Table of Contents

List of Maps xi

List of Abbreviations Used in the Footnotes xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xvii

1 The Argument (and Its Limits) in Brief 1

The Argument 2

The Limits of the Argument 5

The Limits of the Novelty of the Argument 8

Part I Setting the Scene

2 Atlantic Empires and Caribbean Ecology 15

Atlantic American Geopolitics, 1620-1820 15

Ecological Transformation in the Caribbean, 1640-1750 22

Yellow Fever and Caribbean Ecology 32

Yellow Fever Transmission and Immunity 40

Epidemic Yellow Fever and Plantation Sugar 47

Malaria, Mosquitoes, and Plantations of Sugar and Rice 52

Climate Change, El Niño, Mosquitoes, and Epidemics 58

Conclusion 60

3 Deadly Fevers, Deadly Doctors 63

Early Yellow Fever Epidemics and Their Victims 64

A Virulent Strain of Medicine 68

Conclusion 86

Part II Imperial Mosquitoes

4 Fevers Take Hold: From Recife to Kourou 91

The Dutch in Brazil, 1624-1654 92

The English in Jamaica, 1655-1660 97

The Scots at Darien, 1698-1699 105

The French at Kourou, 1763-1764 123

Conclusion 135

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

Yellow Fever and the Defense of the Spanish Empire 137

The Deadly 1690s 144

Siege Ecology at Cartagena, 1741 149

The Seven Years' War and the Siege Ecology of Havana, 1762 169

Conclusion 188

Part III Revolutionary Mosquitoes

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

Introduction 195

Slave Risings and Surinam's Maroons 195

Revolution and Malaria in the Southern Colonies 198

Yorktown 220

Conclusion 232

7 Revolutionary Fevers, 1790-1898; Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba 235

St. Domingue, 1790-1804 236

New Granada, 1815-1820 267

Immigration, Warfare, and Independence, 1830-1898: Mexico, the United States, and Cuba 287

Conclusion 303

8 Conclusion: Vector and Virus Vanquished, 1880-1914 304

The Argument Recapitulated 304

Vector and Virus Vanquished 306

Disease and Power 312

Bibliography 315

Index 363