Twentieth Century Reflections on Death in Zanzibar

At times the expansion of capital has been misinterpreted as a literal acting-out of Marx and Engels's image of capital inevitably pushing all before it.1 Obviously, nineteenth-century capital did expand and conquer the farther regions of the world. Yet, as Walter Rodney has pointed out, the advance of capital was impeded and molded by the physical environment, as well as by class struggle and intraclass conflict.2 A simplistic view of the relationship between capital and labor ignores the signal role played by ecology. The latter is not simply the stage upon which the capital and labor interact. It is the factor which determines the nature of that interaction or, more importantly, whether that interaction will take place at all. We already know that the blacks emigrating from the United States experienced great difficulties with the West African disease environment in the nineteenth century, a fact which had a considerable impact on patterns of settlement.3 Although it is obvious that the epidemiological factor was no absolute barrier to the exploitation of portions of precolonial Africa and its islands, the existence of such a factor cannot be ignored. For instance, given the relationship between relatively limited population movements in other areas and the resulting increased prevalence of malarial infection, analysis of the longdistance movement of groups of administrators and landlords cannot altogether avoid the question of epidemiological impact.4 Marvin Harris has argued for the Americas that epidemiology and demography influence landholding patterns, patterns of miscegenation, methods of social control and the general open or

Ancient history · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Geology

• Revisiting the Politics of Zanzibar

  Open Access•Kyudeug Hwang, Kyu-Deug Hwang•International Area Review•2009

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• Malaria and Public Health Measures in Colonial Urban Zanzibar, 1900-1956

  Open Access•Amina Issa•Hygiea Internationalis: An…•2011

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• Mozambique

  Donald L Wiedner, Allen Isaacman et al.•The American Historical Review•1975

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