Disease Dispersion and Impact in the Indian Ocean World

Gwyn Campbell, Eva-Maria Knoll, Gwyn Campbell, Eva-Maria Knoll

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030362638
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030362645
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

This volume views the study of disease as essential to understanding the key historical developments underpinning the foundation of contemporary Indian Ocean World (IOW) societies. The interplay between disease and climatic conditions, natural and manmade crises and disasters, human migration and trade in the IOW reveals a wide range of perceptions about disease etiologies and epidemiologies, and debates over the origin, dispersion and impact of disease form a central focus in these essays. Incorporating a wide scope of academic and scientific angles including history, social and medical anthropology, archaeology, epidemiology and paleopathology, this collection focuses on diseases that spread across time, space and cultures. It scrutinizes disease as an object, and engages with the subjectivities of afflicted inhabitants of, and travellers to, the IOW.

© The Author(s) 2020

G. Campbell, E.-M. Knoll (eds.)Disease Dispersion and Impact in the Indian Ocean WorldPalgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36264-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Eva-Maria Knoll¹ and Gwyn Campbell²

(1)

Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

(2)

McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

Eva-Maria Knoll (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Gwyn Campbell (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Environment and Movement

Throughout history in the Indian Ocean World (IOW) diseases have, under certain distinctive geographical and climatic conditions, emerged and spread, generating a number of impacts on varying spatial scales. The IOW, a macro-region lying between latitudes 45°S and 45°N running from Eastern Africa through the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia to East Asia, encompasses tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate zones, major oceans, gulfs and rivers, islands, lakes and deserts, and the world’s highest mountain range (Map 1.1). It thus experiences major differences in temperature and rainfall, which are further affected by other environmental factors—the most significant of which is the monsoon system of winds and currents that governs the IOW littorals and seas north of about 12°S of the equator. In the northern hemisphere summer, the southwest monsoon dominates, bringing heavy rainfall to the Asian littoral, while in winter the system switches direction, creating the northeast monsoon. Most historians have assumed the monsoon system to have been stable, but it could unpredictably fail, triggering drought, crop failure, famine, and disease. A range of other, often associated, environmental factors, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO ), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), volcanism, and cyclones could also significantly impact temperature and rainfall and thus disease. For example, in the aftermath of heavy rain, stagnant pools of water could form, providing breeding grounds for mosquitos and other causal agents of diseases such as malaria, filariasis, dengue, and chikungunya (cf. Meunier 2014). Again, heavy monsoons, cyclones, seismic activities, tsunamis, and storm surges could lead to flooding that might in turn create favourable conditions for pathogenic microorganisms and thus for the spread of water-borne and contagious diseases such as cholera, dysentery, and polio or Escherichia coli infections. Furthermore, weather extremes and natural disasters were often followed by famines, conflict , and migration, all of which increase health hazards.

Map 1.1

The Indian Ocean World (IOW). © IOWC

In addition to these environmental specificities—this “deep structure” of the IOW (cf. Pearson 2003)—the macro-region witnessed the rise of the first “global” economy from around 300 BCE. The IOW global economy, linking Eastern Africa and the Middle East to China and all places in between through the creation of a sophisticated network of overland, riverine, and maritime communication, was characterized by an intensifying exchange of plants, animals, and (both voluntary and involuntary) humans—creating the quintessential conditions for disease diffusion. This process, which started with early hominid migration out of Africa, triggered the development of regionally specific immunological responses. With the advent of long-distance trans-IOW seafaring, the entanglement of humans and pathogens gained a novel epidemiological momentum affecting both littoral and hinterland communities (cf. Campbell 2019; Schnepel and Alpers 2017; Pearson 2015; Alpers 2014; Sheriff 2010). The interconnected character of the IOW global economy, and increasing concentration of human and animal populations close to water resources, transformed the IOW into one interconnected disease zone (Issa 2006; Arnold 1991). It formed, for example, a centre of dispersion of a number of diseases such as the plague, smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis.

However, disease outbreaks and dispersion did not occur in a historically linear fashion. The IOW global economy underwent major cycles of expansion and contraction. The main eras of economic expansion were from approximately 300 BCE to 300 CE, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, and again from the mid-nineteenth century—the intervening periods being marked by general stagnation. Times of overall economic prosperity, characterized by enhanced agricultural productivity and demographic growth, were not immune from outbreaks of disease. However, it is notable that some of the most notable and devastating episodes of disease, such as the first and second plague (541 and 1347 CE) and cholera (e.g. 1817 and 1826 CE) pandemics, not only originated in the IOW but erupted during periods of major economic uncertainty (Campbell 2019).

Within this context, there is considerable debate about the European impact on the IOW. For some scholars, such as Arnold, the advent of the European presence from 1500 marked a major epidemiological watershed for the IOW (Arnold 1991). However, Campbell argues that, in contrast to the New World to which Europeans carried Old World diseases that had a catastrophic impact on indigenous populations, the reverse was generally true in the IOW where Europeans proved highly vulnerable to tropical diseases. This was, for example, the case with malaria to which many African populations had, through genetic adaption (sickle cell), acquired resistance. Thus the Portuguese in Mozambique suffered such high mortality from malaria that they often lacked sufficient soldiers to maintain a garrison. For largely the same reason, European attempts to found settlements in Madagascar failed. Only with the widespread adoption of quinine from the late nineteenth century could European soldiers and colonists settle malarial regions of the IOW (Campbell 2019 and contribution to this volume).

The nineteenth century marked a major turning point in the disease history of the IOW for a number of reasons, many of which were related to the rise of a truly international economy that, by the eve of the First World War, had drawn all bar the most peripheral societies into the orbit of modern capitalism. First, with the exception of railways in India, and of late nineteenth-century investment in mining in South Africa, few areas of the IOW benefitted from the enormous outflow of capital to extra-European regions from financial centres, notably London and Paris, based in Western Europe. Consequently, growing demand for tropical and semi-tropical products from a rapidly industrializing West resulted in a commercial boom in the IOW that was largely labour intensive. This was the case with both European and indigenous enterprise in the macro-region. Manpower was required to clear land and cultivate cash crops such as cloves, sugar cane, coffee, tea, and cocoa; collect forest products such as gum and tropical hardwoods; hunt and extract prized animal products such as ivory, rhino horn, skins, pearls, and whale oil; transport such produce to ports, and carry imported articles into the interior; load and offload commodities at ports; and provide the crews of commercial vessels. However, in the 1800s the IOW failed to experience the same rates of demographic expansion as the West, and, as much labour was already tied up in indigenous forms of bondage, there existed a very limited wage labour force from which to hire workers. As a result, European and indigenous IOW authorities, traders, and entrepreneurs, resorted largely to the use of bonded labour. This was reflected in the continued use of slaves and the increased use of penal and especially of indentured labour. There developed a large-scale system of bonded labour movements, both intra-IOW and from th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Evolution and Spread of Major Human Diseases in the Indian Ocean World
• 3. The ‘Frankish Disease’ and Its Treatments in the Indian Ocean World
• 4. Reconsidering the Early History of Leprosy in Light of Advances in Palaeopathology
• 5. Climate, Weather and Pestilence in the Philippines Since the Sixteenth Century
• 6. Malaria in Precolonial Malagasy History
• 7. Disease, Alcohol Consumption, and Excise in Nineteenth-Century British India
• 8. European Sailors, Alcohol, and Cholera in Nineteenth-Century India
• 9. Chikungunya and Epidemic Disease in the Indian Ocean World
• 10. Challenging Chikungunya: Resistance to Public Health Measures and Aetiology During the 2005–2007 Epidemic in Réunion
• 11. Inherited Without History? Maldive Fever and Its Aftermath
• Back Matter