Yellow fever, malaria and development: Atlantic Africa and the New World, 1647 to 1928

ABSTRACT

Malaria and yellow fever in the Atlantic world (Africa, the Caribbean, mainland America) are treated. In the evolution of these diseases, Development (involving the involuntary migration of millions of potential laborers from East to West) is found to be a principal motor force. As with leprosy in the nineteenth century, disease Constructs were important on shaping dominant peoples` attitutes. Construct yellow fever held that black Africans were immune to the disease. This mischievous understanding was taken to demonstrate that the Christian God had specially created them to serve as slaves in North, Meso- and South America. In Africa and Liverpool in the 1890s, British medical personnel further marginalized blacks by creating a malaria Construct.(AU)