Article ID: CBB394438457

Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans (2019)

unapi

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms. But it was also the nation’s “necropolis,” with yellow fever routinely killing about 8 percent of its population. With little epidemiological understanding of mosquito-borne viruses—and meager public health infrastructure—a person’s only protection against the scourge was to “get acclimated”: fall sick with, and survive, yellow fever. About half of all people died in the acclimating process. Repeated epidemics generated a hierarchy of immunocapital whereby “acclimated citizens” (survivors) leveraged their immunity for social, economic, and political power and “unacclimated strangers” (poor recent immigrants) languished in social and professional purgatory. For whites, acclimation was the quintessential demonstration of calculated risk-taking: that people had paid their biological dues, were worthy of investment, and could now justifiably pursue economic advancement in slave racial capitalism. For black slaves, who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery. By fusing health with capitalism, this article presents a new model—beyond the toxic fusion of white supremacy with the flows of global capitalism—for how power operated in nineteenth-century Atlantic society.

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Authors & Contributors
Espinosa, Mariola
Marcia Chatelain
Kathryn Olivarius
Warden, Paul Michael
McQueeney, Kevin
Willoughby, Urmi Engineer
Concepts
Public health
Yellow fever
Epidemics
Medicine and race
Slavery and slaves
Disease and diseases
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
New Orleans (Louisiana, U.S.)
Brazil
Southern states (U.S.)
Cuba
Philadelphia, PA
Institutions
United States. Public Health Service
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