The Environmental History of Africa

Topic 6 - Disease in African History

  1. Disease (and human response to it) is a classic environmental and ecological problem tied to demography, economic history, and social organization and even religion. Relevant questions are:
    1. What diseases are most influential in African context?
    2. How can historians evaluate Helge Kjekshus' arguments about the ecology control of disease and the effect of colonialism versus other factors?
    3. What has been effect of disease on demography, patterns of human settlement, and economic activity? Does it promote decline or structure the direction of change?
    4. How have African people perceived disease? Has that perception changed over time, particularly within the colonial period (c. 1875-1960)?

  2. Diseases evident in African history have very different characteristics and effects on society. The presence and effect of diseases are historically conditioned
    1. Mortality (death rate) versus morbidity (sickness and debilitation).
    2. Epidemic (sudden widespread outbreak) disease versus endemic (constantly present in a given ecology) disease.
    3. Human versus livestock versus plant or crop disease.
    4. Long-term versus short-term economic effects of disease.
    5. The nature of the solution can involve direct medical intervention or application of public health measures to deal with prevention.
    6. Disease may be exotic (introduced from outside) or long-standing human afflictions. The cases of influenza (1917-19) and trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness outbreak, 1890-1920) illustrate the contrast.
    7. Disease behavior reflects wider ecological change of vectors such as climate, temperature, vegetation, the introduction of new plants, animals, or organisms.

  3. Major diseases have different characteristics and have played different historical roles
    1. Homeopathic (i.e. affecting humans directly) disease: vectors, organisms, effects, etc).
      1. malaria (morbidity, anopheles mosquito borne, sickle cell, quinine, falciperum vs vivax).
      2. trypanosomiasis (a.k. a. sleeping sickness, protozoan, tsetse, endemic, human and livestock affected).
      3. schistosomiasis (a.k.a. bilharzia, trematode, snail vector, morbidity, disease of development).
      4. onchocirciasis (a.k.a. river blindness: morbidity, blindness, black fly, long-term effects on productivity).
      5. influenza (a.k.a. Spanish Flu, 1918-19, 2 million-death epidemic, air-borne virus).
      6. dysentery/diahereal disease (endemic, high infant mortality).
      7. Smallpox: partial exposure through historical links builds limited immunity and prevents major mortality that occurred in native New World populations.
    2. Animal diseases (epizootic)
      1. trypanosomiasis (a.k.a. Sleeping Sickness: endemic versus migration theory of origin).
      2. rinderpest (a.k.a. cattle plague: epizootic, viral disease of intestine, 1889-92 epizootic).
      3. parasitic (liverfluke, debilitating).
    3. Plant Disease (Crops)
      1. Maize rust (disease of food crops)
      2. Diseases of cash crops: Coffee Berry Disease/Swollen Shoot Disease of cocoa

  4. Disease in general and in Africa in particular is socially, historically, and environmentally specific: Key Questions to address in reading and discussion will be:
    1. Want to test Kjekshus thesis on role of colonial period, social disruption, and introduction of disease as major force inducing a new disease environment in Africa.
    2. What factors of change brought on change in disease patterns prior to colonialism?
      1. Agriculture itself (animals, village life, clearing forest contact between environmental zones.
      2. Trade and migration during Columbian Exchange, Swahili caravans in East Africa.
      3. New settlement patterns (along trade routes or avoidance of wars) or new crops-disease links, such as banana--cholera in Buganda.
      4. Coincidence of spread of maize, forest fallow cultivation and malaria (new research.

  5. Colonialism as a Major Watershed for Disease: Why?
    1. Expansion of the scale of contacts (continuity).
    2. Introduction of new diseases.
    3. Forced movement to new environments.
    4. Urbanization.
    5. Labor migration.
    6. Public health and veterinary services. Veterinary services were the first colonial health services.

  6. African Response: Key question is to determine historically whether African responses to disease and approaches to disease control were conscious purposeful actions or accumulations of ritualized actions.
    1. Example of Tanzanian lakes people who ritually move ticks with new house building and thus keep immunity from tick-borne disease.
    2. Example of Maasai moving cattle in tsetse bush to achieve limited exposure and build immunity to trypanosomiasis. Use of dung smears on cattle to avoid tsetse bites.