Colonization, Slavery, and Urbanization in the Atlantic World Through the Lens of Yellow Fever

Urmi Engineer Willoughby’s module explores the history of yellow fever from an Atlantic and global perspective. Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease that originated in tropical Africa and caused devastating epidemics in the Atlantic World from the 1640s through the nineteenth century. It never spread to Asia, so even within a global framework, this history is limited to Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The module includes lessons on the emergence of yellow fever in the early modern Atlantic World, the yellow fever pandemic of the 1790s, and the medical discovery of the role of mosquitoes in spreading yellow fever. Through these lessons, students learn about concepts of disease ecology and historical epidemiology and apply them to studying the emergence, spread, and decline of yellow fever over a period of more than two centuries. Through the lens of yellow fever, students study the historical context of colonization, plantation slavery, and urbanization. The module centers primary documents from the 1793 epidemic in Philadelphia and offers a window into the history of modern medicine and public health. It closes with a critical study of efforts to eradicate yellow fever by eliminating and controlling mosquitoes, and issues of vaccine development and access.