Author: J. R. McNeill Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139484508 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 391
Book Description
This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them.
Author: Timothy C. Winegard Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1524743437 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 639
Book Description
**The instant New York Times bestseller.** *An international bestseller.* Finalist for the Lane Anderson Award Finalist for the RBC Taylor Award “Hugely impressive, a major work.”—NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito’s reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.
Author: Sherry Johnson Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 9780807869345 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
From 1750 to 1800, a critical period that saw the American Revolution, French Revolution, and Haitian Revolution, the Atlantic world experienced a series of environmental crises, including more frequent and severe hurricanes and extended drought. Drawing on historical climatology, environmental history, and Cuban and American colonial history, Sherry Johnson innovatively integrates the region's experience with extreme weather events and patterns into the history of the Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic world. By superimposing this history of natural disasters over the conventional timeline of sociopolitical and economic events in Caribbean colonial history, Johnson presents an alternative analysis in which some of the signal events of the Age of Revolution are seen as consequences of ecological crisis and of the resulting measures for disaster relief. For example, Johnson finds that the general adoption in 1778 of free trade in the Americas was catalyzed by recognition of the harsh realities of food scarcity and the needs of local colonists reeling from a series of natural disasters. Weather-induced environmental crises and slow responses from imperial authorities, Johnson argues, played an inextricable and, until now, largely unacknowledged role in the rise of revolutionary sentiments in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.
Author: Marcus Hall Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000435105 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 229
Book Description
This edited volume brings together natural scientists, social scientists and humanists to assess if (or how) we may begin to coexist harmoniously with the mosquito. The mosquito is humanity’s deadliest animal, killing over a million people each year by transmitting malaria, yellow fever, Zika and several other diseases. Yet of the 3,500 species of mosquito on Earth, only a few dozen of them are really dangerous—so that the question arises as to whether humans and their mosquito foe can learn to live peacefully with one another. Chapters assess polarizing arguments for conserving and preserving mosquitoes, as well as for controlling and killing them, elaborating on possible consequences of both strategies. This book provides informed answers to the dual question: could we eliminate mosquitoes, and should we? Offering insights spanning the technical to the philosophical, this is the “go to” book for exploring humanity’s many relationships with the mosquito—which becomes a journey to finding better ways to inhabit the natural world. Mosquitopia will be of interest to anyone wanting to explore dependencies between human health and natural systems, while offering novel perspectives to health planners, medical experts, environmentalists and animal rights advocates.
Author: Greg Woolf Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019977529X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 383
Book Description
Woolf expertly recounts how the mammoth Roman empire was created, how it was sustained in crisis, and how it shaped the world of its rulers and subjects--a story spanning a millennium and a half of history.
Author: Erica Charters Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022618014X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
The Seven Years’ War, often called the first global war, spanned North America, the West Indies, Europe, and India. In these locations diseases such as scurvy, smallpox, and yellow fever killed far more than combat did, stretching the resources of European states. In Disease, War, and the Imperial State, Erica Charters demonstrates how disease played a vital role in shaping strategy and campaigning, British state policy, and imperial relations during the Seven Years’ War. Military medicine was a crucial component of the British war effort; it was central to both eighteenth-century scientific innovation and the moral authority of the British state. Looking beyond the traditional focus of the British state as a fiscal war-making machine, Charters uncovers an imperial state conspicuously attending to the welfare of its armed forces, investing in medical research, and responding to local public opinion. Charters shows military medicine to be a credible scientific endeavor that was similarly responsive to local conditions and demands. Disease, War, and the Imperial State is an engaging study of early modern warfare and statecraft, one focused on the endless and laborious task of managing manpower in the face of virulent disease in the field, political opposition at home, and the clamor of public opinion in both Britain and its colonies.
Author: Alan Mikhail Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199315272 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
Animals in rural Egypt became enmeshed in social relationships and made possible many tasks otherwise impossible. Rather than focus on what animals represented or symbolized, Mikhail discusses their social and economic functions, as Ottoman Egypt cannot be understood without acknowledging animals as central shapers of the early modern world.
Author: J. R. McNeill
Author: Timothy C. Winegard
Author: J. R. McNeill
Author: 
Author: Sherry Johnson
Author: Marcus Hall
Author: Greg Woolf
Author: Erica Charters
Author: Alan Mikhail
Author: David C. Conrad