Why read Mosquito Empires?

Book cover of Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914

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…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Mosquito Empires as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Carol R. Byerly

Author

McNeill, William McNeill’s son, examines the intersection of disease, ecology, race, and international politics to show how infectious disease shaped the fortunes of colonial empires in the Caribbean. In the wake of the encounter between Europeans and the New World which destroyed up to 90 percent of the Amerindian population, European empires restructured the region into a colonial economy of sugar and slavery. Mosquitos bearing malaria and yellow fever flourished in this environment and McNeill shows how anyone seeking power in the region had to reckon with both them and disease.

From Carol's list on how diseases shape society.