Abstract
During the whole of the nineteenth century, the most important problem for Europeans in West Africa was simply that of keeping alive. Until the 1840’s the essential facts about the “climate” remained what they had been in the eighteenth century. Any European activity exacted an appalling price. Every assignment of missionaries or officials, every journey of exploration, every trading voyage or anti-slavery patrol took its toll. Unlike the situation of the later eighteenth century, when men could plan in optimistic ignorance, the facts were now more broadly publicized. Lind and some others had spoken out earlier, but the coastal experiments of the 1790’s brought the image of West Africa as “the white man’s grave” into new focus. The initial death rate for Europeans sent to the Province of Freedom had been 46 per cent. The Sierra Leone Company lost 49 per cent of its European staff, and the Bulama Island Association lost 61 per cent in the first year.1 These figures were not far out of line with the eighteenth-century expectation of a 20 per cent loss from the crew on a slaving voyage to the Coast, but they were something to ponder.
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Footnotes
Sierra Leone Company, Report of the Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company to the General Court, 7 vols, (title varies) (London, 1791–1808), I (1791), 11: H. Thornton to J. Clarkson, 14 September 1792, Ad. Mss. 41262A, f. 179;
Sierra Leone Company, Account of the Colony of Sierra Leone from its First Establishment in [sic] 1793 … (London, 1795), p. 53;
C. B. Wadström, An Essay on Colonization, Particularly Applied to the Western Coast of Africa …, 2 vols. (London, 1794– 1795), I, 39;
Philip Beaver, African Memoranda (London, 1805), pp. 365–66;
G. Sharp to a New York Lady, 12 January 1788, quoted in Prince Hoare, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1828), II, 84;
J. Corry, Observations upon the Windward Coast of Africa … Made in the Years 1805–1806 (London, 1807), pp. 100–101.
S. M. X. Golberry [S. M. X. de Golbéry], Travels in Africa Performed during the Years 1785, 1786, and 1787, 2 vols. (London, 1803), II, 209.
To my knowledge, the earliest use of the phrase in print occurs in J. C. de Figaniere e Morao, Descripçao de Serra Leon (Lisboa, 1822), p. 38, where he refers to the colony as the “sepulcro dos Europêos.”
(C. Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone [London, 1962], p. 151.)
R. R. Kuczynski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, Volume I: West Africa (London, 1948), p. 71.
Mungo Park, The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa in 1805, 2nd ed. (London, 1815), II, 190.
E. H. Acherknecht, A Short History of Medicine (New York, 1955), p. 134;
R. H. Shryock, “Nineteenth Century Medicine: Scientific Aspects,” Journal of World History, III, 881–908 (1957).
T. Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighborhood of Sierra Leone, 2 vols. (London, 1803), II, esp. 1–4.
Charles Stormont, Essai sur la topographie médicale de la côte occidentale d’Afrique et particulièrement sur celle de la colonie de Sierra Leone (Paris, 1822).
Colin Chisholm, An Essay on the Malignant Pestilential Fever introduced into the West Indian Islands from Boullam, on the Coast of Guinea … (London, 1795).
C. Chisholm, An Essay on Malignant Pestilential Fever …, 2 vols. (London, 1801);
C. Chisholm, Manual of the Climate and Diseases of Tropical Countries (London, 1822);
William Pym, Observations upon Bulam Fever … (London, 1815);
Nodes Dickinson, Observations on the Inflammatory Endemic, Incidental to Strangers in the West Indies from Temperate Climates, Commonly Called Yellow Fever … (London, 1819), pp. 1–9.
T. Trotter, Medica Nautica, 3 vols. (London, 1797–1803), I, 325–32;
Henry Clutterbuck, An Inquiry into the Seat and Nature of Fever (London, 1807);
E. N. Bancroft, An Essay on the Disease called Yellow Fever (London, 1811);
E. N. Bancroft, A Sequel to an Essay on Yellow Fever (London, 1817);
W. Ferguson, “On the Nature and History of Marsh Poison,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, IX, 273–98 (1823), esp. pp. 294–95;
E. Doughty, Observations and Inquiries into the Nature of Yellow Fever … (London, 1816), esp. pp. 1–9.
James Johnson, The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1821), I, 67. First published London, 1813.
See C. Chisholm, Malignant Fever (1801), I, 270–81; Johnson, Tropical Climates, I, 39;
John MacCulloch, Malaria: An Essay on the Production and Propagation of this Poison … (Philadelphia, 1829), pp. 21–77. First published London, 1827.
Winterbottom, Native Africans, I, 79–80; Edward Griffith and others, “Supplemental History of Man,” in G. Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom, 16 vols. (London, 1827–1835), I, 137.
Andrew Johansen, Description of Bulama Island (London, 1794), p. 20; Wadström, Colonization, I, 49 and II, diagram, plate I.
Charles Dunne to African Committee, 16 November 1811, T 70/35; G. A. Robertson, Notes on Africa … with Hints for the Melioration of the Whole African Population (London, 1819), p. 24; Sir N. Campbell, Memorandum on the Gold Coast, November 1826, SLA, Gold Coast Misc., 1826–1827;
Chisholm, Malignant Fever (1795), PP. 204–10; M. Sweeney to James Rowan, 20 September 1826, PP, 1830, xxi (57), P. 88. See also Stormont, Topographie médicale, p. 68 for an anti-clearing opinion.
For some representative advice, see Henry Meredith, An Account of the Gold Coast of Africa … (London, 1812), pp. 42–50; Johnson, Tropical Climates, II, 228–93; MacCulloch, Malaria, pp. 132–64.
A. Bryson, “Prophylactic Influence of Quinine,” Medical Times and Gazette, VII (n.s.), 6–7 (7 January 1854).
J. E. Howard, Illustrations of the Nueva Quinolo gia of Pavon (London, 1862), esp. p. 15 on Chinchona succirubra.
Chisholm, Malignant Fever (1801), I, 418–519; Clutterbuck, Inquiry, 404–5,
Doughty, Observations, pp. 11–12; Dickinson, Observations, pp. 121–68; A. Bryson, Report on the Climate and Principal Diseases of the African Station (London, 1847), pp. 243–44 and 246–47.
E. H. Acherknecht, Malaria in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1760–1900 (Baltimore, 1945), pp. 101–4;
A. A. Boahen, “British Penetration of North-West Africa and the Western Sudan, 1788–1861” (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London, 1959), P. 252;
R. L. Lander, Records of Captain Clapperton’s Last Expedition to Africa … With Subsequent Adventures of the Author, 2 vols. (London, 1830), II, 333–37; Dr. Sweeney to James Rowan, 20 September 1826, PP, 1830, xxi (57), pp. 87-88; Dr. Alexander Stewart to Commissioners, 4 November 1826, PP, 1830, xxi (57), p. 58.
Winterbottom, Native Africans, II, esp. 38–40; The Times, 5 September 1958. Most of the reported cases of “sun stroke” were in fact cerebral malaria. See S. F. Dudley, “Yellow Fever as seen by the Medical Officers of the Royal Navy in the Nineteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, XXVI, 443–56 (1932), p. 443.
See Chisholm, Malignant Fever (1801), I, xv–xvi and 98–102.
Chisholm, Malignant Fever (1801), I, 141–42; Winterbottom, Native Africans, I, 65 and II, 13, 22–23; Johnson, Tropical Climates, I, 2–4; Doughty, Observations, p. 50; Dickinson, Observations, pp. 12–13. Ferguson, “Marsh Poison,” pp. 297–98.
E. Stock, A History of the Church Missionary Society, 4 vols. (London, 1899– 1917), I, 244.
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Curtin, P.D. (1964). The Problem of Survival. In: The Image of Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00539-0_7
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