1493_ Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann [250]
65 Massachusetts disease, slavery: Romer 2009 (8 percent, 118); Dobson 1989:283–84 (health); Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641):art. 91 (available in many places online).
66 Slavery compared in Argentina and Brazil: Eltis et al. 2009– (2.2 million); Chace 1971 (220,000–330,000 slaves, 107–08; lack of establishment of African culture in Argentina, 121–22; half Argentina African, 126–27); Alden 1963 (half Rio, São Paulo African). Eltis et al. give 75,000 as the number of slaves entering the ports of the Rio Plata; Chace makes clear this is only the registered “pieces,” which ignores the much bigger number of illegally imported slaves. By the end of the nineteenth century, Brazil’s great writer, Euclides da Cunha, was celebrating his nation’s mixed heritage (Hecht: forthcoming); meanwhile, Argentina’s ruling “Generation of Eighty” was boasting that Argentina was the “only great white nation of South America” (Chace 1971:2).
67 Yellow Jack: Much in this section comes from McNeill 2010.
68 Sugar comes to Barbados: McNeill 2010:23–26; Emmer 2006:9–27; Davis 2006:110–16; Blackburn 1997:187–213, 239–31 (slave prices, 230); Sheridan 1994:chap. 7, esp. 128–30; Beckles 1989; Galenson 1982 (slave prices, table 4). I am grateful to the plantation owners in Brazil who let me visit their land to see sugar work.
69 First yellow fever epidemic: McNeill 2010:35, 64 (“populations”); Beckles 1989:118–25; Findlay 1941 (six thousand dead and quarantine, 146); Ligon 1673:21, 25 (“dead,” 21).
70 Spread of sugar, ecological ravaging of Caribbean: McNeill 2010:23–33 (“for cultivation,” 29); Watts 1999:219–31, 392–402; Sheridan 1994 (production and population figures, 100–02, 122–23); Goodyear 1978:15 (Cuba). Ligon (1673) reported that when the first Europeans landed on Barbados the island was “so overgrown with Wood, as there could be found no Champions [fields], or Savannas for men to dwell in” (23).
71 A. albimanus: Grieco et al. 2005 (susceptibility to falciparum); Rejmankova et al. 1996 (algal habitat); Frederickson 1993 (habits). Frederickson suggests that it has a preference for cattle “1.6 to 2.1 times greater than that for humans” (14). The gradual replacement of Caribbean cattle by sugar thus increased the risk of malaria.
72 Fourth voyage: During Colón’s fourth voyage to the Americas (1502–04) the admiral’s nautical career effectively came to an end when he was forced to ground his worm-eaten, sinking ships on Jamaica. To obtain help from Santo Domingo, he asked a trusted lieutenant, Diego Mendez, to canoe 120 miles to Hispaniola. After a brutal journey in the Caribbean summer, Mendez’s party made it to shore. Most of the group was too sick to continue to Santo Domingo, Colón’s son Hernán wrote later. Mendez nonetheless “left in his canoe to go up the coast of Hispaniola, though suffering from quartan fever” (Colón 2004:322).
73 Environmental changes favor malaria and yellow fever: McNeill 2010:48–50, 55–57; Webb 2009:69–85ff.; Goodyear 1978:12–13 (pots).
74 Caribbean as lethal environment: McNeill 2010:65–68; Webb 2009:83 (“non-immunes”); Curtin 1989:25–30, fig. 1.2, table 1.5. Ligon, who came to Barbados two decades after the first English colonists, found (1673:23) that “few or none of them that first set there, were now living.” This may exaggerate. Not many colonists lasted more than a few years, as Ligon said. But that was not only because they died. Many fled to healthier places—Virginia, for one (Sheridan 1994:132–33).
75 Introduction of malaria into Amazon: Cruz et al. 2008 (Madeira survey); Hemming 2004a:268–70; Requena, F. 1782. Letter to Flóres, M. A. d., 25 Aug. In Quijano Otero 1881:188–97, at 191–95 passim; Orbigny 1835:vol. 3a, 13–36; Edwards 1847:195 (“one case”).
76 Guyane: Hecht forthcoming; Ladebat 2008