IsisCB Explore

Book ID: CBB723225615

Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia’s First Peoples (2021)

Peter Dowling (Author)

Monash University Publishing
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

ISBN: 9781922464460

Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 400

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

Google Books

Public health Great Britain, colonies Life expectancy Cross-national interaction Colonialism Epidemics Infectious diseases Indigenous peoples; indigeneity Early modern Modern Australia

Fatal Contact explores the devastating infectious diseases introduced into the Indigenous populations of Australia after the arrival of the British colonists in 1788. Epidemics of smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, measles and sexually transmitted diseases swept through the Indigenous populations of the continent well into the twentieth century. The consequences still echo today in Aboriginal health and life expectancy. Many historians have acknowledged that introduced diseases caused much sickness and mortality among the Aboriginal populations and were part of the huge population decline following colonisation. But few writers have elaborated further, and much of this history is still missing, even after more than 200 years. Our knowledge and understanding of the biological consequences surrounding the meeting and contact of these two cultures has not yet been fully investigated. What the investigation in Fatal Contact reveals is nothing short of the greatest human tragedy in the long history of Australia. This is a vitally important story that all Australians should read.

...More

Reviewed By

Review Martin Bush (2022) Review of "Into the Loneliness: The Unholy Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates". Historical Records of Australian Science (pp. 72-77). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB723225615

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Chambouleyron, Rafael; Barbosa, Benedito Costa; Bombardi, Fernanda Aires; Sousa, Claudia Rocha de; (2011)
“Formidável contágio”: epidemias, trabalho e recrutamento na Amazônia colonial (1660--1750) (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420545/)

Article Warwick Anderson; (2016)
Postcolonial Ecologies of Parasite and Host: Making Parasitism Cosmopolitan (/p/isis/citation/CBB168578111/)

Article Glomski, Matthew; Ohanian, Edward; (2012)
Eradicating a Disease: Lessons from Mathematical Epidemiology (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320028/)

Book Koch, Tom; (2011)
Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground (/p/isis/citation/CBB001250403/)

Article Toby Raeburn; Kayla Sale; Paul Saunders; Aunty Kerrie Doyle; (2022)
Aboriginal Australian mental health during the first 100 years of colonization, 1788–1888: a historical review of nineteenth-century documents (/p/isis/citation/CBB437532103/)

Article N. A. J. Taylor; (2021)
The Visual Politics of Maralinga: Experiences, (Re)presentations, and Vulnerabilities (/p/isis/citation/CBB755235573/)

Article Ortega Martos, Antonio Miguel; (2010)
¿Colonialismo biomédico o autonomía de lo local? Sanadores tradicionales contra la tuberculosis (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420476/)

Thesis Christopher Steven Kindell; (2019)
The Sanitary Sieve: Public Health, Infectious Diseases, and the Urbanization of Honolulu, c. 1850–1914 (/p/isis/citation/CBB673158334/)

Article Alcalá Ferráez, Carlos; (2012)
De miasmas a mosquitos: el pensamiento médico sobre la fiebre amarilla en Yucatán, 1890--1920 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420572/)

Article Tilley, Helen; (2004)
Ecologies of Complexity: Tropical Environments, African Trypanosomiasis, and the Science of Disease Control Strategies in British Colonial Africa, 1900-1940 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000750318/)

Book Crawshaw, Jane L. Stevens; (2012)
Plague Hospitals: Public Health for the City in Early Modern Venice (/p/isis/citation/CBB001200915/)

Article Cameron-Smith, Alexander; (2013)
Race, Medicine, and Colonial Rule in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213544/)

Book Seth Archer; (2018)
Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai'i, 1778-1855 (/p/isis/citation/CBB725520854/)

Article Carlos Viesca Treviño; Maríablanca Ramos de Viesca; (2018)
Mexican Medicinal Plants a Therapeutic Resource of Physicians and Traditional Healers (/p/isis/citation/CBB305763570/)

Book Robins, Nicholas A.; (2011)
Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes (/p/isis/citation/CBB001212498/)

Article Christine Folch; (2021)
Ceremony, Medicine, Caffeinated Tea: Unearthing the Forgotten Faces of the North American Stimulant Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) (/p/isis/citation/CBB450129077/)

Article Smithers, Gregory D.; (2015)
Beyond the “Ecological Indian”: Environmental Politics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Modern North America (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422283/)

Book Few, Martha; Tortorici, Zeb; (2013)
Centering Animals in Latin American History (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422387/)

Article Jones, M.; (2000)
The Ceylon malaria epidemic of 1934--35: A case study in colonial medicine (/p/isis/citation/CBB000111976/)

Book Silva, Cristobal; (2011)
Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative (/p/isis/citation/CBB001250139/)