By Herb Rakatansky
Disasters, such as epidemics/pandemics, may produce permanent social and political changes and can teach us that our very survival depends on cooperation. The United States would be a very different country were it not for several epidemics.
In 1802, New Orleans and the territory to the north were legally under French control, though Spain had not yet withdrawn after ceding the territory. The island Hispaniola (now called Haiti) was divided between France and Spain. England had departed its West Indian territories because of a disease that killed 70% of the occupying army.
The economies of New Orleans and Haiti were based on slavery and agriculture. At the same time, the United States was expanding westward and and needed access to the Mississippi river via New Orleans. To this end, President Thomas Jefferson sent James Monroe to negotiate with Napoleon (he became first counsel of France in 1801).
In 1802 Napoleon sent 37,000 (some estimate up to 60,000) troops led by general LeClerc to Hispaniola in 61 ships to quell a slave revolt led by Toussaint L‘Ouverture. This effort ran into trouble. Yellow fever was endemic in that area and a severe epidemic struck the French troops who had no previous exposure.
In spring 1802, LeClerc wrote to Napoleon: “At this moment I have 3,600 men in the hospital. ... there is no day when 200-250 men do not enter the hospital, while no more than 50 come out …”
All of this happened 60 years before the discovery of bacteria and the germ theory of disease. Yellow fever is spread by mosquitos that proliferate in warm, moist areas.
The revolutionary slave leaders knew that the disease was worse in the warmer lowlands than at the cooler, dryer higher elevations, but not why. L’Ouverture deliberately drew the French into battle in the “lowlands” during the rainy season where yellow fever rapidly devastated the French troops.
Napoleon prepared a second expedition to go directly to New Orleans but, because of financial and political complications, it never set sail. Control of New Orleans and the Mississippi river was critical to the United States as it expanded west of the Allegheny mountains. And control of New Orleans was critical to France if it continued to control part of Hispaniola.
Because of other European conflicts and the insurmountable epidemics, Napoleon gave up his quest for New Orleans. But, rather than sign a treaty granting the United States access to the Mississippi, Napoleon offered to sell the entire territory. It was an immense amount of land, mostly uninhabited that now constitutes all or part of 15 states. The price was $15 million (3 cents an acre). The United states made the “Louisiana Purchase.”
Absent the yellow fever epidemic of 1802, Napoleon might well have quelled the slave revolt and then established a French colony on the mainland that would have resulted in a much different and smaller U.S.
And in 1620 a severe epidemic (probably leptospirosis) had annihilated the entire Native American population in the Cape Cod-Plymouth area.
The pilgrims survived their first winter, albeit with a mortality of almost 50%, partly because of the food stores found in abandoned villages and the absence of hostile natives. If that epidemic had not occurred, the pilgrims might not have survived and the area might have been settled later by Spanish, French or other settlers leading to a country with very different geographic, political and cultural characteristics.
There is nothing good about our current pandemic. We must address the profound social and economic consequences with an abiding belief in the integrity and value of each and every human being.
Science and moral behavior are our best weapons in the battles against the recurrent epidemics that have and will continue to plague us. This pandemic is sending us a message about mankind’s need to cooperate in order to survive. Are we listening?
Herbert Rakatansky is clinical professor emeritus of medicine at Brown University.