Migration and Mortality in Africa and the Atlantic World, 1700-1900

This collection of articles is centred geographically on the Atlantic basin - especially on the tropical and south Atlantic, rather than the more familiar connections between Europe and North America across the north Atlantic. Many of the articles deal with relationships that bridge the ocean, like the transfer of people through the slave trade or the transfer of ideas, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man from France to Saint Domingue in the period of the French Revolution. Others are trans-Atlantic in comparing developments on both sides of the ocean, such as comparing South Africa and Argentina in the 19th century. The time period covered is another unifying aspect. The 18th and 19th centuries were a unique period in world history in that western Europe and its outliers overseas rose to a degree of relative power in the world beyond that achieved by any previous society. This material triumph was an important factor behind the globalization of world affairs which has now become so important. None of the articles attempts to account for the rise of Western power, although several of them are linked to the exercise of Western power on the periphery. An important theme running through many of the articles is a concern abou the role of the physical environment. Much of conventional environmental history is focused on the damage humans have done to their environment. The emphasis here is more on the role of the physical and biological environment in moulding human history. The most serious environmental concern, however, is the role of disease, which becomes increasingly dramatic as humans move from one disease environment to another, or when diseases are newly introduced to an additional set of human victims. It is this perspective of world history that links human mortality with human migration.