Synopses & Reviews
The astonishing, hitherto unknown truths about a disease that transformed the United States at its birthA horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the War of Independence began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America.
By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Québec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-helath crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.
During the years when the Revolutionary War transformed thirteen former British colonies into a new nation, a horrifying epidemic of smallpox was transformingor endingthe lives of tens of thousands of people across the American continent. This great pestilence easily surpassed the war in terms of deaths, yet because of our understandable preoccupation with the Revolution and its aftermath, it has remained virtually unknown to us. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply Variola affected the outcome of the War of Independence, and why it caused a continental epidemic, affecting the lives of virtually everyone in North America from Florida to Alaska.
Political ferment and military actions helped to spark the initial outbreaks of the dreaded illness on the East Coast, where the pox struck first in Boston. As the contagion of liberty spread, this gruesome contagion of pestilence spread with it, striking Native Americans, Continental soldiers, and settlers of both European and African descent. Smallpox devastated the American troops in Quebec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. And during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops.
In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, the pox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers north, striking Texas and then erupting in Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. From there the epidemic ravaged the northern plains and wrought havoc among the Indians trading furs at the Hudson Bay. Simultaneously, it reached the Pacific coast and extended to what is now southeastern Alaska. Fenn argues persuasively that not only the war but the expansion of the European world economyand with it the acquisition of the horse by plains Indians; the increase in intertribal conflict aggravated by access to guns; the trade in furs and other goods; the Spanish pattern of colonization, missionization, and silver miningcreated the circumstances for this unprecedented continental epidemic.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heart-breaking human drama. Fenn explores the many different ways this megatragedy was met, and analyzes the consequences. Her brilliant book is a signal contribution to the study of infectious diseases which immensely increases our understanding of the interplay between devastating pestilence and historical change. And it transforms our picture of the American Revolution.
"Elizabeth Fenn provides a dazzling new perspective that embraces the entire continent . . . [and she] recovers the larger picture that we have long missed . . . A story that is timely as well as powerful and sobering."Alan Taylor, The New Republic
"A terrifying contagious disease, the threat of biological warfare and an American population 'living a life of incessant dread': Elizabeth A. Fenn's Pox Americana goes back to the future to examine an all-too-relevant part of our past. The American Revolution coincided with a smallpox plague that swept across North America, decimating the population and determining the course of history. From the nature of the many references on which Ms. Fenn's lively research draws, it's clear that the epidemic has generally been regarded as a footnote to the full story of the Revolutionary War. Or it has figured tangentially in accounts of explorers' forays into the New World. Not this time: Ms. Fenn's entire focus is on the disease, how it spread and where its larger importance lies . . . The book explains [her subject] in scholarly yet detective-like detail . . . Using sources as varied as the burial records kept by Catholic priests in the Southwest and the diaries of explorers travelling up the Pacific coast, she pieces together a gripping, untold story."Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Elizabeth Fenn provides a dazzling new perspective that embraces the entire continent . . . [and she] recovers the larger picture that we have long missed . . . A story that is timely as well as powerful and sobering."Alan Taylor, The New Republic
"A considerable achievement and an extraordinary work of history that uncovers an episode that reshaped America as surely as the War of Independence."Garance Franke-Ruta, The Washington Monthly
"A chilling portrait of the first contact between the New World and the [smallpox] virus . . . [Fenn] chronicles smallpox's influence on early American history [and] musters strong evidence of early biowarfare . . . Pox Americana fills out the historical record, illuminating in vivid detail a pandemic that stretched from Alaska to Brazil and took more lives than America's war of independence . . . A meticulously researched study of public health policy challengingand defeatingan incurable disease."Philip Herter, The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer
"With Pox Americana
cf0, Fenn has made a stunning contribution to American Revolution studies."Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe
"A richly detailed and comprehensive portrait of smallpox at a now-forgotten but nonetheless epochal moment in its long past . . . A fascinating and invaluable case study of the way an epidemic can, as it spreads with blind impartiality, fuse such apparently unrelated phenomena as the American Revolution, the Canadian fur trade and the Spanish missions of the West . . . Fenn makes us re-imagine . . . an era of polyglot complexity, with widespread populations scattered across the continent, only dimly aware of each other at all, and pursuing (simultaneously or in sequence) different preoccupations as they battled the same catastrophic illness . . . That insight alone brands Pox Americana as a considerable achievement."Mark Caldwell, Newsday
"[Fenn] has made fresh use of many primary sources . . . to put together a remarkable portrait of an epidemic that killed five times more people on the entire continent than the War of Independence did in the east."The Economist
"After the flood of works that talented scholars have devoted in recent years to the American Revolution, who could have expected a major new study of an unexamined and scarcely suspected dimension of it? That is what Elizabeth Fenn has produced in this extraordinary book, which concerns the workings of a catastrophic epidemic that shaped both the course of the Revolutionary War and the way people lived throughout the North American continent."Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University
"With impressive research and sparkling prose, Elizabeth Fenn addresses a greatly neglected subject: a smallpox epidemic that not only was continent-wide but had the real possibility of derailing the War of Independence. Pox Americana is an excellent book."Don Higginbotham, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"I thought that the most important participants in the saga of North America in the era of the American Revolution were the Native Americans, African Americans, Patriots, Redcoats, and French. Elizabeth A. Fenn convinces me that I must add the smallpox virus to the list of protagonists or fail to comprehend the actions of all the others."Alfred W. Crosby, author of The Columbian Exchange
"Many books have been written about smallpox, but few have this volume's scholarly focus. Fenn (history, George Washington University) relies heavily on primary documents to illustrate the disease's devastating impact on the political and military history of North America during the Revolutionary War. Excerpts from diaries, letters, presidential papers, and church and burial records provide first-hand accounts of the spread of this disease. The result is an extensive discussion of the role of smallpox in the Colonial era, but the book's main strength is in the detailed analysis of smallpox among Native Americans, from Mexico to Canada."Tina Neville, University of South Florida at St. Petersburg, Library Journal
"In this engaging, creative history, Fenn addresses an understudied aspect of the American Revolution: the intimate connection between smallpox and the war. Closed-in soldiers' quarters and jails, as well as the travel demands of fighting, led to the outbreak of smallpox in 1775. George Washington ended an outbreak in the north by inoculating American soldiers (the colonists had a weaker immune system against smallpox than the British). Indeed, Fenn makes a plausible case that without Washington's efforts, the colonists might have lost the war. Despite the future president's success at 'outflanking the enemy' of smallpox, however, the disease spread on the Southern front, where there was 'chaos, connections, and a steady stream of victims.' Even as the war ended, the increased contact between populations spread the disease as far as Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. The outbreak eventually killed an estimated 125,000 North Americans more than five times the number of colonial soldiers who died (to her credit, Fenn admits that these numbers are inexact). Along the way, Fenn, who teaches history at George Washington University, recounts the fate of many blacks freed under a British 'emancipation proclamation' of sorts; promised their freedom if they fought for the British, several thousand ex-slaves perished from smallpox. She also traces the disease's effect on the North American balance of power by devastating some Native American tribes in the 1780s. Long after the war, whites kept Native Americans passive with explicit threats of infection. Fenn has placed smallpox on the historical map and shown how intercultural contact can have dire bacterial consequences."Publishers Weekly
Review
"By examining the massive smallpox epidemic that accompanied the American Revolution between 1775 and 1782, Elizabeth Fenn provides a dazzling new perspective that embraces an entire continent. We tend to think of eighteenth-century North America as a group of distinct and isolated regions -- a mismatched set of Spanish, French, Dutch, British, and even Russian colonies. Clustered along distant coasts, these colonies have seemed isolated by a broad and vague interior then still possessed by diverse Indian peoples. Consequently, historians of the American Revolution rarely examine cultures and places beyond the thirteen new states along the Atlantic seaboard. By tracking an epidemic across colonial boundaries throughout North America, Fenn recovers the larger picture that we have long missed." Alan Taylor, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
Synopsis
A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across North America when the War of Independence began, and until now we have known almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply Variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone on the continent. Her remarkable research shows us how the disease devastated the American troops at Quebec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston, and how it ravaged slaves in Virginia who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this megatragedy was met and what its consequences were for the young republic.
Synopsis
The astonishing, hitherto unknown truths about a disease that transformed the United States at its birthA horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the War of Independence began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America.
By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Québec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-helath crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.
Synopsis
The astonishing, hitherto unknown truths about a disease that transformed the United States at its birth
A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the War of Independence began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America.
By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Quebec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-helath crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.
During the years when the Revolutionary War transformed thirteen former British colonies into a new nation, a horrifying epidemic of smallpox was transforming--or ending--the lives of tens of thousands of people across the American continent. This great pestilence easily surpassed the war in terms of deaths, yet because of our understandable preoccupation with the Revolution and its aftermath, it has remained virtually unknown to us. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply Variola affected the outcome of the War of Independence, and why it caused a continental epidemic, affecting the lives of virtually everyone in North America from Florida to Alaska.
Political ferment and military actions helped to spark the initial outbreaks of the dreaded illness on the East Coast, where the pox struck first in Boston. As the contagion of liberty spread, this gruesome contagion of pestilence spread with it, striking Native Americans, Continental soldiers, and settlers of both European and African descent. Smallpox devastated the American troops in Quebec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. And during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops.
In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, the pox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers north, striking Texas and then erupting in Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. From there the epidemic ravaged the northern plains and wrought havoc among the Indians trading furs at the Hudson Bay. Simultaneously, it reached the Pacific coast and extended to what is now southeastern Alaska. Fenn argues persuasively that not only the war but the expansion of the European world economy--and with it the acquisition of the horse by plains Indians; the increase in intertribal conflict aggravated by access to guns; the trade in furs and other goods; the Spanish pattern of colonization, missionization, and silver mining--created the circumstances for this unprecedented continental epidemic.
The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heart-breaking human drama. Fenn explores the many different ways this megatragedy was met, and analyzes the consequences. Her brilliant book is a signal contribution to the study of infectious diseases which immensely increases our understanding of the interplay between devastating pestilence and historical change. And it transforms our picture of the American Revolution.
Elizabeth Fenn provides a dazzling new perspective that embraces the entire continent . . . and she] recovers the larger picture that we have long missed . . . A story that is timely as well as powerful and sobering.--Alan Taylor, The New Republic
A terrifying contagious disease, the threat of biological warfare and an American population 'living a life of incessant dread': Elizabeth A. Fenn's Pox Americana goes back to the future to examine an all-too-relevant part of our past. The American Revolution coincided with a smallpox plague that swept across North America, decimating the population and determining the course of history. From the nature of the many references on which Ms. Fenn's lively research draws, it's clear that the epidemic has generally been regarded as a footnote to the full story of the Revolutionary War. Or it has figured tangentially in accounts of explorers' forays into the New World. Not this time: Ms. Fenn's entire focus is on the disease, how it spread and where its larger importance lies . . . The book explains her subject] in scholarly yet detective-like detail . . . Using sources as varied as the burial records kept by Catholic priests in the Southwest and the diaries of explorers travelling up the Pacific coast, she pieces together a gripping, untold story.--Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Elizabeth Fenn provides a dazzling new perspective that embraces the entire continent . . . and she] recovers the larger picture that we have long missed . . . A story that is timely as well as powerful and sobering.--Alan Taylor, The New Republic
A considerable achievement and an extraordinary work of history that uncovers an episode that reshaped America as surely as the War of Independence.--Garance Franke-Ruta, The Washington Monthly
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Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-358) and index.
About the Author
Elizabeth A. Fenn teaches history at George Washington University. The author of
Natives and Newcomers, she lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.