The Promise and The Terror of a Tropical Environment

Bibliographic Data

ID20045587
AuthorsPhilip D Curtin (corresponding author)
Year1964
Pages58-87
Publication date1964-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueThe Image of Africa (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-00539-0_3
OpenAlexW2503907692
ISBN9781349005390
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited10

For eighteenth-century Europe, the world between the tropics was much more a "New World" than North America had ever been. In its newness it held out both promise and terror—the promise of tropical wealth and the terror of the unknown. Even though Englishmen had been sailing southern seas since the reign of Elizabeth I and had settled on Barbados in the reign of Charles I, the tropical environment was still alien and forbidding and barely understood. But the most crucial fact was known: Europeans died there with considerably greater frequency than they did in Europe. Whatever else it held out, a visit to the tropics meant running the gauntlet of disease and death.KeywordsEighteenth CenturyYellow FeverTropical EnvironmentSlave TradeGuinea CoastThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Alien · Ancient history · Biology · Development economics · Economics · Geography · Political science · Politics · Reign · Tropics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Ecology · History · Law

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