a loose agglomeration that included Portugal, some small Ger-man states, the Iroquois confederacy, and various South Asian princesagainst France, its Amerindian and South Asian allies, and Austria,Sweden, and Russia among others including, after 1761, Spain. By andlarge, Britain left the European fighting to Frederick the Great of Prussiaand concentrated resources against French overseas possessions and,after 1761, Spanish ones as well. After some early reverses this strat-egy, associated with the ministry of William Pitt, bore fruits with theconquests of French Louisbourg (1758), Guadeloupe (1758),104 Quebec(1759), and all major French posts in India (1757–1761). With Spain’sentry into the war, Pitt’s ambition turned to Havana, the “key to theIndies.”

Havana remained the strategic linchpin of Spanish America. Thetreasure fleets still stopped there before their transatlantic voyages toSpain. Its harbor ranked among the best in the Americas and servedas the home port for the Caribbean squadron of the Spanish navy. Itsshipyard built two of every five warships of the Spanish navy includ-ing almost all the biggest, made from tropical hardwoods and twice asdurable as vessels built in Spain. And it built them more cheaply thanany Spanish shipyard could.105 Since the close of the last war, Havana

104 Guadeloupe’s inadequate fortifications allowed a conquest before fevers deci-mated the British force (Smelser 1955).

105 McNeill (1985:173–6); Ortega Pereyra (1998). BL Additional MSS, 15,717, f.35, “Estado que manifiesta las fuerzas marittimas del Rey de Espana,” (1771),says all ships of more than 80 guns in the Spanish navy were built in Havana.


had also become the center of a thriving sugar industry. Sugar exportsfrom the Havana district quintupled between 1749 and 1760. Nearly ahundred plantations ringed Havana in 1761, extending 20 or 30 kilo-meters inland from the port. Each year, about five more opened forbusiness. Together they produced about 4,600 tons of sugar annually,and the rest of Cuba another 1,000. This quantity amounted to no morethan an average small sugar island’s, and less than 15 percent of thesugar exports of Jamaica or St. Domingue. But visionaries foresaw theday when western Cuba would outstrip the rest of the West Indies inits sugar harvest.106 From Pitt’s point of view, Havana looked a sweeterprize than ever.

the british amphibious expedition

Within a week of the declaration of war with Spain in January 1761,Pitt’s war planners had begun preparing an assault on Havana.107 Withinfifty-seven days, an amphibious expedition was under sail, a feat of orga-nization that testifies to the efficiency of the British military machine

106 Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), Seccion de Manuscritos, 20144, Jose AntonioGelabert a Don Julian de Arriaga, “Proyecto para que se tomen los azucaresde Cuenta de la Real Hacienda,” 25 abril 1759; a copy appears in AGI, SantoDomingo 2015; see also Marrero (1972–1992, 7:11–23); McNeill (1985:162–6).Comparative production figures appear in Moreno Fraginals (1976, 1:40–2).

107 No authoritative book covers the campaign. The most useful are: Parcero Torre(1998) and Syrett (1970); older narratives include Valdes (1814); Guiteras(1856); Hart (1931); Zapatero (1964:264–75); Fernandez Duro (1901, 7:39–82); Pezuela (1868, 2:428–529); Corbett (1907, 2:246–84). Garcıa del Pino(2002) is highly patriotic, concerned to show the virtues of Havana’s popularclasses. Keppel (1981) is helpful, especially about the British side; Calleja Lealand O’Donnell (1999:103–79) is useful on the Spanish side, but reports (164)that George Washington served among the British forces at Havana! CastilloManrubia (1990) is derived from secondary sources but has more on the navalaspects than most. The daily correspondence of Havana’s governor is in AGI,Ultramar 169. His diary is printed in Pezuela (1868, 3:27–51). An anonymousSpanish journal appears in SHM, Ultramar, 4.1.1.7; and one by “J. M. y J.,” prob-ably a naval officer, in Martınez Dolmau (1943:65–101). The journal of the chiefBritish engineer, Patrick MacKellar, mainly about artillery, glacis, fascines, andentrenching tools, is in BL Additional MSS, 23678; in PRO CO 117/1 ff. 110–18; and printed in Beatson (1804, 2:544–65). Anonymous (1762) (An AuthenticJournal) is more revealing. Further documents appear in Archivo Nacional deCuba (1948; 1951; 1963). The 1948 volume includes many documents from theprivate archive of the Albemarle family.


in the latter stages of the Seven Years’ War. The army command wentto George Keppel, the Earl of Albemarle, who although an officer sinceage fourteen had scant combat experience. But he had good personalconnections. Two of his brothers also secured posts as high-ranking offi-cers with the expedition. Vice-Admiral George Pocock led the navalforces. He had entered the Navy in 1725 at age nineteen and had com-manded ships since 1733, often in the West Indies. Their instructionsrequired Albemarle and Pocock to rendezvous with units already in theWest Indies, and with an army of North American volunteers to takeHavana, then capture additional Spanish places of their choosing, andfinally to seize Louisiana from the French. The expedition anticipatedthe usual fevers and included an unprecedented complement of medicalofficers, one for every 110 men.108

Albemarle and Pocock made Barbados by late April, and by late Maywere cruising off the northern coast of St. Domingue, waiting for thelast of their comrades to assemble for the descent on Havana. Whenfinally gathered, the British expedition included 20 ships of the line, 10lesser warships, and perhaps 200 transports carrying 11,098 soldiers –of whom 1,241 were listed as sick.109 Albemarle bought and rented afew hundred slaves because “sailors and soldiers cannot possibly workin this country,” for exertion would bring fevers.110 The commandersexpected another 4,000 men from North America but they could notwait, what with the sickly season already upon them and the hurricanemonths not far off.111 They took the shortest route, along the northcoast of Cuba, an unconventional approach because of the dangers ofits current, reefs, and keys. When they arrived off Havana on June 6th,the military governor was attending mass, entirely unaware that a giantfleet and army had come to call.

108 On medical officers: Cantlie (1974, 1:117–18). Albemarle’s orders appear inPRO CO 117/1, ff. 24–35.

109 Abstract of the general return of H.M.’s forces under the command of Lt.-Gen.Lord Albemarle, 23 May 1762. Printed in Syrett (1970:126). Syrett has correctedthe arithmetic of the original. The figure of 10,998 printed in Archivo Nacionalde Cuba (1948:79) is incorrect.

110 Albemarle to Egremont, 27 May 1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 70.111 The British military reckoned the “sickly season for Europeans is from the Middle

of May ‘till the beginning of October during the heats and rains; and then it ishardly possible for Europeans to work.” BL Additional MSS 32694, “An Accountof the Havanna and Other Principal Places belonging to the Spaniards in theWest Indies,” 14 April 1740, f. 76.


Map 5.3. Havana and Environs (c. 1762)

havana and its defenses

In 1762, Havana counted about 40,000 to 50,000 people, making itamong the largest cities in the Americas. It comprised more than aquarter of the population of Cuba.112 Its immediate suburbs includedperhaps 5,000 to 6,000 more people. Most of them were born and raisedin Cuba, although not necessarily in the Havana region. Their ancestrywas mainly Spanish, predominantly from the Canary Islands, but manyhad roots elsewhere in Spain or in France, Ireland, Italy, or Greece. Avery few had Amerindian ancestry. A large minority, perhaps a quarter,were slaves, mostly born in Africa. Of these slaves, probably abouthalf came from Kongo and its hinterlands, and about half from WestAfrica.113 In addition to the slaves, perhaps another fifth or sixth ofHavana’s population was free blacks, so the total proportion of Africansand Cubans of African descent came to about 40 or 45 percent.114

112 The visita of Bishop Morell y Santa Cruz, AGI SD 534 (and a copy in 2227)reports 26,000 for Havana and its suburbs in 1755–1757. This is an under-count. See McNeill (1985:37–8); Marrero (1972–1992, 6:47–8). A 1760 esti-mate (Declaracion de Juan Ignacio de Madariaga, 14 abril 1763, AGI SD 1587)gives 40,000 to 50,000.

113 This is based on a document in AGI, Contadurıa 1167, which gives the origins ofslaves smuggled into eastern Cuba in 1749, summarized in Marrero (1972–1992,6:33); and another in AGI SD 504, summarized in Marrero (1972–1992, 6:36)giving the origins of 182 slaves sold in Havana in 1759.

114 Cuba’s first census (1774) found the island’s population was 55% whites, 45%slaves plus free blacks. In 1762, the population was likely slightly more white;


Havana lay on the west side of a large bay, connected to the sea by along channel only 200 meters wide. This situation gave the city and itsharbor enviable natural defenses. In addition, it had a fort within thecity walls. At the mouth of the channel, on its west bank just north ofthe city, stood a seawall and a second fort called La Punta. On the eastside of the channel, on a promontory about 7 meters above sea level,loomed the fortress called El Morro, standing sentinel over the harbor’sentrance and the city itself. El Morro represented the careful work ofSpain’s finest military architects (and legions of slaves). Its thick wallswere of stone, and on its east and landward side it sported a deep, dryditch, cut into rock.115 Besiegers could not hope to dig trenches in anapproach to El Morro. Nor could they starve it out: El Morro had itsown food and water kept in several storehouses and cisterns, and atnight small boats could cross the channel from Havana with little risk.Nor could attackers expect to force the channel with warships becausevessels would have to run a gauntlet between the guns along the citywalls and those of El Morro. Indeed, every attempt on Havana since1555 (when it was but little fortified) had ended in failure. The manySpanish officers who regarded Havana as impregnable had their reasons,and the chief one was El Morro.116

But as a French military engineer pointed out in the summer of 1761,to the southeast of El Morro there stood a row of hills called La Cabana,overlooking the fortress and harbor.117 It carried a mantle of woodsin 1762. Throughout the 1750s, Spanish authorities had proposed toperfect Havana’s defenses by fortifying these hills.118 When war withBritain loomed in 1760 and a new governor was sent to Havana, the min-ister responsible for the Indies expressly instructed his new appointee,

how fully Havana conformed to the island’s proportion is unclear. In 1762,Havana’s free black militia included over 800 men (Garcıa 2002:165).

115 Mante (1772:432–3) says the ditch was at various points 45 to 63 feet deep and43 to 105 feet across. Mante was an assistant engineer at the siege. Similar figuresappear in the diary of Archibald Robertson (1930:63), another participant.

116 Parcero Torre (1998:18–30) is the best description of Havana’s fortifications.Their historical development to 1762 is recounted in Perez Guzman (2002:135–43). See also Blanes Martın (1998; 2001:76–87).

117 Relacion del estado actual de las fortificaciones de la plaza . . . de La Habana ydemas fuertes y castillos por el ingeniero D. Francisco Ricaud de Tirgale, 8 julio1761, AHN, Estado 3025.

118 For example, Informe y Consulta del Rey por el Gobernador de esta Plaza enfavor del proyecto de fortificar la montana nombrada la Cavana (signed: Cagigal1759), SHM 4.1.1.1.


Juan de Prado, to fortify La Cabana.119 But work had scarcely begunwhen the British fleet arrived.

Juan de Prado Mayera Portocarrero y Luna (1716–1770) came froma military family and had fought at Oran in 1731 and in Spain’s Italianwars. In 1760, he was serving as sub-inspector of the infantry of Aragon,Valencia, and Murcia when his older brother arranged his appointmentto Havana. He took his time before embarking for Cuba, stopped toinspect Santiago de Cuba, and arrived in Havana in early February1761 to serve as captain-general of Cuba and take command of themilitary forces of Havana.

Those forces consisted of the so-called “fixed” battalion, in placesince 1719 in Havana. Two newly arrived battalions and some dragoonsbrought the total number of regular soldiers to about 2,400 in May of1762 – of whom 321 were listed as sick and a few others were stationedoutside of the city.120 Perhaps 2,000 healthy regulars were in Havanawhen the British arrived.121 About 3,300 militiamen, of variable use-fulness, supported them. A naval squadron of twelve ships of the lineand three frigates anchored in the bay with some 5,500 sailors, manyin a pinch available for shore duty. Altogether, Havana’s defendersnumbered some 10,000 to 11,000 in June of 1762.122

They did not lack for artillery or shot. Havana’s walls and forts bristledwith 195 cannon, and many more lay in the warehouses. In 1758–1759,Spain had sent new cannon and plenty of ammunition and powder to

119 Arriaga a Prado, 23 agosto 1761, AGI, SD 1581. In a 1755 report, a bishop hadraised the issue with King Ferdinand VI: AGI SD 534, Morell al Rey, 2 julio1755.

120 Several estados de tropas from May 1762 appear in AGI, SD 1581, 1584, 1585.Albi (1987:46–9) has an account of the defenders.

121 At his trial, Prado gave 2,681 “sin descontar los enfermos” as the number ofregular troops at the outset of the siege. Proceso y [sentencia?] dada al Gobernadorde la Habana Juan de Prado (1765), BN-Madrid, MSS 10,421. He mentions 2,430Havana militia, also.

122 Estado de la fuerza de milicias, 6 junio 1762, AGI SD 1584; El Marques delReal Transporte a Arriaga, 26 abril 1762, AGS, Marina, 406. An Account ofthe Havanna, BL Additional MSS 32694, ff. 73–4, gives a favorable account ofthe fighting qualities of Cuban militia; most Spanish sources do not. A capturedSpanish document (Estado que manifiesta el numero de Plazas de que estabantripuladas y guarnecidas los vaxeles de la Esquadra de S.M.C. en este Puerto dela Havana, 7 junio 1762, PRO CO 117/2 f.34) lists only two frigates and a totalof 4,781 sailors.


Havana. The naval squadron carried over 600 more cannon. Small arms,however, may have been in short supply.123

Havana’s defenders could count on help. The strong northeasterlywinds prevailing in January through April made it dangerous for anarmada to try to ride off the north shore of Cuba, guarded by almost con-tinuous reef. From August through October, hurricanes might destroyan entire fleet in minutes. If attackers wished to avoid these hazards,and did not think they could complete a siege in the interval betweenOctober and late December, then they had to face the risks of the yel-low fever season. As the engineer Francisco Ricaud made clear in 1761,fortifications and mines could delay attackers but “experience shows itis the climate alone that debilitates armies.”124

yellow fever at havana before 1762

Havana had long experience with yellow fever. A brutal epidemic in1649 cost the city a third of its population, and repeated outbreaks in1651, 1652, and 1654 took yet more.125 This catastrophe inaugurateda 250-year long struggle in the city against the virus. Major epidemicsoccurred in 1709, 1715, 1730, 1731, 1733, 1738, and 1742. Smalleroutbreaks happened virtually every year among the city’s children, new-comers, and sailors.126

Havana’s urban environment suited the A. aegypti nicely in termsof temperature and breeding habitat. As the biggest city and one ofthe most active ports in the Caribbean, Havana had extensive water

123 Noticias de la artillerıa que conceptuo habıa montada y desmontada en la plazade La Habana . . . 6 de junio de 1762, 16 junio 1763, AGI SD 1578.

124 Relacion general e instructiva de la consistencia del Castillo de San Carlos,proyectado en la Eminencia llamada la Cabana al Este de esta Plaza de la Habana,8 julio 1761, AHN Estado 3025.

125 de la Fuente (1993:65–7). Lower figures, less well documented, appear in Le Royy Cassa (1930) and Martınez Fortun (1952:29–30).

126 Lopez Sanchez (1997:151–62); Espinosa Cortes (2005:29–33). The epidemics ofthe early 1730s might best be considered a single event, like those of 1647–1652and the 1690s. St. Domingue and Charleston also experienced multiple outbreaksin the 1730s, and according to Henry Warren (1741:73–4) some 20,000 Britishsubjects, mostly sailors, died of a “malignancy” in the West Indies in 1733–1738.This spate of outbreaks could have resulted from the buildup of immigrants in theGreater Caribbean in the peaceful years after 1715, but in Havana the arrival ofa permanent naval squadron could also have contributed fuel for epidemics.


storage facilities. Its immediate hinterland, as noted previously, acquireda plethora of sugar plantations in the 1750s, further improving the breed-ing environment. In most years the rainy season began in May, peaked inJune, and then reached a second peak with the August and Septembertropical storms. Humidity and temperatures, always high, both edgedupward in May and June. This meant that A. aegypti populations nor-mally exploded in June and were looking for blood throughout the sum-mer. Several generations could hatch before the great-grandchildren ofthe June crop died out in November.

The city and its hinterland offered plenty of mammal blood. Beyondthe 50,000 humans in the city and suburbs, the nearby sugar andtobacco plantations added a few thousand more human bloodstreamsfor mosquitoes to drink from. A. aegypti prefer human blood but, in apinch, will drink what they can get. The sugar plantations all had oxenand horses. Where there were no plantations (yet) there were ranches,with more cattle and horses. Havana and its vicinity in 1762 might haveoffered the best conditions anywhere on earth for A. aegypti.

The virus as well as its vector found Havana well suited to its needs. Itshinterland had forests, and forests had monkeys where the virus couldsurvive indefinitely. The crown preserved forest land around HavanaBay for the naval shipyard, so Havana had more forest close to thecity than any comparably sized city in the Americas (and thus probablymore monkeys and more yellow fever virus in reserve close by). The bigurban population meant newborns and toddlers, that is, nonimmunebloodstreams. Most Caribbean cities had a large surplus of young malesand thus little in the way of families and fertility. As an old and bigcity, Havana had more of an established population, more locally bornpeople, more females, more marriages, more families, and more babiesthan any other Caribbean community.

These babies soon got yellow fever and either died from it (rareamong children) or became immune. Moreover, roughly a tenth to afifth of Havana’s population had been born in yellow-fever zones ofAtlantic Africa.127 So as in Cartagena, the resident population, con-taining mostly immunes, offered some scope for the yellow fever virus’survival and circulation, but not much for epidemics.

127 A guess, perhaps high, based on the estimates of Moreno Fraginals (1976, 2:86)that 88% of slaves on Havana’s plantations, 1740–1790, were born in Africa;and an estimate that one quarter of the city’s population were slaves. This takesno account of the free black population, some of whom were African-born.


Fortunately for the virus, Havana attracted newcomers from else-where. In addition to the babies, nonimmune bloodstreams arrivedconstantly with immigrants from Spain and young people from Cuba’sinterior villages. Some of these migrants carried immunity but some,especially the Spaniards, did not. Moreover, Havana hosted a floatingpopulation of temporary visitors, sailors, and merchants, from all overthe Atlantic world. They might number in the hundreds or even thou-sands, at least when the treasure fleets were in port. Some of these visitorswere immune, if they had survived yellow fever on previous Caribbean(or West African) visits. But many were not. Thus, the ecological anddemographic circumstances of Havana ensured a lively population ofA. aegypti and an omnipresent, if fluctuating, supply of virus. Any timea goodly influx of newcomers coincided with the wet season, a yellowfever epidemic would reliably result.

One such epidemic flared up in the summer of 1761. Within a monthafter Spain entered the war, the Minister of War in Madrid orderedreinforcements to Havana, the first large batch of new troops sent toCuba since 1749. They came from precisely the same units that hadbeen sent to Cartagena in 1740, suggesting the Spanish recognized thevalue of “seasoning” and had units designated for service in America.128

Of some 1,440 men who left Cadiz, 68 died en route and nearly 300disembarked in either Puerto Rico or Santiago de Cuba; about 1,000landed in Havana. Yellow fever had already broken out among them, andquickly spread once they were ashore. They arrived at the worst possibletime, in late June. “El vomito” spread among the newly arrived soldiers,the sailors of the six ships of the line on which they had come, andeven to the veterans of the fixed battalion.129 The sick soon overflowedthe hospitals and had to be quartered on the local population, some ofwhom fell ill as well. By November, when Juan de Prado sent a report toMadrid, 183 of the 1,000 reinforcements had died, and another 45 fromthe fixed battalion. The number of deaths among sailors and civiliansis unknown but some authors suggest, probably extravagantly, either1,800 or 3,000.130 Costly as it was, the yellow fever outbreak of 1761

128 Albi (1987:38).129 Gutierre de Hevia (the Marques del Real Transporte) a Arriaga, 28 julio 1761,

quoted in Calleja Leal and O’Donnell (1999:93).130 Prado a Arriaga, 12 noviembre 1761, AGI SD 1581; several further letters from

Prado to Arriaga mentioning the epidemic are in AGS, Marina 405. Prado addedthe number of yellow fever victims up to 187 total; I get only 183. Fernandez


meant that by June 1762 the Spanish forces in Havana, and the city’spopulation too, consisted overwhelmingly of immunes.

Despite the losses of 1761, little doubt remained that yellow feverwas an ally of Spanish defense. No one could forget the precedent atCartagena. Havana’s chief military engineer in July 1761 made clearthat the city relied on the navy, the fortifications, the garrison, and the“peculiarly pernicious effects of this climate, the costs of which to theenemy we have already witnessed.”131 Several British military men hadmade the point in the 1740s, including Vernon and Admiral Knowles.Looking back in 1771, Samuel Johnson put it more colorfully, explainingthat the Spanish dominions “are defended not by walls mounted withcannon which by cannons may be battered, but by the storms of thedeep and the vapours of the land, by the flames of calenture and blastsof pestilence.”132 Everyone knew what yellow fever could do.

the siege

Pocock’s armada and Albemarle’s army arrived off Havana on June 6,1762. In sixty-six days they would master the city, only to die in drovesfrom blasts of pestilence. Armed with a good idea of the city’s defenses,the British planned to assault El Morro first. Albemarle allegedly toldhis army they would all “be as rich as Jews,” for Havana was “paved

Duro (1895–1903, 7:43) claimed 1,800 soldiers and sailors died in this epidemic,while Levi Marrero (1972–1992, 6:3) says 3,000, probably following MartınezFortun (1948). Guerra (1994:370) uses this figure too, and also (116) says 40 to50 died daily when things were at their worst. These are likely to be too high,even if they include sailors and civilians. Guijarro Olivares (1948:376) says in1761 Juan Antonio de la Colina, leading a group of “galeotes” (which usuallymeans galley slaves), brought yellow fever to Havana from Veracruz, killing1,800 victims in a single year, entirely among soldiers and sailors. Garcıa delPino (2002:75–6) claims the “supposed” epidemic was used to cover up Spanishmilitary incompetence. The question became a political one when Prado wascourt-martialed in 1763–1764.

131 Relacion del estado actual de las fortificaciones de . . . La Habana . . . por el inge-niero D. Francisco Ricaud de Tirgale, 8 julio 1761. AHN, Estado 3025. In theoriginal: “ . . . los peculiares perniciosos influxos de este clima que tan a costa enemigatenemos ya experimentado . . . ”

132 Johnson (1977 [1771]:373–4). Knowles, perhaps in 1748, wrote of operationsin the West Indies, “the Climate soon wages a more destructive War, than theEnemy.” From BL, Additional MSS 23,678, f. 17, quoted at greater length inMcNeill (1985:102).


with gold.” The army began to disembark the next morning, June 7th,well to the east of the city at Cojimar, without resistance but amidheavy rains.133 Soon the British had thousands of men ashore, and aftera brief skirmish had taken the village of Guanabacoa, to the southeastof Havana. Guanabacoa included the headwaters of the small CojimarRiver, which the British wanted because fresh water was otherwisescarce. And from Guanabacoa they could keep an eye on the countrysideand obtain some provisions.

Observing that the heights of La Cabana remained bare of fortifi-cations, British infantry took the hills, again with minimal resistance,on June 11th. Then began the tedious hot work of putting artillery,shot, horses, and other supplies ashore, cutting roads through the woodsbetween the coast and La Cabana, and hauling everything up the slopeswhile under fire from El Morro, from the city, and from Spanish shipsin the bay.

Building batteries atop La Cabana took a month. Twice, on June 29thand July 22th, the Spanish tried in force to retake La Cabana with nosuccess. Beginning in early July when the first batteries opened, a fierceartillery duel took place between the British batteries and the Spanishfortress, supplemented by Spanish ships in the harbor. British ships alsoexchanged cannon fire with El Morro briefly, inflicting no damage onthe fortress but some on the ships. The batteries on La Cabana faredbetter, and gradually knocked out the Spanish guns on the landward sideof El Morro. With great difficulty because of rocky terrain and Spanishmusketeers, British sappers slowly dug mines under the outer bastionsof El Morro.

Meanwhile, beginning on June 15th, the British also besieged the cityfrom the west, landing 2,800 men safely beyond the range of Havana’sguns at the mouth of a small river, the Chorrera. Here they watered theirships. They also cut the aqueduct that brought fresh water to Havana.But they lacked the manpower to surround the city and its bay, and cutcommunications with neighboring districts. So water, food, men, andsupplies continued to flow into Havana throughout the siege, and inany case the city’s storehouses and cisterns were well stocked. To win,the British would have to take El Morro.

133 On the rains: Anonymous (1762) (An Authentic Journal), entry for 7 June. Narra-tion of the early days of the siege appears in the diary of Robertson (1930:49–63).Albemarle’s quotations from Mante (1772), cited in Keppel (1981:36).


Many obstacles hampered the besiegers. They could find no freshwater close to their operations and had to carry water from nearbystreams upward of three kilometers to their batteries and sappers. Un-expectedly dry weather after the rains of June 7th and June 16th leftthem desperately short of water. Often they had to ferry water by shipfrom the Chorrera, west of Havana, to the operations east of the city.They could not dig trenches in the rocky earth in which to move menand materiel out of sight of the defenders. They could not “scrape soilsufficient to fill our sandbags” for their batteries atop La Cabana, andone of them, couched in wood instead of earth, caught fire and burnedfor days.134

Moreover the defenders of El Morro, under the naval captain DonLuıs de Velasco, fought ferociously. Each night, Havana could easilysend fresh supplies and men to El Morro across the bay’s channel. Unitsrotated in and out of the fortress every few days. As a British diarist putit on July 4th, “The Morro was now found to be tuffer work, and theSpaniards more resolute than was at first imagined.”135

Yet the British had fortune on their side. Velasco, Prado, and theSpaniards counted on “the climate” taking its toll on the British. But adry July followed a dry June. After June 16th, or perhaps June 18th, thenormally reliable summer rains did not fall. The British thought this badluck because it exacerbated their shortage of fresh water. A soldier, JamesMiller, remembered “ . . . the bad water brought on disorders, which weremortal, you would see the men’s tongues, hanging out parched like amad dog’s, a dollar was frequently given for a quart of water. . . . ” At thetime, Miller thought the siege would fail.136

134 Memorandum of Lt.-Gen. David Dundas, printed in Syrett (1970:314–26). Thequotation is from p. 323.

135 Anonymous (1762) (An Authentic Journal).136 James Miller, “Memoirs of an Invalid,” Public Archives of Canada, Amherst

Papers, Packet 54, f. 43 (quoted in Syrett 1970:xxix). Anonymous (1762) (AnAuthentic Journal) notes rains before 15 June, but then “want of rains” in the entryof 21–24 June; “want of water” for 4 July; and “great want of water” for 23–27July. Mackellar’s journal entry for 2 July remarks on the lack of rain for the last14 days, i.e., since 18 June. BL Additional MSS 23678. Knowles’ “Remarks uponthe Siege of the Havana,” also in BL Additional MSS 23678, f. 21, mentions the“excessive dryness of the weather,” as of 2 July. It was already dry enough on 18June that the Spanish could set fire to the woods east of El Morro in an effort todrive back the besiegers: Diario de el Sitio de la Abana enviada a la Corte por elLord Albermarle [sic], BN-Madrid, MSS 2,547, entry for 18 June 1762. On the


But unseasonable summer drought – perhaps another El Nino effect –was the best luck they could have had.137 Dry conditions (recall Chapter2) inhibit the hatching of A. aegypti and their eagerness to fly andbite. Prado’s arthropod allies failed to turn up in force. As a result, thedisease burden of the British army in the first fifty-five days of the siegeremained modest – although Albemarle worried he was losing men toofast and would have to withdraw before taking El Morro. Indeed, onJuly 17th he wrote to London that he needed more troops if he wereto prevail.138 But Pocock supplied sailors willingly for operations onland, and the soldiers and sailors building and manning the batterieson La Cabana stayed surprisingly healthy. The sailors who remainedaboard ship retained their health. Those working on the shore ferryingsupplies amid mangrove swamps suffered the most from “flux, fever, andague.”139 They had to abandon Guanabacoa on July 21st after 2,100 ofthe 2,400 troops stationed there fell ill. Despite the likely unseasonableshortage of vectors, by the seventh week of the siege, on July 27th,roughly half the British force was unfit for duty. By July 28th, yellowfever had become more widespread and the British “scarce able . . . fromsickness to defend themselves had they been attacked regularly.”140 Butfor Prado, the British army did not suffer badly enough soon enough.

Unlike Prado’s, Albemarle’s allies did turn up. On July 27th, just asyellow fever took hold among the British, ships from New York landed3,188 healthy troops, mainly American volunteers. They were monthslate but in time for the climax of the siege. Engineers exploded the mineson July 30th, blowing a breach in El Morro’s walls. After a witheringhail of artillery fire directed at the breach, British soldiers, including

same day Albemarle wrote to Pocock, “We are so distressed for water with thisdry weather . . . ” (Keppel 1981:55).

137 According to Quinn (1992), 1761–1762 witnessed an El Nino, which in Cubausually means early summer drought, a result of unusually low sea-surface tem-peratures and reduced convection. The 1997–1998 El Nino brought Cuba itsworst drought in 50 years (Jury et al. 2007).

138 Albemarle to Egremont, 17 July 1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 96. Albemarle reported4,063 sick. “General Return of H.M forces under . . . Albemarle,” 17 July 1762.PRO CO 117/1, f. 93. On 13 July, he wrote to Egremont that “increasing sicknessof the troops, the intense heat of the weather, and the approaching rainy seasonare circumstances which prevent my being too sanguine as to our future successagainst the town.” PRO CO 117/1, f. 79.

139 Dundas Memorandum printed in Syrett (1970:324).140 Anonymous (1762) (An Authentic Journal), 28–29 July entry. Mante (1772:430)

also notes the sickness and suffering among British troops in late July.


the new arrivals, stormed through. In a matter of hours, at the cost offourteen dead, the British controlled the castle. The Spanish had lostthe linchpin of Havana’s defenses.141

For the next twelve days, as torrential rains set in, the British turnedthe remaining guns of El Morro against the city and the Spanish navalships while continuing the cannonade from La Cabana. More healthyNorth Americans arrived on August 2nd. They helped to drag guns intoposition on the west flank of Havana, so the city prepared to receive firefrom the east and west, and from ships anchored to the north.

The fall of El Morro put Juan de Prado in an awkward spot. As longas the British artillery had targeted El Morro, the city of Havana andits civilians faced little immediate danger. His men, militia included,had fought well. His pleas for men and food from nearby districts hadoften met with helpful responses, so Havana suffered little. ThroughoutJune and most of July he could play for time, waiting for yellow fever tosave the city. And he had reason to hope: Deserters kept the Spanishinformed about sickness in the British Army.142 But after El Morrofell, the rain of cannonballs and howitzers threatened the lives andproperty of all remaining Habaneros. By Prado’s orders, thousands ofwomen and children had left in the days after June 7th, but some20,000 people stayed in the city. Had he known that the late rainyseason, finally underway in August, ensured an abundant and activemosquito population and a yellow fever epidemic, he might have heldout longer than he did. But he did not know, and on August 11th, soonafter the three-sided bombardment began, he chose to seek terms andon August 14, 1762, he surrendered the city.

The Spanish had lost somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 men incombat, soldiers, sailors, and militia combined. As of August 13th, theBritish army suffered 290 killed and 56 “dead of wounds,” and the RoyalNavy only 86 dead.143 But in August, with the rains yellow fever set inwith a vengeance. Several hundred Spanish sailors fell sick, as did several

141 In losing El Morro, the Spanish also lost 130 killed, 37 wounded, 326 takenprisoner, and 213 drowned or killed in boats. “State of the Garrison of FortMorro when taken by storm the 30th of July 1762,” PRO CO 117/1, f. 130.

142 The anonymous diary printed in Martınez Dalmau (1943) records desertersspeaking of sickness on ten different occasions between 14 June and 5 August.

143 Parcero Torre (1998:173–4); over a thousand more defenders had been wounded:Relacion de Herridos, 25 agosto 1762, AGS, Hacienda 1056; in a diary sent tothe Spanish court, Albemarle gave 1,200 as the number of Spanish dead and1,500 wounded, Diario de el Sitio de la Abana enviada a la Corte por el LordAlbermarle [sic], BN-Madrid, MSS 2,547. “Return of the Killed, Wounded, Died


thousands more British soldiers and sailors. Looking back, in SeptemberAlbemarle wrote to London that his army had been “so reduced bysickness, and the well so unfit for almost any service, that, if the governorhad been firm, he might have named his own terms.”144 Had Prado heldout another week or two he might have held out forever and become ahero like Eslava and Blas Lezo. Or had the North Americans not comewhen they did, wrote Albemarle, the siege would have failed.145

Albemarle thought the North Americans arrived in the nick of time,and he was more right than he knew. He would have preferred thatthey had kept to the plan and joined him in May, but he was luckythey did not. Had they done so, they too would have suffered at leastas grievously as their British cousins. By August, about three in four ofthem would have been dead or unfit for duty. As it was, they remainedfit for at least a week or two after arrival, providing the British with aninfusion of fighting and laboring power just when they needed it most.Thus had the North Americans arrived on time, as Albemarle wished,or had they arrived later than the end of July, the siege probably wouldhave failed.

aftermath: death in havana and peace in 1763

Havana was a rich prize. The British captured a treasury with over3,400,000 pesos, or £700,000, in it. Adding in the tobacco, sugar, andother goods taken, the booty amounted to more than £3,000,000. Theyalso took about a fifth of the entire Spanish Navy. They acquired hugequantities of military supplies.146 And they had in their possession the

of Wounds, Missing, and Dead since the Army landed on the Island of Cuba, tothe 13th of August 1762,” printed in Beatson (1804, 3:406).

144 Albemarle to Newcastle, 29 September 1762, BL Additional MSS 32,942, f. 388;printed in Archivo Nacional de Cuba (1948:195). Albemarle’s correspondenceshows he was sick himself in August and September 1762.

145 Albemarle to Egremont, 21 August 1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 137. AdmiralKnowles agreed: “Remarks upon the Siege of Havana,” BL Additional MSS23,678, f. 28. On f. 35 he wrote: “ . . . time was wasted, numbers were lost bysickness, and it became next to a miracle that we succeeded at last.” Knowleshere was criticizing the army, countering Mackellar’s criticism of the navy.

146 Parcero Torre (1998:176–87) summarizes Spanish losses. “Return of Guns,Mortars, and Stores Found in the City of Havana . . . 13 August 1762,” 8 October1762, PRO CO 117/2, ff. 24–8 (a copy is in PRO ADM 1/237, ff. 84–88), listscaptured military materiel. Prado was not short of weaponry or ammunition. “AList of Ships of War that were in the Harbour of the Havana . . . ” 21 August1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 134.


best harbor in the West Indies with the most formidable fortifications,which they quickly set about repairing.147

But with the booty came the virus. The recently arrived NorthAmericans, mainly men from New England and New York, sufferedheavily. Among them was a future hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill,Israel Putnam from Connecticut. Putnam’s company lost 76 of its 96men (83%), all killed by yellow fever.148 Major Joseph Gorham, a life-long soldier from Massachusetts, arrived in Havana on August 6th with253 men; ten weeks later 102 (40%) had died when the survivors re-embarked for New York. A Rhode Island detachment that accompaniedGorham lost 111 of its 212 men at Havana and en route home, two ofthem in combat and the rest (53%) to disease.149 Levi Redfield ofKillingworth, Connecticut, who had joined up as a seventeen-year-oldin hopes of seeing Fort Ticonderoga, arrived at Havana on August 10thand remained there until October 28th, during which he wrote, “mostof our men died of West Indian fever.” More died en route home.150

Although the North Americans may have had it worst, yellow feverquickly crippled Albemarle’s entire army. There could be no question oftaking further Spanish strongholds or French Louisiana. With no intactunits and strength diminishing every day, it was challenging enough tohold the coastlands of western Cuba. That task required 4,000 fit men,thought Albemarle, which meant a permanent garrison of 6,000 wasneeded, taking sickness into account.151 This came to roughly twice asmany men as the British had stationed in recently acquired Canada. ButAlbemarle only had 2,067 fit for duty in mid-October according to anofficial return, and a mere 700 by his count.152 Almost his whole armywas sick – or already dead.

147 “Estimate of the Expenses of the Fortifications at the Havana,” PRO CO 117/1,f. 275. This document appears to be from early 1763 as it records expenses in thefive months since September 1762.

148 Putnam (1931:5). His Connecticut regiment lost 220 men to disease at Havanaand another 400 en route home.

149 Gorham (1899:162, 168). Gorham’s Rangers also lost both of the “women of thecorps” to disease en route home.

150 Redfield (1798:3–9).151 Albemarle to Egremont, 7 October 1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 149.152 “General Return of Officers, Sergeants, Drummers & Rank and File . . . from

the 7th of June to 18th October 1762,” PRO CO 117/1, f. 158; Albemarle toEgremont, 7 October 1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 145.


Yellow fever victims piled up after the end of human hostilities.As of the Spanish surrender, 696 British officers and men had died of“sickness.” On October 7th Albemarle wrote: “We have buried upwardsof 3,000 men since the capitulation.” By October 18th, the date ofthe last return that has survived in archives, 4,708 had died of disease(compared to 305 killed in action and 255 dead of wounds). Albemarlehad lost more soldiers from yellow fever in two months of peace atHavana than the British Army had lost in the entire Seven Years’ Warin all of North America.153

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy lost so many men that Pocock reportedhe could not contemplate further action. In October, he reported:

We have lost since the 7th of June to the 9th instant by death abouteight hundred seamen and five hundred marines, and eighty-sixwere killed during the siege; but from the number at present sick,as their Lordships will observe by the weekly account to be twothousand six hundred and seventy-three seamen and six hundredand one marines, we have reason to apprehend several of themwill die.154

So as of October 9th, 1,300 sailors had died from disease. If half of thesailors sick on October 9th later died, then the navy lost about 3,000to disease. If the epidemic continued among the navy, as it did in thearmy, the figure should be greater still. Because Pocock spent £1,500on cinchona bark in January 1763, it is a plausible assumption that thenavy still had many sick in its ranks, and likely more deaths followed.155

In the months after the last official calculation of its losses in October1762, the army lost several hundred, perhaps more, in Havana, and morestill among soldiers sent to North America to improve their health. Theremnants of the army still in Havana in the spring of 1763 suffered arenewed outbreak in late May.156 A reasonable guess is that the army lost

153 “Return of the Killed, Wounded, Missing and Dead since the Army landed onthe Island of Cuba,” 13 August 1762, PRO CO 117/1 ff. 106–7; “General Returnof Officers, Sergeants, Drummers & Rank and File . . . from the 7th of June to18th October 1762,” PRO CO 117/1, f. 158; Albemarle to Egremont, 7 October1762, PRO CO 117/1, f. 145.

154 Pocock to Clevland, 9 October 1762, PRO ADM 1/237.155 Pocock to Clevland, 13 January 1762, PRO ADM 1/237, f. 103. The bark was

used against all West Indian fevers, even though helpful only against malaria.156 Keppel to Egremont, 31 May 1763, PRO CO 117/1, f. 221.


7,000 to disease, bringing the total to about 10,000 soldiers and sailorsas the price of Havana. Fewer than 700 died in combat. A. aegypti killedabout fourteen or fifteen times as many British attackers as did Spanisharms.

The appalling toll from disease impressed sages of the day. BenjaminFranklin, in congratulating an English friend on the fall of Havana,wrote: “It has been however the dearest conquest by far that we havepurchas’d this war when we consider the terrible Havock made by thesickness in that brave Army of Veterans, now almost totally ruined.”157

Samuel Johnson, looking back on the victory in 1771, summed it upthus: “May my country never be cursed with another such conquest!”158

While yellow fever still raged in Havana, British and French diplo-mats began negotiating a peace. The French needed it badly. In Britain,the policy elite divided into two camps. Some wanted to press theiradvantage against France and Spain, others to make peace and con-solidate their gains. Initially, the conquest of Havana strengthened thehand of those who wanted to continue the war: Without Havana, theSpanish system of defense in the Americas was severely underminedand Britain could choose among several tempting further targets. But asAlbemarle’s army died off, those who wanted peace prevailed. FurtherCaribbean conquests seemed not only unlikely but, even if successful,undesirable. Too few men remained for actions against Louisiana, whichin any case would also have presented another challenging disease envi-ronment. The Peace of Paris, signed in February 1763, gave Havanaback to Spain but awarded Spanish Florida to Britain. To win Spanishacquiescence, France ceded Louisiana to Spain.159

The manpower shortage that stopped the British from attackingLouisiana affected North America in another way. Too few menremained in the British army in North America to respond quicklyto Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763, in which an Amerindian confederacychallenged British rule especially in the broad interior regions just takenfrom the French. The rebellion swelled and ended in a stalemate that

157 B. Franklin to G. Whitefoord, 7 December 1762, BL AM Add MSS 36, 593,f. 53.

158 Johnson (1977:374).159 As late as December 1762, Albemarle seemed to think Britain would keep

Havana. His instructions to William Keppel include very detailed efforts to wingood will, such as a plan to support orphans. “Instructions for the HonourableWilliam Keppel . . . ” printed in Archivo Nacional de Cuba (1948:102–4).


convinced the British to try to keep colonists and Amerindians apart,drawing a boundary around the eastern colonies and creating a hugeIndian reserve from the Appalachians to the Mississippi, from Floridato Canada. This added to the resentments colonists felt against theBritish government and contributed in a modest way to the crisis thatended in the American Revolution.160

For the Spanish, the temporary loss of Havana came as a terrible blow,both because it was so strategically important and because it was thoughtinvincible. The defeat served as the prod for a general reorganizationof imperial defense in the Americas in the 1760s. It included fortifyingthe heights of La Cabana. The Spanish recognized that yellow feverhad come to their rescue in 1762, but too slowly. Had they delayed theBritish by another week or two, as holding La Cabana surely would havedone, then, they expected, they would have prevailed. So the strategyfor the defense of the “key to the Indies” still rested with fortificationand fever.161

Juan de Prado and other senior officials were put on trial in Madrid,accused of failing to fortify La Cabana and to send sallies out againstthe British, among other sins. The judges found Prado guilty. Somewanted him executed, but the King instead banished him from courtfor twelve years, from employment forever, and confiscated his propertyfor the royal treasury.162 He died in a village near Salamanca, probablyin 1770. Rich beyond his dreams, Albemarle suffered from poor healthuntil his death at age forty-eight in 1772. Admiral Pocock, also rich (hisshare from Havana was more than £122,000), lost several of his shipsin a storm on the way back to England and was never granted anothercommand. He died in 1792 and rests in Westminster Abbey. Don Luısde Velasco died of wounds shortly after the fall of El Morro. His valor soimpressed King Carlos III that he decreed that forevermore the Spanishnavy would always include a ship named “Velasco,” and it has. Onceagain, A. aegypti went unrecognized and without honors. But everyoneknew what yellow fever had done.

160 This link is suggested by Syrett (1970:xxxv).161 Parcero Torre (2003); Abarca (1773) contains details about how many days each

feature of the defense would delay attackers. He was confident that “el clima”(fol. 106) would destroy attackers within three months – three weeks longerthan the 1762 siege lasted.

162 BN-Madrid, MSS 10,421 has the 192 folios of the Proceso y [sentencia?] dada alGobernador de la Habana Juan de Prado (1765).


Conclusion

Fortifications and yellow fever helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish.Of course, valiant soldiers and other infections contributed too, as didthe French alliance and a modest navy. But the heart of Spain’s defensesystem in the Americas was heavily fortified ports that, together with theravages of yellow fever, could reasonably be expected to repel even theformidable war machine of Georgian Britain. Yellow fever did its dutyby Spain at Cartagena, at Santiago de Cuba, and belatedly at Havana.Even there, where it came too late to prevent the surrender, it camewith such a vengeance that it prevented Britain from exploiting thesuccess, and encouraged diplomats to return the pestilential city in thePeace of Paris. Spain lost Florida, gained Louisiana, kept Havana, andkept its empire.

At Havana, British soldiers had the satisfaction of dying from yellowfever as victors. At Cartagena, they died as vanquished. Although it istrue that in the intervening years the British improved their capacity tomount amphibious operations, and that the land and sea arms coordi-nated better at Havana than at Cartagena, the big difference was a fewdays: In 1741, yellow fever forced a desperate attack on a strongholdbefore proper siege preparations had even begun, but in 1762 it held offlong enough for the besiegers to breach El Morro’s wall before attempt-ing to carry it by assault. The 1762 siege lasted sixty-six days, that of 1741only forty-six. Had yellow fever come sooner at Havana, Prado wouldhave been a hero, Pocock and Albemarle disgraced. Its late appearanceis probably a result of the summer drought, although any number ofthings might explain it. Had El Morro held out another two weeks,Albemarle would surely have chosen to depart with what army he hadleft. In politics and war, timing – even of rains, mosquitoes, and viruses –is everything. Mark Twain is credited with saying that history does notrepeat itself, but it rhymes. The sieges of Cartagena in 1741 and Havanain 1762 form a couplet. One failed and the other succeeded, but in bothcases yellow fever destroyed an amphibious assault force and checkedBritish ambitions on the Spanish Empire.

Spanish military officials in Veracruz, Cartagena, Havana, andthroughout the Greater Caribbean learned the value of yellow fever.By the 1760s, they wrote about it explicitly as part of their system ofdefense. Perhaps living with frequent outbreaks kept it in the forefront oftheir minds. But between 1815 and 1830, Spanish military authorities inMadrid committed expeditionary forces to the killing grounds of coastal


Venezuela and Mexico, as if they had no knowledge, or no fear, of the“climate.” Meanwhile, French and British strategists seemed to knowwhat to expect in expeditionary warfare to the Greater Caribbean by the1730s if not before, but often either failed to complete their invasionsduring the dry season or, in some cases perhaps, supposed that historywould not repeat itself and that God would protect their troops fromharm. Spanish, French, and British strategists and statesmen all learnedfrom experience but sometimes also forgot or ignored their lessons.

The British seemed to ignore the lessons of Cartagena and Havanain 1780 in an assault on what is now Nicaragua. During the War ofthe American Revolution (of which much more in the next chapter),the Governor of Jamaica secured permission for an attempt to annexa slice of Central America and establish British naval power on boththe Caribbean and Pacific coasts. The revolt of Tupac Amaru in theAndes (1780–1782), which threatened the foundations of the SpanishEmpire, fired British ambitions once more. Horatio Nelson, already acaptain but not yet twenty-two, sailed with an expedition to the mouthof the San Juan River. They arrived in good health, recruited localAmerindians (called Miskito or Moskito) as allies, and pushed upriverto the castle of San Juan. After an eighteen-day siege, they took it as theApril rains began. Nelson fell ill before the victory but, luckily for him,received orders for a new posting that obliged him to return to Jamaica.Meanwhile, his comrades suffered a blistering epidemic. Of 1,800 menwho went upriver, 380 survived. Two or three were killed in the siege;another died from snakebite; and over 77 percent perished from disease.Most of the Spaniards taken prisoner died as well, as did many of theBritish Amerindian allies.

The disease(s) in question scarcely affected the Africans (and those ofAfrican descent) involved with the expedition. A British naval surgeonand eyewitness, Thomas Dancer, made the interesting observation thatIndians of the coast “who have an admixture of negro blood . . . did notfall ill so soon as the others.” An army doctor, John Hunter, also noteddifferential immunity at work in this campaign, writing: “There was thestrongest proof of this in the negroes who were sent along with thetroops against Fort St. Juan, of whom scarcely any died, although few ornone of the soldiers survived the expedition.”163

163 Dancer (1781:12); Hunter (1788:23). Moseley (1795:147) wrote of “negroes”that only a “very few of them were ill.” Of an attack on another Spanish post,Fort Omoa on the same coast, he added (147), “ . . . half of the Europeans who


This circumstantial evidence suggests the frightful mortality of theNicaragua campaign came from a mosquito-borne disease to which peo-ple of African descent carried some resistance – in other words, malaria,yellow fever, or dengue. The acute mortality has led most who offered anopinion (including me)164 to a diagnosis of yellow fever. However, theswampy riverside terrain, the absence of good A. aegypti habitat outsidethe fort itself, and Dancer’s description of symptoms (which does notmention black vomit) suggest malaria. In his journal, Stephen Kemble,a British officer on the expedition, repeatedly described his own sicknessand that of his men as “ague.” He claimed to have recovered his healththanks to the bark, taken “in quantities.” Like Dancer, Kemble saidnothing of yellow fever or black vomit.165 So a diagnosis of malaria fitsthe textual evidence and the ecological circumstances, even though a77 percent mortality rate is extremely high even for falciparum malaria.Perhaps the best guess is falciparum malaria in combination with otherinfections.

Nelson narrowly escaped an early death, and he remained sick inJamaica and England for a year or more. But eventually he recovered,his reputation enhanced, his trajectory set for Trafalgar and glory.166

The epidemic at Fort San Juan ended British hopes of seizing a chunkof Central America and acquiring a naval station on the Pacific. It

landed, died in six weeks. But very few negroes; and not one, of 200, that wereAfrican born” (italics in the original). Stephen Kemble, a British officer, wrotein his journal that: “The Negroes from the Bay of Honduras stand the Climateand are better Calculated to Service in this Country than any other People.”Kemble (1884–85, 2:14).

164 McNeill (1999). Beatson (1804, 6:230–31) includes the text of the Spanishcapitulation at Fort San Juan. As a response to a proposed Article VII, theBritish commander wrote: “It is characteristic of Britons to treat their prisonerswith humanity and politeness; and I pledge my word to do my utmost to keep theMosquitoes within the bounds of moderation.” When I first saw this sentence Ithought it might be a reference to fierce insects, surely unique in the annals ofcapitulations, and evidence of the likelihood of mosquito-borne disease. But, alas,the passage refers to the Miskito Indians, allies of the British in this campaign.

165 Kemble (1884–85, 2:48–58) mentions “ague” six times. He also described hisfever as recurring frequently, which sounds more like malaria than dengue oryellow fever (1884–85, 2:15–16).

166 The best sources are Dancer (1781) and Kemble (1884–85); Moseley (1795:135–48). Knight (2005:55–61) and especially Sugden (2004:148–75, 810–11) providefine accounts of Nelson’s experience. The reports and correspondence on Britishoperations are in PRO CO 137/77 and 137/78.


confirmed Spanish faith in the “climate” as a powerful ally.167 In termsof loss of life, it was the single costliest engagement for Britain in the Warof the American Revolution: Nicaragua’s mosquitoes killed more Britishsoldiers in the summer of 1780 than the Continental Army did at thebattles of Bunker Hill, Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Princeton,Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, King’s Mountain, Cowpens,and Guilford Courthouse combined. In political terms, however, thesiege of Yorktown fifteen months later cost far more.

167 The “climate” also menaced troops fresh from Spain in this war: An army of7,000 sent out in late 1780 to attack British posts on the Gulf Coast, to expelthem from Nicaragua, and ideally to retake Jamaica, lost more than 4,000 ofits men (57%) to disease by January 1781 (Saavedra de Sangronis 1989:103–4,journal entry for 23 January 1781). In his entry for 6 December 1780, Saavedrade Sangronis summarized the import of tropical diseases on operations in theCaribbean: “In any case, it will be advisable to hasten the operations, becausethe effects of the climate will carry off more cautious persons than the enemy’sfire will kill among the reckless” (Ibid 63).

P A R T T H R E E

REVOLUTIONARY MOSQUITOES

I n the 1770s, the geopolitical significance of differential immunity inthe Atlantic American world shifted. Formerly, it had helped sta-

bilize the distribution of territory among the various imperial powers,especially protecting Spain’s empire in the Americas. It continued to doso, as the example of Fort San Juan in Nicaragua showed. But now, bythe 1770s, it also helped insurgents in their quests to change the impe-rial order. Political dynamics evolved in such a way that many peopleborn and raised in the Americas sought to upset the status quo. Rebelslaves in Surinam, for example, benefited from differential immunity.In British North America, growing numbers, wealth, self-confidence,and sense of frustration with their treatment by King and Parliamenthelped turn many Americans onto the path of revolution in the 1770s.A generation later, slaves in St. Domingue and Creole elites in SouthAmerica also chose revolution. So did Cubans at the end of the nine-teenth century. Historians for generations have brilliantly illuminatedthis age of revolution. One thing that has escaped their spotlight is therole of mosquitoes in making the revolutionaries victorious.

193

C H A P T E R S I X

Lord Cornwallis vs. Anopheles

quadrimaculatus, 1780–1781

Introduction

This chapter follows the story of environmental change, mosquitoes,vector-borne disease, differential immunity, and war to two new locales,the Atlantic coastlands of Surinam and the American South. TheSurinam excursion is brief. Although illustrative of the power of dif-ferential immunity, the rebellion in Surinam carried far smaller con-sequences than the American Revolution. This chapter also shifts thefocus to malaria, part of the earlier stories in the Caribbean, but asidefrom the English conquest of Jamaica in 1655 never at the center. So inthis chapter the political dynamics, the venue, the vector, and the prin-cipal disease in question are all different from those in earlier chapters.But as in earlier chapters, mosquitoes in pursuit of human blood shapedhuman politics.

Slave Risings and Surinam’s Maroons

From the late seventeenth century onward, Dutch planters had orga-nized a thriving plantation economy along the coastal rivers of Surinambased on African slave labor and sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton asexport crops. By 1770, some 50,000 to 60,000 slaves toiled on perhaps400 to 500 plantations.1 Runaway slaves gradually formed maroon com-munities in the sprawling swampy forestlands of the interior, and rou-tinely raided the plantations, provoking counter-raids that became an

1 Goslinga (1979:100). Key texts include Herlein (1718); Hartsinck (1770);Pistorius (1763); Malouet (1802, v. 3).

195


annual ritual by 1749 if not before.2 Beginning in 1772 the maroons, whonow numbered several thousand,3 embarked on larger attacks againstthe plantations involving, according to one account, some 2,000 to3,000 men.4 They had few and poor weapons, but one powerful ally.

Surinam had endemic malaria, abetted by naturally swampy ter-rain and the polders the Dutch planters had designed and their slaveshad built, accidentally making good Anopheles habitat even better. InSurinam, wet rice was a staple food. It was not an export crop, but it fedthe slave population and sometimes the whites. Maroons also grew it inthe swamps. With their frequent floodings and bountiful organic debris,rice fields made ideal nurseries for Surinam’s resident malaria vector,Anopheles darlingi. In the mid-1770s, Dutch Surinam’s mosquitoes were“inconceivable numerous.”5 They remained so a generation later, asDr. Pinckard recalled: “ . . . we were in danger of being devoured bythose annoying insects the musquitoes, which attacked us in such dar-ing hosts that we were obliged to walk with small boughs in our hands,and to continue, the whole time, beating them from our legs and faces.”6

There were many different species of mosquitoes in Surinam but, thanksto the rice economy, An. darlingi was well represented.

Moreover, because the rice fields required endless toil female mos-quitoes easily found human blood from slaves. Because many of theseslaves came from Africa, most carried malarial plasmodia in their blood-streams, ensuring that the An. darlingi of Surinam’s rice fields wouldalmost always be infective. So the rice economy improved the landfor An. darlingi while increasing opportunities for the transmission ofmalaria. This made Surinam an extremely dangerous place to visit foranyone without strong resistance to malaria. To make matters worse fornewcomers, residents also collected rainwater in tanks, inadvertentlycreating good environments for Aedes aegypti larvae, and thereby assist-ing in Surinam’s frequent yellow fever outbreaks.7

2 Fermin (1778:138–72). See Thompson (2006) on maroons generally.3 Boomgaard (1992:216) says 5,000 to 10,000. Others say as many as 20,000.4 Extrait de la Resolution du Conseil de la Ville d’Amsterdam, 15 novembre 1774.

British Library, Additional MSS 35,443, fol. 149.5 Stedman (1988:46). Stedman thought mosquitoes preferred to bite newcomers

from Europe and noted that locals burned tobacco to keep mosquitoes at bay.6 Pinckard (1804, 2:210).7 Malouet (1802, 3:257). Stiprian (1993) gives a sense of the overall ecology of

eighteenth-century Dutch Surinam. On rice-malaria links in Surinam: Hudson(1984); van der Kuyp (1950).

LORD CORNWALLIS VS. ANOPHELES QUADRIMACULATUS 197

The maroons’ attacks on the plantations in the early 1770s promptedthe dispatch from the Netherlands of some 1,650 soldiers. They wereprobably reluctant to go: Surinam’s justly acquired reputation as a par-ticularly unhealthy spot for Europeans was well known.8 The Dutchforces succeeded politically while failing demographically. They pushedthe maroons deeper into the forests and temporarily relieved the imme-diate threat on the plantations. But only about 200 soldiers survived toreturn to Europe. John Stedman, the Scottish-Dutch soldier-of-fortune(from Chapter 2) who served – willingly – with the Dutch expedition,noted the death toll at the end of the campaign in 1777:

In Short out of a number of near twelve hundred Able bodiedmen, now not one hundred did return to theyr Friends at homeAmongst whom Perhaps not 20 were to be found in perfect health,all the others (a verry few of the Remaining Relief Excepted)being Repatriated, sick; discharged, past all remedy; Lost; killed;& murdered by the Climate. . . . 9

Stedman went on to remark on the importance of differential immunity,observing that:

Amongst the Officers and Private men who had formerly beenin the West Indies, none died at all, while amongst the wholenumber of 1200 together I Can only Recollect one Single marinewho Escaped from Sickness. . . . 10

Stedman did not know why the “climate” was so murderous for thosewho had not previously been in the West Indies, but he left no doubtabout the strong partisanship of the disease(s) that reigned in Surinam.Judging from the swampy terrain of Surinam and the abundant ricecultivation, the chief suspect would be malaria. However, the sharpdistinction between veterans of the West Indies, among whom noneapparently fell ill, and the others, among whom almost all did, suggests

8 Fermin (1778:208–9).9 Stedman (1988[1790]:607). Dutch documents put the strength of Dutch forces

at 1,650, not 1,200; see Hoogbergen (1990:104). Extrait de la Resolution duConseil de la Ville d’Amsterdam, 15 novembre 1774, British Library, AdditionalMSS 35,443, fol. 149 says 1,200 plus 600 reinforcements, including a corps of300 blacks raised in Surinam (or, 1,800 in all).

10 Stedman (1988:607). The italics are in the original. Col. Fourgeoud au Princed’Orange, 6 septembre 1774, BL, Additional MSS. 35,443, f. 128–30, notes therampant sickness among troops chasing maroons through swampy terrain.


yellow fever, which more completely immunizes its survivors than doesmalaria. Soldiers spent what time they could in the main town, Para-maraibo, attracted by its women, drink, and food, and in turn attractingurban A. aegypti. Yellow fever was present in Surinam in 1779, as aletter to Amsterdam attested: “Strangers and sailors after disembark-ing . . . come down with the so-called chocolate sickness, called by theSpaniards vomito negro or chapetonnade, which is the vomiting of gall,by which the sick person, sometimes in the greatest paroxysm of frenzy,is snatched by death within three or four days.”11 Some of the Dutchprobably caught yellow fever in town, some probably developed malariawhile on campaign in the bush, and many of them probably hosted both.Whatever the case, Stedman’s account shows how powerful differentialimmunity could be in aiding rebels in the American tropics.

The maroons of Surinam lived to fight another day but they weretwo few, too disunited, and too poorly armed to convert the destruc-tion of the Dutch regiments into a political triumph over the Dutchplantation colony. In Surinam, mosquitoes and diseases could destroyan army but could not defeat the political order. In North America, therevolutionaries held a stronger hand than did the maroons of Surinam.

Revolution and Malaria inthe Southern Colonies

While the maroons waged their war in the swamps of Surinam, a largerscale revolt brewed in North America. It resulted in war by 1775.12 Therebellious Americans organized the Continental Army – drawn froma population of nearly 3 million and led by George Washington – tocounter British forces. After a few years of inconclusive ebb and flow,by 1779 the British were firmly entrenched in port cities, chiefly NewYork, and the Americans unable to dislodge them. But the Americanscontrolled most of the countryside, and the British were unable tolure them into decisive battles. It was a considerable achievement thatWashington was able to maintain an army, despite precarious finances,uncertain loyalties among his troops, quarrels in the fledgling Congress,and the toll exacted by smallpox and other diseases. It was an expensive

11 Quoted (without attribution or citation) in Goslinga (1979:107).12 For the political and military history of the war, I relied on Mackesy (1965);

Pancake (1985); Lumpkin (1981); Black (1996); Weintraub (2005); Middlekauff(2005); Wilson (2005); Ferling (2007).


Map 6.1. The Carolinas and the Chesapeake (c. 1780)

engagement for the British to maintain a large force (they sent 60,000men to America in all, half of them German mercenaries) so far fromhome for so long.

The argument here is straightforward: In the American Revolution,the British southern campaigns ultimately led to defeat at Yorktown inOctober 1781 in part because their forces were much more suscepti-ble to malaria than were the American. Malaria was ubiquitous in theCarolina Lowcountry, partly because of changes in the agro-ecology ofthe Carolinas since 1690. On average, Americans were more resistant to


it than were British troops because of repeated prior exposure. Differen-tial susceptibility to malaria constrained British strategy and presenteda dilemma from which there was no escape. In the South, the Britishcould either keep their forces within reach of the Royal Navy, in whichcase they could easily be re-supplied and reinforced but could not bekept healthy, or they could leave the coasts, in which case they couldexpect better health but could not be reliably re-supplied or reinforced.

malaria vs. smallpox in the american revolution

Infections killed far more combatants in the American Revolution thandid violence, and two of the most deadly, malaria and smallpox, weresystematically partisan because of differential immunities.13 Americanforces were more vulnerable to smallpox than were the British andGerman troops arrayed against them because most of them had grown upin regions where smallpox was not endemic and they had not encoun-tered it. (Some 30,000 Germans, called Hessians by the Americansbecause many hailed from Hesse, served under British command in theAmerican Revolution.) On the other hand, the British and Germanswere almost all survivors of smallpox and therefore immune to it.14

Moreover, many British soldiers had been inoculated against smallpox,a frequent practice since 1756. In some regiments by the 1770s, inoc-ulation was obligatory.15 A smallpox epidemic raged nearly the lengthand breadth of North America during the American Revolution, and its

13 Duncan (1931:371) estimates that in both the Continental and British armies,disease deaths outnumbered battle deaths by 10:1. Over the course of the war, hefigures that Washington’s army lost 18% of its men annually to disease and 2% towounds. The Continental Army’s disease death toll came mainly from smallpoxand typhus in the early years of the war. Duncan (374) estimates that the Britishlost 10% annually to disease, and the Germans only 6%, which he accounts for bytheir prior experience with smallpox, typhus, and other diseases common amongeighteenth-century armies. Other authors offer a ratio of 8:1 for disease deathsover combat deaths in the British Army during the American Revolution, afigure that may originate with Hamilton (1794, 2:262). In the Royal navy,the ratio was 16:1 say Keevil, Lloyd, and Coulter (1957–1963, 3:137). Kipping(1965) reports that of the roughly 17,000 Hessians who served in the war, 4,626died in all and 357 were killed in combat, a ratio of 13:1. Eelking (1863) makesfrequent mention of disease among the Germans, but offers few specifics.

14 Duncan (1931:372) quotes a British doctor as saying only two out of every nineBritish and German soldiers had not already survived smallpox.

15 Kopperman (2007:69–70, 75–6).


partisanship posed one of George Washington’s most vexing problems.16

Early in the war, he wrote he had “more to dread from it, than from theSword of the Enemy.”17 With the example of British regiments beforehim, Washington opted to require inoculation throughout his army.Through compulsory inoculation, which killed a few but saved the rest,the Continental Army acquired an effective shield against smallpox.Without it, the epidemic might have sapped the American forces fasterthan other diseases drained the British.

On the other hand, their enemies for the most part had never encoun-tered malaria. Before 1750, the marshy and low-lying districts of Kentand Essex had hosted vivax malaria and as a result were more sicklythan elsewhere in England. The same held true of wetlands landscapesin Germany. But as the eighteenth century wore on, increasingly Englishand German youth lacked prior exposure to malaria, partly because ofwetlands drainage and partly because of an enormous expansion incattle numbers. With plenty of cattle to bite, the anophelines of north-ern Europe grew increasingly ineffective as malaria vectors, so peo-ple became increasingly inexperienced with, and unresistant to, vivaxmalaria.18 Even the few who did carry resistance to vivax proved vulner-able to falciparum malaria, a routine summer scourge in the Carolinasand the Chesapeake but entirely absent in Europe. Ecological condi-tions and changes in Europe, as well as those in the Americas, had somebearing on differential resistance to malaria.

The toll from disease became the greatest demographic problem fac-ing the British Army in America. Through 1779, by resorting to evermore desperate measures, it managed to recruit men to replace thoseit lost despite annual losses to West Indies garrisons of 15 to 25 per-cent. Stationing a large share of the army in Canada, New England, andNew York to counter rebellious Americans improved its health becauselosses in these locales came to only 1 to 6 percent annually. But in 1780,the balance tipped because Britain’s grand strategy committed a largerproportion of the army to malarial (and yellow fever) zones. The deathof 2,500 men in the Nicaragua campaign (recall the previous chapter),

16 See the fascinating account in Fenn (2001:92–103), and the thorough discussionin Becker (2005).

17 Washington to Dr. William Shippen, 6 January 1777 (quoted in Fenn 2001:92).18 The reduction of malaria in northern Germany is summarized in Blackbourn

(2006:64). On the role of cattle, see Kjaergaard (2000:19). See also Dobson(1997:287–367); Bruce-Chwatt and de Zulueta (1980).


and almost 5,000 more in the occupation of fever-stricken St. Lucia in1780–1781, on top of the routine wastage of men on garrison duty inthe West Indies – in 1779–1783, Jamaica fevers killed 3,500 troops –put the army in a demographic plight. When in 1780 the British Armyplaced its single largest force, some 9,000 men, in the vicinity of SouthCarolina’s Anopheles mosquitoes, it could no longer recruit men fastenough to offset those it lost.19 Neither immunity nor inoculation couldshield the British Army from malaria.

the southern strategy and the americanrevolution

After the battle of Saratoga (1777) had showed them that the Americanswould not lose quickly, the French joined the war (1778) and Spainfollowed (1779). Simultaneously, Britain and Holland went to war (late1780). Britain thus faced an international war of the utmost seriousness.The British Army, which had numbered only 48,000 at the outbreakof the war, was thinly stretched from Bengal to Barbados and beyond.The British Army in America could not be supplied locally except atgreat political cost (commandeering food and supplies was a good way toturn Loyalists into revolutionaries), so the Royal Navy had to safeguardeach British enclave in the Americas. Now with the expansion of thewar, the Navy would be thinly stretched too, by threats in the EnglishChannel and North Sea, in the West Indies, the Mediterranean, andIndian Ocean.

With the entry of France, Spain, and the Netherlands into the war,maintaining control of the rich sugar islands of the Caribbean requiredthat the North American war be forced to a conclusion and forcesshifted to more important theaters. Campaigns in the northern colo-nies in 1775–1778 had frustrated the British: They had hoped that ifWashington’s army could be shattered, colonists loyal to the king wouldeasily restore British authority. But although Washington had beenbeaten in several small battles, he prudently would not allow another

19 Hunter (1788:56–8), Jamaica and St. Lucia; Kopperman (2007) andO’Shaughnessy (1996:106–11) on the general demographic plight. The navy’sdifficulties in the 1770s and 1780s are analyzed by Wilkinson (2004). On St.Lucia, the troops remained “more healthy than usual in this Climate” as late asMay 1779 according to a letter from James Grant to Gen. Henry Clinton, 12 May1779, Society of the Cincinnati Library, Manuscript Collection, L2001F518.


major showdown after his defeat on Long Island (1776). With theinternationalization of the war, the standoff of late 1778 and most of1779 could not last, and time now seemed to favor the Americans. Thewar, never widely popular in Britain, had become a divisive politicalissue. Britain needed a new strategy, one that would bring matters to ahead quickly.

Britain’s warlords in London and the commander of the army inAmerica, Sir Henry Clinton, settled on a southern strategy. Theybelieved the Loyalists, who in the north had proved too few or tootimid to turn the tide, existed in sufficient number in Virginia, theCarolinas, and Georgia.20 They also hoped to ruin the lucrative exporttrades of tobacco and rice in the southern colonies, and so to starve therebels of funds with which to pay the Continental Army. Encouragedby small-scale successes in Georgia, early in 1780 the British besiegedCharleston,21 the only major city in the south, and took it in May.The Carolinas certainly had loyalists, but they had far more Anophelesmosquitoes.

the carolinas and their mosquitoes

After 1670, Barbados planters and all manner of English had begunto settle in the Carolina coastlands, and by the 1690s South Carolinawas a fast-growing slave plantation society.22 The local Amerindianpopulation, probably in intermittent decline since the 1520s, shrankrapidly after 1670, making settlement easier. The land here is flat –an early settler likened it to a “Bowling ally.”23 Sluggish rivers snakedthrough pine and broadleaf forests, and lost their way in cypress swampsand bogs before seeping into estuaries and the sea.

20 Lord Germain, now responsible for London’s war strategy, apparently believedas late as November 1780 that over half of Americans were “well disposedto Britain” (Marshall 2005:357). On Loyalists in the south, see Smith (1964);Lambert (1987); Piecuch (2008). The latter argues that the wagering on Loyaliststrength was sound policy.

21 Strictly speaking, Charleston was Charles Town until 1783, but I use the modernname throughout.

22 Olwell (1998); Wood (1974); Coclanis (1989); Edelson (2006); Carney (2001).For the ecological situation, Silver (1990). On the adjacent Georgia coast, seeStewart (1996), especially chapter 3.

23 “An Old Letter” in Langdon Cheves, ed., The Shaftesbury Papers and Other RecordsRelating to Carolina (Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society, 1897), vol.5: 308, quoted in Coclanis (1989:30) and Morgan (1998:30).


By 1730, rice was the principal crop, well suited to the swampylowlands from Cape Fear to Savannah, called the Lowcountry.24 Raisingrice in these environments required endless labor, such as diking anddraining swamps, and careful management of irrigation. (Indigo, thesecond most important plantation crop, also involved irrigation and wasalso first grown on the inland swamps.) Some slaves from West Africanrice-growing regions had the necessary know-how for rice cultivationin tidal estuaries and inland swamps, and by 1760 their knowledge,skill, and labor had helped create a thriving plantation regime thatexported tens of thousands of tons of rice each year. They were makingthe swamps into “the golden mines of Carolina.”25 In all, between 1700and 1780 planters imported roughly 100,000 slaves who spent theirremaining days building and maintaining creole landscapes, analogousto those of the sugar zones of the Caribbean.26 As in Surinam, thelandscape the slaves created was ideal habitat for Anopheles mosquitoes.Chapters 2 and 3 explained something of the ecology of Anopheles andmalaria as it applied to the West Indies. In the Carolinas, the detailsof anopheline and malaria ecology were different – and the detailsmatter.

Several anopheline species existed in the Americas. The dominantone in the eastern United States in the twentieth century was theAnopheles quadrimaculatus.27 It presumably reigned in the eighteenthcentury as well, an inference supported by its very widespread distribu-tion today, from Florida to the Dakotas and from Mexico to Quebec.28

It needs temperatures between 10◦C (50◦F) and 40◦C (104◦F), withits ideal around 35◦C (95◦F) and humid – midsummer weather in theCarolinas and Virginia. In the Carolina Lowcountry, the climate was

24 Exports (which accounted for almost all production) averaged a little over 3million pounds annually in the 1710s, 20 million pounds in the 1730s, and65 million pounds in the 1770s. Figures from Dethloff (1988:41).

25 Johan David Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation (1783–1784) (Philadelphia,1911), vol. II, 180, cited in Morgan (1998:33). See Wood (1974); Littlefield(1981); Carney (2001); Edelson (2006); and Eltis et al. (2007) on the installationof the rice economy and the degree of African expertise involved.

26 Numbers from Morgan (1998:61).27 Kaiser (1994); O’Malley (1992); Horsfall (1972:134–59).28 Wood (1974:86) says An. quadrimaculatus was present in the Carolina wetlands

when settlers first arrived, citing M.D. Young et al., “The Infectivity of NativeMalarias in South Carolina to Anopheles quadrimaculatus,” American Journal ofTropical Medicine, 28(1948), 302–11.


warm enough for more than six months of the year, allowing upwardsof twelve generations of An. quadrimaculatus yearly.

An. quadrimaculatus prefer to breed around the edges of bodies of freshwater, such as ponds, swamps, ditches, and irrigated fields. But the larvaecan also survive in brackish water and salt marshes. The larvae thrivebest when sheltered by floating or emergent vegetation in warm waterspiced with bountiful organic matter, for example, algae and bacteria.In their lifetimes, females (on average) might lay 2,000 eggs in nine totwelve batches. Females hibernate, often in close proximity to humansand domesticated animals, and in spring when temperatures reach 20◦C(68◦F) they become active again, usually only long enough to lay onemore batch of eggs before dying.

After 1690, the Lowcountry plantation environment increasinglyprovided exemplary conditions for An. quadrimaculatus’ breeding. Thecreole ecology and rice plantations of the Carolina Lowcountry did forAn. Quadrimaculatus what the sugar plantation ecology of the Caribbeandid for A. aegypti. Lowland South Carolina suited Anopheles’ habits evenbefore the installation of the rice economy, but the extensive irrigationof fields with shallow and stagnant water, full of organic debris, madegood conditions much better. Usually, rice fields got four floodings peryear, ensuring that in the warm months conditions suited An. quadri-maculatus larvae. Moreover, slaves built reservoirs to guarantee suffi-cient supplies of irrigation water, and surrounded fields with networksof ditches and canals.29

29 On the rice-Anopheles link in the U.S. South, see Steelman et al. (1981); San-doski et al. (1987). It may also be that the widespread presence of maize, orcorn, helped Anopheles to flourish in the Carolinas. A third of plantations raisedmaize for sale, and almost all had acres of maize to help feed slaves (Morgan1998:48–50; Edelson 2006:90). Recent research in Ethiopia shows that hybridmaize pollen serves as an ideal food for Anopheles larvae, which are much morelikely to survive to the pupal stage if located close enough to maize fields sothat the wind carries pollen to their aquatic cradles. In Ethiopia, the relevantAnopheles species is arabiensis, and it is uncertain (to me at least) whether otherAnopheles species react so favorably to the presence of maize pollen. Perhapsany pollen would do, and in the Ethiopian case it just happened to be maize.It also happens to be a new hybrid maize, which releases its pollen at just theright season for An. arabiensis larvae. Could the maize grown in the Carolinas inthe eighteenth century have released pollen at the right season for An. quadri-maculatus? Possibly, and if so then the Lowcountry plantations would have beenespecially good incubators for Anopheles. The Ethiopian research is presented inMcCann (2005:174–96).


The growth of the Carolina plantation economy helped with anophe-line feeding as well as breeding. Full-grown male An. quadrimaculatustypically live only about one week, feeding on nectar and sucrose, anddevoting all available energy to finding females of their species. Femalessurvive one to three weeks, on average. They too can feed on sweetsubstances but to reproduce, they must find a blood meal. They feedchiefly at dawn and dusk on large mammals including deer, cattle, andhorses, but especially humans. Dog or pig blood will serve in a pinch,but chicken and rabbit blood will not do. An. quadrimaculatus are notas efficient as An. gambiae, but as malaria vectors go, they are very goodones, because of their preference for human blood.

The Carolina coastlands had been thinly populated in the seven-teenth century. Only with the rise of rice and the importation of Africansdid human population grow quickly. By 1710, there were some 9,000people (about evenly divided between whites and blacks) in the areassurrounding Charleston, and by 1770 about 88,000 in the Lowcountry,mainly (78%) of African birth or descent.30 Population grew faster stillin the backcountry, where malaria took a smaller toll and immigrantsmore easily found opportunity.

In addition to the rapidly growing human population, the Carolinasalso offered a menu of deer and cattle blood for the thirsty anophelines.31

South Carolina had seemingly endless herds of deer and a huge deerhideexport trade (second in value only to rice). As hunters killed off the deer,settlers brought in cattle. Lowcountry plantations normally maintainedpastures and cattle for their own purposes, sometimes running hundredsof cattle in nearby woods under the management of slave cowboys. TheCarolina backcountry had yet more cattle, routinely driven to the coastfor sale and slaughter. Almost every plantation had a few horses too,and more than half kept hogs.32 Thanks to rice, the plant kingdomgenerously contributed to the welfare of Anopheles larvae; thanks topeople, deer, and cattle, the animal kingdom fed female Anopheles.

30 Coclanis (1989:68). The colony as a whole had about 175,000 people, nearly60% of African descent (Gordon 2003:17).

31 In Louisiana at least, higher cattle density in rice regions raises mosquito popu-lations (McLaughlin and Focks 1990).

32 Morgan (1998:52) has figures on livestock on Lowcountry plantations, 1730–1776; Edelson (2006:113–24) explains land use patterns. The proliferation ofcattle, hogs, and sheep attracted the attention of Thomas Ashe in 1682 (Ashe1682), reprinted in Salley (1911:138–59, esp. p. 149).


In general, conditions for An. quadrimaculatus in the Carolina Low-country improved markedly throughout the eighteenth century. Eventhe weather cooperated. From the 1750s to the 1770s, in SouthCarolina conditions were wetter than average and spring rains, impor-tant for mosquito populations, were especially abundant.33 Contempo-rary Carolinians often noted how thick the mosquitoes were in summerand early fall. Eliza Pinckney complained of “muskatoes and sand fliesin abundance,” and George Ogilvie of “swarms of Muskitoes [draw-ing] blood at every pore.”34 Dense populations of vectors and of hostsimproved the odds for the transmission of malaria.

malaria, malaria resistance, andmalaria awareness

With reliably abundant crops of An. quadrimaculatus, malarial plasmodiaeasily moved from human to human. Slave ships brought new strainsof malaria from West and Central Africa, or from the West Indies,every year. As in Surinam, the rice economy ensured that there wouldbe many human bloodstreams swimming with plasmodia amid the bestbreeding grounds for An. quadrimaculatus, maximizing the chances ofinfection among mosquitoes. In the summer and early fall, the Low-country hummed with hungry mosquitoes, and after a few bites almostall of them carried malaria.35

Thus in the years after 1690, the Carolina coastlands increasinglybecame a perilous landscape, but more perilous for some than for others.People of West African origin or descent generally had less to fear frommalaria than anyone else. People born and raised locally, if they sur-vived childhood, normally carried strong resistance and had little causefor concern, although they might experience recurrent vivax malaria(which stays with one forever and can flare up from time to time). Peo-ple who came to the Carolinas from malaria-free zones – mainly fromhigh latitudes – ran great risks.

33 Climate data from Stahle and Cleaveland (1992); and Stahle, personal commu-nication 2 August 2005.

34 Eliza Pinckney quoted in Wood (1974:75–6); Ogilvie in Edelson (2006:145).A traveler quoted in Wood (1974:76) likened mosquitoes’ “venom” to that ofrattlesnakes.

35 Packard (2007:57–8).


By the middle of the eighteenth century, everyone in the CarolinaLowcountry grudgingly accepted malaria as a routine fact of life anddeath.36 Despite their comparative safety from malaria, slaves consideredrice work the most dangerous to their health. The slave population didnot increase of its own accord until the 1750s or perhaps the 1770s, inlarge part because of high disease mortality among children in whichmalaria figured prominently.

Contemporaries recognized a connection between swamps in general– and rice plantations in particular – and fevers. Lord Adam Gordon, aBritish officer traveling through the Carolinas in 1764–1765 unknow-ingly identified the link: “In general what part of South Carolina isplanted, is counted unhealthy, owing to the Rice-dams and Swamps,which as they occasion a great quantity of Stagnated water in Sum-mer, never fails to increase the Number of Insects, and to produce fallfevers and Agues. . . . ”37 Thomas Jefferson regretted that rice cultiva-tion “requir[es] the whole country to be laid under water during a seasonof the year, [and] sweeps off numbers of the inhabitants annually withpestilential fevers.”38 Whites tried to spend the summers away from therice plantations, preferably well inland where malaria was less preva-lent. In the years before the American Revolution, the most prosperousfamilies summered in Rhode Island to avoid the fever season.39 Grad-ually, people learned not to build their homes next to swamps or ricefields.40

However, this knowledge did not prevent what contemporaries oftencalled “country fever” from ravaging the Lowcountry population in theeighteenth century. As a German visitor put it in 1783, “Carolina isin the spring a paradise, in the summer a hell, and in the autumn a

36 Chaplin (1993) provides a sense of how fearsome and familiar whites in SouthCarolina found malaria, as do Merrens and Terry (1984). Miranda (1963:33)notes how agues were routine for Lowcountry whites. He visited in August–October 1783. I owe this citation to my colleague Alison Games. Childs (1940)on the early history of malaria in the Lowcountry.

37 Quoted in Duffy (1953:213).38 Quoted in Carney (2001:147).39 In this respect, white Carolinians imitated behavior then routine in the marsh-

lands of East Anglia and Kent, where summer malaria was a fact of life in thesixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. Vicars in those parishesmade a point of residing well inland so as to avoid malaria (Dobson 1997:295–7).

40 Wood (1974:74).


hospital.”41 Every summer and fall, especially in wetter years, it carriedoff thousands. In Charleston (afflicted by yellow fever as well as malaria)in the three decades before 1750, three people were buried for everyone baptized – and everyone considered Charleston healthier than itshinterland.42 The European population in the Lowcountry could notsustain itself biologically until the 1770s, before which time it grew onlybecause of strong flows of immigrants. Newcomers from Britain, lackingall resistance unless they were from the marshy and malarial parts of EastAnglia and Kent, were the most likely to suffer and die. The seasonalityof death in the Lowcountry shows the dangers of malaria: In one parish,77 percent of all those who died before age twenty did so in the malarialmonths from August to November. The culling of children reveals thesame dangers: 57 percent of males and 33 percent of females baptizeddied before age five, and 90 percent of those who died in their first yearperished in those four malarial months.43 The survivors’ bloodstreamswere swimming with malarial parasites, a standing reservoir of futureinfections that would menace newcomers without experienced immunesystems.

malaria vs. the british army in the southerncolonies, 1780–1781

This was the Lowcountry environment into which the British Armystepped, in force, in early 1780. Sir Henry Clinton (1738–1795), thechief of all British forces in North America, had commanded the siegeof Charleston, but soon after its successful end he returned to New York,leaving the infantry in the hands of Major General Charles Cornwallis.Lord Cornwallis (1738–1805) was a graduate of Cambridge, Turin’smilitary academy, and of several European campaigns in the Seven

41 Johan David Schoeph, Travels in the Confederation (1783–1784) (Philadelphia,1911, 2:172), cited in Merrens and Terry (1984:549).

42 Duffy (1953:212–13). Fraser (1989) includes mentions of several yellow feverepidemics, notably in the mid-1740s. Yellow fever seems to have made its firstappearance in the 1690s, about the same time as malaria.

43 Merrens and Terry (1984) and Terry (1981:92–3) cited in Packard (2007:58).Dobson (1989:271–3, 294) shows that malaria was the chief reason the southerncolonies were less healthy than the northern. Settler demography is summarizedin Coclanis (1989:42–3). Only the wealthiest could afford cinchona bark; seeWood (1974:76).


Years’ War. A career army man and an earl related to prime ministersand archbishops, he had excellent political connections (he had servedas aide-de-camp to the king). In an army led by amateurs, Cornwalliswas unusually professional and dedicated to his craft.44

Upon taking over at Charleston, Cornwallis presided over about9,000 regulars and an awkward political alliance. He looked forward tothe support of Loyalists, especially in the backcountry. He also expectedand found allies in the slave population, half a million strong in thesouthern colonies. In Virginia in 1775 the royal governor promisedfreedom to slaves willing to fight against rebels, and in June 1779Clinton proclaimed that blacks who fought for the Crown would begranted protection and freedom at the war’s end. Thousands of slavestraded their bondage for an ambivalent reception in the British Army,where they normally toiled as laborers.45

The heart of the British southern strategy lay with the Loyalists.Clinton and Cornwallis hoped that if the British Army could temporar-ily secure a given region, Loyalists would then declare for the king –as many had done in Georgia a year or two before – and reliably holdand administer territory for the crown.46 Thus, the regular army wouldbe free to move on and repeat the exercise elsewhere. With only amodest commitment of men and resources – all that was available givenBritain’s worldwide entanglements – the southern colonies could plau-sibly be won through this policy of Americanization of the war.47

Cornwallis and his men faced enemies both human and microbial.The British capture of Charleston and 5,000 rebel Americans tookprecious months of cool weather in early 1780. To counter this Britishtriumph, Congress dispatched a small army to counter the British. It wasto be led by General Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga. Gates nevercommanded more than 1,600 regulars. But Cornwallis also had to worryabout irregular forces throughout the Carolinas, the revolutionary mili-tias skilled in guerrilla tactics. And deadliest of all, as spring’s paradisegave way to summer’s hell, he had to worry about malaria. In pursuingthe southern strategy, the British put an army in the awkward position

44 Wickwire and Wickwire (1970) and Frey (1981:18–19) for a biography.45 Piecuch (2008); Frey (1981:18–20).46 The British had seized Savannah late in 1778 and held it until the end of the war.

A joint Franco-American force tried to retake it in October 1779, but sufferedcatastrophic disease mortality. Wilson (2005) reviews the southern campaignsbefore 1780.

47 See Shy (1990:193–212).


noted at the outset of this chapter. Cornwallis needed to find a placewhere ships could reach his troops but malarial mosquitoes could not –but there was no such place in the South between May and November.

British soldiers coming to America in the 1770s and 1780s arrived ina vulnerable state. The rank and file of the British Army had often suf-fered from malnutrition for much of their lives, and had survived manydiseases. Joining the Army often improved their diet but not necessarilytheir health. If sent to America, the men first had to withstand thehazards of their ports of embarkation, which offered all the unhealthytemptations, and many of the pathogens, known to man. They thenfaced a cruise of six weeks or more, in crowded conditions with some-times spoiling food. Regiments shipped out to the West Indies during1780 lost 5 to 25 percent of their men while crossing the ocean.48 Sail-ing to North America was usually a little healthier because the journeywas shorter. But nonetheless, many died en route and more fell sick.Arriving in the Americas brought men into an alien disease environ-ment. Conditions in camps, barracks, and garrisons anywhere, NorthAmerica included, were often crowded and filthy, although in the eigh-teenth century the British Army was developing sanitary regulationsthat helped check some infectious diseases somewhat.49 To exacerbatematters, British soldiers in America were often underfed because of thedifficulties of supplying an army from across the sea, making the menmore vulnerable to infections generally, and malaria especially.

Those soldiers who hailed from Britain or Germany came overwhelm-ingly from malaria-free environments. Of the 15,000 men who joinedthe army in 1778, for example, two-thirds were Scots. When sent toAmerica, British soldiers were typically only weeks or months awayfrom their homes. By 1780, many had served for long months in Amer-ica, but mainly in New England or New York. One regiment had beenin the south since 1778, and most of its men probably had one or twobouts of malaria under their belts. No regiments had served in the WestIndies or in India (where the British East India Company maintained its

48 British Library, Additional MSS 38,345 “An Account of the Number of TroopsSent to the West Indies for the Years 1775–1782.” On dysentery’s role, seeHaycock (2002) – a reference brought to my attention by Pratik Chakrabati.French ships sailing to the West Indies lost somewhat fewer according to Buchet(1997) because the journey was shorter and because they carried wine ratherthan beer. Beer spoiled, obliging British ships to stop in Madeira for wine andwater, slowing their passage and raising their mortality.

49 Cantlie (1974); see also Frey (1981:22–52).


own army). Thus, in the great majority of cases their immune systemswere unprepared for the challenges they faced from malaria.50

Doctors were normally of little help. The British Army maintaineda medical establishment, much expanded since the 1750s, but it haddifficulty recruiting the best doctors of the day. Even the most skilleddoctors probably killed more patients than they cured. Ordinary soldierssuffering from malaria (or indeed almost anything) could expect to bebled and purged if they fell into the hands of doctors. A healthy distrustof doctors was commonplace in the British (and American) military.English folk remedies for ague (mentioned in Chapter 3) did no good,nor could the cures soldiers might learn in America. Americans triedpowders made from barks or roots of dogwood, tulip, and peach trees,and downed concoctions of brimstone and sugar as well as water fromiron mines. Indeed, Americans envied the skills of the British militarymedicine, less surprising perhaps when one considers American doctorssometimes applied poultices of chipmunk brains to combat wounds.51

The greatest exception to the lethal impact of eighteenth-centurydoctors involved malaria and “the bark” (discussed in Chapter 3). Butcinchona bark was expensive, and the British Army never had enough.In 1778, the Spanish forbade the export of cinchona bark, explicitlytrying to keep it for their use and deny it to hostile powers. Moreover,what little the British could get was needed more urgently in India andthe West Indies than in the Carolinas. So an army based in Charlestonand expected to operate in the southern colonies faced acute dangers toits health with little medical help.52

Cornwallis was fully aware of the malaria problem. British forcesactive in Georgia and South Carolina before 1780 had suffered in theague season and tried to time operations to avoid it. Soon after takingover from Clinton in South Carolina, Cornwallis wrote that: “Thisclimate (except at Charleston) is so bad within one hundred miles of

50 Frey (1981:3–21); Babits and Howard (2009:79–94).51 See Chapter 3; Frey (1981:47–52). On American malaria remedies, Kalm (1771,

1:373–6); Stephenson (2007:168–9, 172). Middlekauf (2005:525–34) and Dun-can (1931) review medical matters in the Continental Army. One Americansoldier, James Fergus, when urged to enter a hospital in Charleston in 1779,replied, “I [have] seen hospitals in Philadelphia, Princeton, and Newark andwould prefer dying in the open air . . . ” Dann (1980:184). As far as I can deter-mine, by the 1770s Americans no longer resorted to the seventeenth-century folkcure for malaria of drinking horse-dung posset, mentioned in Childs (1940:263).Posset is a spiced drink of hot sweetened milk curdled with wine or ale.

52 Perez-Mejıa (2002:32); Frey (1981:47).


the coast, from the end of June until the middle of October, that troopscould not be stationed [here] during the period without a certainty oftheir being rendered useless for some time for military service, if notentirely lost.”53 Eighteen months into the southern campaign, if notbefore, the British director of the war, Lord Germain, also recognizedthe hazards of the Lowcountry summer and early autumn. He instructedCornwallis in June 1781 to employ his (modest) reinforcements as “aco-operating army until southern provinces are reduced, or the seasonbecomes too advanced for active service.”54

Recognizing the problem did not mean the British could solve it.As Cornwallis appreciated, staying in Charleston was the healthiestoption. Its position on a breezy promontory kept Anopheles mosquitonumbers down and saved Charleston from a heavy burden of malaria.Charleston suffered occasional outbreaks of yellow fever, but, happilyfor the British Army and everyone else in the city, none occurred duringthe war. Venturing outside Charleston, however, invited malaria. If thesouthern strategy was to work, then Cornwallis would have to seizeterritory in the winter and spring and turn it over to Loyalists beforelate summer. He got off to a slow start: The siege of Charleston lasteduntil May, leaving only a few months before “the country fever” wouldset in.

In the first weeks after the capture of Charleston, Cornwallis movedquickly to secure important inland points such as the villages of Camdenand Ninety-Six, and lesser bases such as Cheraw and Hanging Rock,leaving garrisons large and small. This was the British Army’s largest-scale attempt to occupy American territory in the war. The rebels hadno army yet in South Carolina, and their militias prudently melted away.The British set about finding the Loyalists who could control Georgiaand the Carolinas for them while the local population, revolutionary andLoyalist, engaged in an informal civil war marked by frequent atrocities.By July 1780, the militias were active again. In a foretaste of what layin store, a British garrison had to retire from Cheraw in midsummerbecause two-thirds of the men had fallen ill with “Fevers & Ague.”55

53 Cornwallis to Germain, 20 August 1780, Germain Papers, Clements Library,University of Michigan (quoted in Duncan 1931:312). Wilson (2005:67, 71) onpre-1780 health problems of the British army in the south.

54 Germain to Cornwallis, 4 June 1781, PRO 30/11/6, f. 215–16.55 Jackson (1791:300); Pancake (1985:82). McCandless (2007) provides several

quotations indicating how serious malaria was in the British Army in Georgiaand South Carolina. His is the only account I have seen that puts proper weighton this factor in shaping the southern campaigns.


In August of 1780, before malaria had taken firm hold of his army,Cornwallis managed to deliver a smashing blow to Gates’ army at Cam-den. Gates’ force of 3,700, mostly militia, scattered. His regulars (800men) retreated pell-mell to North Carolina. It was the last time theBritish would administer a convincing defeat to the rebels. Cornwallislost only 68 men (of about 2,240) in battle at Camden, but by now thevulnerability of the British Army to malaria began to tell. He wrote toClinton (August 23rd) that” “Our sickness is great and truly alarming.The officers are particularly affected; Doctor Hayes and almost all thehospital surgeons are laid up. Every person of my family and every Pub-lick officer of the Army is now incapable of doing duty.”56 Cornwallis’pursuit of Gates was hampered by the fact that he had 800 men, morethan one in every three, in hospital in Camden. In the months to come,he would find his mobility constrained by morbidity: He had to pro-tect sick men, who could easily be surprised, captured, or killed by thenumerous bands of guerrillas roaming the Carolinas.57

The British occupation strategy placed some 9,000 men in the Low-country and Piedmont of the Carolinas and Georgia. In that numberwere about 7,000 Britons, 500 Germans, and perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 Loy-alists in units from South Carolina, Pennsylvania (mainly Irish-born),New Jersey, and New York. As the mosquitoes began to bite, energizedby a warm summer of 1780, malaria spread. The easy communications ofSouth Carolina, which had many wagon roads built for the highly com-mercial plantation economy, and still more navigable streams and rivers,meant that troops could move around quickly.58 Even those prostratedby malaria could be wheeled or floated to the nearest military hospital.In this way, malaria migrated quickly via the bodies of sickly Britishsoldiers (and infected men who had not yet fallen ill), whom previouslyuninfected mosquitoes could then bite. As more men fell sick, moremosquitoes bit infective men, and the British Army by late Augusthosted its own epidemic, to which most of the local population (includ-ing Cornwallis’ Loyalists from the Carolinas) was resistant. Cornwallis

56 Quoted in Duncan (1931:313). Dr John Hayes was Cornwallis’ chief medical offi-cer. By his “family,” Cornwallis presumably meant those officers on his personalstaff.

57 Savas and Dameron (2006:249–52) for the numerical data. Camden and otherSouth Carolina battles are succinctly related in Gordon (2003) and Pancake(1985).

58 Edelson (2006:130–2, 151–2) discusses transport and the spread of disease incivilian contexts.


wrote that one regiment was “so totally demolished by sickness, thatit will not be fit for actual service for some months.”59 Looking backsix months later, he wrote that his army had been “nearly ruined” bydisease in the fall of 1780.60 Cornwallis fell ill himself. In early October,a thousand of his Loyalists were defeated, and a quarter of them killed,at King’s Mountain (50 kilometers west of Charlotte) while Cornwallislay feverish 40 kilometers away. The commander of his cavalry, a law-school dropout with a savage reputation, Banastre Tarleton, was alsotoo sick to ride to the rescue of the Loyalists that day, despite an urgentrequest from the Loyalists’ leader.

Cornwallis and Tarleton may have inadvertently contributed to themalaria burden of the British Army by buying or requisitioning cattle,hogs, chickens, and other edible mammals. When far from Charlestonand other harbors, the British Army had to acquire food as best it could,which no doubt reduced the livestock and fowl populations of SouthCarolina, especially in the immediate vicinity of British regiments. Withfewer mammals on which to feed, the An. quadrimaculatus of SouthCarolina focused their ambitions still more on human blood, improvingtheir efficiency as malaria vectors.61 In any case, as long as conditionsremained warm and humid, mosquitoes would bite and breed. Only coolweather could save the British Army.

By November 1780, the change of the seasons came to Cornwallis’rescue. His chief surgeon, John Hayes, considered that “health oncemore begins to smile on us” in mid-November, when he counted only

59 Cornwallis to Clinton, 29 August 1780 (quoted in Pancake 1985:115).60 Cornwallis to Clinton, 10 April 1781, Clinton Papers, University of Michigan

(cited in Frey 1981:43).61 As noted in Chapter 3, it seems that larger cattle populations allow higher

survival rates for mosquitoes and can contribute to higher malaria rates wherepeople and their animals live close together. But still more effective for com-municating malaria is a situation with high cattle populations suddenly reduced,leaving large mosquito populations in search of blood meals. Sota and Mogi(1989); Bouma and Rowland (1995); for a general review, Saul (2003). Anintriguing further possibility is that breeding conditions grew better still forAn. quadrimaculatus with the onset of war in the south. Slaves ran off, oth-ers died in the smallpox epidemics, and so maintenance of dams and otherwaterworks in the rice zones suffered. Moreover, there was occasional damagewrought by marauding armies and guerillas eager to destroy their enemies’ prop-erty. Water splashed and spilled everywhere. Quite possibly, the only thing betterfor anopheline larvae than a rice plantation was a ruined rice plantation. Theseruminations are inspired by Chaplin (1992:37–9).


198 sick in the hospital of the Charleston garrison, and only five dead inthe previous week. In anticipation of further encounters with malaria,Hayes reported that he had ordered “two hundred weight of the bestpowdered bark.”62

The military doctor Robert Jackson served in the southern campaignand his experience gives some sense of the challenge posed by malaria tothe British Army. He first saw duty in Georgia in 1779, where he notedthat by the end of April, after several healthy months, the “intermittingfever soon made its appearance, and spread so rapidly, that before theend of June, very few remained, not only in the regiment, but evenin the garrison, who had not suffered more or less from this ragingdisease.”63 After the siege of Charleston, Jackson served with the mainbody of Cornwallis’ forces in South Carolina, and ministered to themany sick soldiers at Cheraw. Matters did not improve much while thewarm weather lasted, as Jackson related: “During the month of August[1780], and a great part of September, the army remained encamped nearCamden. The weather was excessively hot, and fevers were frequent –sometimes malignant and dangerous; though they preserved, in general,the distinct character of intermittents.”64 Only winter brought relief.Jackson continued:

The campaign of the following winter was a very active one. Thearmy traveled over a great extent of country, and was consideredby many as performing very hard service; but I have the satisfactionto add, that notwithstanding occasional forced marches, wading ofrivers, exposure to rain, accidental scarcity of bread, and no greatprofusion of beef, with the total want of rum, the troops enjoyedin general a most perfect state of health. Valetudinarians wererestored to perfect vigour; and when we arrived at Wilmington, atthe latter end of April, there scarcely was a man in the regimentto which I belonged, who was not fit for the duty of the field.65

In the healthier conditions of the colder months, Cornwallis’ forceslost a battle at the Cowpens (January 1781) and held the field after thebloody encounter of Guilford Courthouse (March). The two battles cost

62 Hayes to Cornwallis, 15 November 1780, PRO, 30/11/4; “Return of Sick andWounded in H.M. Hospital at Charleston” November 1780, PRO 30/11/4.

63 Jackson (1791:295).64 Jackson (1791:300–1).65 Jackson (1791:303–4).


him about 200 men killed. Only by fighting and winning such battlescould he hope to win the war.66

By not fighting, he could only lose. After Camden, Cornwallis hadbeen engaged in an exhausting game of cat-and-mouse with Americanforces led after December 1780 by Nathanael Greene. Greene, a RhodeIsland Quaker born in 1742, had distinguished himself in the early yearsof the war as a quartermaster and logistical magician. Aware of thedebacle at Camden, Greene took care not to risk all on a single battle –he lost several small ones – and excelled in drawing Cornwallis’ mendeeper and deeper into the country, further and further from Britishsupply bases. Although normally the superior force in any set-piecebattle, the British Army did not have nearly enough men to hold thecountry it won, and the Loyalists, on whom the British counted toadminister and police secured regions, were unwilling to perform theirassigned task until they saw clearly that Cornwallis would survive andwin. So Cornwallis chased the Americans the length and breadth of theCarolinas, hoping for a decisive encounter that would change the polit-ical balance. Greene prudently would not give it to him. At one point,in a desperate attempt to catch Greene’s forces as they retreated, Corn-wallis ordered all his supply train burned, except for salt, ammunition,and – revealingly – medicine.

Although Greene’s forces suffered from diseases as well, and manymore died from them than from battle, on the whole his men enjoyedbetter health than did the British. His ragged medical department, shortof supplies in part thanks to Tarleton’s habit of capturing or destroyingmedical stores, had less to do with this than the vigilant immune systemsof his men. Nonetheless, Greene had reason to fear malaria in the warmmonths. In the mid-summer of 1781, having exhausted his supply ofcinchona bark, Greene took his army to the hills of the Santee district,thought to be salubrious. Some of his regulars did suffer badly thatfall, and the next year, in the fall of 1782, more than a hundred diedfrom malaria.67 However, at most points roughly two-thirds of his force

66 Babits (1998) and Babits and Howard (2009) on these battles.67 Gillett (1990:119–24). One of Greene’s colonels, Otho Williams, wrote to him

from the High Hills of Santee on 10 October 1781 that fever was so rampantthat “Battalions can scarce form Companies” and no physicians or surgeons werehealthy (Conrad 1997, 9:440). In his memoir, Henry Lee wrote: “The soldiersof Greene’s army may truly call these hills benignant. Twice our general thereresorted, with his sick, his wounded, and worn-down troops; and twice we wererestored to health and strength, by its elevated dry situation . . . ” (Lee 1869:448).


consisted of locally recruited militia men, veterans of the Carolinas’disease environment and in particular survivors of repeated bouts ofmalaria. Greene thought little of them, saying 20,000 militia were worthless than 500 soldiers,68 but they did have some malaria resistance thanksto having spent about twenty summers in the Carolinas.

Even the regulars whom Gates and Greene commanded carried con-siderable resistance to malaria. Their infantry came from Virginia (sevenregiments), Maryland (seven), North Carolina (four), and Delaware(one), almost all from coastal, tidewater, or piedmont counties – whichafter all is where most the population lived in the 1770s. The twoartillery and three cavalry regiments serving in the southern campaignhailed from Maryland, Virginia, or the Philadelphia area. As in everyeighteenth-century army, most of the Continentals came from farmingbackgrounds, but in Greene’s regiments quite a few were maritime menwhose jobs in the many small ports of the Chesapeake had vanishedwith the British blockade of the Bay. Whether farmworkers, dockers, orsomething else entirely, almost all the American regulars would havehad lengthy experience with vivax malaria and often some with fal-ciparum as well. It was probably accident rather than design, but theAmericans chose the right units to fight in the southern theater.69

After Guilford Courthouse in the spring of 1781, Cornwallis foundhimself in an awkward position. He had marched far from his basesto get at Greene’s army because he needed a decisive victory with thefever season coming on. He held the field after the battle, but almostall the Americans (about 4,500 in all) got away. The British killed onlyseventy. Greene could lose every battle and still win the campaign. AsGreene later put it, “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.”70 TheAmericans had slipped away, and the fever season would soon return –a most unwelcome prospect for the British Army.

68 Greene to Governor Nash, 3 February 1781, quoted in Middlekauf (2005:510,n. 22).

69 Details on origins of regiments from Wright (1983:195–351); Babits and Howard(2009:75). If the selection of mainly southern and mid-Atlantic troops was madewith disease resistance in mind, I have not seen any indication of it. RandallPackard alerted me to the importance of ascertaining specifics of the geographicorigins of the manpower of the Continental Army. Duffy (1953:204–14) on thepresence of malaria south of New England. Duffy uses words such as “universal”and “omnipresent.” See also Rutman and Rutman (1976).

70 Green to Lafayette, 1 May 1781, printed in Idzerda (1977:74–5).


In April of 1781, Cornwallis moved his force back to the coast toWilmington, North Carolina, in hopes of rest, reinforcement, and re-supply. His army had recovered its health, but as he contemplated theonset of the summer months, he concluded he would have to go inlandagain, “to the upper parts of the Country, where alone I can hope topreserve the troops from the fatal sickness, which so nearly ruined theArmy last autumn.”71 Another malaria season, he recognized, wouldruin much of what he had left.

The British Army had had two chances in the malaria-free months(December through May) of 1780 and 1781 to take South Carolina andinstall Loyalist control. In 1780, they were busy besieging Charlestonuntil May. In 1781 they chased Greene out of the Carolinas but couldnot destroy the rebel army. Decisive victory eluded them, and the steamysummer eroded their manpower. Another summer amid the mosquitoesand fevers of the Carolina Lowcountry would only lower their chancesof prevailing in America. Cornwallis concluded he had had enough ofthe Carolinas. He did not have enough men to hold the up-country, andthe Loyalists would not do it for him as long as the war’s outcome lay indoubt. He could not keep his army healthy in the Lowcountry, and feverdeaths depleted his strength so that even maintaining his garrisons wasbecoming difficult. Tarleton later reflected on the failure, remarkingon “fatigues from the climate and the country, which would appearinsuperable in theory and almost incredible in the relation . . . a climate,at that season, peculiarly inimical to man. . . . ”72 Tarleton exaggeratedin one respect: The climate was particularly inimical to British andGerman men, not to “man” in general.

So bowing to these unpleasant realities, on April 25th Cornwallisgave up on the Carolinas. He left garrisons to hold Charleston and a fewother strategic posts, and moved the bulk of his force northward towardVirginia and the Chesapeake, to join forces with a smaller British Armyin a land he hoped would prove more welcoming and more salubrious.He did so on his own initiative, without orders from his superiors, whocomplained when they learned of it.73 Neither they nor Cornwallisknew it, but he was fleeing from An. quadrimaculatus.

71 Cornwallis to Clinton, 10 April 1781, Clinton Papers, University of Michigan(cited in Frey 1981:43).

72 Tarleton (1787:507).73 Greene (2005:4–5, 7–9) has an interesting discussion of the move to Virginia.


Yorktown

In Virginia, small British forces had been raiding freely, opposed only bythe militia and a few regulars. Since March 1781, rebellious Virginianshad fought under the command of the 22-year old aristocrat, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette.Lafayette (1757–1834), received a French military education from ageeleven, a generous inheritance at age thirteen, and an opulent dowry atage sixteen upon his marriage to the daughter of a duke. At nineteenhe accepted a commission as Major-General in the Continental Army.He fought for years at Washington’s side, and when sent to Virginiaeventually accumulated a force of about 5,000. After Cornwallis unitedwith the existing British units in Virginia, Lafayette’s mission was tokeep close to Cornwallis and prevent him from intercepting the suppliesthat must be sent south to Greene’s army. He carefully avoided givinga pitched battle (he lost the largest one he fought, at Green Spring),playing his own game of cat and mouse with Cornwallis as Greene haddone before.74

After launching a few successful raids in the Virginia piedmont inMay 1781, Cornwallis received orders to move to the tidewater coast.His commander, Clinton, fearful that the French West Indies fleet underAdmiral de Grasse might join Washington’s army to attack New York,had instructed Cornwallis to find some “healthy” anchorage along thecoast from which it would be possible, with suitable transports, to movethe army to New York within days if summoned. Cornwallis obeyed butobjected, wanting to avoid the coast. On June 30th, from Williamsburg,he wrote: “I submit to your Excellency’s consideration whether it isworth while to hold a sickly defensive post in this Bay.”75 He knew, aseveryone did, that the shores of the Chesapeake were reliably malarialin summertime.76 Eight days later he returned to the issue, writingthat his position “only gives us some acres of an unhealthy swamp.”77

74 Useful narratives of Yorktown, albeit inattentive to disease, include Davis(1970); Bougerie and Lesouef (1992); Ketchum (2004); Hallahan (2004);Greene (2005); Grainger (2005). James’ journal (1896:111–29) provides anaccount of the siege from a naval officer’s viewpoint.

75 Cornwallis to Clinton, 30 June 1781, PRO 30/11/74, f. 26.76 By the 1680s, malaria (including falciparum) was established around the Chesa-

peake, and deeply entrenched by the 1750s (Rutman and Rutman 1976). Seealso Kalm (1771, 1:365–76); Duffy (1953:204–14).

77 Cornwallis to Clinton, 8 July 1781, PRO 30/11/71, f. 33.


On July 17th, he reported he had “many sick.”78 Cornwallis wantedreinforcements from Clinton, and Clinton wanted reinforcements fromCornwallis. But Clinton was in charge, so Cornwallis grudgingly kept tothe tidewater estuaries of the James and York rivers, and on August 1stchose to install his army at Yorktown. A declining tobacco and slaveport on the York River estuary, Yorktown hosted a population of perhaps2,000. Cornwallis dug in on a low bluff overlooking the town and theestuary, between two marshy creeks. According to one Pennsylvanian,rice was growing nearby.79 It was good mosquito country and a bad time:the hot and humid August of 1781.80

Meanwhile, to Clinton’s surprise the French fleet sailed not for NewYork but for the Chesapeake. For de Grasse, as for the French and Britishgenerally, the West Indies commanded a higher priority than the NorthAmerican colonies, but during the hurricane season fleets normallyavoided major operations in the Caribbean. Admiral de Grasse was

78 Cornwallis to Clinton, 17 July 1781, PRO 30/11/74, f. 44. He reported 934 sickon June 15, 1,044 on July 15, and 1,222 on August 15 according to various“Return[s] of the Troops under Earl Cornwallis” in the Clinton Papers, cited inWickwire and Wickwire (1970:455). However, in early September he reportedthe army was not very sickly – a situation soon to change. See Davis (1970:138).

79 Linn and Egle (1896:720), diary entry for 6 September 1781. This section of the“Diary of the Pennsylvania Line” was written by William Feldman.

80 Every August is hot at Yorktown. Johann Conrad Dohla, the Hessian diarist,wrote on 31 August that the whole month had been “very hot” (Dohla 1990:160).Greene (2005:91, 133) says the weather remained warm and humid into Septem-ber and October. A French officer complained of brutal heat in his diary on 28September (Clermont-Crevecoeur 1972:57). Captain Benjamin Bartholomew(2002:16–17), from Chester County Pennsylvania, found early August just southof Richmond, “intolerable Warm,” but 11–18 August, near Yorktown, cooler.Bartholomew noted rains in early September and again October 11–12. Severalweather observations for August and September 1781, emphasizing heavy rainsand warm weather until 21 September appear in the “Diary of the Pennsylva-nia Line,” (Linn and Egle 1896:716–33). After a mention of cooler temper-atures on 21 September, the weather observations stop. Several more appearin “Revolutionary War Diary by an Officer of the Third Pennsylvania Conti-nental Line, May, 26 1781 – July 4, 1782,” Society of the Cincinnati Library,Manuscript Collection L2007G37. The years 1780 and 1781 were also rainierthan the 1928–1978 average on the Virginia coast, improving breeding condi-tions for Anopheles, according to the tree-ring data compiled for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s North American Drought Atlas, available onlineat: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.LDEO/.TRL/.NADA2004/.pdsi-atlas.html (consulted 14 July 2008).


thus willing to remain in North American waters for a few weeks untilthe risk of hurricanes faded. The French fleet hemmed Cornwallis in,presenting Washington with an improbable opportunity. The Congresswas bankrupt and earlier in 1781 the Continental Army had twicemutinied. Yet now Washington had a chance to inflict a crushing defeatbefore the war destroyed the morale of the Americans. So he seizedthe chance and marched south, together with a French force led byGeneral Rochambeau (Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte deRochambeau, 1725–1807, a career army man), to join the small armyunder the command of Lafayette.81 It had been Rochambeau who quietlyadvised the French fleet to sail to the Chesapeake rather than to NewYork and had urged Washington to exploit the opportunity that arosein August 1781.

While Washington and Rochambeau marched south in early Septem-ber 1781, Admiral de Grasse drove off a British fleet at the Battle ofthe Capes. The mouth of the Chesapeake remained sealed. Cornwallisnow had the worst of both worlds: His army was entrenched on thecoast, at maximum risk to malaria, yet the Royal Navy could not getthrough to relieve him. When he learned of the approach of Wash-ington and Rochambeau, Cornwallis could only hope that he mighthold out long enough for another British fleet to break through andsave him.82 Washington and Rochambeau joined Lafayette in Virginiain mid-September, and together they laid siege to Yorktown with over16,000 regulars, plus some 3,000 militiamen.83 Rochambeau and hisofficers had plenty of useful experience: Yorktown was Rochambeau’sfifteenth siege. Clinton promised another fleet and a relief expeditionat the soonest opportunity. Until it arrived, Cornwallis would need allhis men, and need them healthy.

Most of Cornwallis’ men were in their second ague season in theland of An. quadrimaculatus. At most ten percent had served in thesouth since 1778 and were thus in their fourth season. In the arduousprocess of building up malaria resistance his troops lagged about twentyyears behind the average American soldier. Cornwallis could not closethis gap.

81 The fifteen volumes of Rochambeau Papers are in the Manuscript Division ofthe Library of Congress.

82 Sands (1983:1–92) covers naval aspects of the Yorktown campaign.83 Reports on the numbers vary only slightly. These come from Ferling (2007:531).


Dr. Jackson was at Yorktown from the beginning of the siege andleft an account of the health of the British Army. His regiment, the71st, had moved north to Virginia with Cornwallis and had fallen illwith intermittent fevers at Portsmouth in July, but recovered its health.This was too good to last, and “intermittent” fever returned. Jacksonclaimed his regiment was the healthiest in the army, having enduredthree campaigns in the South already. (It might also have been thehealthiest because Jackson was a great believer in “the bark,” and whenhe had it he prescribed it quickly and in quantity, sometimes mixed withVirginia snake root; he thought that the textbook remedies of bleeding,blistering, purging, and opiates were less effective in America.)84 Onlysix or seven men were too sick to serve in the 71st at the beginningof the siege of Yorktown. But intermittent fever, and dysentery (whichJackson regarded as a consequence of malaria),85 afflicted other regi-ments. Jackson claimed that others suffered because their surgeons usedthe bark “sparingly,” and that “the Hessians all of them were inveterateenemies of the bark,” and suffered as a result.86 As September turned toOctober, malaria haunted the British and German core of Cornwallis’army. Some of his Loyalists, who were just as resistant to malaria asWashington’s troops, suffered from smallpox, as did many of the slaveswho had fled Virginia’s plantations.87

Beginning their trenches on September 28th, Rochambeau, Lafa-yette, and Washington conducted the siege competently and quickly.They knew that the French fleet could not linger and had to return tothe West Indies. They also knew that come November, the ague seasonwould end and the British Army would recover its vigor. They had goodreasons to hurry.

Three weeks later, on October 19th, Cornwallis surrendered. Inhis account of the siege, Cornwallis gave credit to the siegecraft ofthe French and Americans but stressed the importance of sickness in

84 Jackson (1791:310–26) on his cures.85 Insofar as malaria is a strong suppressant of human immune systems, he was right

in making this connection. Dohla (1990:162), a German serving with Corn-wallis, mentioned dysentery and “the foul fever” in his diary for 11 September1781.

86 Jackson (1791:304–5, 329). According to the American doctor James Tilton,the French at Yorktown also eschewed the bark (Tilton 1822, cited in Duncan1931:354).

87 Becker (2005:181–7).


hampering his ability to resist. The day after the surrender, he wrote toClinton:

I have the mortification to inform your Excellency that I havebeen forced to give up the post of York and Gloucester [a smallencampment across the York River estuary] and surrender thetroops under my command. . . . The troops being much weakenedby sickness, as well as by the fire of the besiegers; and observingthat the enemy had not only secured their flanks but proceededin every respect with the utmost regularity and caution I couldnot venture so large sorties as to hope from them any considerableeffect. . . . Our numbers had been diminished by the Enemy’s fire,but particularly by Sickness, and the strength and spirits of thosein the works were much exhausted by the fatigue of constantwatching and unremitting duty. . . . Our force diminished dailyby Sickness and other losses, I was reduced, when we offered tocapitulate on this side to little more than 3,200 rank & file fitfor duty including officers, servants, artificiers, and at Gloucesterabout 600 including cavalry.88

On October 24th, the long-awaited British fleet from New York arrivedat the mouth of the Chesapeake with an army aboard, but it was a weektoo late. Had Cornwallis been strong enough to hold out another fewdays, the siege might have ended differently, provided the British navycould defeat the French at sea.

Could Cornwallis have avoided defeat? Rochambeau, Tarleton, andsubsequently several historians thought that Cornwallis made a crucialerror on the night of September 29–30th, when he withdrew his forcesfrom his outermost defenses. However, at this point he expected twenty-three warships and 5,000 soldiers as reinforcements from New York,which Clinton had assured him would sail by October 5th. His armywas too depleted by sickness to hold the larger perimeter.89 Cornwalliswas far from incompetent. He was not running low on stores, exceptpossibly of medicines.90 But he did not have enough healthy men.

88 Cornwallis to Clinton, 20 October 1781, PRO 30/11/74, ff. 106–10.89 Bonsal (1945:151–2). Grainger (2005: 109–10) and Greene (2005:115–23) have

interesting discussions of this choice. James (1896:119–20) shows the British stillexpected relief as of 5 October.

90 A document filed by Henry Knox, the American artillery officer (“Return ofOrdnance and Military Stores Taken at York and Gloucester . . . 19th of October,


More generally, to avoid disaster Cornwallis would have had to breakout and escape or else withstand the siege long enough – perhaps aweek longer – for the naval situation to change. Either action wouldhave required men he did not have. To break out meant winning abattle against Lafayette in the days before Washington and Rochambeauarrived and then scampering either south to the Carolinas or north toNew York, across rivers and through hostile country. Cornwallis knewhe would lose many men if he tried, and he would have to leave his sicktroops behind to the tender mercies of American militias.

Withstanding the siege for another week, as every veteran of theSeven Years’ War well knew, meant mounting sorties almost every nightto interfere with the advancing trenches of the besiegers. In effect, itmeant trading men for time, to prevent the enemy from placing artilleryadvantageously. This might have worked – had he held out five moredays the British fleet might have scattered the French squadron andcome to Cornwallis’ rescue. Had he held out a few weeks, Admiral deGrasse and the French fleet would have left for the West Indies leavingany British ships easy access to Yorktown. The French admiral hadat first told his allies he would stay only until October 15th. Underpressure, he relented and agreed to stay until the end of October (heleft November 4th). But to exploit the Admiral’s eagerness to depart,Cornwallis needed to mount a vigorous defense, trading men for time.Many of the French and Americans arrayed against him found it strangethat he did not. Only once (October 16th) did a party of British troopssneak out at night and attack, spiking a few cannon, bayoneting afew French soldiers, and losing a dozen men. As he wrote to Clinton,Cornwallis thought he did not have enough healthy men to do whatevery experienced soldier knew had to be done to prolong, and thuswithstand, the siege.91

1781”), printed in Tarleton (1787:451–4), shows Cornwallis had at the time ofhis surrender plenty of ammunition and supplies; another document (“Returnof Provisions and Stores in the Ports of York and Gloucester” 19 October 1781,p. 457) indicates the British surrendered 36 tons of flour, 30 tons of bread, 10 tonsof beef in barrels and 37 tons of pork, among other foodstuffs. James (1896:120)nonetheless refers to a shortage of artillery ammunition. On the possible lackof medicines: the French officer Nicolas-Francois-Denis Brisout de Barnevillewrote in his journal on 19 October 1781 of the English: “Leurs hopitaux pleins demalades et manquant de tout” (Brisout de Barneville 1950:277).

91 Sgt. Roger Lamb of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, with Cornwallis at Yorktown,afterward wrote a memoir in which he quoted (without attribution) these words:


When it first arrived in Charleston in 1780, the British Army hadabout 9,000 men. After many losses and reinforcements in the nextseventeen months, Cornwallis commanded some 8,700 at the outsetof the siege of Yorktown and surrendered about 7,660, counting 1,850across the river at Gloucester.92 If he was honest in his account andhe truly had only 3,200 in Yorktown and 600 in Gloucester fit for dutyby October 19th – something he could expect to be investigated by amilitary board of inquiry93 – then Cornwallis’ army must have sufferedgrievously indeed from “sickness” because only about 150 to 300 ofhis men were killed in action and 300 to 600 wounded, about 4 to 10percent in all.94 By his account, then, more than half of his force – 51percent – was too sick to fight.95

Cornwallis’s account is not the only one. The number of BritishArmy troops sick at Yorktown is sometimes given as only 2,000.96 Thejournal of the American officer St. George Tucker says 1,875 were unfitfor duty in a British force of 5,818 (or about 32%).97 The official journalof the French general staff gives the same figure of 1,875 British sickat the time of surrender, and 3,935 in good health. It says nothing of

“ . . . it would be madness to attempt to maintain [British defensive works] withthe present garrison, exhausted by the fatigue of constant watching and unremit-ting duty, and reduced in its numbers by sickness even more than by the enemy’sfire” (Lamb 1809:378–9).

92 Greene (2005:17, 33) says Cornwallis had 7,200 at the start of the siege, 8,900by September 20, and over 9,700 counting sailors, plus 1,500 to 2,000 slaves andex-slaves.

93 Cornwallis’ uncle Edward had been one of the targets of an official inquiryconcerning the siege of Minorca in 1756; he was acquitted on technicalities.Admiral John Byng was shot for “failure to do his utmost.” These events weresurely familiar to Cornwallis. Details in Great Britain (1757).

94 Hallahan (2004:206); Savas and Dameron (2006:336); Ketchum (2004:247)says the British lost 556 dead and wounded at Yorktown. A British documentprinted in Tarleton (1787:451) reports 309 British killed at Yorktown. TheFrench general staff recorded 389 killed and 679 wounded (Gallatin 1931:27).Secondary sources vary somewhat in the numbers they present, but none suggestCornwallis lost more than about 10% of his men, killed and wounded, to combat.

95 This represents 3,800 fit for duty and 3,860 sick. The inconsistency in reportedfigures of course means this can be only an approximation.

96 For example, Ferling (2007:536). Reiss (1998:211) and Duncan (1931:352) say16% of Cornwallis troops were unavailable owing to malaria, much less than theevidence provided by Cornwallis himself, or any other original sources I haveseen.

97 Riley (1948:393).


the condition of another 1,850 taken prisoner at Gloucester across theYork River.98 Two British deserters reported some 2,000 in hospital onOctober 4th.99 Henry Lee, an American officer present at the siege, gavefigures of 4,017 fit for duty of a total force of 7,107, implying 3,090 sick orwounded (44%) at the time of the surrender.100 Sgt. Roger Lamb, whocopied dispatches for Cornwallis, reported the same 4,017 fit for duty outof 5,950 rank and file (or 33% sick).101 These figures do not match thosereported by Cornwallis. It is tempting to suppose the Americans andFrench preferred lower figures so as to inflate their glory, but one mightequally suppose Cornwallis inflated his figures to minimize his shame.Unlike the Americans and French, however, he was describing his ownarmy and knew a board of inquiry or court martial might parse his wordscarefully. His assessment is broadly corroborated by the diary of thePrussian Captain Ewald, who wrote on October 17th that “nearly all” ofCornwallis’s soldiers were “plagued with fever.” Ewald went on: “[T]hearmy melted away from 7,000 to 3,200 among whom not a thousandmen could be called healthy.”102 According to the journal of a navalofficer who took part in the siege, Bartholomew James, the British lost450 dead to sickness as of the date of surrender. (His is the only figure Ihave found for disease mortality in the British Army at Yorktown, andhis numbers for other things are eccentric.) James went on to say that inthe days just after the capitulation, “few, if any” British soldiers escaped“intermitting fevers.”103

Why did the French and Americans at Yorktown not suffer frommalaria? They did, but too rarely and too late for it to matter. Uponarrival in Virginia the Franco-American forces were in superb health bythe standards of eighteenth-century armies. Washington’s troops hadbeen quartered around New York and Rochambeau’s had summered

98 Gallatin (1931:9).99 Ketchum (2004:224).

100 Lee (1869:514).101 Lamb (1809:380). Here Lamb quotes from another author without revealing his

source. Lamb’s precision is open to question: He also wrote that the distancefrom New York to Yorktown is more than 500 miles, when it is about 370 (p.389).

102 Ewald (1979:338–9). Ewald’s diary was written in the field but he revised it afterthe war, so he might have taken the 3,200 figure from Cornwallis, whom headmired, or perhaps they both got it from the same staff officers responsible fordaily returns.

103 James (1896:127–8).


in salubrious New England. Hardly a man reported sick as they headedsouth to join Lafayette. The few French troops who had been in Virginiaall summer under Lafayette were suffering from malaria; about half ofthem were unfit for duty.104 Lafayette’s Americans fared rather better.At the very end of August, Lafayette’s little Franco-American armywelcomed about 3,400 additional French soldiers recently posted to St.Domingue, who had sailed with de Grasse to the scene. These men weresurvivors of a summer amid the malaria strains of the West Indies, andperhaps more resistant as a result.105 Washington and Rochambeau hadmany things to be thankful for at the outset of the siege, and the healthof their army ranked well up the list.

104 Duncan (1931:351); Reiss (1998:210). In his many letters written in July, August,and September of 1781, while settling in close to Cornwallis’ positions Lafayettecomplained bitterly to his several correspondents about shortages of flour, salt,shoes, clothing, ammunition, wagons, militiamen, money and, above all, horses.But he did not, in hundreds of letters to people nearby, mention sickness amonghis troops. He noted his own intermittent fever in early September. Hundreds ofLafayette’s letters from this period appear in Idzerda (1977:228–426). Curiously,General Anthony Wayne, writing to Lafayette on 11 September 1781, refers toLafayette’s as a “Caitiff fever” (Ibid 399). In a single letter to a friend in Franceon August 24th, 1781, Lafayette wrote, “The heat of this country is so fiercethat you can hardly move in the month of August. It results in an additionaldifficulty, that of illness. Almost all my people at present have fever. I on theother hand have never felt better.” Lafayette to Prince de Poix, 24 August 1781,printed in Idzerda (1977:346–8) and quoted in Gottschalk (1942:292). Thistranslation is Gottschalk’s; the original, which I have not seen, is in a privatecollection. The part about his “people,” if by that he meant the men under hiscommand, was at best a great exaggeration. Perhaps he meant only his Frenchtroops or, more likely, those on his personal staff. In the letters to comrades inVirginia he made no such claims, although in one letter, also of August 24th toGeneral Washington, he did mention medicines well down a list of things heneeded. On August 26th, he noted sickness among the Continentals, which heattributed to their having gone eleven days without liquor. Lafayette’s Americantroops hailed chiefly from Virginia and had grown up with malaria. Aside fromthe French-born, it appears Lafayette’s army suffered only slightly from malaria(or anything else) in the summer before Yorktown.

105 Perhaps. They might also have included some infectives who brought moremalaria to the mosquitoes at Yorktown. The figure often given for the Frenchregiments from the West Indies is 3,000 or 3,200, but the correspondence of theircommander indicates 3,470: Marquis de Saint-Simon to Lafayette, 31 August1781, printed in Idzerda (1977:376–7). Wooden (1976:403) is the only author Ihave come across to comment on the likely disease resistance of these troops.


The allied army survived the siege almost intact. Few men (about twopercent) died in combat.106 Disease claimed a few more. Rochambeau’sFrench regiments were just as susceptible to malaria as Cornwallis’sBritons and Germans. But unlike their enemy, and unlike Lafayette’stroops, they came to the tidewater only toward the end of Septem-ber, some fifty to seventy days after Cornwallis’s army had settled in.Remember that malaria plasmodia take a while to circulate among apopulation, and up to a month to provoke illness after entering a blood-stream. While the siege lasted, the French stayed remarkably healthy.107

After the surrender, their susceptibility began to tell. In the next monthsa few dozen died and a few hundred fell sick. Rochambeau contractedmalaria. His army stayed in the tidewater for ten months and began tosuffer from malaria once again in June 1782. By August, after they hadmarched north to the Hudson Valley, more than a quarter of the armywas in hospital and another fifty-eight had died.108

Among the Americans, only the New Englanders suffered heavilyfrom the tidewater disease climate. Washington marched south withone Rhode Island regiment, one from the St. Lawrence valley (north-ernmost New York), and another comprised partly of men from coastalConnecticut and partly from lower New York. Most of his troops camefrom eastern Pennsylvania and the lower Hudson valley (six regiments),or New Jersey (two regiments) and Maryland (two and a half regiments).This army was not as well suited to malarial environments as Greene’s,but, aside from the New Englanders and some New Yorkers, most ofWashington’s men would have had repeated experience with malaria,

106 Ketchum (2004:247) gives French losses as 389 killed or wounded, of which 98were killed; and of Americans, 299 officers and men killed or wounded. Savasand Dameron (2006:336) give lower figures. Cornwallis apparently tried his bestto spread smallpox among them, expelling from his encampment hundreds ofinfected slaves (Fenn 2001:132–3); Becker (2005) is less sure this was deliberate.

107 Greene (2005:231) says a maximum of 400 French soldiers were ill at any onetime. The French fleet at the end of September had about 1,500 to 1,800 sickaccording to de Grasse; Idzerda (1977:405).

108 Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Rochambeau Papers, 9:215; Scott(1998:81, 96, 100). A full account of the experience of Rochambeau’s army,including the march north from Yorktown, is in the manuscript of the Frenchengineer, Francois-Ignace Ervoil d’Oyre, “Notes relatives aux movemens del’armee francaise en Amerique,” Society of the Cincinnati Library, ManuscriptCollection, L2008F163.1-5.


and those from Maryland or the Delaware valley would likely have hadnearly annual bouts all their lives.109

The New England natives did eventually fall afoul of Virginia’s fevers.A Connecticut contingent that wended its way toward Yorktown in thesummer of 1781 had minor health problems, chiefly agues and fevers.In its ranks marched Josiah Atkins, an enlisted man who became adoctor’s assistant. He left a diary, noting prophetically on July 16ththat the “next month is the season for the fever & ague.” Several timesin the next few weeks he wrote that the number of sick increased; onSeptember 15th he wrote of “ague & fever, that is continually takinghold of our men.” His final entry, written in the “Camp before York”on October 15th reads in full: “I recruit but very slow; my ague & feveris very severe on me at present.” He died soon thereafter, but happilyfor historians his diary found its way to his widow. Atkins in placesmentioned rheumatism, dysentery, and venereal disease as well as aguesand “intermitting” fever. But it seems probable that his fellows sufferedchiefly from malaria, to which life in Connecticut (after about 1750)provided no exposure. Lafayette was not far wrong to think the localwater was “very unhealthy to Northern soldiers.”110

Two factors favored the health of the Franco-American army. Wash-ington and Rochambeau had some susceptible “Northern soldiers” undertheir command, but they had more malaria-resistant troops. Moreover,when they reached Yorktown in late September, the weather had cooledsomewhat – and the mosquitoes bit less frequently.111 According to the

109 Details on regimental origins from Wright (1983:195–351).110 Lafayette to General Weedon, 16 June 1781, quoted in Gottschalk (1942:248).

The relevant diary entries are from Atkins (1975:45, 49–50, 53, 55, 58, 61).Gillett (1990:121–2) says malaria was the chief ailment afflicting Continentalsoldiers at Yorktown.

111 Batholomew (2002) gives the most frequent weather observations of the York-town diarists, and emphasized the heat in early August, and cooler weather11–18 August and a “remarkable Cool” day 21 September. The “Diary of thePennsylvania Line,” (Linn and Egle 1896:716–33) also notes cooler weatherafter 21 September. See also “Revolutionary War Diary by an Officer of theThird Pennsylvania Continental Line, May, 26 1781 – July 4, 1782,” Society ofthe Cincinnati Library, Manuscript Collection L2007G37, which includes com-mentary on the weather. By and large the available diaries and journals ceasecomment on the weather after the siege began in earnest on 28 September. Butit seems plausible in view of the textual evidence (and the turn of the seasons)that the mosquitoes of the York peninsula were more active in August than in


diary of the French quartermaster Claude Blanchard, whose job includedfeeding the sick, only 300 were reported ill on September 28th whenthe siege began, 400 by October 11th, and 500 by October 13th.112 Thiscounts as excellent health for an eighteenth-century army anywhere,let alone in the malarial Virginia tidewater, despite the ominous trendof mid-October.

Had the siege lasted a few more days, malaria might have hamperedthe French and Americans’ ability to continue. Blanchard’s reportsimply some galloping infection among the allies in the days just prior toCornwallis’ surrender. Dr James Thacher, a surgeon in the Continen-tal Army and a careful observer of almost everything, confirmed thisimplication in his journal on October 16th, “Our New England troopshave now become very sickly; the prevalent diseases are intermittentand remittent fevers, which are very prevalent in this climate duringthe autumnal months.”113 Washington on October 19th reported that1,430 French and American troops were sick.114 But on that day, theBritish forces laid down their arms.

As at Cartagena or Havana, differential resistance was at work. Wash-ington, Rochambeau, and Lafayette had by good fortune assembled anarmy fairly well-equipped with the right antibodies for late summer andearly autumn conditions along the York River. Moreover, the most vul-nerable portion of their army arrived on the scene only a month beforehostilities ended, too late to get very sick before it no longer matteredto the outcome of the siege. Hence in the final days at Yorktown, about3 to 8 percent of those under Washington’s command were sick, andabout 25 percent of those serving under Cornwallis if one prefers the fig-ures of the French general staff, or 51 percent if one believes Cornwallishimself.115

late September and October, and thus more efficient communicating malariabefore the bulk of the Franco-American force arrived.

112 Blanchard (1876:145–50).113 Thacher (1862:286).114 Hallahan (2004:209). Washington busied himself trying to find more hospi-

tal space for sick men even before settling the terms of capitulation (Gillett1990:123).

115 These percentages take Blanchard’s and Washington’s figures as the range forthe Franco-American forces. Greene’s remark (2005:232) that sickness “plaguedboth sides” at Yorktown is, strictly speaking, true but still misleading. To hiscredit, Greene is one of the few historians to mention disease at all in thiscampaign.


At Yorktown, mosquito-borne disease served the besiegers and bedev-iled the besieged, reversing the pattern evident at Cartagena or Havana.The reason is simple: Differential immunity consistently favored thelocals and worked against those from northern climes. At Cartagenaand Havana, the locals with the better portfolio of disease immunitieswere besieged; at Yorktown they were the besiegers.

Conclusion

With the help of malaria and differential immunity, Surinam’s maroonsprotected their freedom in the mid-1770s. With the help of malaria anddifferential resistance, rebellious Americans achieved their freedom bydefeating the British southern strategy in 1780–1781. The maroonsand the American rebels had little in common. But they both enjoyedresistance to malaria much stronger than that of the armies sent out todeny them their goals.

Cornwallis surrendered a quarter of the British Army in NorthAmerica at Yorktown. When the news reached London, Gibraltar laybesieged by Spanish and French troops; the North Sea was menacedby Dutch and French fleets; India was aflame and French squadronsprowled the Indian Ocean; and in the West Indies, small and ill-defended British islands were falling to French and Spanish assaults.In these circumstances, there could be no question of reconquering therebellious American colonies, despite the continued presence of Britishsquadrons and garrisons in Halifax, New York, Charleston, Savannah,and elsewhere. Peace negotiations took another twenty-two months,during which only small battles took place in America. Yorktown andits mosquitoes ended British hopes and decided the American war.116

Of course, mosquitoes and malaria did not win the American Revo-lution on their own. Washington and Greene had to fight (and avoidfighting) as prudently as they did; the French had to intervene; theBritish had to gamble on their southern strategy; de Grasse had to sailfor the Chesapeake; and no doubt much else had to fall into placefor things to come out as they did.117 But given these circumstances,

116 Returning British troops even brought malaria to England, leading to a briefspike in mortality there (Dobson 1997:346, n. 226).

117 Ferling (2007:572–3) finds the outcome almost miraculous, citing “Cornwal-lis’ egregious blunder in advancing into Virginia, Clinton’s misguided deci-sion to leave a large, and vulnerable, British force on the Williamsburg penin-sula, France’s determination to send de Grasse north from the Caribbean, and


mosquitoes and malaria could help make the difference, snatching vic-tory from the jaws of stalemate.

Simply put, differential vulnerability to malaria put Cornwallis’ forcesat a systematic disadvantage, creating a problem for which he had nosolution. Mosquitoes and malaria helped drive Cornwallis from theCarolinas and then sickened his army at Yorktown to the point wherehe lacked the manpower to conduct counter-siege operations properly.American resistance to the British Army had been made more effectiveby American resistance to malaria. Because “fevers” killed British sol-diers at roughly eight times the rate that battles did in the war, a smalledge in disease resistance translated into a significant advantage. It wasa war of attrition in which malarial plasmodia and the smallpox viruskilled far more than cannon and muskets, and sickened far more thanwere wounded.

In the case of Cornwallis and An. quadrimaculatus, mortality amongBritish soldiers was only a fraction of what redcoats experienced atCartagena and Havana. Part of the reason is that malaria is normallyless lethal than yellow fever, and the Lowcountry and tidewater diseaseenvironments were less dangerous to visitors than that of the WestIndies. And at times Cornwallis’ men got powdered cinchona bark,which helped against malaria, whereas nothing helped against yellowfever. In addition, Cornwallis fled the most fever-ridden districts of theCarolinas, whereas the armies of Wentworth and Albemarle stayed put.But at Yorktown, malaria put thousands of men hors de combat for theweeks when Cornwallis needed them most.

Had malaria not hamstrung Cornwallis, he might well have beenable to hold South Carolina and Georgia indefinitely, and the Loyalistshe counted on might have rallied to his side in greater numbers. Afterall, Generals Gates and Greene lost almost every battle they fought inthe South, and could not oust the British Army from fortified coastalpositions – only mosquitoes armed with malaria could accomplish that.It is probably unlikely that the British southern strategy would havesucceeded in keeping all of British North America, but, absent malaria,the southern plantation colonies might well have stayed loyal, as Florida,Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec did,in effect creating a southern version of Canada linked to the plantationworld of the British West Indies, and leaving a narrower band of NorthAmerica to the fledgling United States. But that did not happen. The

Rochambeau’s covert decision to ask de Grasse to sail not to New York but tothe Chesapeake.”


tiny female An. quadrimaculatus stands tall among the founding mothersof the United States.

Cornwallis had been fortunate to avoid yellow fever in his army.Charleston hosted seven major epidemics between 1693 and 1763, andwould suffer more after 1793.118 But in 1780–1781, yellow fever didnot strike. It was a much deadlier disease than malaria, even falciparummalaria, as the British and French armies would find once more in theWest Indies during the Napoleonic Wars.

118 Duffy (1953:162).

C H A P T E R S E V E N

Revolutionary Fevers, 1790–1898:

Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba

If Nature is against us, we will fight it and make it obey us.– Simon Bolıvar1

The defeat of Cornwallis in 1781 decided one American Revolution, butmore soon followed. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, free pop-ulations in the Americas grew in number, wealth, confidence, and ambi-tion. Their frustration with old regime monarchies that limited theiropportunities for trade and for political voice gradually mounted. Thatfrustration contributed to revolutions in French and Spanish colonies,as it had in thirteen of Britain’s in North America. In St. Domingueuniquely, the revolution evolved into a massive slave uprising. Mon-archs responded to each revolution with armed force in hopes of main-taining their American empires. But when they sent their legions to themosquito coasts of the Caribbean, they ignited epidemics that destroyedtheir armies far more thoroughly than any revolutionary brigades could.Canny revolutionaries recognized the power of differential immunity toyellow fever, and conducted their wars accordingly.

This chapter tells the stories of yellow fever (and malaria) and rev-olution in St. Domingue, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, and Cuba.The stories span a century, from the 1790s to the 1890s. But in eachcase, the broad pattern was the same. Locally born and raised armiesfought revolutionary wars against troops sent out from Europe to prevent

1 “Si se opone la Naturaleza, lucharemos contra ella y haremos que nos obedezca.”Quoted in Indalecio Lievano Aguirre, Bolıvar (Bogota: Intermedio, 2001), 84.Bolıvar’s remark came in response to a monk telling him that an earthquakeshowed nature supported the Spanish in 1812.

235


Map 7.1. St. Domingue (c. 1790)

or reverse revolution. The rebels invariably had poorer weaponry andspotty military discipline. But they had greater resistance to the lethaldiseases of their homelands, and in particular often had immunity toyellow fever. By and large, nature was on Bolıvar’s side, even if it didnot obey him.

St. Domingue, 1790–1804

St. Domingue, now Haiti, occupied the western third of the island ofHispaniola.2 It had several small and fertile plains, divided by ruggedchains of forested mountains whose crests reached 1,500 to 2,000 meterselevation. Formally acquired by France in a 1697 treaty, St. Dominguesoon became the heart of the French colonial system. Its climate andsoils, especially on the well-watered northern coastal plain stretchingeast of Cap Francais, suited sugar well. Its hills proved ideal for thecultivation of coffee, which boomed after 1750. The fertile parts of thecolony stood to the north of protective mountain ranges, and rarely feltthe wrath of hurricanes – unlike Jamaica or Cuba. Land was plentiful,soils still rich as late as 1780, so all in all it was the best place in the worldto make money off of sugar and slaves. By the 1780s, St. Domingue had

2 St. Domingue is also rendered Saint-Domingue, St.-Domingue, Saint Domingueand, in some English sources of the eighteenth century, San Domingo.

REVOLUTIONARY FEVERS, 1790–1898 237

about 8,000 plantations in all, and accounted for nearly half of the sugarand coffee produced in the Atlantic world. Indigo, cotton, tobacco,and cacao also figured as export crops. The colony generated a third ofFrance’s seaborne trade. Thirty ships a week visited its ports. As manyas 30,000 African slaves a year arrived in St. Domingue, making it by farthe most likely destination for slaves anywhere in the plantation zoneof the Americas – indeed, anywhere in the world.

population and society

Slaves made up more than 90 percent of St. Domingue’s population bythe 1780s, numbering around half a million. About two-thirds of themwere born in Africa. They came from many districts and spoke morethan two dozen languages, although a considerable proportion werecalled “Congos” and hailed from northern Angola and West-CentralAfrica generally. On the lowland sugar estates, a larger proportion –roughly half – were locally born, and spoke the lingua franca ancestralto today’s Haitian Creole. Some of them also spoke metropolitan French.Like the slave populations elsewhere in the Caribbean, St. Domingue’shalf million toiled mainly on plantations, and lived short lives markedby brutality and humiliation. Two-thirds of them were male.

The 30,000 free people of African or mixed African and Europeanancestry, called gens de couleur in St. Domingue, made up about 5 to6 percent of the colony’s population.3 Any discernible proportion ofAfrican ancestry qualified a free person as a “free colored.” A rich vocab-ulary of terms existed to describe people by their ancestry seven gener-ations back, so there were words – probably seldom used – for peoplewho were 127/128 African or 1/128 African.4 Unlike most Americanmulatto and mestizo populations, St. Domingue’s included many richplanters and slaveowners. Usually children of white fathers, they ofteninherited property. But many others toiled and scrimped to purchaseland and slaves, and in the booming sugar or coffee markets had struck

3 The term sometimes included free blacks of purely African descent, and some-times not. The vocabulary of St. Domingue’s sociology was not quite as simpleas I present it here.

4 Moreau de St. Mery (1787–1788, 1:5–99) and Lacroix (1995[1819]:36–40) offerdetailed vocabularies for St. Domingue society, but in practice few could distin-guish the gradations and most used the three-category system that I use here andthat most scholars of St. Domingue have long used.


it rich. Perhaps a quarter of the property, and the slaves, of St. Dominguewere owned by gens de couleur. Some free coloreds had received educa-tions in France, and most spoke French rather than Creole tongues, andpreferred Catholicism to African religions. They endured daily racistslights, could not hold political office, but could give some scope totheir entrepreneurial talents. They also were prominent in the militiaand rural constabulary. Almost all were born in St. Domingue. Womenoutnumbered men by about 6:5.

The white population of St. Domingue, about 40,000 strong and 6to 7 percent of the total in the 1780s, came mainly from France. Onlya quarter were born in the colony. Among whites, men outnumberedwomen by about 4:1, and children were few.5 Some whites had accu-mulated or inherited vast fortunes as planters or merchants. Othershad little more than the clothes they wore, and struggled through lifeas peddlers or artisans, or even wage laborers in sugar boiling houses,competing economically with gens de couleur and slaves. Their mostvaluable assets were their white skins. They alone as civilians couldlegally bear arms or hold political office. Although they had their dif-ferences, they could all agree on the indispensability of their privilegesand the importance of keeping the gens de couleur and the slaves in theirplaces.6

the disease environment

Like the rest of the West Indies, St. Domingue was an unhealthy place foralmost everyone but more so for some than others. Population growthcame only through immigration. Infections killed people faster thanothers were born. In broad terms, the whites had the most to fear fromdisease, and the gens de couleur the least.7

Slaves, most of whom arrived in poor health after a harrowing oceancrossing, often died within a year. Even though most slaves arriving inSt. Domingue were around fifteen to thirty years old, their life expect-ancy upon arrival was less than ten years – normal among Caribbean

5 Houdaille (1973:863). King (2001:43) says the ratio was 3:2.6 For sketches of St. Domingue population and society, Butel (2002:143–78);

Geggus (2002:5–8); Garrigus (2006); Dubois (2004:5–71); King (2001); Laurent-Ropa (1993:97–155). All draw heavily on Moreau de St. Mery (1787–1788, 1:5–99), as do I. Malouet (1802, v. 4) is another crucial primary source. Demographicdata from parish registers, also used in these paragraphs, appear in Houdaille(1973:863–5).

7 Gilbert (1803:10–26) for medical geography of St. Domingue.


slave populations.8 Smallpox, typhoid, tetanus, yaws, hookworm, anda dozen other infections and parasites preyed on them. Frequent mal-nutrition and squalid conditions magnified the risk posed by their dis-ease burden. The slaves, especially the African-born, were howevercomparatively resistant to malaria and likely to be immune to yellowfever.9

The gens de couleur lived healthier and longer lives than anyone else.Almost all were born locally, so they did not face the risks of “seasoning.”Their living conditions and nutrition generally were better than those ofslaves, sometimes far better. Their African genetic inheritance providedsome of them with resistance to malaria and (possibly) to yellow fever.Socially, the larger the proportion of African ancestry the lower one’srank. But epidemiologically, the larger the share, on average the saferone was from malaria and possibly from yellow fever. (One must say“on average” because much depended on where within Africa one’sancestors lived.) Women among the free colored population may havebeen at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases because one of the mostpromising life strategies for them was to become mistress to a wealthyor upwardly mobile Frenchman. These liaisons were usually temporary,hence numerous, and thus dangerous to all involved in terms of venerealinfection. One French writer in St. Domingue maintained that syphiliswas the most widespread malady in the colony.10

Although atop the social pyramid, the white population stood at thebottom in terms of health and life expectancy. Parish registers show theirdeath rates were about twice as high as those of the gens de couleur.11

8 Weaver (2006:21) says half of St. Domingue’s African-born slaves died withinthree years of arrival.

9 According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.org), fewer than 4% of slaves arriving in St. Domingue (1750–1790) came from southeastern Africa, where yellow fever was (probably) absent.A small share of the large proportion (about 55%) who hailed from West CentralAfrica might have been from the Angolan highlands, also likely to have beenfree of yellow fever, to judge from the map in Miller (1988:10); but the mapin the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database shows West Central slave ports ofembarkation as entirely north of the Kuvo River, and therefore these slaves wereunlikely to have come from the highlands (although one cannot be sure).

10 Charles Mozard, editor of a newspaper, Affiches Americaines, cited in McClellan(1992:29).

11 King (2001:44) offers 84/1000 as the crude death rate among whites and 44/1000among gens de couleur. Moreau de St. Mery (1787–1788, 1:173) notes that in the1760s at the military camp called Trou, white soldiers died at twelve times therate of the “550 hommes de couleur.”


Most whites were born in France, and thus at high risk when movingto the Caribbean, especially to malaria and yellow fever. Moreau deSt. Mery, the French lawyer whose work is the single best source forlate colonial St. Domingue, wrote that the climate of Cap Francais, thelargest city and chief port of entry, was “murderous” for sailors and othernew arrivals.12 French peacetime garrisons in St. Domingue lost about6 percent annually to disease, although only 3 percent in the 1780s.13

French males also presumably faced a high risk of contracting venerealdisease thanks to the opportunities provided by their social position.14

As elsewhere in the West Indies, in St. Domingue malaria justifi-ably inspired anxiety among newcomers. In the eighteenth century, St.Domingue’s lowland swamps were expanding, in part a result of erosionin the hills owing to the coffee boom. Wetlands expansion improvedbreeding conditions for St. Domingue’s resident malaria vector, Anophe-les albimanus.15 So did extension of irrigation for the plantations. Theinflux of people and livestock, also brought on by the growth of the plan-tation economy, duly improved feeding conditions. The annual arrivalof tens of thousands of slaves ensured constant renewal of the supply ofmalarial plasmodia. By the 1750s, malaria in both vivax and falciparumform was routine in St. Domingue, waxing with the rains from April toOctober, and waning in the drier months. Yellow fever was not routine:Among susceptibles, it inspired terror.

yellow fever in st. domingue

West and Central Africans and adult Afro-Creoles raised in St.Domingue had little to fear from yellow fever. But among whites, andespecially new arrivals, yellow fever provoked outright dread. Whiteslived mainly in cities and on sugar plantations, habitats they shared withAedes aegypti. In St. Domingue all cities were port cities, and all con-tained the infrastructure of water storage, both against the dry seasonand for shipping, that made ideal breeding habitat for A. aegypti. Behind

12 Moreau de St. Mery (1787–1788, 1:528). King (2001:44–5) discusses health.13 Geggus (1979:49), citing Moreau de St. Mery.14 The correspondence of a young French merchant in the early 1790s, Michel

Marsaudon, gives a remarkably detailed sense of the sexual adventures he andhis friends engaged in with free colored women. Georgetown University LauingerLibrary, Special Collections, Michel Marsaudon Papers. A description is avail-able at: http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/cl158.htm

15 Molez, Desenfant, and Jacques (1998); Higuera-Gundy et al. (1999:168).


the ports were the sugar plantations of the coastal lowlands, also suitablehabitat (see Chapter 2). Deeper inland stood forests, dwindling by theday as slaves hacked out new plantations, but still quite likely (thereis no way to be sure) home to monkeys hosting the yellow fever virus.Mosquitoes in search of blood meals had about a million large mammalsto choose from in the 1780s, including 580,000 humans, 350,000 headof livestock, and a few thousand additional wild or feral animals in thewoods. A French naturalist, M. E. Descourtilz, found that mosquitoeswere everywhere in St. Domingue, but especially around dwellings by thesea and rivers, where they “obscured” the sky morning and evening. Likemany West Indian locales, St. Domingue hosted hordes of mosquitoes ofseveral sorts but with growing ports, population, and plantations, habi-tat improved daily for A. aegypti. So yellow fever vectors were rarely inshort supply.16

Neither was virus. The heavy traffic from West Africa meant that newvirus (and mosquitoes) continually arrived. However, nonimmunes weregrowing scarce by the 1780s. Moreau de St. Mery recorded yellow feveroutbreaks on St. Domingue in 1691, 1733–1734, 1743, and 1755.17 TheFrench army doctor Nicolas Pierre Gilbert mentioned another, whichhe regarded as acute, in 1739–1741.18 Before the 1750s, new Frenchmigrants (nonimmunes) accounted for a goodly share of the popula-tion, creating scope for outbreaks. After the 1750s, the proportion ofimmunes on St. Domingue was so large that yellow fever had feweropportunities to spread. The virus might kill a few sailors, soldiers, andother newcomers but could not circulate freely because mosquitoes toooften took their blood meals from immunes. Herd immunity confinedthe virus. Moreover, the 1780s saw extended drought in St. Domingue,which may have temporarily reduced mosquito strength and correspond-ingly the incidence of yellow fever.19 In short, in the eighteenth centuryyellow fever was endemic in St. Domingue, a sporadic deadly risk to new-comers, but limited in its scope by herd immunity, which was sustainedby the numerical preponderance of people born and raised in the yellow

16 Descourtilz (1935:62–7) on mammals; p. 97 on mosquitoes. Moreau de St. Mery(1787–1788, 1:100) for livestock numbers.

17 Moreau de St. Mery (1787–1788, 1:534–5). Moreau de Jonnes (1820:70–1)agrees but adds another in 1766. Pouppe-Desportes (1770, 1:40–186) is thesource for some of these dates.

18 Gilbert (1803:97).19 Geggus (1979:44). This could help account for the improved health of the

garrison, noted previously.


fever zones of Africa or St. Domingue itself. This was fortunate for allconcerned because in St. Domingue, as elsewhere, doctors did moreharm than good in cases of yellow fever.20

Epidemic yellow fever would require a large influx of susceptibles.This is just what the Haitian Revolution provided: tens of thousands ofnonimmunes, enough to undermine herd immunity and give the virusits greatest opportunity for mischief in the history of the Americas.

the haitian revolution begins

In the 1780s, St. Domingue was a cauldron of thwarted political ambi-tion. Slave uprisings in St. Domingue for decades had been fewer andsmaller than elsewhere. But every group wanted something it did nothave. Whites wanted more political representation in Paris, appropriateto their wealth and status. Most gens de couleur wanted legal equalitywith the whites. Most slaves wanted freedom. These ambitions proveddifficult to reconcile.

When word came of the events in Paris in 1789, these smolder-ing political ambitions ignited. The ideals of the French Revolution –liberty, equality, fraternity – were radical enough in France. In St.Domingue, they were explosive. As the Revolution unfolded in France,authorities in Paris did not know what to do with St. Domingue (andthe French Caribbean generally). Some felt that revolutionary princi-ples should apply everywhere, and thus that even African slaves shouldbe free and equal. Most felt otherwise. St. Domingue provided usefulrevenues that depended on the maintenance of the plantation system.Thus, Parisian revolutionaries argued and acted inconsistently. Theygranted gens de couleur legal equality and withdrew it more than once.They abolished slavery and then reinstated it. Ultimately, events inSt. Domingue followed their own chaotic logic, well beyond the controlof anyone in Paris – or anywhere else.

Violence first erupted in 1790 in the form of a revolt organized amongthe gens de couleur. Many of them had military experience in a regimentrecruited to fight in Georgia during the American Revolution. Othershad served in the militia. Despite their skills, they were soon crushedby the colonial authorities. Outwardly, calm reigned. The NationalAssembly in Paris voted to give political rights to some free coloreds in

20 Gilbert (1803:90) describes the “creole” cures of bleeding, emetics, purgatives,quinine, and baths.


St. Domingue, to the irritation both of whites and those free coloredswho did not qualify. Turmoil continued.

Then in August 1791, in the northern plain, a slave revolt began thatsoon involved as many as 100,000 slaves. Plantations burned. Murders,reprisals, and atrocities abounded. A French army contingent arrivedin December 1791, but before it could affect the struggles underway itstroops fell ill.21 Half were dead within a few months. Violence ebbedand flowed, alliances shifted, and each rumor of the twists and turns ofthe Revolution in France provoked new outrage or relief and reshufflingof coalitions in St. Domingue. When Paris proclaimed the legal equalityof all free people (April 1792), most gens de couleur and whites madecommon cause, and gradually got the upper hand in war against therebel slaves. Then in February 1793, the French Republic, fighting forits young life within Europe, declared war on Britain.

This widened the Wars of the French Revolution, more than twodecades of struggle (1792–1815) pitting France (and lands France occu-pied) against a shifting coalition that usually included Britain, Austria,and Russia, and sometimes Prussia. Combat took place in Europe fromPortugal to Russia, in Egypt, India, the West Indies, and on a smallscale in South Africa and Southeast Asia. By and large France, whichcreated a huge citizen army, had the edge in land warfare in the heartof Europe. France’s enemies fared better on the poorer fringes, in Spainand in Russia, where the French army’s methods of living off the landworked less well. Britain’s strategy involved paying other members of thecoalition to fight in Europe, and using naval power and expeditionaryforces against French colonial possessions – and those of the Dutch aswell after France conquered the Netherlands in 1795.

This strategy, associated with William Pitt the younger (1759–1806)and his war secretary Henry Dundas (1742–1811), made the West Indiescrucial. Caribbean trade revenues could help Britain to subsidize Aus-trian, Prussian, and Russian armies fighting France. (Indeed, in 1796Dundas considered offering St. Domingue to Catherine the Great asa sweetener to commit her and Russia to the anti-France coalition.)22

Revenues denied to France and directed to Britain were doubly valuable.Using the small British army across the ocean made sense because theFrench could deploy only a fraction of their much larger army overseas.

21 Geggus (1979:50) says the French losses approximated those of later contingentsof British soldiers, which he puts at 50–75% per annum.

22 Duffy (1997:86).


The outbreak of the Wars of the French Revolution brought large-scale expeditionary warfare back to the West Indies. Several islandsof the Lesser Antilles, poorly fortified and defended by tiny garrisons,quickly changed hands. In St. Domingue, expeditionary warfare came intwo phases. First, a British army sought to occupy the colony beginningin 1793. A French army sent out in 1802 tried to undo the revolu-tion in St. Domingue and restore the colonial plantation system. Bothinterventions failed amid catastrophic epidemics.

the british in st. domingue, 1793–1798

The decree of legal equality among all free people in St. Domingueprovoked a backlash among white colonists, deepened by the policiesof commissioners sent from republican France. Many whites emigrated.Others turned for help to Britain and Spain, each of which saw a beck-oning opportunity to weaken revolutionary France. With the bless-ing of many French planters, the British assembled an army to invadeSt. Domingue. Pitt and friends sought to add St. Domingue’s wealth toBritain’s empire, to deny it to France, and to uphold the slave planta-tion system. To this end, they sent an initial contingent of some 2,000troops to occupy the ports in the autumn of 1793. But before theyarrived, the Revolution’s commissioners in St. Domingue, without theendorsement of the government in Paris, took the step of abolishingslavery (August 29, 1793). That changed everything. Most factions inthe slave rebellion had formerly sided with conservatives and the kingagainst the Revolution (partly to secure assistance from Spanish SantoDomingo). But now the insurgent slaves fought to defend their freedom,siding with the Revolutionary government in Paris and against Britain,which represented the old regime and the preservation of plantationslavery.

When the British army arrived in September 1793, the planters andwhites in general welcomed them. So did the yellow fever virus, as aJamaican planter noted:

The season of the year was unfavourable in the highest degree formilitary operations in a tropical climate. The rains were incessant;and the constant and incessant fatigue, and the extraordinary dutyto which the soldiers, from the smallness of their number, werenecessarily subject, co-operating with the state of the weather, pro-duced the most fatal consequences. That never-failing attendant


on military expeditions in the West Indies, the yellow or pesti-lential fever, raged with dreadful virulence, and so many, both ofthe seamen and soldiers, perished daily, that the survivors werestricken with astonishment and horror at beholding the havockmade among their comrades!23

Late 1793, however, was the best of times for the British army in St.Domingue. Most of the first troop contingents were seasoned men whohad spent a year or more in Jamaica. In any case, by November the feverseason subsided, the British recruited a few thousand gens de couleurand blacks to their side, and occupied nearly a third of the colony byJune 1794, with combat losses of only about fifty men. The fortunes ofrevolutionary France were at a low ebb, in Europe and in St. Domingue,and so Britain’s only effective enemy (in a chaotic situation with manycivil wars afoot) was the ex-slave army. The Royal Navy ensured thatFrance, even if it wished to, could not reliably send supplies and soldiersto St. Domingue. Pitt and Dundas had reason to smile.

But in June 1794, yellow fever broke out with a vengeance amongthe British troops in Port-au-Prince, a major seaport. Port-au-Prince,which a German aristocrat in 1789 likened to a “Tartar camp,” stoodin a dry part of the colony with no year-round rivers or streams.24

It relied on stored water and canals, and probably had abundant A.aegypti as a result. Some 650 British soldiers died within two months,none in combat. From June to November 1794, the British army inSt. Domingue lost roughly 10 percent of its men each month. By theend of the year, the British army had only 1,100 men fit for duty and heldonly four pockets of territory around the biggest ports, all isolated fromone another except by sea. Port cities were important for the British tohold militarily but disastrous to inhabit.

The British army again enjoyed a respite in the dry winter monthsin 1794–1795. But 1795 soon proved deadlier than the year before. Inthe fever season from July to December of 1795, the remnants of theBritish army died at a rate of 13 to 22 percent per month. The newlyarrived died with astonishing quickness, seemingly disembarking fromships straight to their graves. Some British officers concluded the effortwas not worth the cost. Pitt saw his strategy fall to ruin but, worried by

23 Edwards (1797:149).24 von Wimpffen (1817:208).


a slave rising in Jamaica, chose to stay the course. He sent a new armyto St. Domingue.25

In 1795–1796, about 27,000 British soldiers (and nearly a thousandwomen) headed to the West Indies under the command of an agedScot, Sir Ralph Abercromby. He had not seen battle in thirty years butwas a kinsman of Dundas. His force, mainly Irish, included large num-bers of Germans and French emigres, as well as a sprinkling of Poles,Swiss, Dutch, and others. About 13,000 went to St. Domingue, arrivingin dribs and drabs from February 1796 onward. Yellow fever assaultedthem soon after they landed. Doctors once again proved helpless. One ofthem, Robert Jackson, noted that British and French medicine was aboutequally effective, “ . . . on the sea-coast, two-thirds at least, of any givennumber of European soldiers, will be found to perish before the expi-ration of the year, whether treated by French or English physicians.”26

By March 1796, the British had already lost some 6,000 dead in St.Domingue. In July, Lt. Col. Thomas Maitland wrote that “All ourboasted Army has dwindled to nothing.”27

This lament was a modest exaggeration, but the toll taken by yellowfever in the summer of 1796 discouraged everyone in the British army.Lt. Thomas Phipps Howard, who had sailed for St. Domingue with aregiment called the York Hussars, kept a journal. He arrived at the navalbase of Mole St. Nicolas on May 1, 1796, at a time when the Britisharmy was losing an average of twenty men daily to disease. Howardknew what to expect: “In the West Indies the Months of June, July,August, Sept. & the beginning of October are what are called the sicklyMonths. . . . ”28 By early July, now at St. Marc, Howard’s regiment wasfirmly in the grip of the yellow fever virus. In ten days his regiment lost23 percent of its men, dead from fevers. He continued:

It is impossible for words to express the horror that presenteditself at this time to those who were still able to crawl about. 30Negroes were constantly employed in digging Graves & buryingthe unhappy wretches that perished; & scarcely could they work-ing the whole of the Day, from sun rise to sun set, again dig Holes

25 The numbers come from returns in PRO WO 17, cited in Geggus (1979:44–50).26 Jackson (1798:297). Cantlie (1974, 1:240) gives 31,000, mainly Irish, as Aber-

crombie’s total strength, including 4,500 foreigners, mainly Germans.27 Thomas Maitland to James Maitland, 15 July 1796, PRO, WO 1/64, ff. 343–54,

quoted in Buckley’s introduction to Howard (1985:xxxv).28 Howard (1985:43).


enough for the Dead, tho’ three, four & five were tumbled into thesame Grave together. The Dead Carts were constantly employed,& scarcely was one empty, tho’ they held from 8 to 12 each, butanother was full. Men were taken ill at dinner, who had been inthe most apparent Health during the Morn: & were carried totheir long Homes at Night. In short, the putridity of the Disorderat last arose to such an hight that hundreds, almost, were abso-lutely drowned in their own Blood, bursting from them at everyPore.29

In the summer of 1798, just before Howard’s regiment was withdrawn toJamaica, the commanding general of the British forces in St. Dominguenoted that the York Hussars and two other regiments “are sufferingseverely from the Yellow fever.” When they left St. Domingue, Howard’sregiment counted 231 officers and men, the survivors of an original688.30 Nearly two-thirds died, almost all of disease.

The quality of the evidence for the last years of the British occupationof St. Domingue is poor and perhaps was deliberately falsified by thegovernment, which faced fierce criticism over the West Indies campaign.But it seems that in 1797–1798 the death rates declined. This stands toreason because with few exceptions only men immune to yellow feverand experienced with malaria remained alive by 1797. The question ofthe magnitude of the losses to the British army in St. Domingue becamea political issue and subject to wild claims. The most careful students ofthe question estimate that in the course of the occupation, 1793–1798,the British multinational army committed a total of about 23,000 to25,000 troops to St. Domingue. Roughly 15,000, or 60 to 65 percent,died there.31 The experience of the York Hussars then was only slightlymore gruesome than average.

29 Howard (1985:49–50).30 Maitland to Dundas, 6 July 1798, PRO, WO 1/68 (printed in Howard 1985:147–

56, quotation p. 152); regimental returns in PRO WO 1/899 and 17/1990, citedin Howard (1985:li, 131). The York Hussars may have received reinforcementsduring their St. Domingue stay, in which case the mortality rate would be higherthan that indicated here.

31 Geggus (2002:20). Geggus (1979:48) offered 12,700 of 20,200 (or 63%). Duffy(1987:328, 332) gives 13,590 out of 23,000 (or 60%). Discrepancies may arisefrom counting, or not counting, foreign troops under British command, of whichthere were about 4,500. Jackson (1798) provides a detailed account of theepidemic, albeit entirely wrong from the medical point of view.


The British campaign in St. Domingue formed part of a larger WestIndian struggle against the French. It also involved taking SpanishTrinidad and Dutch posts in South America. Everywhere British forceswent, they encountered yellow fever and malaria. On Guadeloupe in1793, Cooper Willyams found: “That dreadful malady the yellow fever,which, though it had subsided when we first came to the West Indies,was now, as it were, awakened by the arrival of fresh victims.”32 Atsea, matters were equally grisly. The surgeon of the HMS Alfred in1796 recorded a shipboard epidemic: “The symptoms as they appearedon board the Alfred at the worst period were prostration of strength;heavy, sometimes acute pain of the forehead; a severe pain of the loins,joints, and extremities; a glazy appearance of, with a bloody suffusion ofthe eye; nausea or vomiting of bilious, sometimes offensive black matter,not unlike coffee grounds. . . . ”33

Estimates of the total loss of life to British forces range from 40,000to 100,000, but something around 50,000 to 70,000 is probably best.Next to deaths from disease, mainly yellow fever, battle casualties were“trivial.”34 Edmund Burke wrote that Pitt was fighting to conquer acemetery.35 St. Domingue was the biggest part, but only a part, of thisgraveyard of the British army.

32 Willyams (1796:101). Bartholomew James, then a Royal Navy lieutenant onMartinique in 1794, wrote in his journal: “The dreadful sickness that now pre-vailed in the West Indies is beyond the power of the tongue or pen to describe.In a few days after I arrived at St. Pierre I buried every man in my boat twice,and nearly all of a third boat’s crew, in fevers; and shocking and serious to relate,the master, mate, and every man and boy belonging to the Acorn transport, thatI came from England in, and had continued my pennant on board during thewhole of the time up to May 12. The constant affecting scenes of sudden deathwas in fact dreadful to behold, and nothing was scarcely to be met but funeralprocessions in this town, of both officers and soldiers; and the ships of war wasso extremely distressed that many of them had buried almost all of their officersand seamen” (James 1896:241–2).

33 Surgeon’s journal, 1798, HMS Alfred, PRO ADM 101/87/3.34 Duffy (1987:338). His estimates and those of Geggus (1982, 1983, 2002) are the

most careful. Willyams (1796:58–60) gives data for officers serving in the WestIndian campaign under Lt.-Gen. Charles Grey. In 1794, 197 were reported dead,of whom 86% died of “the yellow fever, and other diseases incidental to theclimate.” Of the enlisted men, 5,000 of 7,000 (71%) died in the 1794 campaign(Cantlie 1974, 1:236).

35 Geggus (1983:699).


toussaint louverture

The British army in St. Domingue had the misfortune to confront astrategist who understood the power of differential resistance to yellowfever and malaria: Toussaint Louverture (1743?–1803). Toussaint wasborn a slave around 1743, perhaps on the Breda plantation in thenorthern plain of St. Domingue. He worked as a coachman and horsehandler, acquiring an unusually large knowledge of the region. He knewthe geography, roads, and tracks of St. Domingue the way a veteran taxidriver knows a city. He became a skilled rider. He also learned to read,to write (although he usually preferred to use a secretary), and became adevoted Catholic, although he may at times also have practiced vodun(voodoo). He spoke French, the Creole tongue of St. Domingue, andprobably the West African language of his father (Ewe). His master freedhim when Toussaint was about thirty, after which he sometimes rentedand sometimes owned slaves himself. He was a culturally versatile manwho could move easily among slaves and gens de couleur, and who couldwin the good opinion of whites. It turned out that in his fifties, he alsohad extraordinary stamina, physical courage (he collected many battlewounds), and political cunning.36

Toussaint also knew his way around the herbs, plants, and potionsof Afro-Creole medicine, and apparently had some acquaintance withEuropean medicine. He had worked for a while at Jesuit hospitals. Inthe early days of the slave uprising in 1791, in correspondence he styledhimself “medecin general” of the slave army. It seems he was unusuallyinformed about and attentive to matters of health and disease. And aswe shall see, he knew that his enemies would suffer far more grievouslyfrom disease than would his brothers-in-arms.

Toussaint’s role in the early months of the slave uprising is unclear.But by 1792, he emerged as one of several commanders. From mid-1793he served with the Spanish forces against the French and gens de couleur.He showed political skills of the highest order, and soon built an armyof several thousand followers, including some whites and gens de couleur.He adopted the name Louverture (“the opening”) to emphasize the newdawn that he claimed to represent. In the spring of 1794 he graduallyswitched sides, deserting the Spanish (who were not fighting much inany case) and joining the French. Perhaps he thought they would win;

36 Biographies include James (1989[1938]), Pluchon (1985), and Bell (2007).


perhaps he thought their Republic represented the best chance theslaves had for freedom. (The Republic did abolish slavery throughoutthe French Empire in February 1794, but Toussaint had turned on theSpanish before word of abolition reached St. Domingue.)

In any case, from the spring of 1794 Toussaint led the ex-slave armyagainst the remaining Spanish troops, who gave up in 1795, and againstthe British. Matters were clearer now: The French and their Revolutionstood on the side of freedom for all, including slaves, and the Britishstood for plantation slavery. Now perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 strong, Tous-saint’s army stood with the French. Factions and warlords abounded, andalignments varied markedly from one part of St. Domingue to another.A free colored leader, for example, Andre Rigaud (1761–1811), con-trolled most of the southern province. But the central conflict was thatbetween Toussaint and the British.

Toussaint soon showed himself to be a master of guerilla warfare.He avoided set-piece battles, preferring to ambush isolated British unitswhen he could. He tempted them deeper into the hills only to trap them.He kept them guessing about where he might strike next, and alwaysseemed to know where they were. He used the intelligence networkprovided by the large slave and ex-slave population to good effect.Above all, he kept the British confined to the ports and plains, whereyellow fever killed them quickly.

By the 1790s, everyone knew that higher ground was healthier groundfor Europeans in the West Indies. But the British needed to hold theports to ensure re-supply, and they needed to hold the plains if they wereto rejuvenate the plantation economy. This suited Toussaint perfectly,for he knew that in the rainy season yellow fever would scythe down hisenemies, leaving him in control of the strongest faction in St. Domingue.

While fighting the British in St. Domingue, Toussaint also had to out-maneuver competing factions. Many rival leaders disappeared. Otherswere shipped off to France. He cooperated with Rigaud against theBritish until that battle was won. As the British finally left in 1798,Toussaint attacked all rivals, especially Rigaud, and stood supreme inSt. Domingue by 1800. He had perhaps 20,000 to 40,000 men at hiscommand.

Toussaint chose to remain nominally subordinate to France but dideverything short of declaring independence. He awarded land to hisgenerals and used the army to force other ex-slaves back onto estatesas sharecroppers; they got a quarter of the crop, and estate-owners gotthree-quarters. He annexed the formerly Spanish part of the island


without consulting Paris. He betrayed a French plan to start a slaveuprising in Jamaica. In effect, he ran his own foreign policy. He madehimself governor for life. All this was too much for France’s new strong-man, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821).

Napoleon had come to power via coup d’etat in 1799, and likeToussaint stood vaguely for revolutionary principles but extinguishedpolitical freedoms, crushed rivals, and gathered power unto himself. InSt. Domingue Napoleon, like Toussaint, hoped to reconstitute the plan-tation economy, but he wanted its revenues to flow to his coffers, notToussaint’s. By 1801, Napoleon decided to risk an army to recaptureSt. Domingue. A temporary peace with Britain, which would allow safepassage of fleets across the Atlantic, gave him his chance.

leclerc

For this mission, Napoleon selected his brother-in-law, General CharlesVictor Emmanuel Leclerc (1772–1802). A man of modest bourgeoisorigins and boundless determination, Leclerc had volunteered for thearmy in 1791. Although the youngest in his battalion, he was quicklyelected (this was a revolutionary army) lieutenant. He fought withdistinction in French armies at Toulon, in Italy, and in Germany. Herose rapidly through the ranks, and married Napoleon’s favorite sister,Pauline, when she was seventeen – a relief to her elder brother asher conduct, even in the libertine 1790s, was cause for scandal. Leclercsupported his brother-in-law in the coup of 1799 that brought Napoleonto the summit of power. The choice of Leclerc indicated how seriouslyNapoleon took this expedition.37

Napoleon intended that Leclerc should, by stealth or force, restorethe plantation economy to St. Domingue, restore St. Domingue toFrance, and end the de facto independence of Toussaint. Leclerc wasto resurrect the plantation regime, including forms of forced labor, asToussaint was already doing. Leclerc eventually was to reinstitute slaverybut to keep quiet about it until he had disarmed the blacks and deportedall black leaders. This was to be the first step in the re-establishment of alucrative French Empire in America. Napoleon envisaged black armiesin the service of France conquering far and wide in the West Indies,

37 Meziere (1990:16–120). Adelaıde-Merlande (2007:286–7) shows that Napoleonwas not trying to get rid of his sister and excessively Republican troops by sendingthem to St. Domingue, as some authors have supposed.


cutting off vital funds to Britain and taking the Gulf Coast (beyondLouisiana, already French) before the new United States could. LikeChoiseul before him, Napoleon dreamt of reversing the verdict of 1763and making France once again a great power in America. His strategywas a bit like Cromwell’s vision of virtuous Protestants carving up thepapist Spanish Empire a century and a half before, for which Jamaicawas to serve as the launching pad. For Napoleon, the reconquest of St.Domingue was to re-launch France on the path of American empire, atBritain’s expense.38

In late 1801, the French assembled a fleet of 35 ships of the line,26 frigates, 22,000 soldiers, and 20,000 sailors. They were delayed amonth in French ports by contrary winds, shipping shortages, and insome accounts by Pauline’s tardiness. The first contingents arrived inSt. Domingue at the end of January 1802. In subsequent months stillmore men arrived, making about 65,000 soldiers and sailors in all. Manywere excellent soldiers, veterans of many campaigns along the Rhine,Danube, or Nile. Among them were large numbers of Poles, Swiss,Germans, Italians, and other nationalities. A few hundred were whiteSt. Domingans who had recently fled their homes but who now hopedto return in triumph.39

war fevers

When Leclerc invested the ports in February 1802, Toussaint had per-haps 30,000 or 35,000 soldiers.40 Despite help from the U.S. and Britain,they had little in the way of training or equipment to match the French.

38 Auguste and Auguste (1985:11–19); Adelaıde-Merlande (2007:287–9). The textof Napoleon’s instructions to Leclerc, which show a brilliantly devious mind atwork, is printed in Roussier (1937:264–73).

39 Participants’ views appear in: Leclerc’s letters printed in Roussier (1937); Lacroix(1819); Moreau de Jonnes (1858); and, less reliably, in Norvins (1896). Descour-tilz (1935) is another eyewitness account, by a civilian naturalist who livedthrough many harrowing adventures. Classics include Metral (1825). Of mod-ern works, the best is Auguste and Auguste (1985) and Dubois (2004); butsee also the brief analysis of Adelaıde-Merlande (2007) and the coverage ofnaval affairs in Girard (2008). Considerable confusion surrounds the numbersof French military personnel sent to St. Domingue, with totals in the literatureranging from 60,000 to 82,000.

40 Leclerc estimated only 15,000 plus 2,000 cavalry (Leclerc au Ministre de laMarine, 9 fevrier 1802, printed in Roussier 1937:80), but modern scholars creditToussaint with more.


Toussaint said his army was as “naked as earthworms.” Things beganwell for Leclerc. Many of Toussaint’s generals joined the French. Sev-eral were now men of property and could see a fine future for themselveswithin Napoleon’s dream. But Toussaint and his closest lieutenants,Henri Christophe (1767–1820) and Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806), took to the hills once more and organized guerilla resistance inthe spring months of 1802. Like the struggle against the British this wasasymmetrical warfare, requiring clever use of the weapons of the weak –Toussaint’s strength. Toussaint employed mobility, surprise, ambush,and scorched-earth tactics. In the dry season until April, the towns, plan-tations, and woodlands burned easily. Christophe’s men converted CapFrancais, a town of 20,000, into a “pile of cinders.”41 A frustrated Leclercdescribed the struggle in a letter to Napoleon as a “guerre d’arabes,” inwhich ambush and flight replaced the set-piece battles Leclerc had mas-tered in Italy and Germany.42 He could hold the ports and sometimesthe plains, but Toussaint’s men ruled the woods and the mountains.Leclerc could not force a decisive battle, and he knew almost as wellas Toussaint that when the rains came yellow fever would turn fortuneagainst him.

Nonetheless, many of Toussaint’s followers wavered in the springof 1802. Although ill-supplied by their standards, the French had farbetter weaponry than Toussaint’s “naked earthworms.” They had moremoney, although Leclerc regularly wrote for more, and used it to buyallegiance. Many rebels seemed to think that the French would win,and voted with their feet against Toussaint. But Toussaint knew thefever season was coming, and that it would count for more than gunsand money. He wrote Dessalines in February: “Do not forget that whilewaiting for the rainy season, which will rid us of our enemies, we haveonly destruction and fire as our weapons.” He explained that he wouldfight defensively until July and August but then go on the attack – whenthe French would be far weaker.43

41 Moreau de Jonnes (1858, 2:120).42 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 19 fevrier 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:101–2). Moreau

de Jonnes (1858, 2:131–3) describes the ambush tactics the French faced.43 Toussaint a Dessalines, 7 fevrier 1802, printed in Lacroix (1819:320), and quoted

in Auguste and Auguste (1985:151–2). The original: “N’oubliez pas qu’un atten-dant la saison des pluies qui doit nous debarrasser de nos ennemis nous n’avons pourressources que la destruction et le feu.” The letter was intercepted by French forces.Adelaıde-Merlande (2007:289) indicates Toussaint recommended this strategy


Toussaint could not follow through on his own strategy. In earlyMay 1802, he rode to meet Leclerc and agreed to retire to his countryplantations, of which he owned several. Leclerc momentarily thoughthe had won, and described his position to his brother-in-law as “belle etbrillante.”44 But Toussaint was probably playing a double game. Lettersintercepted by Leclerc’s agents in June indicate Toussaint was bidinghis time until yellow fever weakened the French.45 Many of his lieu-tenants and rival warlords had already gone over to the French – anexcellent way to acquire weapons and ammunition. If Toussaint con-tinued to scramble through the mountains while others loaded up onweapons, he would be in a weaker position should the French ultimatelyleave, as he expected they would. So his surrender probably representsa political calculation based on his faith in yellow fever and his fearsabout his fellow rebel commanders. His intercepted letters seem to havemoved Leclerc to eliminate Toussaint once and for all: In June, Tous-saint incautiously agreed to meet another French general, was captured,and bundled off to France. Locked up in a dungeon in the frosty Juramountains, he wrote an unreliable, self-justifying memoir intended toconvince Napoleon of his loyalty, and died of lung ailments in April1803.46

Toussaint had predicted that his own arrest and deportation wouldnot win the war for Leclerc. He was correct. Generals Christophe andDessalines, fighting for the French, used their talents to disarm and killtheir former comrades. Leclerc was delighted with Dessalines’ reign ofterror against the insurgent blacks, most of whom were African-born andsaw their interests as different from those of Dessalines.47 But Dessalinestoo trusted in the fever season. In March 1802, he had told his men totake courage, that the French could not long remain, that they wouldprosper at first but soon would fall ill and die like flies.48

to his subordinate Laplaume as well, but I have not seen any document to thiseffect.

44 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 7 mai 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:145). He also askedfor botanists and mining engineers to be sent out to develop the colony. Leclercau Ministre de l’Interieur, 8 mai 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:148).

45 Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 11 juin 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:168–9).46 Roussier (1937:311–49) for Toussaint’s memoir.47 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 16 septembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:228–37).

Leclerc called Dessalines (230) “the butcher of the blacks.”48 Pauleus Sannon (1920, 3:121); Fick (1990:211-12) where it is attributed to an

eyewitness, the naturalist Descourtilz (1935:212).


Dessalines was also right. In the summer of 1802, Leclerc’s men con-trolled the most valuable parts of the colony. In May, it had seemed hehad won the war. But the fever season came as Toussaint and Dessalineshad foreseen. Leclerc noted the onset of the rains in early April, and inMay complained he had 6,000 men in hospital and was losing thirty tofifty men daily to disease.49 In June, he ordered his health commissionto prepare a report on the epidemic, and was duly informed that it wasyellow fever, made especially virulent by the miasmas caused by burnedhouses.50 A month after boasting that his position was “brilliant,” hewrote to Napoleon to say it grew worse daily as disease carried off hismen.51 By early July he was losing 160 men to disease each day, and at theend of the summer 100 to 120 daily.52 Leclerc thought he needed 25,000men to subdue the rebellion but had at best half that. He asked for menwho had served in Egypt, in hopes that they would be resistant to the illsof St. Domingue, although he eventually concluded they died as readilyas anyone else.53 According to the French General Pierre Boyer, com-mandant at Cap Francais, the hospitals overflowed, and as the epidemicwaxed, his enemies “calculated its progress with a secret joy.”54

By late summer, uprisings sprouted all over the colony. The Frenchdid not have enough men left standing to counter them. As of

49 Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 9 avril 1802 and 8 mai 1802, printed in Roussier(1937:124, 151). Leclerc reported the following numbers of soldiers in hospitalin the spring of 1802:

9 February 60015 February 1,20017 February 2,00027 February 3,5001 April 5,000

Source: letters in Roussier (1937: 84, 90,94, 109, 120, 145, 151).

50 Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 6 juin 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:154–5).51 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 6 juin 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:161–5).52 Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 6 juillet 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:186–

7). On 2 August, he wrote that over the past month 100 men died daily in thehospitals of Cap Francais alone: Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 2 aout 1802,printed in Roussier (1937:196–9).

53 Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 21 avril 1802 and 11 juin 1802, in Roussier(1937:131, 168); Leclerc a Bonaparte, 15 fevrier 1802, 11 juin 1802, and 16septembre 1802, Roussier (1937:90, 172, 233). Egypt might have provided someexperience with malaria, but not with yellow fever.

54 Quoted in Anonymous (1971[1818], 163).


September 16th, Leclerc reported 28,000 dead, 4,500 in hospital, 1,500convalescents, and 4,000 fit for duty among his European troops.55 Theydid not have enough medical men to care for their sick (health offi-cers and engineers seem to have been in shortest supply to judge fromLeclerc’s desperate letters – perhaps because they remained in portsmore consistently than others).56 Leclerc vainly hoped that because theepidemic had begun in early May, a month earlier than he expected, itwould end in September rather than October.57 But it did not abate.European sailors as well as soldiers died in droves. One Swedish vessel atCap Francais lost all its men but one cabin boy to disease. Some 4,000Dutch sailors died “sans combat, ni gloire.”58 In late September, Leclercforecast that if the epidemic lasted into the month of Brumaire (roughlyOctober 23rd to November 21st), then the colony was lost.59

Leclerc, too, was correct. As the epidemic raged among the French,word came (July 1802) that French authorities in Guadeloupe, afterdefeating an ex-slave insurrection, had reinstated slavery. Rumors aboutthe return of slavery to St. Domingue flourished. Napoleon had beenwon over by the planter lobby, and had indeed authorized both the slavetrade and slavery. (His wife Josephine came from a Martinique planterfamily that had lost everything in a slave revolution there.) Leclerc’sentreaties that this plan should remain concealed could not scotch therumors, and no official denials came from Paris.60 The news about slav-ery strengthened the resolve of the rebels in August and September.For want of healthy Frenchmen, Leclerc had become demographicallydependent on blacks in his army, and thus found himself hostage totheir loyalty, which the news from Guadeloupe undermined.61 Leclerc

55 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 16 septembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:233).56 For example, Leclerc au Ministre de la Marine, 6 juin 1802, 11 juin 1802, 24 juin

1802, 26 aout 1802, and 16 septembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:155, 167,176–7, 220–1, 228). According to the memoir of Jean Le Roux (1957:101–2), ofa contingent of 17 engineers who arrived in St. Domingue on 1 July 1802, onlyone remained alive sixteen days later; the climate “devoured” five sixths of themen who accompanied Le Roux to St. Domingue.

57 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 11 juin 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:171–3).58 Metral (1985[1825]:112–14). Meziere (1990:232) says yellow fever killed 4,000

French sailors. Girard (2008) discusses yellow fever in the French navy.59 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 26 septembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:245–7).60 Dubois (2004:284–6).61 Lacroix (1819:369) says Leclerc understood the vulnerability he accepted by

relying on blacks, who at the Cap comprised seven-eighths of the French army


responded with a terror campaign aimed at intimidating the blacks intosubmission; it backfired. Uprisings and resistance continued and coa-lesced. Despite their recent betrayals, Christophe and Dessalines wentback over to the rebels’ side (mid-October) and with some misgivingswere reinstated; Dessalines became the foremost rebel leader harryingthe French in the northern province. Most of Leclerc’s black and free-colored troops, the majority of his army, went over to Dessalines. Inearly October, Leclerc concluded that to prevail the French would haveto kill all the blacks in the mountains over age twelve, and half of thosein the plains – a couple hundred thousand people.62

In early November, yellow fever killed Leclerc.63 Pauline and hertoddler son accompanied the yellowed corpse back to France withits tongue, eyes, and brain preserved in an urn by her express wish.Leclerc’s remains are in the Pantheon; Pauline married again and livedon, mostly in Italy, until 1825. The St. Domingue command fell toGeneral Donatien-Marie-Joseph comte de Rochambeau (1755–1813),the son of George Washington’s comrade-in-arms. Rochambeau theyounger had served with his father in America, and in 1792 become ageneral of France’s revolutionary army. In St. Domingue, he acquireda reputation for outstanding cruelty in a war marked by massacre andtorture. Leclerc had admired him for his hostility toward blacks.

Rochambeau inherited a near-hopeless situation. Of the 34,000 sol-diers sent to St. Domingue, 24,000 were dead and 7,000 sick. Only 3,000(9%) were fit for duty.64 But soon more than 12,000 reinforcements65

arrived, just in time to allow Rochambeau to vent his genocidal urges.For another year, the French fruitlessly persisted. In the dry months, theyplayed a game of cat-and-mouse with Dessalines’ forces, which were alsoengaged in destroying Dessalines’ Haitian rivals. In April 1803, with therains yellow fever flared up yet again and thousands more Frenchmendied. By May, the peace with Britain came to an end, meaning that

in October 1802, but he had no choice. Meziere (1990:189) says Leclerc beganto recruit blacks in February 1803. On events on Guadeloupe, Regent (2004).

62 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 7 octobre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:256).63 Gilbert (1803:60–2) gives his case history, and recounts Pauline’s health, too.64 Auguste and Auguste (1985:246–7); Meziere (1990:275) has similar figures, and

says 21,000 deaths were due to yellow fever and 700 to combat.65 Lacroix (1819:382, n. 2). Leclerc had been promised 9,500. Ministre de la Marine

a Leclerc, 5 decembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:299). Leclerc was deadby this point but the news had not reached Paris.


France could no longer reliably re-supply the army in St. Domingue,and Britain began to arm Dessalines. This sealed Rochambeau’s fate.Napoleon lost interest in St. Domingue, gave up his grand plans for aFrench empire in America, and sold Louisiana to the United States.

The end came in November 1803, when Dessalines bested the Frenchnear Cap Francais. Within days, Rochambeau and about 8,000 Frenchtroops and civilians departed for good, boarding British warships asprisoners of war. (Rochambeau remained a British prisoner until 1809,then rejoined the French army and died of wounds incurred at the Battleof Leipzig in 1813.) Dessalines slaughtered most of the few French leftbehind and proclaimed a new country, Haiti, in January 1804, the firstand only country born of a slave revolution. In the prologue to theact proclaiming Haiti’s independence, Dessalines contrasted Haitiansto French, pointing to skin color, a French penchant for cruelty, and“our avenging climate.”66

reckoning dead

In all, the French sent some 60,000 to 65,000 men to suppress therevolution in St. Domingue. About 50,000 to 55,000 died there, roughly80 to 85 percent.67 Some died in combat or massacre; in the biggestbattle of the war, an eighteen-day siege of a position held by Dessalines,the French lost as many as 2,000 dead.68 But most engagements involvedsmall numbers of French troops, as Toussaint and Dessalines had moresense than to fight large contingents. In any case, most of the soldiering

66 The English text is given in Armitage (2007:194). Lacroix (1819:415) saysafter the revolution the blacks believed themselves “invincibles sous la protectionde son climat.” An example came in a speech Dessalines made 28 April 1804in which he gave yellow fever its due. Challenging any nation to attack his, heproclaimed: “Let that nation come who may be mad and daring enough to attackme. Already at its approach, the irritated genius of Hayti, rising out of the bosomof the ocean appears; his menacing aspect throws the waves into commotion,excites tempests, and with his mighty hand disperses ships, or dashes them inpieces; to his formidable voice the laws of nature pay obedience; diseases, plague,famine, conflagration, poison are his constant attendants.” He went on to say hecould rely on the people of Haiti, a more conventional case for a ruler to make.This translation appeared in the periodical Balance and Columbian Repository,(Albany) 19 June 1804, Vol. 3, Issue 25, p. 197. I owe this reference to mycolleague Adam Rothman.

67 Auguste and Auguste (1985:316). Dubois (2004:298); Fick (1990:236).68 At Crete-a-Pierrot in February–March 1802 (Adelaıde-Merlande 2007:290).


and combat involved black and free-colored troops, whether in France’sarmy or the rebels’. The great majority of the 50,000 died as Leclercdid, of yellow fever in the ports, in garrisons and hospitals, or onboardship. Figures presented by General Lacroix imply that disease accountedfor upward of 75 percent of French military deaths. Partial figures fromLeclerc for one month in the late summer of 1802 indicate that diseasekilled 3,000 of 3,350 (89%).69 A reasonable guess is that 35,000 or45,000 died of disease, overwhelmingly of yellow fever.70

France’s foreign troops suffered acutely. Of 840 Swiss mercenariesin St. Domingue, only 11 returned to Europe (less than 2%). Swissmercenaries never agreed to serve overseas again. Some 5,000 Polesfought for France in St. Domingue as well (some changed sides nearthe end and joined Dessalines), and about 4,000 (80%) died, mainly ofyellow fever.71

In percentage terms, the losses of the French and their allies in St.Domingue exceeded those of any other Napoleonic campaign exceptthe disastrous (and much larger) Russian one of 1812–1813, in whichNapoleon lost perhaps 90 percent of his army to all causes. In absoluteterms, about 171,000 French soldiers died in Russia (and many non-French too); about 84,000 in the Iberian campaigns (1808–1813), andmaybe 13,000 in Egypt (1800–1801). Thus, the St. Domingue fiasco wasdistinguished not for its scale but for its lethality, and the role of diseaseas a cause of death.72

The Haitians lost many lives, too. French army sources estimated theykilled 4,000. General Lacroix wrote that 13,000 blacks died fighting forthe French, of whom 54 percent died in battle, 31 percent in executions,

69 Lacroix (1819:431) gives 5,000 soldiers killed in war and 20,651 by disease. Thisdoes not count sailors, likely to have died even more disproportionately fromdisease, or officers, of whom the same was true, at least of health officers (750died of disease) and engineers. And it applies only to the nine months beforeLeclerc’s death. So these estimates are only a rough guide. Leclerc au Ministrede la Marine, 26 septembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:242–5).

70 Pluchon (1985:366) estimates that the French army sent 59,000 men to St.Domingue between 1791 and 1804, that 10,000 survived, that 8,000 died incombat or of wounds, and about 40,000 died of yellow fever and, to a lesserextent, of malaria.

71 Anex-Cabanis (1991:184). Pachonski and Wilson (1986:12, 305–6). A line in“Pan Tadeusz,” the Polish epic poem of Adam Mickiewicz, laments the fate of aPolish general in St. Domingue.

72 Lynn (2005:210). Chandler (1966:1118–21) for casualties in major Napoleonicbattles. Lacroix (1819:415) compares the Russia and St. Domingue campaigns.


and 15 percent of disease. The General’s educated guesses refer only tothe nine months of Leclerc’s leadership. The real death toll amongblacks and gens de couleurs, combatants and noncombatants, was surelyfar greater than these figures suggest. Some historians say perhaps 5,000to 13,000; some say as many as 80,000. Haiti’s 1805 census implies aloss of population of about 180,000 since the 1780s, but its accuracy isin question. Nor can one tell how many died and how many left amongthe (putative) 180,000. However, it is plausible that only 15 percent ofblacks who died while fighting in the French army fell to disease, for thegreat majority of them were resistant or immune to yellow fever.73

No doubt other infections claimed many lives, too. The Frenchaccounts usually mention only yellow fever, and their descriptionsof symptoms correspond to yellow fever.74 But St. Domingue had itsshare of malaria too, and the wartime conditions surely exacerbatedit. The slaughter of almost all the colony’s livestock75 would havesharpened the feeding focus of anophelines on remaining mammals.The widespread burning of the woodlands would have killed millionsof anopheline mosquitoes, but at the same time would have added toupland erosion, siltation, and the creation of more lowland swamps –and more mosquitoes. As with all armies in the field, dysentery andtyphus no doubt took a toll. But the seasonality of death, which peakedstrongly in the rainy season and especially the late summer, implicatesthe mosquito-borne diseases. The geography of it, concentrated in theport cities, supports the idea, held by all contemporary commentators,that yellow fever was by far the greatest killer.

the genius of toussaint

Some historians have objected (and some readers will object)that emphasizing the power of yellow fever diminishes Toussaint’s

73 Auguste and Auguste (1985:314); Lacroix (1819:431). The 80,000 figure is fromPachonski and Wilson (1986:303). Lacroix (1819:395) says 50,000 blacks diedin the “troubles,” which probably means 1791–1804, but it is not clear. Onemystery of the Leclerc campaign is the seeming lack of herd immunity for theFrench army. More than the British in the 1790s, the French moved easily amongthe local population, recruited thousands of locals into their army, and in thetowns lived among larger populations of presumably immune Haitians. Perhapsthe density of infected mosquitoes was high enough to offset the presence ofhundreds of thousands of immunes.

74 Gilbert (1803) and Moulie (1812) provide the most detailed narratives; Navar-ranne (1943) is a medical history.

75 Auguste and Auguste (1985:318).


achievement. Leclerc, whose letters are full of laments about losses toyellow fever, is sometimes accused of exaggeration. Some racist histori-ans have indeed found it impossible to credit Toussaint and Dessalineswith effective leadership and strategy or their followers with martialprowess.76 The latter view is easily refuted by the eager recruitment ofblacks into every army fighting in St. Domingue as well as by many ref-erences to their bravery, skill, and implacability. The former propositionis undermined by the record of guerilla campaigns fought by Toussaintand Dessalines. But it is decisively refuted precisely by their wily relianceon yellow fever.

Toussaint’s challenge as a military commander was that he faced, inthe British and especially the French, formidable veteran armies and hadat his disposal ex-slaves, most of whom had no military experience, noskill with firearms, and no fondness for discipline. Those Africans whohad been soldiers in their homeland had been trained in several differ-ent military traditions, and had never worked together before 1791.77

He had almost no engineers, limited artillery, and modest (althougheffective) cavalry. He could not expect to win set-piece battles of thesort Abercrombie and Leclerc longed for, but could fight only guerillacampaigns. His particular problem was to survive the dry seasons, whenEuropean troops enjoyed comparatively good health, with a force intact.So he hid in camps in the mountains, kept on the move, slid across theborder into Spanish Santo Domingo, and told his followers to be patient,to wait until “the climate” worked its magic. Even surrendering, as hedid in May 1802, or surrendering and fighting against comrades, as hislieutenants did, made strategic sense. It allowed them to maintain fight-ing forces, and even replenish their supply of weapons and ammunitioncourtesy of the French, until thousands upon thousands of their enemieshad died and others lay helpless with fever. Then and only then couldthey strike decisively.

Toussaint and Dessalines would have been poor commanders indeedhad they not exploited the power of differential resistance to yellowfever. In the virus, they had an ally that they recognized would mowdown their enemies without risking their own troops. The experienceof the British army in 1793–1798 confirmed what everyone in St.Domingue knew about the vulnerability of European newcomers toyellow fever. In that conflict, Toussaint avoided decisive battles andheld the mountains, confining the British to the pestilential ports and

76 The champion in this regard is Stoddard (1914).77 Thornton (1991) on African soldiers in the Haitian Revolution.


plains. When fighting the French he did the same thing, and in hisletter intended for Dessalines (of February 1802) explicitly mentionedthe power of the rainy season, by which he meant the killing powerof mosquito-borne diseases. Yellow fever was the weapon they wieldedto overcome the sharp inequalities in firepower, training, and (usually)manpower they faced. Christophe told a French general that the insur-gents had fought more than they ought to have out of pride, instead offollowing more strictly the “system of Toussaint.”78 The former hospi-tal worker and self-styled “medecin general” of the slave army, Tous-saint understood better than anyone that yellow fever was the supremeweapon of the weak and conducted his wars accordingly.

Whereas in earlier wars Spanish defenders also relied on yellow feverto kill off their attackers, their tactics differed from Toussaint’s. Theybuilt costly fortifications to slow besiegers until “the climate” weighedin. He could not do that. Nor could the Spanish have pursued guerillatactics, at least not by the late eighteenth century. They had too muchto lose in the form of plantations and property. Only at Veracruz didthey seem willing to contemplate abandoning their coastal wealth andretreating to the interior while waiting for disease to come to theiraid (see Chapter 2). When defending their small islands against oneanother, the French and British had to try to hold on to the ports andplantations, even at the cost of entire garrisons (small in any case).Toussaint did not feel constrained to protect the ports and plantationsagainst invaders. Indeed, he and his men wielded the torches that burnedthem (even though Toussaint had become a planter himself). Freed fromthe necessity of defending plantations, he had therefore the freedom topursue the strategy that best fit the environment of the eighteenth-century Caribbean.79

In Toussaint’s war against the French, yellow fever played a politicalrole as well as a military one. Not only did it kill tens of thousands ofFrench soldiers, but belief in its power affected decisions that thousands

78 Lacroix (1819:366).79 Toussaint did have a predecessor or two, for example, the French commander

defending Guadeloupe in February 1703, who took to the rugged interior withhis troops when an English force swooped down on the island. This outraged theplanters, whose fields and houses the English burned, but it was sound strategybecause in May the rains came, the mosquitoes hatched, and the English becameso sickly they abandoned the island. See Pritchard (2004:376–7) for an accountof this campaign.


of men made. Morale among the French (and their friends) plummetedas the epidemic spread. As a Polish officer put it:

Downcast, discouraged and wearing an unkempt uniform the sol-dier, as yet untouched by the disease, had a grim foreboding thathe would not be spared, that he would leave his bones far fromhis native land and never again lay eyes upon the thatched roof ofhome. Some therefore abandoned themselves to wild dissipationand lawlessness ‘in order to live life to the hilt,’ others readiedthemselves for death, in a state of self-preoccupied detachment.The hospitals were overflowing with invalids – who often lay onthe ground uncared for. All respect for authority has ceased, aprivate was the equal of a general, no one dreamt of glory andvictorious battles. Friendships withered, hearts froze over, neithersoldier’s song nor the rattle of arms was audible . . . everyone fearedfor himself.80

French and Polish troops deserted and defected in hopes of escapingyellow fever. Toussaint prudently accepted many defectors into hisranks (Dessalines was less welcoming). Leclerc’s soldiers calculated theirchances of survival might improve by fleeing the ports and plains forthe mountains, known to be healthier. Living in the mountains meantsiding with the black rebels, usually an ideological leap for Europeans,but one that some of them found reason to make.

Moreover, in a revolutionary war in which men changed sides forgold, fear, ideology, or the hope of being on the winning side, yel-low fever’s power was magnified. Everyone could see that the diseaseravaged Leclerc’s army but left Toussaint’s unharmed. For those of areligious bent, this offered proof of God’s partiality in the conflict. Foropportunists, yellow fever’s destruction of the French seemed to fore-tell the winner. Toussaint’s (and Dessalines’) claims that the climatewould destroy their French enemies, borne out by events, marked themas prophets and showed to one and all that destiny stood on theirside. Thus, yellow fever’s partisanship and the fear it provoked affectedmorale and the political choices made by tens of thousands.

The Haitian revolution affords a fine opportunity to reflect on the roleof yellow fever and malaria in shaping human history. Recall Chapter 1,

80 Pachonski and Wilson (1986:56–7). Metral (1985[1825]:110, 115–17, 127–8)on disease and indiscipline.


which claimed that pathogens, like people, made history but did notmake it just as they pleased. Although powerful, their impact dependedon circumstances. Given that yellow fever and malaria, by making(disease-resistant) African labor especially attractive to Caribbean andBrazilian planters, helped cause untold misery for millions of Africansover centuries, it is altogether fitting that these two infections shouldhave helped world history’s largest slave revolt succeed. The virus andplasmodium initially promoted African slavery in the Americas, thenhelped destroy it.

Toussaint and Dessalines had yet another ally, one of which theyremained unaware. As Leclerc noted in his correspondence, the rainyseason in 1802 started early and lasted longer than usual.81 He did notlive to see it, but the same was true in 1803 and 1804. The Frenchexpedition by chance coincided with a long ENSO event (1802–1804),which probably meant more and longer rains, and thus (other thingsbeing equal) more and more vigorous mosquitoes. Indeed, the Britisharmy had suffered similar bad luck, if not as acutely. The years 1790–1793 featured one of the strongest El Nino events of the last millennium,with blistering droughts in India (where British forces were doing ratherwell) and Australia but heavy rains in the big islands of the WestIndies and droughts further east in the Leewards and Windwards. In theCaribbean it seems to have lasted to 1795, and its effects on mosquitopopulations probably ended in 1796, the ENSO+1 year. British sufferingfrom yellow fever continued in 1797–1798 at a diminished rate, whichmight indicate reduced mosquito populations but surely also reflects thefact that most British soldiers in St. Domingue by that time were eitherdead or immune. In St. Domingue, as in earlier episodes, ENSO likelyexacerbated epidemics that would have happened in any case.82

81 Leclerc a Bonaparte, 11 juin 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:171–3). Ministrede la Marine a Leclerc, 5 decembre 1802, printed in Roussier (1937:299–302)notes the sickly season lasted longer than normal.

82 Quinn (1992); Quinn and Neal (1992); Quinn, Neal, and De Mayolo (1987);Garcia-Herrera (2008) for ENSO sequences. Grove (2007) on the 1789–1795ENSO effects. ENSO in Haiti is inconsistent in its effects, sometimes bringingwet winters and summer drought, sometimes longer, wetter, rainy seasons. Anydeviation from the norm could boost A. aegypti strength (because people storemore water in droughts), but only wetter weather could favor anophelines. Inter-estingly, Gilbert (1803) argued for correlation between yellow fever outbreaksand drought in St. Domingue in the years 1733–1734, 1739–1741, and 1743(cited in Pluchon 1985:366).


Toussaint and Dessalines used their environment to help them winagainst the French. However, they had other enemies against whomneither virus nor El Nino offered any help. Before the fighting in Haitiwas over and Dessalines was in power, he had to destroy several otherfactions of gens de couleur and ex-slaves. In these struggles Dessalines,like Toussaint before him, had to rely on more conventional politicaland military talents.

aftermath

The yellow fever epidemics in St. Domingue had their counterparts else-where in the West Indies wherever European armies went. Altogether,British, French, and Spanish armies lost perhaps 180,000 men. OnSt. Lucia, a British force under the future hero of the Peninsular War,Sir John Moore, fought an anti-guerilla campaign against ex-slave insur-gents in 1795–1796; one of his regiments lost 96 percent of its men in itsfirst year, as “every description of fever prevailed amongst them.”83 OnJamaica where there was no combat, 8,000 British soldiers died (1793–1815). Yellow fever spread within armies, navies, and beyond. Yellowfever killed 5,000 British merchant seamen annually in the West Indiesin the 1790s.84

Military and refugee migrations created unusual opportunities forthe virus to spread around the Atlantic world. In the 1790s, especially1793–1796, the virus raged in New Orleans, Havana, Veracruz, Guyana,most of the Lesser Antilles, Bermuda, New York, and Philadelphiawhere, apparently introduced by refugees from St. Domingue, it killedperhaps 5,000.85 The virus ranged even further afield in the aftermath ofLeclerc’s campaign. In 1803–1805, it spread to many of the same portsin the greater Caribbean and North America, and to Puerto Rico aswell, but also to Gibraltar, where 5,600 died, Malaga, and Cartagena inSpain, where 5,000 died. In Spain as a whole, yellow fever killed more

83 Breen (1844:103–7). BL Additional MSS, 57320, 57321, 57326, 57327, give asense of that campaign.

84 Arthy (1798).85 Holliday (1796); Geggus (1979); Rodrıguez Arguelles (1804:prologo) Havana;

Bustamente (1958:80–3) Veracruz; Carrigan (1994:20–9) Louisiana; Powell(1993) Philadelphia; PRO CO 37/164, f. 250, “Epidemic Fevers at Bermuda,”Bermuda; Wellcome Library, American MSS 113, Certificats de Guadeloupe, f.26, in which a French doctor named Bazin recalled that in 1794 on Guadeloupe“presque toute l’armee fut moissonnee,” by yellow fever.


than 100,000 victims in 1801–1804, roughly one percent of Spain’spopulation. On a limited scale the virus spread to Italy, the Netherlands,Mecklenburg, Saxony, Hungary, Prussia, and Austria. Presumably, someof the refugees and surviving troops fleeing Haiti, or perhaps otherCaribbean locales, brought the virus and mosquito across the Atlantic,where in summer heat they could both thrive for a few months beforecold closed their European careers.86

The transatlantic yellow fever pandemic of 1791–1805 helped con-firm the reputation of the Caribbean as a death trap for Europeans.Armies seeking to maintain garrisons in the region increasingly had toimitate Leclerc’s example and recruit local slave and ex-slave manpower.Of course, this aroused fervent resistance in colonial councils, wherearming blacks and training them could not have been more unpopular.But the death rates among European troops had reached such propor-tions that any force that feared it was bound for the Caribbean wouldlikely mutiny before sailing. So the British army raised twelve regimentsof slave troops, beginning in the 1790s. Their resistance to diseases“incidental to the climate,” as it was often put, was the argument thattrumped slaveowners’ objections. Indeed, the British army became thelargest purchaser of slaves in the West Indies, and maybe the world,between 1795 and 1807.87 In 1807 slave soldiers were freed, but blackregiments remained a feature of the British army in the West Indies.Composed mainly of locally born ex-slaves, they proved much healthierthan European troops in the garrisons of the Antilles. Their servicehelped draw attention to the moral quandaries of slavery, and therebycontributed to the growing momentum for abolition, which came to theBritish West Indies in 1833.88

The catastrophic mortality among European troops in these warsalso shaped larger geopolitical ambitions. After the St. Domingue

86 Rigau-Perez (1991) Puerto Rico; Moreau de Jonnes (1858, 2:184–200) Mar-tinique; Sawchuk and Burke (1998) Gibraltar; Soler Canto (1970, 1984) Carta-gena; Guijarro Olivares (1968:187) Spain as a whole; Rupp (1981) northern andcentral Europe. Yellow fever hit Seville in 1800, too (Hermosilla Molina 1978).A Dutch force that occupied St. Eustatius in 1803, and lost a quarter of its men toyellow fever, may have brought the virus to the Netherlands. Wellcome Library,American MSS 113, Certificats de Guadeloupe, fol 41, Laportere a Chervin,10 Avril 1818. The Prussian government sought British expertise in handlingyellow fever in 1805: PRO PC 1/3740, Dr. Blane to Baron Jacobi 28 September1805.

87 Duffy (1997:95). It bought 13,400 slaves.88 Buckley (1979); Duffy (1997).


Map 7.2. The Viceroyalty of New Granada (c. 1810)

debacle, Napoleon soured on the prospect of a restored FrenchCaribbean empire and sold Louisiana and the heartland of North Amer-ica to the United States. The British never again mounted a major mili-tary expedition to the West Indies and gradually lost interest in acquiringnew territories in the Americas (though they did attack Buenos Airesin 1806–1807 and New Orleans in a modest way in 1814). Instead, theyshifted to a strategy of increasingly informal empire in the Americasthrough commercial dominance, made feasible by the cheap textiles ofthe industrial revolution. Their efforts at empire-building moved to theshores of the Indian Ocean, where malaria but not yellow fever menacedtheir troops. France retired from major military operations in the WestIndies after 1804 until its quixotic assault on Mexico in the 1860s. ButSpain remained willing to throw away thousands of young men’s liveson expeditions to fever-ridden coasts.

New Granada, 1815–1820

The Viceroyalty of New Granada comprised roughly the northern fifthof South America. Its location and its ports, especially Cartagena, weremore important than its products. It was crucial to the defense and tradeof Spanish America.

In 1800, Spanish America had about 16 million people, few ofwhom gave any thought to independence from Bourbon Spain. Someof those who did were high-minded thinkers, for whom the principlesof the Enlightenment called into question the legitimacy of Bourbonmonarchy in the Americas. A few were favorably impressed by the


recent revolutions in North America, France, and Haiti, and hoped toliberate their people or to enjoy the exercise of power – or both. Stillothers felt deep grievances against the Bourbons, whose policies discrim-inated against criollos – people of European descent born in America –and against people of Indian, African, or mixed ancestry. The Bour-bon reforms of the late eighteenth century had sought to modernizethe empire and strengthen the hand of Spain, but in the process theyhad raised false hopes and created new dissent especially among criolloelites. The reforms had also spread military skills widely among theAmericanos89 by enrolling criollos in the regular army and by expandingthe militia, in particular by including large numbers of pardos, or peopleof partly African descent. Thus, by 1800, Spanish America had only afew revolutionarily minded people but a lot of men familiar with the useof arms.90

revolution in spanish america

The few got their chance when in 1807–1808 Napoleon invaded Spain,forced the king to abdicate for his son Ferdinand VII, and then packedboth father and son off to exile in France and substituted his own brotherJoseph as monarch of Spain and its empire. This provoked six years ofmainly guerilla warfare in Spain – a large reason for Napoleon’s eventualdownfall. A rump government loyal to Ferdinand VII survived in Cadiz.The British army joined the fray in 1809, fighting Napoleon’s armiesin Portugal and Spain in the Peninsular War. In Spanish America,Napoleon’s actions brought a crisis of sovereignty. Few Spanish Ameri-cans felt loyalty to the Bonapartes. Many maintained their attachmentto their exiled king, but many others saw a chance for something alto-gether new.91

Spanish America came untethered from Spain. Defeats at CapeSt. Vincent (1797) and Trafalgar (1805), and subsequent neglect,had reduced Spain’s formerly formidable navy to a low ebb. SpanishAmerican commerce tilted toward the Anglo-Atlantic, as the British

89 I use this term to refer to all people living in Spanish America, following Chas-teen (2008).

90 On the causes and courses of Spanish American revolutions, Lynch (1973);Rodrıguez O. (1998); Ramos Perez (1996); Kinsbruner (2000); Adelman (2006);Chasteen (2008); and Blanchard (2008). On military reforms in New Granada,Kuethe (1978).

91 Adelman (2006).


fleet prevented normal traffic between Spain and the Indies. The politi-cal turmoil in Spain and the almost total absence of Spanish naval poweropened political vacuums. This allowed local revolutionary councils –juntas – to spring up almost the length and breadth of Spanish America.Composed mainly of the wealthier strata of society, these juntas fol-lowed all sorts of agendas, which in some cases, particularly in Caracas,included independence from Spain.92 As Spain’s crisis deepened, thejuntas succeeded in forming the kernels of new states and governments.They quickly fell into rivalry, and frequently into warfare, with oneanother.

Many personal and economic interests were at stake but in broadpolitical terms, the juntas divided between those seeking independenceand those royalists loyal to the Cadiz government in Spain and theexiled Ferdinand VII. Several years of chaotic struggle followed, mainlyin Mexico, New Granada, and the River Plate basin (Argentina andUruguay). The government in Cadiz had only meager resources withwhich to influence the outcomes of struggles an ocean away. It sentsmall contingents of troops when it could, but they often deserted at thefirst opportunity. Nonetheless, as of 1813 royalists had put themselvesin power almost everywhere but the River Plate and New Granada.Spanish America was forging its own destiny.

Then in 1813–1814, Napoleon withdrew from Spain, his brotherJoseph fled Madrid, settling in rural New Jersey for most of the nextquarter century, and Ferdinand VII assumed the Spanish throne. Heturned out to have firm ambitions to absolute rule, in Spain and inAmerica. With peace at home and thousands of experienced war vet-erans at hand, he quickly tired of considering political compromisesand settled on a military solution.93 He charged an expedition with thetask of the reconquest of Spanish America, and put the matter in thehands of an experienced and highly competent general, Pablo Morillo(1775–1837), recommended for the job by, among others, the Duke ofWellington, Britain’s hero of the Peninsular War. Morillo had joinedthe marines in 1791, been wounded at Trafalgar, and fought with dis-tinction against the French since 1808, rising through the ranks fromsergeant to field marshal.94

92 McKinley (2002) provides details on the growth of revolutionary sentiment inCaracas.

93 Costeloe (1986) considers the Spanish response to the revolutions in America.94 Quintero Saravıa (2005) is the best biography, but see also Revesz (1947).

Morillo’s service record is detailed in Rodrıguez Villa (1908, 2:1–7).


Morillo commanded the largest expedition Spain had ever sent toAmerica: 12,250 soldiers and 1,800 sailors crammed into 18 warshipsand 42 transports. They were well-supplied by the standards of Spainin 1814, and almost all hardened veterans of the war against France.They included 1,430 cavalry and 600 artillerymen, but only one seniormedical officer. The men were selected for their resistance to republicanideas rather than to disease.95

After much deliberation, the king himself decided where to sendMorillo’s legions. They were told their target was the River Plate, a hiveof revolutionary activity and a comparatively healthy destination. Onlyonce they were out to sea did they learn the truth: They were sailingfor Costa Firme, the coast of the former viceroyalty of New Granada, acontender for the title of the unhealthiest region in the Americas. Thenews was met, wrote a soldier, with “consternation.”96

fervor and fevers in new granada, 1808–1815

New Granada included most of what are now Venezuela, Colombia,Ecuador, and part of Panama. After 1777, Venezuela became a quasi-autonomous captaincy-general within New Granada. Venezuela hadjust under a million people before 1808. About one-fifth were white,almost all criollos. They included a small landed aristocracy, very jealousof its status and privileges. Nearly half the population was of mixeddescent, pardos, some of whom, like the Haitian gens de couleur, hadachieved a measure of prosperity, although the mass had not. Roughly

95 Perez Turrado (1992:193, 206–9); Albi (1990:147–8, 402); Gonzalez Garcıa(1961:131–2). Many authors give Morillo’s strength as 10,200 or 10,500 men,but Albi’s archival work is probably more trustworthy. See also Quintera Saravıa(2005:245–7), whose documents give a total of 12,254 soldiers and officers, plusabout 1,500 marines. By 1821 the army had 1 surgeon major, 7 assistants, and 39practitioners and 4 hospitals. Cuerpo de Cirugıa militar del Ejercito pacificadorde Tierra Firme, Caracas, 23 febrero 1821, AHN Estado 8728.

96 Sevilla (1916:24). On the puzzling choice of the Costa Firme, Albi (1990:146–7).On the campaigns of 1815–1820, the literature is enormous and usually patriotic.Thibaud (2003) might be the single most useful book. The original sourcesinclude Morillo’s papers in the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historiain Madrid (which I have not seen, but abstracts of 2,902 of his letters are inContreras 1985); his correspondence with subordinates in AHN Estado 8717–8718; his French-language Memoires (Morillo 1826); Sevilla (1916); Brown(1819); Flinter (1819); Vowell (1831); Montalvo and Samano (1918); Paez(1973); and O’Leary (1952).


a tenth of Venezuelans were slaves, and a twentieth were free blacks.Caracas was by far the largest city, with perhaps 45,000 people. InColombia, also with just under a million people, whites comprised about35 percent of the population, mestizos about 45 percent, Amerindiansperhaps 15 percent, and African slaves 5 percent.

Ranches and plantations dominated the economy of Colombia andVenezuela. In Colombia’s Caribbean coastal lowlands, sugar and cottonplantations dotted the otherwise forested landscape (see Chapter 4).Venezuela’s coasts, and the nearby low hills, featured plantations ofcotton, indigo, tobacco, and especially cacao. Most of the populationand the wealth of both countries was concentrated on the plantationsand in the coastal cities. Venezuelans cultivated less than 1 percent ofVenezuela, almost all of it near the coast; the rest of the country wasforest or grass.97

Inland from the coast lay the sea of grass known as the llanos, orflatlands. Stretching from the foothills of Colombia’s Andes to themouth of the mighty Orinoco, the llanos were (and are) a low-lyingtropical savanna about twice the size of Spain. Their weathered soilssupport coarse, tall grasses with occasional groves of trees, often palms.Thick bush lines the riverbanks. Humboldt, who had passed throughin 1800, found the landscape “sad and lugubrious in its spectacularuniformity,” although ecologists consider it teeming with biodiversity.98

During the wet season from May through November, heavy rains splashdown almost every day, streams and rivers swell, the grasslands becomewetlands and lakes, and hillocks become islands. In 1800, about a millioncattle roamed the Venezuelan llanos, together with vast herds of wildhorses and mules. They shared the llanos with a congeries of carnivores,including jaguars, caymans, anacondas, and trillions of insects, including“incredible” swarms of mosquitoes.99

97 Population figures from Lynch (1973:190, 227–8); Lombardi (1976, esp. 67–87);Chen and Picouet (1979:18–20); Izard (1979:42–64, 175–9), and ibid. (p. 84)for land use.

98 Humboldt (1994, 1:88).99 O’Leary (1952), quoted in Humphreys (1969:2). Morillo complained of “snakes,

bats, and other creatures raised in this land where even fish are the enemy ofman,” but admired the cayman, as “the most noble and beautiful of all.” Morillo aLa Torre, 3 julio 1818, AHN Estado 8717. Humboldt (1994) includes a detaileddescription of the llanos, as does Flinter (1819:95–135); Brown (1819); Vowell(1831, 1:18–59, 136–56); and Thibaud (2003:161–73). Flinter (1819:126) alsonoted the dense mosquito swarms. The cattle population figure comes from


If anopheline mosquitoes had their way, the whole world would belike the llanos. It is always hot and usually humid. Standing water forbreeding sites, with plenty of vegetation amid the water, is never in shortsupply except in the most severe of droughts. The seasonal puddles,ponds, and lakes are full of tasty organic debris for mosquito larvae.Millions of big bags of blood stroll around just waiting to be bitten.An. darlingi and An. Albimanus, excellent malaria vectors both, andtwenty other species of anophelines abounded in the llanos in recenttimes, and probably have for many centuries.100 Everyone along theOrinoco suffered the attentions of those “nightly tormentor[s]”, but bysome accounts the llanos’ mosquitoes showed a “decided preference” forthe blood of “Europeans and new-comers.”101 Although such powers ofdiscrimination among mosquitoes are not impossible, it is more likelythat the locals had more experience keeping mosquitoes at bay throughthe use of smoke.102

Any anopheline paradise is usually hell for malaria-susceptiblehumans. Since the sixteenth century, Africans had continually enteredthe llanos, bringing malarial parasites with them. Ever since, plasmodiahave circulated among human, livestock, and wild animal populations.Before mosquito eradication efforts in the mid-twentieth century, theVenezuelan llanos had malaria infection rates as high as anywhere inSouth America, especially in the wet months.103

The roughly 200,000 people who lived on the llanos of New Granada,known as llaneros, were mainly cowboys who hunted the cattle andtamed the horses. They were a wild bunch. Mostly pardos, they migratedwith their cattle to high ground in the wet season and to low groundin the dry. They swam swollen rivers and covered great distances on

Rausch (1984:240), but may be high. The original source (Pons 1806, 1:10)gives 1.2 million for regions of Venezuela that do not correspond exactly withthe llanos.

100 Rejmanko, Rubio-Palis, and Villegas (1999) found two thirds of wet habitatshosted anopheline larvae in the eastern llanos, including good malaria vectorssuch as An. darlingi.

101 Vowell (1831, 1:41); Brown (1819:59).102 Vowell (1831, 1:41) comments on their use of smoke as mosquito repellent.

Over 150 species of mosquitoes were found within a ten-mile radius of a town inthe Colombian llanos in 1948 (Rausch 1984:8).

103 Ayala et al. (1973); Renjifo and de Zulueta (1952); Gabaldon and Berti (1954).In the last seventy years, for which data are best, malaria in the llanos has comeoften in epidemic form in ENSO+1 years. But in Colombia, outbreaks are mostlikely in ENSO years (Gagnon et al. 2002).


horseback as a matter of course, wielded lances and lassos (for cattle-hunting) with practiced skill, and weathered burning sun and drenchingrain all their short lives. “Fording a deep river or battling an enragedbull is a mere game” for the llaneros, recalled General Morillo.104 Theymade excellent irregular cavalry.

They also weathered malaria well. George Flinter, an English soldierof fortune serving with royalists in Venezuela, spent eight months in thellanos and maintained the llaneros were a healthy lot. They apparentlysometimes slept in their corrals, among their cattle, for the purpose ofavoiding mosquito bites – a practice that the modern medical literaturesuggests would have increased their malaria exposure. Presumably, theywere often carrying plasmodia but resistant to malaria either by virtue ofrepeated exposure or by West (or Central) African ancestry – or both.On the other hand, for Spaniards the llanos, especially during the rainyseason, were a death trap. By 1819 if not before, Morillo understoodthe seasonality of sickness on the llanos as it constrained his militaryoperations.105

While the llanos hosted malaria, yellow fever stalked the Caribbeancoasts. The ports, for reasons described in Chapter 2, suited A. aegyptiperfectly. From the late seventeenth century, yellow fever epidemicshad figured in the history of urban Colombia and Venezuela (Chap-ters 2 and 4), as throughout the northern coast of South America. Ofone coastal town, Flinter maintained that “yellow fever [was] raging init throughout the year, with unabated violence.”106 It often attackedIsla Margarita, an important staging point for Morillo’s army, as in an1818 outbreak when it killed about fifty people per week. Yellow feveralso periodically rampaged through the towns of the lower Orinoco (theeastern llanos), especially Angostura, now Ciudad Bolıvar, a strategic

104 Morillo (1826:168). Thibaud (2003:165) for the population figure, and pp. 173–214 on llaneros generally.

105 Flinter (1819:122–3); Vowell (1831, 1:41) writes of the mosquito: “It evenpierces through the hides of horses and cows; and seems to prefer their blood tothat of mankind. This predeliction has given rise to a common custom amongthe natives, in the cattle farms, of sleeping in the corral, or pen, among the cows;as being there, in a great degree, free from the attacks of this insect.” The modernliterature on malaria zoopotentiation (cited in Chapter 2) says that people wholive among their livestock suffer higher rates of malaria. In any case, this appliedonly to those who kept cattle; many llaneros hunted wild cattle instead. ForMorillo’s recognition: Morillo a La Torre, 12 julio 1819, AHN Estado 8717.

106 Flinter (1819:53).


point usually occupied by one or another army.107 As Morillo remem-bered it, “the least of the perils menacing [a Spanish soldier] was enemyarms.” He pointed to caymans, rays, snakes, and scorpions, but, had heonly known, the General would have included in his list anophelinesand A. aegypti.108 Morillo and his 12,000 had much more to fear frommosquitoes than from men in New Granada.

The local population was menacing enough. Some Venezuelanrepublican revolutionaries had declared themselves independent in1810, the first South Americans to do so. Several of them organizedtheir own armies and became independent warlords – called caudillos.They fought one another, and royalist warlords as well. Vicious littlewars, marked by atrocities, massacres, and mass executions, sprouted allover New Granada, but especially in Venezuela. Spain’s army in NewGranada, about 7,000 strong, was composed mainly (about 80%) ofAmericanos, some of whom preferred revolution to duty to their exiledking, as did many of the roughly 10,000 militia.109 The most effec-tive military force was an army of llaneros following a charismatic andparticularly brutal caudillo, Jose Tomas Boves. A former Spanish navalpilot, smuggler, and convict, Boves gathered a few thousand desperadoesinto the terrestrial equivalent of a pirate crew, preying on all who had

107 Brown (1819:106–7, 144); Vowell (1831, 1:33, 151–2). Angostura had about5,000 to 10,000 people according to travelers, and 6,500 according to Chen andPicouet (1979:20). An 1819 outbreak of yellow fever there is briefly described(pp. 173–4) in the journal of U.S. naval chaplain John Hambleton, printed inHambleton and Vivian (1967:166–83).

108 Morillo (1826:227).109 Thibaud (2003:29–31, 36–7). Figures for the Captaincy-General of Bogota,

printed in Kuethe (1978:217–18), suggest 3,600 regulars and 7,730 militia.Spaniards predictably suffered poor health when stationed in New Granada.Flinter (1819:82–3) recalled the siege of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela’s most impor-tant fortress, in 1813: “The unhealthiness of the climate . . . soon reduced theSpaniards to a very low ebb, and they were again reduced to the mortifyingnecessity of confining themselves to defensive operations within their lines. . . . ”A document from the Venezuelan national archives gives a snapshot (perhapsrepresentative, perhaps not), showing for August 1788 an infantry unit of 290men, of whom 129 entered hospital that month, 49 were sick as of 1 September,and two had died during August. “Relacion del estado de la fuerza del cuerpoveterano de infanteria de Trinidad, correspondiente al mes de agosto,” 1 sep-tiembre 1788, printed in: Suarez (1979:338–9). Pons (1806, 2:5–95) describesVenezuela’s military as of 1804.


anything worth taking. Boves liked to call his followers the “Legionsfrom Hell,” and they acquired a reputation as bold, skilled, and mercilessguerilla fighters. They fought as royalists while Boves lived, until 1814,with a special passion directed against the white criollos. Of the severalrepublican caudillos, the most charismatic, and the luckiest, was SimonBolıvar.

Bolıvar was born to great wealth in 1783. His family owned estates,mines, many slaves, and a few townhouses in Caracas. Both his parentsdied before he turned nine. Tutors saw to his education, inculcatinga fondness for Rousseau and anticlericalism if not atheism. He joinedthe militia at age fourteen, traveled to Europe while still a teenager,married Teresa del Toro in Madrid at eighteen (she was twenty-one),and returned home to what he later called the happiest six months ofhis life on his estates with his bride. However, she caught a fever thatkilled her in five days, leaving Bolıvar, orphaned at nine, widowed at agenineteen. He returned to Europe, where he learned French and someItalian, and witnessed Napoleon’s battlefield triumph at Marengo. Hestudied philosophers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, and Spinozawith approval. According to a close comrade, he detested Machiavellibut could recall passages a quarter century after having read them.110

His favorite reading was history, ancient and modern. Leaving Europe,he briefly visited the U.S. and in 1806 settled down to the snake-pit ofpolitics in Venezuela. Like Toussaint, he was small and slender, vain andtouchy, imperious and authoritarian, charming and generous when itsuited him – and Machiavellian day and night. Like Toussaint, he couldwithstand great privations and showed uncanny stamina. The llaneros,men almost born in the saddle, called him culo de hierro (“iron-ass”)in recognition of his endurance on horseback. Unlike Toussaint, whenBolıvar turned to revolution he was young, rich, irreligious, and white(and disdainful of blacks). As a military commander he made countlessblunders, and more than once abandoned his men and materiel to hisenemies while fleeing to safety. But when his fate looked darkest he wasat his best, both resolute and lucky.111

110 O’Leary (1970:18–19).111 Of the dozens of biographies, Harvey (2000) is detailed yet readable; Lynch

(2006) readable and thoughtful; O’Leary (1970: 139–42) gives a portrait onwhich most others rely; Vowell (1831, 1:66–7) gives another.


war to the death

In 1813, when leading rebel factions of perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 men112

against local royalists, Bolıvar declared that henceforth his was a “war tothe death.” His chief opponent, Boves, needed no encouragement, andshortly before he was run through with a lance in battle in December1814, he chased Bolıvar out of Venezuela to Cartagena. This strug-gle between Boves and Bolıvar was a Venezuelan civil war, with fewSpaniards on either side. By 1815, about half the whites of Venezuelawere killed, and about 150,000 people in all – nearly a sixth of thepopulation.113

Into this spasm of violence stepped Morillo’s legions in April 1815,with instructions to “pacify” Venezuela and Colombia, and then to sendhis men on to Peru and Mexico. Morillo, who enjoyed the nickname“El Pacificador,” was appointed captain-general of Venezuela and fieldmarshal of the army.

Upon arrival, Morillo had by far the most formidable force in NewGranada.114 Now leaderless, Boves’ men had only bamboo lances, lassos,and horses, and were vulnerable outside the llanos and helpless againstwell-trained and armed infantry. Bolıvar’s and other republican factionsusually consisted of only a few hundred ill-armed and ragged men – orboys – each. They were little more than teenage gangs: In 1815, the aver-age age of a “patriot” soldier was seventeen, and sergeants twenty-two(Bolıvar himself was thirty-two).115 No one had much popular support,especially after they began routinely expropriating and stealing prop-erty, conscripting men, and raping women. By contrast, the Spaniardswere well-trained, well-armed, and better disciplined. As events wouldreveal, they were just as brave and could be just as murderous as theVenezuelan factions. But Morillo’s Spaniards also had the great liabil-ity of all European troops new to the Greater Caribbean: unpreparedimmune systems.

112 Albi (1990:111) says 8,000 to 20,000.113 Rausch (1984:170); Izard (1979:135).114 Accounts of Morillo’s campaigns include Ejercito de Colombia (1919); Sevilla

(1916); Quintero Saravıa (2005:237–444); Stoan (1971); and Morillo (1826:1–253). Adelman (2006:272–80, 285–7, 295–9) covers political and financialaspects.

115 Thibaud (2003:225).


They were not the only ones. As the Napoleonic wars wound downin Europe, many men with none but military skills sought employmentwherever they could find it, and a few thousand, mainly English andIrish, washed up in New Granada to fight beside Bolıvar. With themcame a teenager from Cork, Daniel O’Leary (1802-54), a butter mer-chant’s son with no military experience, who learned Spanish quicklyand became one of Bolıvar’s trusted officers, his aide-de-camp, and even-tually his biographer and custodian of his papers.116 Most of the AlbionLegion, as the Venezuelans came to call them, died of disease before thewar was out (O’Leary lived into middle age as a diplomat and author).Of one contingent arriving in 1818, half died within weeks of settingfoot in South America; a Captain Brown, then serving on the lowerOrinoco, wrote: “Never did the yellow fever commit in so short a timesuch dreadful ravages.”117 The volunteers and mercenaries might haveheeded the concerns of a Colonel Gordon, who when objecting to a pro-posed British military intervention in Caracas in 1808 wrote, “My fearson that subject are the climate, the climate, the climate.”118 Morillomore than once predicted disease would finish off the British.119 Butwhile they lasted, the foreign legions provided helpful military experi-ence to Bolıvar’s revolutionaries.

Nonetheless, at first, things went well for the Spanish army. Up anddown the Venezuelan coast, cities accepted Morillo’s rule, and some10,000 local recruits flocked to his banners.120 By July 1815, he felt hehad Venezuela safely in hand and marched off to besiege Cartagena,by far the strongest fortified place in New Granada, and strategicallyits most important city. At his approach to Colombia, royalists took

116 O’Leary (1879–1888) is 3 volumes of biography and 29 volumes of Bolıvar’spapers. O’Leary (1970) is a translation and abridgement of the biography.Brown (1819) and Vowell (1831) are also rich accounts of the experiences ofBritish mercenaries and volunteers. On the foreign legions, Hasbrouck (1928);Rodriguez (2006); and Thibaud (2003:384–94).

117 Brown (1819:106–7). Thibaud (2003:389). F. B. O’Connor in 1820 lost 539 ofhis 800 Irish troops within a few weeks in Venezuela. I owe this datum to mycolleague Erick Langer.

118 Gordon to General Craig, 7 May 1808, BL Additional MSS, 49512, f. 17.119 For example, Morillo a La Torre, 19 novembre 1819, AHN Estado 8717. “Todas

la noticias que tenemos de los Ingleses que se hallan a Barlovento son muy favorables,pues las enfermedades, el mal alimento y el clima va acabando con ellos.”

120 Albi (1990:152); Gonzalez Garcıa (1961).


heart and revolutionaries either laid down their arms or gathered insideCartagena’s walls. Bolıvar fled to Jamaica.

Engineers had greatly strengthened Cartagena’s defenses since thedays of Eslava and Vernon in 1741. With 5,000 Spaniards and perhaps2,000 Americanos, Morillo knew the city’s design in detail and under-stood its reliance on “the climate” to destroy besiegers. He chose tostarve it out, surrounding it from the landward side and avoiding thesea defenses that had held up Vernon in 1741. For 100 days, he kepta tight ring around the city. Six thousand, a third of Cartagena’s pop-ulation, starved to death. The victors fared no better. The siege lastedinto the rainy months of October and November, a fever season, beforethe city surrendered in December 1815. Morillo lost 3,100 of his 7,000men, mostly Spaniards, almost all to disease. Intriguingly, one of hiscaptains, Rafael Sevilla, in his memoirs attributed most of the deaths to“bites of long-legged mosquitoes of the swamps.”121 Morillo’s second-in-command noted that Spanish troops were much likelier to fall ill thanlocal ones.122 A very few on each side died in skirmishes.

Morillo, wisely, was in a hurry. He knew what fevers would do to hisarmy (and perhaps to him). After Cartagena fell, he quickly completedthe occupation and intimidation of Colombia. In the eight monthsstretching from the latter weeks of the siege through July 1816, Morillolost only 151 men killed in combat, less than one twelfth the combatdeaths of his enemies.123 It seemed he had won in Colombia and noforce could resist his regiments. He returned to Venezuela to hunt downits revolutionary caudillos. By the end of 1816, he controlled all its maincities.

Meanwhile, Bolıvar assembled a few hundred men to launch aninvasion from Haiti, but he dallied for a month to pursue one of his

121 Sevilla (1916:71): “La mayor parte de las defunciones fueron causadas por las picadasde los mosquitos zancudos de la cienagas. . . . ” This sounds as if Sevilla meantmalarial mosquitoes, but he goes on to say, “ . . . las cuales producıan unas llagasgangrenosas en las piernas, que causaban la muerte so no se hacıa muy pronto laamputacion de dichas extremidades.” No mosquito produces gangrenous wounds,so what Sevilla had in mind is hard to say. I acknowledge the help of Colombianhistorian of medicine Emilio Quevedo on this frustratingly inconclusive point.Accounts of the siege appear in Quintero Saravıa (2005:277–306); Ejercito deColombia (1919:91–125); and Morillo (1826:32–64).

122 Miguel de la Torre, quoted in Perez-Tenreiro (1971:63).123 Quintero Saravıa (2005:316). A detailed account of these campaigns is Ejercito

de Colombia (1919:126–202).


amours. His pursuit eventually succeeded but the invasion quickly failed,and he had to scurry back to Haiti where the president, AlexandrePetion, proved a forgiving and stalwart supporter. Morillo seemed to bepositioned to win. But time, malaria, and yellow fever were against him:If he could not win quickly, he could not win at all.

Morillo could not win quickly. His Spanish infantrymen provednearly invincible in battle along the coasts and in the coastal mountains.He could recruit local men, most easily whites from the upper classes,to his banners. Putting aside his contempt for blacks, he also recruitedthem. But he could not keep weapons, gold, foreign mercenaries, andvolunteers, or Bolıvar, from slipping into Venezuela. The Spanish navy,at its historical nadir, could not blockade New Granada effectively.Caribbean merchants, eager to see New Granada become independent,provided ships and supplies to Bolıvar.

Beyond that, Morillo’s men could not control the llanos. Gradually,more and more llaneros chose revolution, or at least the plunder promisedby revolutionary caudillos, over royalism.124 The llanos provided “inex-haustible” numbers of horses for the rebels, and thus mobility. And theyoffered a refuge into which Morillo’s infantry ventured only at its peril,because on the open savanna they were vulnerable to surprise cavalryattacks – and to malaria.125 In instructions to a colonel written probablyin 1815, Morillo cautioned him not to “send Europeans down to thellanos, except in case of great necessity, because the fevers will finishthem.”126 In 1817, writing of the sufferings of his men on a rare marchin the llanos, he called the region “sickly and feverish.”127 In 1819,he described the llanos as “unhealthy and prejudicial to Europeans,” aland where “hunger, fatigue, and the climate are more dreadful than

124 On this switch, Thibaud (2003:149–61, 332–41).125 Morillo (1826:122–3, 168) on the immensity of the llanos, the countless horses,

and his troops’ vulnerability. Vowell (1831, 1:38, 119–20); Pons (1806, 3:270–1)on llanos livestock.

126 Instrucciones al Coronel D. Sebastian de la Calzada, AHN Estado 8717 (“Nodeben bajar al llano los Europeos, sin una gran necessidad, pues las Calenturas losacabarıan”). He went on to suggest the colonel segregate American and Europeanhospitals in cases of “malign fevers.”

127 Morillo al Ministro de la Guerra, 1 abril 1817, printed in Rodrıguez Villa (1920,1:287–295, quot. p. 291): “enfermizo y calenturiento paıs.” On another occasionin early 1817, he complained that he lost “in a few days a great number of menwho fell ill in that swampy terrain.” Quoted in Revesz (1947:87): “en pocos dıasun gran numero de soldados que enferman en aquel pantanoso terreno.”


combat.”128 He feared “deadly results” if he sent troops to the lowerOrinoco (Ciudad Guayana) where the “black vomit . . . reigned.”129 Ineffect, his army was hemmed in by mosquitoes. A stalemate of sortsemerged, with the coasts and mountains in Morillo’s hands but neitherthe sea nor the sea of grass. Revolutionary caudillos enjoyed an edge inmobility and access to horses. They could escape to the llanos, or toHaiti, rather than squarely face Morillo’s infantry.

Unable to win quickly, Morillo’s army faced a slow death. It foughtmany battles, usually victorious, and lost some men in combat. But itlost all battles with malaria and yellow fever, and lost almost all its menthat way.130 In May 1816, Morillo complained that he could not recruitmen fast enough to replace those lost to disease.131 He instructed his sub-ordinates early in 1817 to recruit men “of the country” because diseasesthreatened to leave the army “without Europeans.”132 In September1817, he wrote that he had lost at least a third of his army to diseaseand, more accurately than he knew, that “The mere bite of a mosquitooften deprives a man of his life. . . . ”133 By 1819, Morillo wrote to Spainthat he had less than a quarter of his 12,000-man European army left.134

Looking back in his Memoires, Morillo alluded to the effects of differ-ential immunity, writing that to appreciate the rigors of the campaigns,“One must above all consider the insalubrity of the climate, almostalways mortal for Europeans.”135 He also noted the allowances he hadto make in his warfighting strategy, saying the wet season was too sicklyto conduct operations, and he had to seek higher elevations to keep

128 Morillo al Ministro de la Guerra, 12 mayo 1819, quoted in Quintera Saravıa(2005:353).

129 Morillo a La Torre, 7 marzo 1817, AHN Estado 8717.130 I acknowledge the work of Rebecca Earle (2000a, 2000b), which makes a similar

case and which led me to many of the original sources.131 Morillo al Ministro de la Guerra, 31 mayo 1816, printed in Rodrıguez Villa

(1908 ed., 3:164–9). Recruitment was hampered by his requisition of propertyfrom Venezuelans and his king’s refusal to sanction the recruitment of slavesuntil December 1818. Morillo did recruit free blacks (Stoan 1970:394).

132 Morillo a La Torre, 28 enero 1817, AHN Estado 8717.133 Morillo al Ministro de la Guerra, 10 septiembre 1817, printed in Rodrıguez Villa

(1908 ed., 3:442–3). Morillo here was not attributing malaria or yellow fever tomosquitoes, but blaming them for all manner of ailments.

134 Morillo al Ministro de la Guerra 13 septiembre 1819, quoted in Rodrıguez Villa(1908 ed., 1:409–15), cited in Ullrick (1920:558). Thibaud (2003:262–3) hassome corroboratory data from AGI, Gobierno, Caracas, leg. 55.

135 Morillo (1826:167).


his troops healthy – an indication that the ailments that most trou-bled the Spaniards were temperature-related, and thus almost certainlymosquito-borne.136

Morillo’s problems with mosquitoes probably worsened as the warwent on. In 1812, before much combat had taken place, Venezuelahad about four or five million head of horses, mules, and cattle. Elevenwar-filled years later, it had a quarter million head left, a reductionof 94–95 percent. Before the war began, livestock had outnumberedhumans in Venezuela by about five to one, giving anophelines andA. aegypti many targets. As the war progressed, while human populationdeclined, the livestock numbers fell far faster, leaving humans a majorityamong the large mammals of Venezuela. Blood-seeking mosquitoes hadfewer targets, but a far bigger share, at least two out of three of them,were people. The mosquitoes’ feeding focus narrowed, to the annoyanceof everyone and the grave misfortune of many of those susceptible tomalaria and yellow fever.137

The Americanization of his army meant that Morillo was far morevulnerable to desertion as time went on, and therefore to propagandaand shifting political winds. As in Haiti, so too in Venezuela: Becausethe war was increasingly a civil war, yellow fever and malaria acquiredpolitical as well as military significance. Morillo constantly asked formore troops and twelve times asked to be relieved of his command –understandable, especially after he had been skewered by a lance in thebattle of La Puerta in 1818.138

Meanwhile, Bolıvar took advantage of the growing weakness of theroyalist forces. He managed to forge a reasonably unified coalition amongrepublican factions, successfully courted the once-royalist llaneros, andexecuted his most effective ally and most promising rival caudillo. Hechanged his mind about blacks and recruited many to his army. In 1819he gambled on a most risky march, taking a few thousand men, andhundreds of women, west across the llanos in the wet season (wading for

136 Morillo (1826:180). Typhus, dysentery, and other routine army diseases wouldbe unaffected by elevation. Brown (1819:94) also noted the restrictions imposedby the wet season.

137 Brito Figueroa (1973, 1:221) says Venezuela had 4.5 million cattle, horses, andmules in 1812 and 256,000 in 1823. These are estimates, of course.

138 Quintera Saravıa (2005:392, 394); Morillo (1826:147–8). He was wounded againin 1819 (Morillo 1826:186). Sailors also suffered extreme manpower losses whileserving off the Costa Firme, prompting routine calls for reinforcements (PerezTurrado 1992:188–93).


a week in water up to their waists while fending off piranhas, accordingto one account) and then over chilly 4,000-meter passes in the Andesto arrive on the plateau northeast of Bogota.139 A good portion of hisarmy died on this march, including a quarter of his British legion (andone child was born in one of the mountain passes).140 But when the2,000 survivors got to Colombia, the few dispirited royalists there –all Americanos – were unprepared. Bolıvar recruited a few hundredlocals, at gunpoint when necessary, won a decisive battle with onlythirteen killed (Boyaca, August 7, 1819), occupied Bogota after Spanishauthorities fled, and at a stroke claimed Colombia for the revolution.The epic march and victory clinched Bolıvar’s status as the supremecaudillo of the revolution in New Granada, “El Libertador” as he likedto be called. It may not have been necessary for the ultimate defeat ofSpain, but it hastened the result.

Ferdinand VII did not give up easily. In 1819–1820, he authorizedanother expedition to the Americas with 20,000 men, for which he hadto buy Russian ships because Spain had too few of its own. While itassembled in and around Cadiz, some of the few survivors of Morillo’swar returned to Spain and spread both sedition and yellow fever. Thenew army mutinied in January 1820 so as to avoid sailing to America.Their official destination was the River Plate, but veterans of Morillo’sexpedition remembered that theirs had been too in 1814–1815. Themutineers particularly objected to the idea of service in the tropics,with the attendant risks that Morillo’s veterans no doubt carefullyexplained. One of the participants, Antonio Alcala Galiano, wrotethat the rebellion succeeded where others failed simply because of the“repugnance of the rank and file against embarking for America.”141

The mutiny sparked a liberal revolution in Spain, which for threechaotic years (1820–1823) forced constitutional government on theking.142

Within three months of the Cadiz mutiny, Morillo had instructionsto seek an armistice with Bolıvar, which their underlings concluded byNovember 1820. Afterwards they met briefly, dined and drank many atoast together, and slept under the same roof, indeed in the same room,

139 Vowell (1831, 1:156–68).140 O’Leary (1970:158–9).141 Quoted in Carr (1966:127).142 Woodward (2000:306–9, 314). Woodward says the second expedition included

14,000 men; every other source I consulted said 20,000.


sleeping “soundly, making up, perhaps, for the many wakeful nights theyhad caused each other.”143 The next morning they parted amicably.Morillo soon turned the war over to a subordinate of lesser talents andwent home (December 1820) to join in the turmoil of Spanish politics.For all intents and purposes, Spain had lost New Granada, althoughdesultory fighting lasted until 1823. In August of that year, the finalremnants of Morillo’s army together with their local recruits – about1,000 men in all – departed Venezuela for Cuba. By 1826, all of SpanishAmerica was free except for Cuba and Puerto Rico.144

arithmetic and aftermath

In all, perhaps 16,000 or 17,000 European troops went to serve FerdinandVII’s cause in Venezuela in 1813–1821. Morillo’s successors in 1821wrote that 1,700 survived. Perhaps 700 returned to Spain.145 Somethinglike 90 to 95 percent of the men sent out to pacify New Granada diedthere. If one counts the roughly 2,000 Spaniards already serving in NewGranada, then about 91 to 96 percent of those who served the kingdied on the job. Of course, many died in combat or were executedas prisoners. Some deserted – a much more severe problem among thelocally recruited in royalist armies. But most died from disease, and someof those who deserted probably did so because they feared epidemics orhospitals.146 The surviving evidence permits no more precise statement.

Diseases annihilated Morillo’s army – but slowly. The catastrophethat befell Spain’s army in New Granada unfolded over five or six years.It was perhaps more complete but less sudden than what befell Leclerc,Abercrombie, Albemarle, or Vernon. It took place in bits and pieces,over a broad territory, rather than as a single epidemic around one or afew ports. This was not a result of better medical care: Spanish medicaltheories and practices around 1815 were no more helpful than thosethat helped kill many hapless soldiers and sailors over the previous

143 O’Leary (1970:184). The cordial correspondence between Bolıvar and Morillo isprinted in Morillo (1826:319–40). Elsewhere, Morillo spiced his Memoires withderogatory asides about Bolıvar.

144 Deadly fevers continued to plague what was left of the Spanish army after 1820.Jaime Arbuthnot a La Torre, 23 febrero 1822, AHN Estado 8739. For the 1,000figure, Gonzalez Garcıa (1961:148).

145 Albi (1990:404).146 Earle (2000b:288–92) on fear of hospitals in Morillo’s army. Thibaud (2003:460–

5) on desertion.


centuries.147 Conceivably, almost the opposite was true: The tiny mil-itary medical corps that accompanied Morillo could do little damage,and soldiers profited by staying out of its reach. The absence of anystrong El Nino (there were moderate ones in 1817 and 1819) may havechecked the ravages of mosquito-borne disease slightly.

Probably, two other factors mattered more. First, at times Morillo’smen were at altitudes of a few hundred meters in the coastal cordillera ofVenezuela, or higher still in the Colombian Andes, and thus outside thecomfort zones of both A. aegypti and anopheles mosquitoes. Morillo tookthem to higher elevations during the rainy seasons expressly to avoiddisease.148 But they could not all stay there all the time; they had tooccupy the cities and ports for political and military reasons. But whileat altitude they probably enjoyed much better health, as British troopsstationed in Jamaica demonstrably did.149 Second, Morillo’s Spaniardsserved among locally born and raised recruits to the royalist cause. Theyoften lived among local civilians. Thus, they probably benefited at timesfrom herd immunity with respect to yellow fever. The political circum-stances, which allowed them to merge into local populations, broughtdifferent epidemiological experiences. It took viruses and plasmodialonger to find them. But in the end, sooner or later, they almost alldied. In that respect, the Spanish reconquest expedition under Morillowas very much of a piece with the British and French expeditions toSt. Domingue.

In its larger quest to reconquer the Americas, Spain committed byfar the largest chunk of its military manpower (about 43%) to the CostaFirme, the unhealthiest of all possible destinations. Sending Morillo tothe River Plate almost surely would have produced happier results forSpain. In 1819–1820, Argentina was ripe for reconquest, but Spain hadsquandered its armies. Feeble though Spain was after 1808, it is notimplausible to suppose it might have held on to America for some timelonger had it not wagered so heavily on New Granada. Throughout itsAmerican colonies, royalists and revolutionaries fought for years beforeachieving any clear result: A less suicidal intervention in a healthierlandscape might have tipped the balance for the royalists, at least in

147 Viceroy Francisco Montalvo castigated the Spanish medical establishment inVenezuela in his instructions to his successor: Montalvo a Samano 30 enero1818, printed in Montalvo and Samano (1918:136–40).

148 Morillo (1826:180, 216).149 Tulloch (1838).


part of the empire. Despite its negligible navy and political factionalism,Spain held the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico easily. Of course, allthis is mere conjecture: We can only know for certain that Spain choseto place its bet on New Granada, and lost.

Nor does the evidence allow a confident judgment about the preciseroles of various infections in dooming Morillo’s army. Yellow fever surelywas responsible for a large share of deaths; the barracks and hospitalsalong the coast were the deadliest locations, as in Haiti.150 The townsof the lower Orinoco also regularly hosted yellow fever. But malaria justas surely played a large role, and in the llanos (for ecological reasonsnoted previously) ought to have been predominant. Accounts mentiondysentery and smallpox (especially among Amerindians) as well, and nodoubt typhus made an appearance as it almost always did among armiesin those days.151

Perhaps Bolıvar and his allies knowingly exploited differential resis-tance and immunity as part of their strategy. Morillo seemed to thinkthat they did. He wrote to a subordinate in 1816: “They are just waitingfor us all to die of infection and disease.”152 He complained afterwardthat his enemy “almost constantly avoided combat.”153 Bolıvar and hisallies used the malarial llanos as their stronghold and their highway. Heseems to have been content to see Morillo’s men pinned along the coast,where yellow fever was most dangerous, and happy to lure them into thellanos. He was apparently aware that disease was a more serious prob-lem for Morillo’s army than for his own. He wrote to a fellow generalon June 26, 1816 that, “We must lament the infinite sickness that hasconsiderably reduced our troops; but we are consoled by the fact thatthe enemy must suffer greater losses, partly because of the nature of hissoldiers, and partly because of the positions he occupies.”154 After the

150 Morillo a Miguel de la Torre 4 octubre 1815, AHN, Estado 8717.151 Morillo a La Torre, 4 octubre 1815, AHN Estado 8717 mentions dysentery, “a

ruinous ailment . . . that destroys humankind.” The “Relaciones de Enfermos,”in AHN Estado 8728, scattered documents from 1820, give diagnoses for a fewdozen sick soldiers, among whom venereal diseases predominated.

152 Bolıvar a Miguel de la Torre, 19 mayo 1816, AHN, Estado 8717, cited in Earle(2000b:292).

153 Morillo (1826:224).154 Bolıvar a General Arismendi, 26 Junio 1816. Bolıvar (1964, 9:285–6). The quo-

tation (p. 286): “Tenemos que lamenter las infinitas enfermedades que nos disminuyenconsiderablemente las tropas; mas nos consolamos con la consideracion de que el ene-migo debe sufrir mayores perdidas, tanto por la naturaleza de sus soldados, como por


victory at Boyaca, before Bolıvar returned to Venezuela, he tried to fillhis ranks with slaves from lowland Colombia, noting that “men fromthe cold uplands will all die in Venezuela, as sadly we have learned.”155

He seems to have appreciated the significance of disease and adjustedhis recruitment policies accordingly. The scant data on the health ofBolıvar’s forces suggest roughly 10 percent were sick at any given time,which if true means his men were much healthier than the Spaniards.156

Their own words suggest that Morillo and Bolıvar both recognized thepartisan effects of disease, which implies that yellow fever and malariawere more prominent than, say, smallpox, which would have killedmore Venezuelans than Spaniards.

It is tempting to suppose that Bolıvar took a page from Toussaint’sbook. In his visits to Haiti in 1815 and 1816, he conferred with veteransof the Haitian revolution. He negotiated for their support (in exchangefor a promise to free Venezuela’s slaves). He and his Haitian friendssurely saw the similarities between Morillo’s mandate and Leclerc’s ofthirteen years before. An inquisitive man seeking every edge he couldget, Bolıvar might well have asked the Haitians how they succeeded,and might well have been told, among other things, about “Toussaint’ssystem” (as Christophe had called it). It is also possible, perhaps likely,that Bolıvar and his allies knew that Mexican insurgents had success-fully pinned a Spanish regiment at Veracruz in 1814, where half itsmen died from yellow fever soon after arrival.157 Admittedly, this ispure speculation. Nothing in the very limited surviving correspondencebetween Bolıvar and the Haitians contains any hint that he sought orreceived advice on how to win a revolutionary war against militarily

las posiciones que ocupa.” In referring to “la naturaleza de sus soldados,” Bolıvarseems to be recognizing differential resistance. In referring to “las posiciones queocupa,” he clearly recognizes the unhealthier nature of the coastal positions heldby Morillo. In referring to sickness that was more than infinite, Bolıvar revealedthat he was no mathematician.

155 Bolıvar a Santander, 14 abril 1820, printed in Santander (1988–1990, 2:82).Morillo, too, recruited black soldiers specifically for their disease resistance(Blanchard 2008:70). He requested and received permission to raise a battalionof slaves who could, he thought, withstand the rigors of “unhealthy countries”(paıses malsanos). Morillo al Ministerio de la Guerra 25 enero 1818; Ministeriode la Guerra a Morillo, 4 diciembre 1818, printed in Rodrıguez Villa (1908,3:494 and 3:700).

156 Thibaud (2003:359–62); Blanchard (2008:130) has some data on disease amongBolıvar’s forces.

157 Earle (2000b:283).


superior forces, and nothing in his twenty volumes of papers shows helearned from the Veracruz experience.158

In 1819–1822, as in the aftermath of the Haitian revolution, yel-low fever ricocheted around the Atlantic world. The presence of newSpanish troops in Havana, Veracruz, and every other strongpoint in theSpanish Empire led to local outbreaks, and ships – probably often troopships – carried the virus (and perhaps mosquitoes) to distant shores.Epidemics occurred in the major cities of the east coast of the UnitedStates and in Iberian ports. Barcelona perhaps suffered the most: Abouta sixth of the city’s population died between August and December,some 20,000 people.159

After Venezuela and Colombia became free, Bolıvar continued thefight against Spain in the Andes. He hoped for a unified Hispanicrepublic in South America, which might become a great power with himat its helm. But instead he got a series of unstable republics dominatedby caudillos. Looking back on his career, he said that those who servedthe revolution had “plowed the sea,” a poignant image of futility. Hedied of lung ailments (again, like Toussaint) in 1830. Spain’s empirein the Americas now consisted only of the islands of Puerto Rico andCuba. For some decades yet, the combination of sugar planters eager toretain preferred access to the Spanish market and the presence of largemilitary establishments kept these islands loyal to Spain.

Immigration, Warfare, and Independence,1830–1898: Mexico, the United States, and Cuba

After Morillo’s army died off and Spanish America secured its inde-pendence, the stakes in geopolitical struggles in the Greater Caribbeanshrank. No longer did the destiny of the Americas or control of theworld’s silver hang in the balance. But warfare continued, and with itnew generations of young men with unprepared immune systems ven-tured into the domains of malaria and yellow fever.

Once again, they were not alone. Civilian migrants streamed tothe region as well. The slave trade ebbed after the 1840s, thanks to

158 Verna (1980:477–96) prints the correspondence of 1815–1816. He asked forships, guns, and money.

159 PRO PC 1/4169 Hamilton to Castlereagh 7 September 1819, on Boston, NewYork, and Baltimore; Reese (1819) on Baltimore; Waddell (1990) and Molinade Munoz (1977) on Cadiz; Chastel (1999) on Barcelona, where the disease wasthought to have come from Havana.


abolition in the British and French empires. But hundreds of thousandsof Indians and Chinese came in the following decades to work the plan-tations of Trinidad, British Guyana, and Cuba. Many of these laborerswent home after a few years of toil, but many lived out their lives inthe Caribbean. Often those lives were cut short by disease, but bothChinese – who mainly came from southern provinces – and the Indianswould often have had resistance to malaria through personal experienceof the disease, and thanks to bouts of dengue may also have had someresistance, if not immunity, to yellow fever.160 In addition to this Asianinflux, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards, especially from the poornorthern villages of Galicia and Asturias, headed for Cuba and PuertoRico, whereas Irish and Germans fled potato famines and revolutionaryupheavals for destinations such as New Orleans.

Malarial plasmodia soon circulated among all these immigrant pop-ulations, as well as within the bodies of the long-resident Caribbeanpopulation. With growing populations in most parts of the region, andwith continual ecological disturbance resulting from further spread ofplantations, the odds that newcomers might avoid malaria dwindled.

The yellow fever virus, even if it did not survive easily in the blood-streams of the new Asian immigrants, flourished among the Europeannewcomers. When they came in surges, or when over time their num-bers grew large enough to overwhelm the protection of herd immu-nity, epidemics resulted. Even when they did not, the newcomers oftendied, unremarked, in dribs and drabs from what in New Orleans andCharleston was often called “strangers’ disease.”161 The general growth

160 Ashcroft (1979a) found that Indians in nineteenth-century British Guyana suf-fered little from yellow fever. Alckin (2001:134) cites a PRO CO 111/250 reportof Dr. Bonyun (1848) showing that among indentured workers in British Guianathe (annual?) death rate among Africans was 1.8% and that of people recruitedfrom Madras 8.1%, whereas those from Madeira fared worst (14%). Dr. Bonyunthought the miasmas that were deadly to Portuguese were “a congenial stimulantto the natives of Africa.”

161 Humphreys (1992); Pritchett and Tunali (1995). It is possible, though far fromcertain, that the establishment of dengue as an endemic disease in much of theWest Indies, circa 1825–1860, helped build the resistance of resident populationsto yellow fever via “cross-immunization” (see Chapter 2). It could be that theinflux of Indians and Chinese helped establish dengue, as the slave trade broughtyellow fever and malaria, but this seems a remote possibility because the voyagesin question took so long, and thus infected travelers would recover (or die) beforereaching the West Indies. It could only have happened if A. aegypti and virusmade the trip together with many susceptibles, and thereby could keep the virusin circulation for the weeks and months needed.


of population, and of cities in particular, improved the chance of yellowfever surviving among newborns, newcomers, and mosquitoes, so as tobe ever-present in the region. Josiah Nott, a doctor in Mobile, Alabama(and one of the first to suggest that insects communicated yellow fever),put it this way in 1847:

Generally, along the southern seaboard, when the forest is firstlevelled, a town commenced, intermittents and remittents springup, and in some places of a malignant, fatal type. As the pop-ulation increases the town spreads, and draining and paving areintroduced, yellow fever, the mighty monarch of the south, whoscorns the rude field and forest, plants his sceptre in the centre,and drives all other fevers to the outskirts.162

What Nott observed along the Gulf Coast obtained elsewhere in theGreater Caribbean as well: More and bigger cities meant more civilianyellow fever.

Yellow fever more often spread outside the Greater Caribbean after1840, too. More frequent and faster ship travel connected Caribbeanports to distant shores, exporting mosquito and virus continually. More-over, the more widespread the virus was in the West Indies, the morelikely it would find its way aboard ships to Baltimore, Barcelona, orBuenos Aires.163

Military expeditions to Caribbean shores continued to provide idealopportunities for malaria and yellow fever to wreak havoc on humandesigns. A Spanish attempt to recover Mexico in 1829 met with defeatat the hands of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1794–1876), and withdisaster in the grip of yellow fever in the tierra caliente near Tampico.Santa Anna, a native of Veracruz province and a yellow fever sur-vivor, with an army of mainly local men, seems deliberately to havekept the Spaniards cooped up along the coast, besieging rather thanattacking them, so as to invite yellow fever to do its worst. He used hisimmunity and that of his men, especially the Afro-Mexican jarochos,to good advantage in his struggles with rival caudillos in the chaoticwarfare of the 1820s and 1830s. Connections between Mexico Cityand the outside world necessarily went through Veracruz, and only

162 Quoted in Cowdrey (1996:86). Nott had only the most general idea that insectsmight serve as disease vectors. See Chernin (1983).

163 See Coleman (1987); Buno (1983); Forrest (1856); Scenna (1974); Bloom(1993); Hillemand (2006) for epidemics outside the Caribbean.


Santa Anna among the caudillos could safely occupy the port city insummer.164

While Santa Anna consolidated the independence of Mexico,its northern neighbor beginning in 1830 undertook to remove theAmerindians of the U.S. southeast to new homes across the Missis-sippi. The most challenging part of this program of ethnic cleansing wasthe Second Seminole War in Florida (1835–1840). The Seminoles werean amalgamation of mainly Creeks, other Amerindians, free blacks, andrunaway slaves who had coalesced in the eighteenth century into anindependent force in Spanish Florida. After Florida became part of theU.S. in 1819, new settlers arrived leading to conflicts with the Semi-noles, and to calls for their removal. The Seminoles resisted and foughta dogged guerrilla war for more than five years. The American generalsat first thought it imprudent to fight in the summer months for fearof malaria, which allowed the Seminoles to plant, harvest, and survivethe otherwise effective harrying of the U.S. Army. This prolonged thecampaign until a new general chose to accept greater losses and fightthrough the summer.

Malaria resistance and mobility were among the few advantages theSeminoles had in this struggle. They had all grown up in the lowlandSouth and most of them in Florida, where malaria was endemic. Manyhad some African ancestry. In addition, so-called Black Seminoles,people of predominantly African descent, served as their allies. Thus,acquired resistance and in some cases heritable resistance as well helpedthe Seminoles cope with Florida’s endemic malaria. The U.S. Armyeventually prevailed, thanks to superior numbers, weaponry, quinine,and by 1840 its new willingness to fight year-round. It lost 14 percent ofits force to disease. Afterward, it escorted most Seminoles to Oklahoma.A handful fled to the Everglades. Thus ended the longest war fought bythe U.S. Army between the Revolution and Vietnam.165

Shortly after the end of the Second Seminole War, the U.S. Armymarched on Mexico. In the tradition of rising powers with weaker

164 Fowler (2007:9, 63–4, 137–8); Ortiz Escamilla (2008:215). Why the Barradasexpedition attempted to reconquer Mexico by landing in July on a coast knownfor its deadly fevers is a mystery. Of the many caudillos in nineteenth-centuryMexico, few if any had a strong regional base like Santa Anna’s.

165 Gillett (1987:53–72). Some 14% of U.S. soldiers (1,466 regulars by officialcount) in the war died of disease, and 3% (328) from combat (Mahon 1991:325).Mahon covers every aspect of the war.


neighbors, the U.S. in 1845–1846 launched a war that would bring ithalf the national territory of Mexico by 1848. The U.S. invaded firstthrough Texas, but found that battlefield success in the north did notyield Mexican surrender. The climactic blow came when a veteran ofthe Second Seminole War, Winfield Scott (1786–1866), led an armyto the halls of Montezuma.

Scott had a college education (William & Mary) and a brief careeras a lawyer before embarking on a half century of active army duty,serving every president from Jefferson to Lincoln. He was a studentof military history and translated French military manuals. He knewwhat yellow fever had done to Leclerc’s army in St. Domingue. As aveteran of the Second Seminole War (among many others), he knewwhat price malaria had exacted from the U.S. Army in Florida. He hadan appropriate fear of fevers’ consequences for unacclimatized troops.A meticulous planner, in late 1846 Scott devised a campaign againstMexico that involved landing on the coast of the tierra caliente, theshortest route to Mexico City. His most urgent concern was to takethe port of Veracruz quickly and get his army inland and upland beforesummer began and yellow fever struck. One of his officers, Ulysses S.Grant, shared his concern, writing to his fiancee soon after arrival onthe Mexican coast: “We will all have to get out of this part of Mexicosoon or we will be caught by the yellow fever which I am ten to onemore afraid of than the Mexicans.”166 As Scott put it, the Veracruzregion presented an enemy “more formidable than the defences of othercountries: I allude to the vomito.”167

Scott succeeded. Despite landing in March, two months later thanhe wished (ships proved difficult to find), Scott had his army in themountains en route to Mexico City by late April. His opposite num-ber, Santa Anna, hoped the fortress at Veracruz could hold out longenough to pin the Americans in the killing fields of the tierra caliente,letting yellow fever come to his aid, as he had done to the Spanisharmy in 1829.168 But U.S. artillery made short work (twelve days) ofVeracruz in late March 1847, and routed Santa Anna near Xalapa,

166 Grant to Julia Dent, 25 February 1847, quoted in McCaffrey (1992:62). Onthe war generally, I relied on McCaffrey (1992); Winders (1997); Eisenhower(2000); and for some matters, Miller (1978).

167 Major-General Winfield Scott, “Vera Cruz and Its Castle,” Quoted in Espinosa(2009:71–2). Eisenhower (2000:253–4) summarizes Scott’s plan.

168 De Palo (1997:120).


where the mountains begin, in mid-April. Scott soon astounded all stu-dents of military affairs by taking almost his entire force up into themountains, leaving his supply and communication lines almost unde-fended, and obliging his troops to live off the land in enemy terri-tory. The Duke of Wellington allegedly proclaimed that now Scott“was lost.”169 (The Duke would later proclaim Scott a genius.) Hisgamble had the effect of shielding his dwindling force (many werevolunteers entitled to go home) from yellow fever. Once at eleva-tion and free from the yellow fever zone, Scott could take his timeto prepare his final assault. By September, he was in control of MexicoCity.

Roughly 12,000 men served with Scott. Among them were RobertE. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and several others who would soon becomefamous. Officially, only 109 died from yellow fever.170 This good fortunehad little to do with advances in medicine: The quinine, cupping,bloodletting, enemas, and mercury used by the U.S. Army doctors didnot help yellow fever victims.171 Instead, it owed everything to Scott’sdetermination to avoid summer in the lowlands, his gamble concerninghis supply lines and, of course, his army’s ability to prevail in the fieldquickly. Like Vernon, Albemarle, and Leclerc before him, Scott hadonly a few weeks to succeed or see his army melt away from yellow fever.Unlike them, he constructed his war plan accordingly, and, unlike them,he was able to get his army to higher ground, where A. aegypti wouldnot follow, before the summer. His victory led to the cession of all thelands from California to Texas to the U.S. in 1848, consolidating itsposition as the greatest power in the American hemisphere.172

Scott, Lee, Grant, and tens of thousands of others enjoyed a briefrespite but soon enough found themselves at war again. To the sur-prise of most and the disappointment of many, in the American CivilWar (1861–1865), yellow fever did not matter – despite a few smalloutbreaks among Union soldiers occupying posts in Florida and the

169 Quoted in Eisenhower (2000:298). The original source is Scott’s memoirs, prob-ably not to be trusted because few soldiers cared more about their public imageand legacy than Scott.

170 Gillett (1987:116–17). Perhaps the real total was a few hundred: Vandiver(1947:382) cited in Espinosa (2009:72). Of the 115,000 U.S. soldiers who foughtin the war, about 10% died from diseases.

171 Porter (1852–1858) gives a detailed account of treatments. He ran an armyhospital in Veracruz.

172 In the U.S. view, Texas was already part of the Union as of 1845, but Mexicorecognized this only in the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo (1848).


Carolinas. Only 436 Union soldiers died from yellow fever, and only1,355 cases were recorded – notwithstanding the best efforts of a Confed-erate surgeon arrested for trying to import yellow-fever infected (or so hethought) clothing into northern ports in 1863.173 When Union forcestook New Orleans in April 1862, most expected (and many hoped) thatyellow fever would lay waste to the northerners. Four serious outbreaksin the 1850s in New Orleans had killed some 20,000 people, mostlyimmigrants. Hence, the expectation that for the Union the city wouldprove “a prize which will cost them vastly more to keep than [it] is worth,if his Saffron Majesty shall make his usual annual visit. . . . ”174 But it didnot. The Union quarantine of arriving vessels apparently worked. Toofew (if any) infected A. aegpyti and infected people arrived in occupiedNew Orleans to set the virus loose among the Union army. Yellow feverreturned in 1867, and several times thereafter until 1905.175

Malaria scarcely affected the outcome of the Civil War either.Malaria was not sufficiently lethal, and not sufficiently partisan in itseffects, to play a decisive role. Although the Union army reported wellover a million cases of malaria (among 2.1 million men who servedin it), it tallied only 4,760 malaria deaths.176 This put malaria a dis-tant third, after dysenteries and typhus, as a cause of death among thequarter million disease deaths recorded in the Union army. Quinine,which the Union army used in abundance, helped.177 Malaria probablyafflicted more Confederate soldiers because more of them spent moresummers in malarial zones and because the Union blockade kept qui-nine scarce in Confederate territory – Lee’s troops resorted to manysubstitutes, including coating their bodies in turpentine.178 But malariaprobably killed fewer Confederates because their acquired resistance wasprobably greater. The records have not survived, so nothing more thanguesswork is possible.

173 Bollet (2002:296–302); Schroeder-Lein (2008:222); Robertson (1995:370). Thedisease history of the Civil War will become much clearer with the forthcomingpublication of Andrew Bell’s Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever and theCourse of the American Civil War (Boton Rouge, LA: LSU Press).

174 Unidentified Virginia newspaper, quoted in Carrigan (1994:84).175 Carrigan (1994:58–95) on yellow fever in New Orleans, 1850–1867.176 Bollet (2002:289). Schroeder-Lein (2008:219) says 10,063 malaria deaths.177 Bollet (2002:236) says the Union army used ten tons of cinchona bark and about

twenty tons of quinine (Gillett 1987:273).178 Hasegawa (2007). This might have helped if anophelines disliked turpentine.

More often, they tried using powders from roots thought to resemble cinchona,such as dogwood and willow.


In the American Civil War, yellow fever and malaria did not shapeoutcomes for three main reasons. First, interventions such as quinineand quarantine kept infection at bay or cured some of the sick. Second,the technology of killing had improved so much that disease in generalkilled only twice as many soldiers as combat, compared to six times asmany in the Mexican-American War and eight times as many in theAmerican Revolution. At Antietam in 1862, each army lost more menkilled in a single day than the U.S. Army lost to all causes in the MexicanWar. Third and most importantly, most soldiers spent most of the waroutside the domains of endemic yellow fever and malaria.179 It is alsopossible there was a fourth reason: Soldiers who fell ill found themselvesin the care of sympathetic civilians who could provide food and watermore often than in other campaigns where population densities werelower or mercy rarer.180

The campaigns of the nineteenth century show the continued powerof differential immunity and resistance to shape military and politi-cal history, but they also show that people and organizations learneda few more lessons. Even though no one as yet understood how yel-low fever and malaria spread, the emergence of routine quarantines(from the 1820s onward) helped check the diffusion of all microbes.The importance of elevation as a shield against malaria and yellowfever became common knowledge, as did the efficacy of quinine againstmalaria. Armies tried to use resistant or immune troops when theycould – which as they understood things usually meant black soldiers –as the British did throughout the West Indies from the 1790s,181 asLeclerc did in Haiti, as Bolıvar and Morillo did in Venezuela, and as theU.S. Army did to some extent in the Civil War.182 Santa Anna in hisstruggles also used soldiers accustomed to the tierra caliente, often theAfro-Mexican jarochos. In one extraordinary episode, the French armyrecruited a battalion of mainly Dinka slave soldiers from Darfur, in whatwas then the Egyptian Sudan, to fight in the Veracruz lowlands during

179 In addition to Bollet (2002) and Gillett (1987), see Steiner (1968) on yellowfever, malaria, and the Civil War.

180 Northern soldiers at Vicksburg in 1863 fell ill (with malaria) at high rates, butmany found succor at local convents (Oakes 1998).

181 Buckley (1979). In dire emergencies, blacks had been recruited to armies andmilitias throughout the eighteenth century (Pares 1936:255–7).

182 The U.S. Army tried to use black troops in the most malarial environments(Gillett 1987:277–8).


their near-conquest and partial occupation of Mexico in 1862–1867.Napoleon III explicitly sought troops resistant to yellow fever, whichhad reduced one of his battalions from 1,000 to 118 men. Apparently,most of the Dinka were immune to yellow fever, although they hadtroubles with typhus and tuberculosis.183

Somehow, all these lessons did not sink in among the upper echelonsof the Spanish army. It suffered greatly from both yellow fever andmalaria while trying to restore Santo Domingo to its empire in 1861–1865, while trying to win back some of Mexico during the French inter-vention in 1862, and even more grievously in trying to prevent Cubafrom gaining independence.184

cuba: a ghastly little war

Nineteenth-century Cuba was a fast-growing bastion of colonial cap-italism. The sugar business, which had expanded in the wake of thedestruction in Haiti, prospered decade after decade, deforesting theisland and supporting a very wealthy and worldly elite. Planters seizedon the latest technologies, bringing railroads and telegraphs to Cubabefore they came to Spain. They used steam engines to process sugaron their plantations. By the 1870s, Cuba provided 42 percent of theworld’s sugar. As the slave trade wound down after 1850 (and ended in1867), Cuba attracted immigrants in larger and larger numbers. By the1880s, more than 100,000 Chinese had come to work in the cane fieldsand stayed. Each year, tens of thousands of Spaniards came to Cuba,some as soldiers, some as seasonal laborers (10,000 to 20,000 per year) towork the sugar and tobacco harvests, and some as immigrants expectingto stay. About 8 or 9 percent of the 1.7 million inhabitants of Cubain 1890 had been born in Spain. Counting sojourners, more than halfa million Spaniards had come to Cuba between 1868 and 1894. Thishigh rate of influx kept the yellow fever virus in rapid circulation. From

183 Hill and Hogg (1995, esp. 30–5, 61, 103); Dabbs (1963:226–7); Edwards (2002).A Spanish army withdrew from Veracruz in this campaign on account of yellowfever, ignoring its orders (Moreno Fraginals and Moreno Maso 1993:79).

184 On disease in the Santo Domingo war, Massons (1994, 2:185–8); Moreno Frag-inals and Moreno Maso (1993:83). Spain lost 15,000 men in this war, 93% todisease. The Dominicans once again showed the efficacy of guerilla war whencombined with differential immunity.


Map 7.3. Cuba

1854 onward outbreaks occurred almost every year, especially whenlarge troop movements took place, as in 1868–1878.185

For most of the nineteenth century, Cuban elites had preferred toremain under Spain rather than become independent. Apart from senti-mental ties among those born in Spain or of Spanish parentage, practicalreasons made Cubans want to remain Spanish. The slave trade, whichbrought about 800,000 additional Africans to Cuba between 1790 and1867, also brought what seemed to whites like the Africanization ofCuba. Slave revolts heightened white anxieties. Spain and its garrisonsremained the guarantor of the social order.

But as the slave trade wound down, more and more slaves won theirfreedom (slavery ended in 1886). Immigration from Spain altered Cuba’s

185 Martınez Fortun y Foyo (1952:28–37) lists Cuban epidemics and says during1868–1878 some 11,600 civilians and 20,000 soldiers died of yellow fever.Moreno Fraginals and Moreno Maso (1993:63–4, 81–5, 99–101, 144) say thatin the years 1868–1880 the Spanish army sent about 15,000 men annually toCuba, whereas about 5,000 died from disease each year; slightly more thanhalf of disease deaths (among Spanish soldiers in Cuba, 1868–1880) wereattributed to yellow fever. Guerra (1999:654) has similar data and shows that21–57% of soldiers admitted to military hospitals with yellow fever (1868–1897) died of it. Raw monthly data from thirty-five Spanish military hospitalsappears in “Estado general comparativo de los individuos invalidos y muer-tos de fiebre amarilla . . . 1867–1879,” a manuscript in the National Library ofMedicine (Bethesda, MD). On demography and immigration generally, PalazonFerrando (1998); Amores Carredano (1998:145–8). In the late nineteenth cen-tury, Havana recorded between 500 and 1,000 civilian yellow fever deaths inmost years, mainly among new arrivals (Gorgas 1915:71; Guerra 1999:654).Smallman-Raynor and Cliff (1999) review the disease environment of Cuba inthe 1890s.


complexion: Whereas in 1830 Afro-Cubans accounted for nearly 60 per-cent of the population, by 1870 they comprised about 40 percent, andonly one in four Cubans was a slave. The Cuban elites’ eagerness tohost the Spanish army diminished accordingly. Now Cuban grievancesagainst Spain weighed more heavily in the balance. Spain taxed Cubaheavily and withheld political rights from Cubans that were granted inSpain itself. Additional taxes imposed to pay for the unsuccessful Span-ish war (1861–1865) in the Dominican Republic provided the strawthat broke the camel’s back. A revolution in Spain in 1868 providedthe opportunity. Cubans in the poor and provincial east raised the stan-dard of rebellion in 1868 and soon gathered thousands of slaves andfree blacks. For years, Spain was too weak and distracted to do anythingmuch to counter the Cuban rising. But after (yet another) Bourbonrestoration in 1875, the divisions among the Cubans told. With thehelp of many Cubans, especially from the west of the island, the Span-ish army restored at least the appearance of the former status quo by1878. A cordon sanitaire across the narrow waist of the island confinedthe revolt, known as the Ten Years War, to eastern Cuba, making iteasier to stamp out.

Spain remained poor, committed to costly imperial wars in Morocco,and thus obliged to squeeze Cuba harder than ever. The rise of sugarbeet in Europe, in Spain especially, also cut into Cuba’s sugar exportsand thus its prosperity. The U.S. market for sugar briefly came to therescue, but in the 1890s new tariffs, the emergence of Hawaiian andLouisiana sugar, and an international depression combined to put theCuban economy into crisis. Two particularly damaging hurricanes addedto the misery. Nationalist-minded intellectuals found ever more reasonsto deny Spain’s right to govern Cuba. In 1895, another rebellion brokeout.186

The rebellion arose in the backward eastern part of the island,led by veterans of the Ten Years War, notably the ex-Spanish offi-cer Maximo Gomez (1836–1905) and the Afro-Cuban Antonio Maceo(1845–1896). Born in Santo Domingo, Gomez had fought for Spain inCaribbean wars as a young man, but in 1868 had thrown in with Cubanrevolutionaries and now fought at their head in his early sixties. Maceowas one of many exiled revolutionaries who hurried back to Cuba to jointhe insurrection. His father, a white Venezuelan, had fought in Bolıvar’s

186 On the evolution of Cuban independence, Amores Carredano (1998); Ferrer(1999); Perez (1983, 2001); Tone (2006).


war before moving to Cuba. Both Gomez and Maceo proved themselvesskilled guerilla commanders, and utterly merciless in pursuit of theirgoals. With no more than a few thousand ill-armed, ill-clad, ill-fed menunder their command at any single time, they could ill afford pitchedbattles with the Spanish army; in their two most famous victories theykilled fewer than a hundred Spaniards.187 The rebels had more horsesand greater mobility than the Spanish forces, and could when neces-sary melt away into the general population. But little else stood in theirfavor, so they resorted to a war of ambush, massacre, and the torch. Theyburned the towns and plantations wherever they could, in an effort todestroy Cuba’s economy and its value to Spain. They sought to forcemen to join the rebellion by depriving them of their livelihoods andsustenance. Most who joined were Afro-Cubans, young and unmarried,with little to lose. Perhaps 40,000 men served in the insurgents’ armiesover the course of three years, but no more than a fraction of this totalat any one time. Cubans fought on both sides; more fought for Spainthan for independence.

Militarily the mambises, as they came to be known, posed little riskto the Spanish army, but politically they prevailed. They marched fromeast to west almost the length of the island, burning as they went. Theygoaded the Spaniards into unpopular policies, courted foreign support –especially in the U.S. – and, most of all, used their mobility to avoidSpanish forces except when they found patrols in vulnerable situations.Thus they kept their rebellion alive, like Washington, Toussaint, andBolıvar before them, and emerged victorious because time and the “cli-mate” was on their side.188

In the Spanish army, Gomez and Maceo faced a force composed ofscrawny, conscripted Spanish peasants, undernourished like their ownmen, although much better armed. Almost everyone who could affordto buy his way out of Spanish military service did so. The Spanish armyin the late nineteenth century had plenty of experience crushing strikesand mounting coups. Its doctrines, borrowed from Prussian examples,aimed to prepare it for conventional warfare in Europe, although itfought mainly colonial anti-guerilla wars, mainly in Morocco, but alsoin the Philippines, Santo Domingo, and Cuba.

187 Tone (2006:80, 125), battles of Peralejo, 28 killed, and Mal Tiempo, 65 killed.188 Gomez (1975:273–369) wrote a diary of the war that reveals just how ill-armed

and improvisational the rebellion was.


In Cuba in early 1895, the Spanish army had 13,000 men, soonraised to 100,000, plus 20,000 to 30,000 Cuban irregulars. In the courseof the war, more than 200,000 Spaniards served in Cuba. They werethe poorest – or the keenest – in the Spanish army: Soldiers with alittle money could buy their way out of Cuban duty.189 At first theywere led by General Arsenio Martınez Campo, a political general whohad negotiated the end to the Ten Years War, overthrown a republic inSpain, and overseen a catastrophe in a Moroccan campaign. Instructedto fight “to the last man and the last peseta,” he found the measures heconsidered necessary for success too distasteful to execute and asked tobe recalled in favor of General Valeriano Weyler (1838–1930), soon toearn the sobriquet “the Butcher Weyler.”190

Weyler, whose father was Prussian but a Spanish officer, had a dis-tinguished military career from age sixteen. He was first in his class atthe army staff college, volunteered for Caribbean duty (and surviveda bout with yellow fever) as a young man, and by age twenty-five hadbecome rich by winning the national lottery. A less driven man mighthave retired to his home on the island of Mallorca. However, Weylerfought again in the Caribbean, in civil wars in Spain, and in counter-insurgency warfare in the Philippines, before becoming a senator. Withthe support of a conservative government in Spain, Weyler assumed fullpowers in Cuba in February 1896.

He used those powers fully. Weyler developed a strategy that he andothers had used in the Philippines, and to a small extent in the TenYears War, which came to be known as “reconcentration.” It involvedmoving the rural population into the towns and cities, into camps ontheir edges when necessary, so as to isolate the insurgents from the sur-rounding population and thereby deny their enemy cover, food, horses,and new recruits. Commanders had used versions of this policy againstguerillas for millennia, and would do so many times again, althoughrarely with Weyler’s efficiency. Beginning the spring of 1896, Weyler’sarmy relocated half a million Cubans, almost a third of the population.This had the desired effect of making conditions much more difficultfor the insurgents, who suffered a further blow when Maceo was killedin a skirmish in 1896. But reconcentration backfired politically. About

189 Perez (1983:74). Pascual Martınez (1996) gives the official figures for the Spanisharmy size in Cuba. Slightly higher ones appear in Moreno Fraginals and MorenoMaso (1993:132).

190 Amores Carredano (1998:251–312, esp. 251–3); Beldarraın Chaple (2005:57).


150,000 Cubans (9% of the island’s population) died of disease or starva-tion in the camps and Spanish-held towns, which became a propagandadisaster for Weyler and the Spanish.191 Smallpox, allegedly brought bySpanish conscripts, and yellow fever, to which rural Cubans were intro-duced when dragged to the cities, carried off many thousands. In Spain,the political opposition seized on the inhumanity of Weyler’s policiesto lambaste the government, and in the U.S. the jingoist press andpoliticians, keen to see Cuba become American, trumpeted Weyler’sbrutality and Spain’s unfitness to rule.

But Weyler and Spain had a more serious problem: the murderouscampaigns of A. aegypti. The Spanish army in the 1890s had manydefects but kept reasonably good records, which allow a more preciseaccounting of casualties than for earlier campaigns.192 In the CubanWar of Independence, the Spanish army lost 3,100 men to combat and41,000 to disease (and occasional accidents). Thus, about 91 percentof all military deaths came via microbes. According to official counts,16,329 died of yellow fever, or 36 percent of all military deaths. Theothers were attributed to malaria, typhus, dysentery, and other infec-tions. But journalists claimed Spanish medical authorities systematicallyunder-reported yellow fever deaths and attributed thousands of them toother causes to reduce panic among conscripts and hide their own inef-fectiveness. A recent estimate puts yellow fever deaths in the Spanisharmy above 30,000, or about one sixth of all soldiers sent to Cuba.193

More still – at least 4,000 – died en route home, on vessels known as“cemetery ships.”194 Beyond the death toll, the Spanish soldiers whostayed alive were often sick. One hospital chief estimated that halfof all soldiers entered hospital within two months of setting foot onCuba. In January 1898, when 114,000 Spanish soldiers remained on theisland, 64,000 were too sick to perform duties. In the course of the war,

191 Beldarraın Chaple (2005:65) cites several larger estimates, up to half a million,but Tone (2006:223) has sorted through the evidence most carefully.

192 Official figures for 1896 were printed in Larra y Cerezo (1901). His figures showyellow fever accounted for about 75% of disease deaths in 1896 (p. 26). PascualMartınez (1996:484) summarizes the official data. The ultimate source is theDiario Oficial del Ministerio de la Guerra.

193 Espinosa (2009:71).194 Moreno Fraginals and Moreno Maso (1993:151) say at least 4,000 died on

transport ships bound for Spain. Their inquiry appears more detailed than Perez(1983:75), who gives 3,000.


Spanish soldiers were admitted to military hospitals about 900,000times – several times per man.195

Medical standards remained miserable. Quinine was in short supply,and much of it wasted on yellow fever patients. The hospitals servedas foci of infection in which sick soldiers swapped diseases, sometimesrising from their beds after a bout with yellow fever only to fall victim thenext day to malaria. To prevent ants, roaches, and other crawling verminfrom preying on the sick, hospitals carefully put all four legs of everybed into pots or pans of water. This kept the ants at bay but served tomaximize the A. aegypti population within the hospitals, ensuring rapidtransmission of yellow fever. When hospitals overflowed, yellow fevervictims piled up in the sugar warehouses along the wharves of Havana.One harborside hospital became so notorious for yellow fever that theSpanish closed it.196 Some Spanish officers tried to shield themselvesfrom yellow fever by drinking cold champagne, which could not havehelped the war effort.197 The role of mosquitoes as disease vectors as yethad not become well known, although it would very soon.198

Gomez’ ragtag soldiers had even less in the way of medical care,but they needed less. As (mainly) Afro-Cubans, they probably carriedsome inherited resistance to yellow fever and malaria, and many hadgrown up with and survived both (although rural Cubans might haveavoided yellow fever). They lost about 1,300 men to disease, accordingto official estimates, only 30 percent (as opposed to the Spaniards’ 91%)of military deaths. To some small extent, this derived from the fact theywere in the countryside and not in the urban centers where yellow feverlurked. But the main reason was differential immunity and resistance.The insurgents were almost all immune to yellow fever and resistantto malaria, although malaria still probably accounted for most of theirdisease deaths.199

195 Tone (2006:97–100); Esteban Marfil (2003:176). Tone (2002:284) inadver-tently wrote 9 million hospital admissions. The yellow fever epidemics beganin Oriente and moved westward because Spanish units followed the rebel army(Smallman-Raynor 1999:340–2).

196 Smallman-Raynor and Cliff (1999:342); Espinosa (2009:69).197 Tone (2006:154).198 Esteban Marfil (2000); Esteban Marfil (2003) details the travails of the Span-

ish military medical establishment. See also Massons (1994, 2:164–73); Perez(1983:74–8).

199 Tone (2006:97–100).


The Cuban insurgents fully recognized the ally they had in yellowfever. All Cubans knew that yellow fever attacked newcomers to theisland. All with military experience knew that for decades, Spanisharmy units had routinely suffered heavily from yellow fever, and someexpected it to kill half the newly arrived Spanish troops. The grislyexperience of the Spanish army in Cuba after 1895 was plain for all to see.Maceo and Gomez, like Toussaint (and perhaps Bolıvar) before them,prudently exploited the fact of differential immunity and resistance,avoiding the sort of battle that could lose the revolution at a stroke, andinstead fighting small engagements and letting yellow fever do its worst.In his field diary, Gomez in July 1897 predicted that the “lack of health”among Spanish soldiers, together with financial problems, would forcethe Spanish to withdraw from Cuba.200 He acknowledged his relianceon yellow fever, often saying that his best generals were “June, July, andAugust.” He might have awarded September and October equal rank,and brevetted the modest El Nino of 1897 as colonel.201

Spain could not stamp out a competent guerilla insurgency withnearly a quarter of its army dying from disease and most of the rest ofit sick. Political disenchantment with the Cuban war brought a newgovernment to power in Spain, which recalled Weyler, and began toseek a political solution. Before it got far, in the spring of 1898 the U.S.declared war on Spain.

Various voices in the U.S. had sought to add Cuba to the republicmany times since the time of John Quincy Adams, but in the 1890s theAmerican appetite for overseas expansion was at its height. Althoughthe U.S. remained officially neutral before 1898, Americans had covertlyaided the rebels throughout the war. Then a battleship, the Maine, sentto Havana to safeguard American lives and property, exploded, probablyby accident, killing 266 sailors. That provided reason enough for theU.S. to declare war, attack Spanish forces on land and sea, in Cuba andthe Philippines. The war in Cuba lasted only a few weeks. The U.S. lostsome 332 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 3,000 to disease, manyof whom died after the fighting stopped. Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico,Guam, and the Philippines. The U.S. diplomat, John Hay, famouslycalled it a “splendid little war.”

Cuba became a U.S. dependency until 1902. Thereafter it was nom-inally free, thanks to Gomez, Maceo, and their guerillas, thanks to

200 Gomez (1975:333).201 Espinosa (2009:68–9). For Gomez’ quotation, Souza y Rodrıguez (1936:228–9).


the U.S. intervention, and thanks to yellow fever and malaria. Cubanshave lionized their heroes. Americans venerated theirs, and elected one,Theodore Roosevelt, to the presidency before carving his likeness onMt. Rushmore. There are no monuments to mosquitoes, far and awaythe most lethal foe of the Spanish army in Cuba.

Conclusion

A long chapter deserves a short conclusion. By the 1790s the plantationeconomy filled most of the suitable landscapes of the French and BritishCaribbean, and reached its apogee in St. Domingue. The ecologicaland demographic effects of the plantation system ensured that plentifulinfected mosquitoes would greet almost all newcomers to the region,and those susceptible would likely contract yellow fever and malaria.By the 1890s, the same was true throughout the island of Cuba. Thus,the large expeditionary forces sent from Europe between 1793 and 1898met the same horrible fate as had those under Vernon and Albemarlein earlier times. In Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba, their mission wasthe same as Cornwallis’ in North America – to defeat revolution. LikeCornwallis, they all failed in large part due to the partisan impacts ofmosquito-borne disease.

In the changed political world after the 1770s, differential immu-nity served to support revolutionaries in their struggles. In the cases ofToussaint, Santa Anna, and Gomez, and possibly Bolıvar and others aswell, it seems highly likely that revolutionary strategists recognized theeffects of yellow fever and adjusted their war plans with it in mind – ashad Spanish imperial defense planners in the eighteenth century. Win-field Scott explicitly planned his campaign in Mexico in 1847 aroundyellow fever. For the moment no one yet knew how to fight againstyellow fever, but by the end of the nineteenth century more and morepeople understood how to fight their wars with it.

C H A P T E R E I G H T

Conclusion: Vector and Virus Vanquished,

1880–1914

Both randomness and regularity exist in history, but in variable pro-portions. The settlement, empire-building, warfare, and revolutions ofthe Greater Caribbean involved regular patterns not clear to all par-ticipants, if surely to some. The varying valor and skill of the generalsand admirals, the arc of the cannonballs as affected by the wind – thesemay have been random. But the outbreaks of yellow fever and malariaupon the introduction of thousands of nonimmunes into the regionwere regular events and highly predictable, even if puzzling, to thosefamiliar with the region. These outbreaks were not random except intheir timing, which depended mainly on the timing of new arrivalsof virus-fodder, and in their severity, which depended on many things.Instead, they formed a regular pattern that constrained randomness, andseverely narrowed the range of likely outcomes of the political strug-gles in the Greater Caribbean. The pattern did not quite determinepolitical outcomes because highly unlikely things can always happen –Finns or Maori might somehow have conquered the whole region –but it dramatically raised the probability that the Spanish Empire inthe Americas would stay Spanish until 1800 and that the revolutionsfought between 1776 and 1826, and that of 1895–1898, would succeedmilitarily.

The Argument Recapitulated

Put less philosophically, the aim in these pages has been to convincereaders of the strength of the linkages between ecological and politicalaffairs in general, and in particular of the power of yellow fever and, to

304

CONCLUSION: VECTOR AND VIRUS VANQUISHED, 1880–1914 305

a lesser extent malaria, to shape settlement, empire-building, imperialrivalries, and revolutions in the Greater Caribbean from the 1640sto the 1910s. Before the 1640s, yellow fever played a minimal role,if any, in the Americas. But its virulence, its communicability, andits capacity to confer full immunity on survivors meant that the gulfbetween those susceptible to it and those safe from it acquired greatpolitical and military implications. The same was true of malaria but toa lesser extent because it was less lethal and there are many gradationsof resistance from full to zero.

The Atlantic powers of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century,try as they might, could not take and hold chunks of the Spanish Empirein America. Britain in particular tried time and again, most determinedlyin 1741–1742 and in 1762, and found that the more men it committedto the effort, the more thoroughly yellow fever destroyed its soldiers andsailors. If composed of men born and raised outside of yellow fever zones,an attacking army could not remain intact for more than a couple ofweeks in the Caribbean, especially in the rainy months, and in a span ofeight weeks would almost certainly lose half or more of its manpower.

Despite these discouraging odds, the prospective rewards in theGreater Caribbean moivated many predatory efforts. The notion ofcontrolling the silver and trade of Spanish America dazzled the imag-inations of first buccaneers and then statesmen; the idea of acquiringnew sugar islands whetted appetites almost as keenly. But (apologies toJimmy Cliff) the harder they came, the harder they fell, and the clearerit became to Spanish officials that building fortifications and relying onfevers was their best defense posture. Mosquitoes served as unpaid andunacknowledged auxiliaries in the defense of the Spanish Empire andproved far more deadly than militia or regular army troops.

Yellow fever and malaria later functioned as fifth (and sixth) columnsin the revolutionary wars that began in Atlantic America in the 1770s.The power of pathogens, and differential resistance to them, radicallyimproved the otherwise doubtful military prospects of the ragged legionsof Washington and Greene, Toussaint and Dessalines, Bolıvar, Gomezand Maceo. Cornwallis, LeClerc, Morillo, and Weyler, and the doc-tors who served them, had no answer for yellow fever’s assaults ontheir armies, and insufficient response for malaria’s. Thus, as claimed inthe Introduction, the mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malariaunderpinned the geopolitical status quo in the Greater Caribbean beforethe 1770s, and thereafter undermined it.


Vector and Virus Vanquished

It is interesting to note how these matters affected the early history ofthe United States. Malaria helped win the American Revolution, andyellow fever helped convince Napoleon to sell the heartland of NorthAmerica to Jefferson in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Together withthe Constitution, these are perhaps two of the three foundations ofthe country. The emergence of the U.S. as an imperial power after the1890s also was bound up with yellow fever: The U.S. Army in Cubaafter 1898 played a central role in taming yellow fever, and armedwith that knowledge the American military was able to undertake theconstruction of the Panama Canal. These are oft-told tales, and I shallretell them only briefly. They bring down the curtain on a 250-year longera in which pathogens and people were co-regent over human affairsin the Greater Caribbean.

cuba and yellow fever control, 1898–1900

When the U.S. Army began its occupation of Cuba in 1898, its generalsand doctors recognized that yellow fever posed a stern challenge. Theyhad paid close attention to the Spanish army’s debacle. By June 1900,the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission, headed by Dr. Walter Reed,had opened shop. Reed had earned an M.D. from the University ofVirginia at age seventeen and since the 1870s had been an army doctormainly in the West. He attended to Geronimo as well as to many aU.S. soldier.1 When sent to Havana, Reed and his associates alreadysuspected the Aedes aegypti. In the course of the nineteenth century,several medical authors had suggested diseases might be transmittedby mosquitoes. A Cuban doctor, Carlos Juan Finlay (1833–1915), amultilingual polymath of Franco-Scottish parentage educated in Franceand Philadelphia, had even fingered the A. aegpyti as the likeliest yel-low fever vector in 1881–1882.2 Finlay conducted experiments that he

1 Reed’s biography appears in Delaporte (1991), Bean (1982), and on the Uni-versity of Virginia’s Philip S. Hensch Walter Reed Fever Collection web-site that includes many original documents: http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu/reed/story.html.

2 Lopez Sanchez (2007) for a treatment of Finlay; more briefly, Chaves-Carballo(2005). I have come across one tantalizing piece of evidence that there may


himself regarded as inconclusive, and his views attracted little support.The idea that insects might carry diseases was still a strange one. How-ever, in the early 1890s ticks were implicated as disease vectors, and in1897 a British military doctor had decisively shown that mosquitoes car-ried malaria. Thanks to the microbiological work of Louis Pasteur andRobert Koch, among others, medical research in general was in tumultand old theories more vulnerable than usual. The reigning theories aboutyellow fever involved filth, miasmas, and mysterious particles calledfomites.

Reed’s group first had to discredit the filth and fomites view favored bytheir boss, the U.S. Surgeon General, before conducting the experimentsthat clearly incriminated A. aegypti. Those experiments cost the livesof a few of the volunteers who allowed themselves to be bitten byinfected mosquitoes. What Reed’s commission did that Finlay had notwas to allow for the fact that humans are infective for only about threedays, early on, and that mosquitoes are infective only a week or soafter they have ingested the virus. Once they had that figured out, theycould infect people reliably via A. aegypti. They won over the U.S.Army’s military governor of Cuba, General Leonard Wood, who hada medical education and firmly supported the commission against itsbureaucratic enemies. Their work attracted ridicule, for example fromThe Washington Post (November 2, 1900), which opined that: “Of all thesilly and nonsensical rigamarole of yellow fever that has yet found its wayinto print – and there has been enough of it to build a fleet – the silliestbeyond compare is to be found in the arguments and theories generatedby a mosquito hypothesis.”3 But with the support of key figures in theArmy, the Commission completed its proof and set about controllingA. aegypti in Cuba.

That work fell to another army doctor, William Gorgas (1854–1920).A skeptic won over by Reed’s experiments,4 Gorgas was in outlook atypical American sanitarian of the late nineteenth century. He believedin systematic science, in its application as a public duty, and in the spe-cial charge of the “white man” (as he often put it) to bring health to

have been a popular belief in mosquitoes as vectors: In the 1850s a British doctornoted, with amusement, that his servant believed mosquitoes carried malaria(White 1859:3).

3 Quoted in Oldstone (1998:64–5).4 Gorgas (1915:72–109) prints some of their correspondence.


the tropics.5 He looked forward to the day when white Americans couldlive safely in the tropics and claim them for progress and prosperity.Indeed, he maintained in 1903 that the purpose of taking Cuba was torid it of yellow fever.6 His father, Josiah Gorgas, had seen Americansoldiers die “by the hundred of yellow fever” in Veracruz in 1847.7 Gor-gas the younger had survived a bout of it in Texas as a young man andmade the conquest of yellow fever his life’s ambition. First in Havanaand then throughout urban Cuba, Gorgas and his anti-mosquito brigadesattacked A. aegypti breeding sites, covering rain barrels, cisterns, and soforth. They put up screens and nets to keep mosquitoes from mov-ing freely. The fussy breeding habits of the mosquito and its lim-ited flying range made it the easiest to control of any major diseasevector. The military authority accorded Gorgas facilitated the intru-sive measures needed for mosquito control. By 1902, yellow feverhad disappeared entirely from Havana, perhaps for the first time since1647.8

panama

Gorgas next turned his talents to Panama, which had recently burnishedits reputation as a graveyard for Europeans thanks to an ill-starred Frenchattempt to build a trans-isthmian canal. The Spanish conquistadorBalboa had convinced his king of the virtues of a Panama canal andmany afterwards, including the irrepressible William Paterson and theubiquitous Humboldt, had entertained the same thought. In the 1850s,a railroad was built across the isthmus at the cost of 5,000–10,000 liveslost to disease. The railroad carried very heavy traffic but, of course,required expensive transshipment. A canal would not.

5 For example, Gorgas (1915:284–92).6 Address Delivered to the D.C. Medical Association, Gorgas Papers, Library of

Congress.7 Vandiver (1947:382). Josiah Gorgas may have exaggerated; officially U.S. Army

losses to yellow fever on Scott’s Mexican campaign totaled only 109. Gillett(1987:116–17).

8 For Gorgas’ biography: Gorgas (1915); Gorgas and Hendrick (1924); Litsios(2001). On yellow fever eradication in Cuba: Gillett (1995); Oldstone (1998:45–66); Chaves-Carballo (2005); Pierce and Writer (2005); and the Universityof Virginia’s Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection website:http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu/reed/story.html.


The French effort took shape in the 1880s, organized by anotherirrepressible impresario, the moving spirit behind the Suez Canal, Fer-dinand de Lesseps (1805–1894).9 A career diplomat of distinguishedancestry, de Lesseps among other things hoped to restore France toits rightful position, much damaged by the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Another engineering triumph and a prof-itable canal would answer nicely. In 1879, he bribed enough deputies towin French government support for a sea-level canal through Panama,for which purpose he courted investors and formed a company. Dig-ging began in 1882. Workers came from a dozen European countries,but mainly from the West Indies, especially Jamaica. An October 1884company count indicated 19,000 employees, of whom 85 percent wereblack West Indians.10 The labor force averaged about 10,000, at firstworking mainly with picks and shovels rather than steam machinery.Putting thousands of fresh arrivals, especially Europeans, within reachof the mosquitoes of Panama provoked epidemics of yellow fever andmalaria. The ports, much expanded for the canal effort, suited A. aegyptiwell, as did the new-built camps and barracks with their water barrelsand cisterns. Anopheles albimanus flourished in the new landscapes tornup by diggers: millions of new puddles perfect for mosquito eggs, and noway for fish to get at them.11

The consequences of sending thousands of men (and not a few womenand children) within range of vector mosquitoes were predictably dis-mal. Estimates of the total death toll range from 5,000 to 23,000. Gorgasput the figure at 22,189, and calculated the annual death rate amongemployees of the French company at 24 percent.12 Contingents of Euro-pean laborers died fastest, about one-third of them in all. But many ofAfrican descent died too, of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and dysenteryas well as yellow fever and malaria.13 French authorities tried to hide

9 Diesbach (1998) for a biography.10 Heimermann (1996:109).11 Sutter (2007) touches on the improvement of the Canal Zone from the An.

albimanus point of view.12 Gorgas (1915:149, 157). Bear in mind Gorgas may have felt a temptation to

make the French look bad in comparison to his own record.13 No figures exist for mortality among the West Indians, let alone figures on

deaths from specific diseases. The infrequency of yellow fever in nineteenth-century Jamaica could have reduced the resistance in that population to thevirus, although if a genetic shield against yellow fever exists among people ofWest African descent, many Jamaicans should have been immune.


the truth, but as it came clear many French engineers refused to goto Panama. One who did go and took over the management of dailyoperations was Jules Dingler, who maintained upon arrival that onlydrunks and dissipated men suffered from yellow fever.14 To show whatclean living could do, Dingler brought his family to Panama. His teenagedaughter died of yellow fever within three weeks and her elder brothernot long after, followed by Dingler’s wife.

As the corpses piled up, morale plummeted. Thousands left for fear ofan early grave, like the painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), who cameto Panama to escape the suffocating constraints of French society in1887. He found long days of spadework under the hot sun lacked charm,and at night was “devoured by mosquitoes.”15 However, he was amongthe lucky ones, returning to France before dying in Polynesia. Anotherlucky survivor was Maximo Gomez, who spent part of his exile fromCuba supervising canal laborers in Panama.

In 1885, the death toll peaked and investors panicked. Progress onthe ground in Panama was slow, partly because of the shortage of healthybodies but partly because of mudslides, floods, and the physical difficul-ties of digging a sea-level canal through the river-crossed rugged terrainof the isthmus. The French hospitals, like those of the Spanish army inCuba, put the legs of beds into pots or cans of water to prevent crawlinginsects from reaching the sick, creating A. aegypti breeding sites withintheir wards. They organized patients by nationality and race, followingprevailing segregationist notions, so that those most vulnerable to yel-low fever and malaria were kept close together and easily infected oneanother. Those least susceptible, such as the Jamaicans and Guyanese,could provide no herd immunity if kept to themselves in the hospitals.As Gorgas later noted, if the French had been trying to create epidemicsin their hospitals, they could not have done better. Digging stopped withabout 40 percent of the work done when the company went bankruptin 1889.16

The Americans would finish what the French began. Determinedto show the qualities of American enterprise and engineering and to

14 McCullough (1977:154).15 McCullough (1977:174).16 The French story is told in McCullough (1977:147–203); Parker (2007:49–195);

Heimermann (1996:80–149); Gorgas (1915:138ff). On West Indian labor, Jos(2004).


improve its strategic position, the U.S. encouraged a revolution thatseparated Panama from Colombia, acquired title to a trans-isthmianstrip, and bought out the French company in 1903 before successfullybuilding a canal between 1904 and 1914. Some 75,000 men worked onthe project, as many as 40,000 at once. Fresh off his success in Cuba,Gorgas became chief sanitary officer.

Gorgas faced three main obstacles in Panama. One was the U.S.Army hierarchy, initially reluctant to believe in the value of expensiveefforts to eradicate mosquitoes – despite the record of success in Cuba.At one point President Roosevelt had to intervene to support Gorgas,who would otherwise have been relieved of his duties. Second werePanamanians who objected to house-to-house searches, fumigation, andthe quarantining of individuals in an effort that made little sense tothem and seemed (because it was) intended to safeguard the healthof foreigners. Gorgas tried diligently to use a light hand and recruitedimportant allies among Panamanians. Third was the scale of the problemof mosquitoes in the Canal Zone. There were two small cities and manymiles of forestland, much of it torn up during the 1880s and full ofpuddles and swamps. As had the French construction, the Americaneffort improved the landscape for An. albimanus and at first raised therisk of malaria.

But Gorgas was nothing if not determined. He prevailed over bureau-cratic and diplomatic challenges, and in the cities used similar methodsto those worked out in Cuba to eliminate A. aegypti breeding sites, tokeep mosquitoes away from people where possible, and to keep infectedpeople away from mosquitoes at all costs, sequestering them behindscreens in “fever cages.” He even insisted on periodically changing theholy water in Panama’s cathedral when mosquito larvae were found inthe baptismal font. By 1906, these measures had succeeded, and yel-low fever disappeared from the Canal Zone. Gorgas also took on An.albimanus, the main malaria vector. This mosquito posed a vexing chal-lenge because it had countless breeding sites in rural areas. Malaria wasmore difficult to control than yellow fever because people who havelived through the disease and show no symptoms can serve as carriers.No thorough eradication was possible, but Gorgas’ mosquito squads suc-ceeded in containing An. albimanus populations sufficiently that malariarates declined by about 90 percent. They drained puddles and ponds, cutdown grass and bush, used sprays and oil in efforts to attack the vector.They used hospitals and quinine against the plasmodia. Officially, 5,609


died of disease and injury from 1904 through 1914. The Canal Zone in1905 had a death rate three times higher than that of the continentalU.S. By 1914, it had a death rate half that in the U.S.17

The methods used in Cuba and Panama soon spread. U.S. cities alongthe Gulf Coast experienced their last yellow fever epidemic in 1905, inwhich the army’s techniques proved their worth. U.S. health officers,doctors, and foundations took the crusade to Ecuador and Peru, andthen to Brazil in the 1920s. Local health officials translated techniquesinto new contexts and – not without some resistance – matched theU.S. Army’s success. Mosquito control, especially of A. aegypti, workedwonders. Yellow fever by 1930 had become very rare. Then in the 1930s,researchers developed a safe, highly effective yellow fever vaccine. Withmosquito control and vaccination programs, yellow fever in the Amer-icas soon was confined to the sylvan cycle and ceased to matter muchin human affairs. It lost all political significance after 1914, and by 1950was a trivial public health problem.18

Disease and Power

Gorgas thought the sanitation work in Panama would ultimately provemore important than the Canal itself because it would pave the wayfor white settlement of the tropics.19 He was wrong about the whitesettlement, but right about the relative importance of disease control

17 A forthcoming book by Paul Sutter will explore the connections among health,environment, ideologies, and power in the making of the Panama Canal. Theconventional story is told briefly in Ziperman (1973), Christie (1978), and Litsios(2001), as well as at length in McCullough (1977) and Parker (2007). Wheninterpreting the death rate data, it is well to remember the Canal Zone had apopulation mainly of young adults rather than a normal age distribution, andsome sick people left and died elsewhere. Moreover, the canal laborers – thebulk of the population – came from all over, but a large proportion hailed fromJamaica (about 12,200), Barbados (9,700), Panama (6,800), Martinique (1,800),and elsewhere in the Caribbean, and thus would likely have carried resistance ifnot immunity to malaria and yellow fever. Some 9,747 came from the U.S., withNew York and Pennsylvania contributing more than 1,000 each. Canal Zonecensus data appear in Greene (2009:396–9).

18 Cueto (1997); Farley (2004:88–106); on Brazil, where yellow fever control isespecially well studied, Cooper (1975); Stepan (1976); Franco (1976:73–199);Chalhoub (1996); Benchimol (1999; 2001); Britto and Cardoso (1973); Lowy(2001).

19 Gorgas (1915:291–2).


and the Canal. Effective control of malaria and yellow fever changedthe balance of power in the Americas and in the world.

The marginalization of yellow fever and containment of malaria inthe Americas are often presented as triumphal stories of human (andsometimes more specifically as European and American) conquests ofterrible diseases. They are also sometimes presented as part of European,and especially American imperialism. Without wishing to dispute eitherviewpoint, I offer here a slightly different outlook.

Before the sanitation triumphs of Cuba and Panama, yellow feverand malaria carried political significance because of differential resis-tance and immunity, as this book has sought to show. With the inau-guration of a golden age of health, sometimes called a “sanitation rev-olution” around 1885–1920, differential protection against infectiousdisease increasingly correlated with the wealth of the society in whichone lived, rather than with one’s personal prior disease experience andthat of one’s ancestors. Through the provision of clean water, vaccina-tion programs, and eventually effective drug treatments, most infectiousdiseases became either avoidable or treatable – if one lived in the rightsocieties. The source of differential vulnerability changed.

In this new world of effective vaccines and drugs, the richer andbetter organized societies and states could safeguard their populations’health at home, and in many cases even abroad. This capacity tendedto make these fortunate societies richer and more powerful still. Thanksto their populations’ good health, a positive feedback loop took shapethat tended to widen the gulf between rich and poor societies in the lastcentury. In effect, the rich got healthier and the healthy got richer (andmore powerful).

This differentiation may prove just a passing phase. Long ago, whencontrol of fire provided a great advantage to some human (or hominid)groups over others, those without fire either got it or disappeared. Soafter a while, all human groups had control of fire, and it no longerserved to differentiate among them. It may be that the same pattern willplay out with respect to effective disease control: For the past centuryor more, some societies have had it and others not, but eventually allwill have it. There is much evidence for this, as almost every societynow has far lower death rates from infectious disease than seventy or ahundred years ago.

But it is also possible that the golden age of health will never becomeuniversal, and indeed may fade away. Vectors and viruses evolve.Many Anopheles mosquitoes developed resistance to DDT and other


insecticides, while some malarial plasmodia evolved resistance to allthe various drugs used against them. Malaria, once thought to be a dis-ease that public health efforts could drive to extinction, is mountingcomebacks in many parts of the world. Unfamiliar viruses still lurk incorners of the biosphere and could break loose, as have HIV, Marburg,and Ebola in recent decades.

Even a virus as familiar as yellow fever could make a comeback.Vaccination regimes have lapsed since the 1970s because yellow feverbecame such a minimal risk that for some people, and for some publichealth programs, the cost no longer seemed justifiable. Mosquito controlprograms lapsed as well, for the same reasons. Meanwhile, the warmerclimate since 1980 has favored the geographic spread of A. aegypti bothin the Americas and in Africa. The resurgence of A. aegypti is partof the reason for recent dengue epidemics. Happily, it took a lot – aconcatenation of contingencies – for yellow fever to become a terrorin the Americas in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and earlytwentieth centuries, and it would take more still today. Yellow feverprobably will break out more often and more widely in the decadesahead. But its career as a governing factor in human history, mercifully,has come to a close.

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Index

Abarca, Silvestre, 141, 187n161Abercromby, Gen. Sir Ralph, 246Acadians

at Kourou, 128Aedes aegypti, 32, 39, 147, 149, 190,

306–308, 312at Cartagena, 146, 151, 157in Cuba, 300, 301drought and, 59, 181ecology and habits of, 40–44habitat for at Darien, 121at Havana, 175–176, 177in New Orleans, 293in Panama, 310in St. Domingue, 240–241ships and, 42, 43, 167slaving voyages and, 64, 151sugar plantations and, 47–52in Surinam, 196, 198

Africa (see also: Angola, Gambia)Aedes aegypti in, 40home of yellow fever virus, 32–33, 45sylvan yellow fever in, 47

Africans (see also: slaves and slavery)in Cuba, 172, 176, 296–297disease resistance of, 44–46, 53–54,

67–68, 189–190, 288n160as healers in Caribbean, 81–86in New Granada, 272in St. Domingue, 237–238as soldiers, 266, 294–295

Albemarle, George Keppel Earl of, 171, 178,181, 183, 184, 185, 187

American Revolution, War of, 20Germans (Hessians) in, 200, 214, 223

Loyalists in, 202, 203, 210, 213, 214, 217in Nicaragua, 189–191smallpox in, 198, 200–201South Carolina campaigns of, 198–203,

209–18Yorktown campaign of, 220–32

Amerindians, 21, 22–3at Darien, 111–112, 115disease experience of, 16in Florida, 290at Kourou, 124in Nicaragua, 189in South Carolina, 203

Amsterdam, 24Anglo-Dutch wars, 19, 95Angola, 17, 45, 96, 237

yellow fever in 97n15, 239n9Anopheles mosquitoes

An. albimanus, 55–56in Jamaica, 102in Venezuelan llanos, 272in Panama, 120, 309, 311preference for biting women of, 36n64

An. aquasalis, 55An. arabiensis, 205n29An. darlingi, 55, 56, 196, 272An. gambiae, 54, 55An. quadrimaculatus, 55

in South Carolina, 204–207, 215n61drought and, 60drug-resistant, 313–314ecology and habits of, 54–57livestock and, 56–57

armies, see British Army, ContinentalArmy, French Army, etc.

363

364 INDEX

Atlantic geopolitics, 15–21, 91, 126–127,144

Atkins, Josiah, 230

Bajon, Bertrand, 133, 134n157Barbados

ecological change on, 27–29malaria absent on, 28–29monkeys on, 49mosquitoes on, 56population of, 25yellow fever on, 64

Belem, yellow fever at, 37Bermuda, yellow fever on, 37Blanchard, Claude, 231Bolıvar, Simon, 3, 235n1, 276, 278–279,

282–283Haitians and, 286march over the Andes of, 281–282strategy of, 285–287youth and education of, 275

Boliviayellow fever in 40, 47

Borland, Francis, 111, 122Bonaparte, Joseph, 269Bonaparte, Josephine, 256Bonaparte, Napoleon, 251, 252, 256, 258,

259, 267, 268Bonaparte, Pauline, 251, 252, 257Bourgeois, Nicolas, 82Boves, Jose Tomas, 274–275, 276Boyaca, Battle of, 282Brazil, 17, 18

dengue fever in, 39Dutch in, 92–97, 105malaria among Dutch in, 95sugar in, 23–4yellow fever in, 40, 65, 73

British (English) Armyassault on Havana (1762), 171,

178–183assault on Jamaica (1655), 99–101at Cartagena, 154–155, 158–162doctors in, 212at Guantanamo, 165–166health of in War of American Revolution,

201–202, 211–216, 219, 220–221,222–224, 226–227, 231, 233

mortality of in European campaigns of1740s, 168

mortality of at Havana, 184–186

mortality of in 1741–1742 West Indiescampaigns, 166–167

mortality of in 1790s West Indiescampaigns, 247–248

in St. Domingue, 244–248in South Carolina, 209–219at Yorktown, 219–221, 222–223,

223–227British Empire

in the 17th century, 18–19Buenos Aires (or River Plate), 43, 267, 284Burke, Edmund, 248

Camden, Battle of, 214Cayenne, 125, 126, 133Cartagena, 17

ecology at, 149–152fortifications at, 155–156French campaign against (1697),

145–147mosquitoes at, 157n58population of, 149, 151siege of (1741), 149–164, 188siege of (1815), 277–278Spanish imperial defense and, 138,

139–140yellow fever at, 65, 146, 151–152,

161–164Chagres, 154Chanvalon, Jean-Baptiste Thibault de,

130–132, 134Charles II, King of England, 72–3Charleston (South Carolina), 43, 203, 209,

213, 234Choiseul, Etienne-Francois Duc de,

126–129, 134, 135Christophe, Gen. Henri, 253, 254, 257, 262cinchona tree or bark, 74–75, 185, 212, 216,

223, 233, 293n177, 293n178 (seealso: quinine)

Clark, James, 77Clinton, Sir Henry, 203, 209, 210, 220–221,

223, 224Colt, Sir Henry, 27Columbian Exchange, 23, 54Continental Army, 191

health of, 200–201, 217–218, 227–231Cornwallis, Maj. Gen. Charles, 209–210,

212–227, 231–234Cornwallis, Cuba, 84Cowpens, Battle of, 216

INDEX 365

Cromwell, Oliver, 97, 100, 101Cuba

deforestation on, 30, 295immigrants to, 295independence in, 295–303population of, 25, 295–297slave trade to, 296sugar plantations on, 170, 295War of Independence (1895–1898),

297–303yellow fever on, 64, 295–296, 300–303

Dancer, Thomas, 75, 189, 190Darien colony

ecology at, 110–11Scots in, 105–123disease in, 119–122

deforestationon Barbados, 27Caribbean 23, 27, 28n35, 29–30on Cuba, 30mosquitoes and, 48, 55

de Grasse, Adm, F. J. P., 220, 221–222de Lesseps, Ferdinand, 309dengue fever, 32, 34n54, 39–40, 46n90, 133,

288n161Descourtilz, M.E., 241, 254n48Desnoux, Carlos, 159Dessalines, Gen. Jean-Jacques, 253, 254,

255, 257, 258, 261differential immunity (to yellow fever), 4–5,

46, 60, 197–198, 261–262, 280, 285,294, 295n184, 301–302

differential resistance (to malaria), 4–5,231–233, 285, 294, 301–302

Dingler, Jules, 310Dinka soldiers, 294–295disease (see also yellow fever, malaria,

smallpox, dysentery, dengue), 32fear of 65–67, 168fortification and, 138–144nonchalance toward on part of high

command, 167–168power and, 312–314warfare in general and, 9–10

doctors, 68–81, 212, 292role in yellow fever research of, 306–308

droughtin Havana (1762), 180–181mosquito ecology and, 41, 59–60, 122in St. Domingue, 241

Dublin, 43Dundas, Henry, 243, 245, 246Dutch empire (see also: Brazil, Dutch in)

in the 17th century, 18in Surinam, 195–198

Dutch West India Company, 24, 92, 95, 96dysentery

at Cartagena, 161in Cuba, 300in Jamaica, 102, 104at Kourou, 133in New Granada, 285in Panama, 309among Scots en route to or in Panama,

110, 120at Yorktown, 223, 230

ecology (see also: deforestation, soil erosion)on Barbados, 27–29Caribbean, 22–32at Cartagena, 151–152creole, 23, 26–32at Darien, 110–111in French Guyana (Kourou), 124–125at Havana, 175–176impact on history, 6–8on Martinique, 29on Montserrat, 29in New Granada, 271–274of St. Domingue, 236–237in South Carolina, 203–208sugar plantations and, 47–52yellow fever and, 32–40, 47–52at Yorktown, 220–221

ENSO (El Nino), 59–60, 64, 103, 147, 148,181, 264, 284, 302

epidemicsand warfare in general, 8–11of yellow fever in 17th century, 64–68,

147–148of yellow fever in 1790s, 265–266

Eslava, Viceroy Sebastian de, 155, 156, 157,159, 164

Ewald, Capt. Johan, 227

Ferdinand VII (of Spain), 268, 269, 270,282

Ferreira da Rosa, Joao, 75, 76n44Finlay, Carlos Juan, 306–307Florida, Second Seminole War in, 290Fort San Juan (see: Nicaragaua)

366 INDEX

fortification, 138–144at Cartagena, 155–156at Havana, 173–174

Franklin, Benjamin, 186French Army

assault on St. Domingue, 251–252disease and mortality among in St.

Domingue, 255–259in Mexico, 294–295

French empire (see also: St. Domingue,Kourou)

in the 17th century, 17–18fuelwood, 24, 28n31

on Barbados, 27–28on Cuba, 27n25, 30

Gage, Thomas, 31, 98, 99, 101Galvez, Jose de, 141Gambia

Aedes aegypti in, 51n99yellow fever in, 38n69

Gates, Gen. Horatio, 210, 214Gauguin, Paul, 310Germain, Lord George, 213Gilbert, Nicolas Pierre, 241God, as explanation for epidemics, 86–87,

189Gomez, Maximo, 297–298, 302Gorgas, William, 307–309, 311–312Gorham, Maj. Joseph, 184Grant, Ulysses, S., 291Greene, Gen. Nathanael, 217, 218Guadeloupe, 126, 169

slavery reinstated in, 256yellow fever in, 64, 248

Guanabacoa, 179, 181Guantanamo, British attack on (1741), see:

Santiago de CubaGuilford Courthouse, Battle of, 216Guyana, (see also: Kourou)

seventeenth-century pestilence in,106n44

Haiti and Haitian Revolution, see St.Domingue

Havana, 17, 31ecology of, 175–176fortifications at, 174–174, 179, 187population of, 172siege of (1762), 169–188sugar at, 170

Spanish imperial defense and, 139, 140,169

yellow fever in 51, 64n3, 175–178,181–186, 265, 308

healers, Afro-Caribbean, 81–86herd immunity, 44, 57, 61, 143, 288

at Cartagena, 152, 164in Panama, 310in St. Domingue, 241–242in Venezuela, 284

Heyn, Piet, 92Hispaniola (see also St. Domingue), 17

English attack on, 99Hosier, Vice-Admiral Francis, 1–2, 148Howard, Lt. Thomas Phipps, 84, 246–247Humboldt, Alexander von, 71, 271Hunter, John, 36n61, 189

immigration to Caribbean, 61–62, 287–288imperial rivalries, 15–21

Jackson, Robert, 66, 68, 76, 81, 84, 216,223

JamaicaEnglish conquest of, 97–105health on, 81, 202, 265, 284population of, 25slave trade role of, 151source of labor for Panama Canal, 309turtles on, 31Vernon at, 154, 166

James, Bartholomew, 227, 248n32Jefferson, Thomas, 70, 208Jesuit bark, see: quinineJesuits, 74

at Kourou, 126Joanna, 83Johnson, Samuel, 178, 186Juan, Capt. Jorge, 65, 151

Kemble, Stephen, 190King’s Mountain, Battle of, 215Kourou

ecology and geography of, 124–126disease at, 131–134French at, 123–135population of, 124

Labat, Jean Baptiste, 31, 83Lafayette, Marie-Joseph Y. R. G du Motier,

Marquis de, 220, 223, 228, 230, 231

INDEX 367

Lamb, Sgt. Roger, 225n91, 227Leclerc, Gen. Charles V.E., 251–252, 256,

257, 261Lee, Henry, 227Lewis, Matthew, 36n61Lezo y Olavarrieta, Admiral Blas, 155, 156,

157, 159, 164Ligon, Richard, 27, 31, 64Lind, James, 35, 36n61, 76Lining, John, 67Little Ice Age, 58, 122Llaneros (of Venezuela), 272–273, 274–275,

276, 279, 281medical practices of 85

llanos (of Venezuela), 271–272, 279–280,285

Long, Edward, 69, 80, 83, 103, 104Louisbourg, 140, 169Louisiana, 17, 126, 186Louverture, Toussaint, 3, 249–254, 258,

260–265capture and death of, 254exploitation of yellow fever, 253–254,

260–262as guerilla commander, 249–250, 253medical background of, 249

MacDowall, Patrick, 119–120Maceo, Antonio, 297–298, 302

killed, 299Madeira, 23malaria, 40

absent in Barbados, 28–29awareness of in South Carolina, 208ecology of in Caribbean, 52–57, 61–62in Europe, 201immigration to Caribbean and, 61, 288livestock and, 56–57

on Jamaica, 102–103in South Carolina, 206in St. Domingue, 260in Venezuelan llanos (or Venezuela

generally), 273, 281in New Granada, 272, 280, 285in Nicaragaua, 189–190in Panama, 311–312resistance to, 53–54, 71–72rice and, 57in St. Domingue, 240, 260slave trade and, 54in South Carolina, 207–209, 212–219

susceptibility to, 67–68, 71–72symptoms of, 52–53in U.S. Civil War, 293–294at Yorktown, 223–224, 226–232

maroons, 21, 30, 100in Surinam, 195–198

Martinique, 126, 131ecological change on, 29turtles on, 31yellow fever among British navy at,

248n32Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, Jan de, 94–96medicine and medical ideas, 63–87

Afro-creole, 81–86European, 68–81

folk remedies, 77, 212mercury as a cure, 76–77venesection, 74–74quarantine, 79, 293

preventive medicine, 78–81race and, 67–68in Spanish army, 283–284, 301

Mexican-American War (1846–1848),290–292

Mexico (see also: Veracruz)French occupation of (1862–1867),

294–295yellow fever in, 38, 289–292, 294–295

militia, 138at Cartagena, 156–157disease resistance and, 143–144at Havana, 174, 182in Jamaica, 100in Mexico, 142–143in New Granada, 268, 274in Panama, 117in St. Domingue, 238, 242at Santiago de Cuba, 165in South Carolina, 210, 213, 214, 218at Yorktown, 222

monkeys, 28at Cartagena, 149, 152at Darien, 111, 115, 121at Havana, 176at Kourou, 125in St. Domingue, 241yellow fever and, 47, 49–50, 65

Montebelo, Marquis de, 73, 80Montserrat, ecological change on, 29Moore, Sir John, 80, 265Morgan, Henry, 107, 108

368 INDEX

Morillo, Gen. Pablo, 269–270, 278–283,285–286

army of, 270, 276, 281attitude towards blacks, 281strategic problem of, 279–281

mosquito control, 306–308, 311–312, 314mosquito determinism, 6–7mosquitoes, see: Aedes aegypti and

Anopheles

Napoleon, see: Bonaparte, NapoleonNapoleonic Wars, 20, 259 (see also: St.

Domingue)navies

British, 18yellow fever and, 144–145, 185at Yorktown, 222

French, 35n59, 221–222disease mortality in, 78n54hospitals of, 78Spanish, 138, 174–175, 183, 268yellow fever and, 38n74

Nelson, Horatio, 84, 189, 190New Granada, Viceroyalty of, 267–287

disease environment of, 273–274economy, 271malaria in, 280–281, 285population, 270–271society, 267–268, 270–271yellow fever in, 273–274, 277, 280–281,

284–285New Orleans, 267

quarantine of in U.S. Civil War, 293yellow fever in, 265, 293

Nevill, Adm. John, 147Nicaragua

British campaign in (1780), 189–191Nine Years War, 19, 144Nott, Josiah, 289

O’Leary, Daniel, 277

Panama, 146, 166, 308–312Canal in, 308–312French canal-building efforts in, 309–310Scots in, 105–123yellow fever in 309–312

Paris, Peace of (1763), 126, 186Paterson, William, 107–109, 110, 115, 116,

117, 119Penn, Adm. William, 99, 104

Pernambuco, Dutch in, 92–97, 105Peru

yellow fever in, 38, 40Philadelphia

yellow fever in, 38, 265Pinckard, George, 68, 75, 83Pitt, William (the Elder), 169, 170Pitt, William (the Younger), 243, 244,

245–246plantation complex, 23–4plantations

in French Guyana, 125fuelwood on, 24at Havana, 170malaria and, 55–57rice, 55, 57, 196, 204–206, 208in St. Domingue, 237in South Carolina, 204–206sugar, 23–6, 47–52, 55–57in Surinam, 195–196yellow fever and, 47–52

Pocock, Vice-Admiral George, 171, 178,181, 185, 187

Pointis, Jean Bernard Louis Desjeans Baronde, 146–147, 158

populationBarbados, 25Caribbean, 25–6Cartagena, 149, 151Cuba, 25Darien isthmus, 112Havana, 172Jamaica, 25, 99Kourou, 124, 126Pernambuco, 93St. Domingue, 25, 237–238St. Lucia, 25Santiago de Cuba, 165Scotland, 107n47South Carolina, 206

Porcell, Diego, 71, 80Port-au-Prince, 245Portobelo (see also: Panama), 17, 113, 139,

151, 154Portuguese empire (see also: Brazil)

in the 17th century, 17Prado Mayera Portocarrero y Luna, Gov.

Juan, 174, 182, 183, 187Prefontaine, Antoine Bruletout, 127–128,

130, 132, 134, 135Putnam, Israel, 184

INDEX 369

Quacy, Graman, 82quarantine, see under: medicine and medical

ideasQuebec, 43quinine, 63, 74–76, 290, 293, 294, 301, 311

Redfield, Levi, 184Reed, Walter, 306–307Richshoffer, Amrosij, 95, 96Rigaud, Andre, 250Rochambeau, D.-M.-J, Comte de, 257–258Rochambeau, J.-B. D. de Vimeur, Comte de,

222, 223, 224, 228, 229Roderick Random, see Smollett, TobiasRodrıguez Arguelles, Anacleto, 76Roosevelt, Theodore, 118n96, 303, 311Royal Navy (see navies, British)

St. Domingue, 17, 126, 228, 236–267British occupation of, 244–248disease environment in, 238–242ecology of, 236–237malaria in, 240, 260mosquitoes in, 241, 260population, 25, 237–238slave uprising in, 242–244, 249–251Poles in, 259, 263Swiss in, 259yellow fever in, 65, 240–242, 244–248,

253–260St. Kitts, 91, 144St. Lucia, 25, 80, 104, 202St. Nazaire, yellow fever epidemic at, 37Santa Anna, Gen. Antonio Lopez de,

289–290, 291Santiago de Cuba

British attack on (1741), 164–166population of, 165yellow fever at, 166–167

Sao Tome, 23, 96Scotland, 18n7

Darien expedition of, 105–123Jacobite rising (1745), 168seventeenth-century conditions in,

106–107union with England (1707), 119

Scott, Gen. Winfield, 291–292, 303Second Seminole War (1835–1840), 290Sedgwick, Gen. Robert, 101Seminoles, 290settlement, foiled by disease, 105–136

Seven Years War, 20, 126–127, 128, 169Havana campaign of, 169–87

Slaves and slavery, 25–6, 38, 45, 171, 210abolition of slavery and army health, 81in Cuba, 172healers, 81–86imperial rivalry and, 143rebellions, 21reinstated in Guadeloupe (1802), 256in St. Domingue, 237, 238–239, 242–244slave soldiers, 266, 294–295slave trade, 26, 96–97

to Cartagena, 149–151to Cuba, 296to St. Domingue, 239n9

in South Carolina, 204, 205, 208in Surinam, 195–198in Yorktown campaign, 223

Sloane, Sir Hans, 73smallpox

American Revolution and, 198, 200–201,223

in Cuba, 300in St. Domingue, 239in New Granada, 285

Smith, Adam 26smoke (as mosquito repellant), 85, 272Smollett, Tobias, 69n18, 155, 161n74, 162soil erosion, 27–28, 55South Carolina

ecology in, 203–207mosquitoes in, 207population in, 206

Spainrevolution in (1820), 282yellow fever in, 265–266, 287

Spanish-American War, 302–303Spanish Army

at Cartagena, 155–156, 160–161in Cuba (1890s), 298–301expedition to New Granada, 270, 276,

277–281at Havana (1761–62), 174–175health of in Caribbean, 143health of at Cartagena, 163–164health and mortality of in Cuba (1890s),

300–301health and mortality of at Havana

(1761–62), 177–178, 182health and mortality of in New Granada,

279–281, 283–285

370 INDEX

Spanish Empire in Americain the 17th century, 16–17defense of, 137–144, 188–189Havana and, 169independence in, 267–287

Stedman, John, 83, 197–198sugar (see also: plantations)

in Brazil, 23in Cuba, 170, 295, 297ecological effects of, 26–32revolutions in Caribbean 23–32sugarcane, 23–4

Surinam, 82, 104rice in, 55, 196malaria in, 196maroon wars in, 195–198yellow fever in, 196, 198

Tarleton, Col. Banastre, 215, 219, 224Thacher, James, 231Thucydides, 8Trinidad, 104Toussaint Louverture, see: Louverture,

ToussaintTupac Amaru, 21, 189Turgot, Etienne Francois, 128, 132, 134turtles and turtle meat, 31–32, 115, 125

Ulloa, Capt. Antonio de, 65, 151United States

Army of, 290–294, 311 (see also:Continental Army)

Army Yellow Fever Commission,306–307

Civil War, 292–294as imperial power, 5, 306Indian removal in, 290intervention in Cuba, 302–303, 306–308war with Mexico (1846–1848), 290–292

Vauban, Sebastien le Prestre de, 140Velasco, Capt. Don Luıs de, 180, 187Venables, Gen. Robert, 99, 100, 102, 104venesection, see under: medicine and

medical ideasVenezuela, see: New Granada, Viceroyalty

ofVeracruz, 17, 81, 139, 291

mosquitoes in, 41yellow fever in, 64n3, 141–142, 265, 286,

295n184

Vernon, Adm. Edward, 2, 153–155, 158–62,164–167, 178

Virginia (see: Yorktown)

Wafer, Lionel, 108, 109, 110War of the Austrian Succession, 20, 153,

168War of Jenkins’ Ear, 20

Cartagena campaign, 153–64Santiago de Cuba campaign, 164–66Portobelo expedition, 166

War of the Spanish Succession, 19, 20,148

Wars of the French Revolution (see also: St.Domingue), 243, 244

Warren, Henry, 67Washington, George, 3, 6–7, 198, 201, 202,

222, 223, 229Wentworth, Gen. Thomas, 154, 158–162,

164–167Weyler, Gen. Valeriano, 299–300, 302Wheler, Rear-Admiral Francis, 145William III, King of England, 108, 110, 115Wilmot, Adm. Robert, 145women, 63

Afro-creole healers, 83–84in Darien colony, 109n53in St. Domignue, 237–238, 239yellow fever and, 35–36

Wright, Capt. Lawrence, 144

yellow feverCommission of the U.S. Army, see under:

United States, Armyecology and, 32–40, 47–52, 60–62cities and, 50–51episodic character of, 64–65in Europe (1803–1805), 265–266immigration to Caribbean and, 62,

288–289immunity and resistance to, 44–47, 60,

71–72jungle (see yellow fever, sylvan)mortality, 37–39political role in St. Domingue,

262–263sailors and, 51–52shipping and, 51–52susceptibility, 34–36, 67–68sylvan, 47, 49–50symptoms, 33–34

INDEX 371

vaccine, 37virus 32–33

evolution of, 39Yorktown, 221 (for siege, see: American

Revolution, Yorktown campaign)

Yucatan,yellow fever in, 34n54, 34n57, 64

Zoopotentiation, 57Zooprophylaxis, 57, 102n35

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