Trade, Transportation, and Infectious Disease:Another Layer to the Process of Globalization

Jonathan Lee, Ph.D

Associate Professor of History

Dean Lambert, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Geography

San Antonio College

San Antonio, Texas

The Contest between Human Immune Systems and Invisible Pathogens has Shaped All Human Experience

• Demographic Trends– Spatial Patterns– Density– Population growth

• Political and Social Constructions

• Economic Interaction

Human “Webs” Have Evolved and Converged Over the Last 3000 Years

• Improvements in Transportation

• Expanding and thickening zones of economic interaction

• These “webs” fostered DIFFUSION (i.e., spread of goods, people, capital, ideas, flora, and fauna across political and cultural boundaries)

– Disease also went along for the ride

• The homogenization of of the world’s formerly regional disease pools is an important dimension to understanding world history

General Classification of Human Disease

• Infectious Diseases – are those that are the result of an organism consuming human tissue (e.g., parasite, bacteria, virus, or fungus).

• Chronic Diseases – are those caused by the degeneration or inappropriate operation of bodily functions (e.g., cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s).

Definitions of Infectious Disease

• Endemic - a disease that occurs in a REGION at a constant but relatively high rate (e.g., malaria in Africa).

– Also includes many childhood diseases

• Epidemic - a disease that occurs at a rate substantially exceeding the normal incidence rate in a population.

• Pandemic - an epidemic occurring across multiple regions.

– Usually the result of increased contact between regions

Epidemics and Pandemics Were Consistent and Constant in the Past

• Migration of disease – Often caused major upheaval that resulted in new social, political, and

economic hierarchies– Or caused enormous anxiety and human suffering

• A very real part of human life

• This story was often forgotten by historians in the 20th Century– “Containment” of many infectious diseases– Epidemics and Pandemics were little understood in the past and thus

“hidden” from today’s historian

• Historical texts today tend to focus on the obvious and sensational examples such as the Bubonic Plague of the 14th Century, the Columbian Exchange, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

The Biological Consequences of Globalization Deserve Further Attention

• World History surveys should incorporate further examples of trade, transportation, and the spread of infectious disease

– Greater understanding of the totality of globalization– Sobering lessons for our present and future

• Five case studies– The Justinian Plagues at the end of the Classical Era– The Spread of Yellow Fever into the Caribbean (17th Century)– The Cholera Pandemics of the 19th Century– The Spread of Small Pox in Oceania (19th Century)– The Spread of AIDS in Africa (late 20th Century)

Justinian Plagues and the End of the Classical Era – 1000 BCE-500 CE

• The Classical Era Saw the Rise of a Trans-Eurasian Human Web of Communication and Exchange

• Camels

• Improved Maritime

Skills And knowledge

http://intranet.dalton.org/groups/Rome/RMap2.html

Trade and Transportation – The Classical Era

After 150 C.E., Epidemics were Pandemic within this Web

• Persistent economic interaction allowed various disease pools to enter virgin territories

• The evidence is sketchy as to what they were– Antonine Plague 2nd Century (South Asian origins - measles,

smallpox?)

– Smallpox introduced in China, 4th Century

• The Bubonic Plague that shattered the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires in the 6 th Century is the bested recorded and understood– Procopius and other’s detailed accounts

Justinian Plague (542 CE – 808 CE)

540?

541?

542

544

547

610-642

610-642

808

610-642

Facilitated by Trade

Justinian’s Plague

• Bubonic and Pneumonic Plague– Disease (Bacterium) of small rodents– Zoonotic – non-human reservoir– Diffusion of Black Rat (Southeast Asia)– Fever, Chills, Inflammation of lymph nodes, Severe cough

• Three major pandemics in world history (6th, 14th, and 19th-20th Centuries)

• The Justinian Plagues Origins in East Africa (Great Lake District)– Arab traders had recently penetrated this region

• Spread throughout the Classical World’s Web (Multiple Occurrences across Time and Space)

– Affected Anatolia and Egypt severely– Overall population declined as much as 1/3 in many areas by 8th Century

Justinian Plague - Consequences

• Transition from Classical to Post-Classical Era– Affected large urban centers and networks

– Gave advantages to nomadic or semi nomadic peoples

• Slavs, Berbers, Arabs

– Direct relation to rise of Caliphates, rise of Dar-al-Islam

– Rise in Germanic and Slavic population north of Mediterranean

Abbasid and Umayyad Empires

Umayyad Empire

Abbasid Empire

Yellow Fever and the Rise of the Sugar Plantation Complex in the Caribbean (17th and 18th Centuries)

• Origins in West Africa– Zoonotic

• Virus + Vector (Aedes aegypti mosquito)

– Symptoms – high fever, muscle aches, vomiting, liver and kidney failure– Mild impact on children/Deadly for adults– Life long immunity to survivors

• Spread of the disease to the Caribbean intimately connected to trade and transportation

– Labor system shifts from European indentured servants to African slaves in mid 17th Century

– Shift in control of Atlantic Slave Trade from Spanish and Portuguese to English, French, and Dutch Merchants

– Development of Dutch flute• Three-masted ship with two decks

• Only mosquitoes saw a population increase on the crossing

Yellow Fever and the Rise of the Sugar Plantation Complex in the Caribbean

• Yellow Fever goes far in explaining the demographic patterns of 17th and 18th Century Plantation society

• Many slaves acquired in Africa had immunity to the disease– Aided in the diffusion of the virus

• European adult settlers did not– African slave majority– Limited and temporary European residency

• Constant inflow needed

• Yellow Fever was a result of the growth in the Atlantic Slave Trade and the plantation complex. And it contributed to its expansion, particularly the demographic revolution of the region.

Yellow Fever (17th Century)

Barbados

1647

St. KittsGuadeloupe

1648

MeridaCampeche

1648

St. Lucia

1665

Philadelphia

1693

Havana

1649

New York

1699

NW Mexico

1648

Martinique

1690

Facilitated by Plantation Economy

Charleston

1693

Boston

1693

Yellow Fever and the Wider Atlantic World

• Yellow Fever epidemics terrorized coastal ports in North and South America for centuries during the summer time– Never consistent enough to become endemic– Haitian Revolution in 1790’s produced

severe outbreaks in Philadelphia and later New Orleans

• These epidemics retarded these cities demographic growth

• Created the tradition of quarantine and other civil measures– Disruption of Trade

• On the flip side, the disease made military action in the tropical regions of the Americas quite daunting– Napoleon and St. Domingue/Haiti

• The human web of Oceania was the last frontier of the emerging global web during the 19th Century

• Polynesian societies were brought into this web beginning in the late 18th Century

• During the 19th Century, whalers, sailors, merchants, land developers, agricultural workers, and missionaries from Europe, North and South America, and East Asia, developed permanent settlement in this “virgin” territory

• Oceania’s Islands became major links along the emerging Pacific Web– Steamships tightened this connection

Epidemics and Pandemics of the Industrial Era – Small Pox in Oceania, 19th Century

Small Pox in Oceania –19th Century

• Sustained contact with the wider web introduced numerous infectious disease into this “virgin territory”

• Smallpox– Virus spreads through direct human contact

– Symptoms are high fever, vomiting, and skin rash

– Endemic to most societies by the 19th Century• Origins lie in South Asia up to 3000 years ago

Small Pox in Oceania

Guam1688

Tahiti1841

Port Jackson1788

Hawaii1853

Facilitated by Maritime Trade

Papua1865

New Guinea1870

Gambier1834

Oceania, a postscript on the Columbian Exchange

• The incorporation of Oceanic societies into the wider global web in the 19th Century saw parallel developments to the incorporation of the Americas several hundred years before

– Huge die off of the native population– Smallpox, Influenza, Measles, tuberculosis caused a demographic

catastrophe• 80% population decline in the Marquesas from 1791-1864

• Similar demographic catastrophe for indigenous groups elsewhere

• The islands of Oceania lost political control to European powers and developed colonial economies producing raw materials

• The demand for labor shifted the demography of the region to reflect a majority European/East Asian ethnicity.

Epidemics and Pandemics of the Industrial Era -Cholera

• Bacterium is Endemic to the Bengal Region of South Asia• Spread through human waste in water supplies• Symptoms include severe diarrhea and dehydration• Until the 19th Century, Cholera was not widespread

– Virus dies below 50 degrees

Cholera Pandemics of the 19th CenturyIndustrialization’s Disease

• Directly relates to improved transportation associated with the Industrial Revolution that fostered greater mobility– More efficient ships– Greater use of canals– Greater navigation of rivers and lakes– Railroads and Steamships only strengthen the process

• Growth in Urbanization associated with the Industrial Revolution– Greater population density– Worsening sanitation

• Disposal of human waste in water supply

Cholera Pandemic (1819-1837)

1819 1820

1821 1822

18261827

1831

1832

1833

1829

1830

1832

Facilitated by British Maritime Trade

Cholera and the Sanitation Revolution

• Lower classes most affected, often protested violently against local governments

• John Snow and the discovery of the linkage to water supply– Birth of modern epidemiology

• Origins of modern sanitation methods and urban planning

Pandemics of the Industrial Era

• Cholera in the early 19th Century was only a preview of the possibility of global pandemics

• Bubonic Plague emerged in the late 19th Century• World War I and the revolution in trade and transportation

precipitated the infamous 1918 Influenza pandemic

Third Plague Pandemic (1894-1901)

May 1894August 1896

May 1899

June 1899

December 1899

January 1900January 1900

January 1900

March 1900

August 1900

February 1901

Facilitated by Maritime Trade

Flu Pandemic of 1918

The Twentieth Century – The Conquest of Disease?

• Ironically, the Pandemics of the previous century lessened the impact of the spread of infectious disease as pathogens became more endemic worldwide

• The Pandemics of the 19th Century served as a “mid-wife” to the sanitation revolution and the science of immunology

The Twentieth Century – The Conquest of Disease?

• In many areas, particularly the developed world, many long standing infectious diseases became a thing of the past– Smallpox eliminated

• But there were significant improvements in transportation– The internal combustion engine (automobiles, aviation)

• The pace of globalization expanded exponentially after World War II, especially after 1973

New Pandemics

• AIDS and HIV in Africa

HIV 1984

HIV 1989

HIV 1994

HIV 1999

HIV 2003

Facilitated by

Overland Trucking

New Pandemics

• Resurgence of Old Viruses– Have we created new “virgin territories”– Evolution of drug-resistant strains

• Possible Pandemics ?– Ebola Virus, Bubonic Plague, SARS

Conclusion

• Will this century see the resurgence of infectious disease to historical norms?

Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

•First reported in Guangdong, China, in February 2003.

•WHO recommended screening airline passengers in March.

•By May over 8400 people had been infected in 26 countries.

•813 people died by June 2003 (roughly 10% mortality).

Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

Health Screeningat Tokyo Airport

Bubonic Plague