2026/03/03 by Elise A. Mitchell · 2 voices
Social Sciences · Immunology and Microbiology · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Poxvirus research and outbreaks #Race, Genetics, and Society
paper · doi:10.1093/pastj/gtag005
Abstract The eighteenth-century medical history of smallpox inoculation and the social history of slavery in the early modern Atlantic World are deeply intertwined. By the early eighteenth century, generations of West Africans were already familiar with smallpox inoculation (also known as ‘variolation’ or ‘engraftment’). West Africans performed inoculations by removing pus from a smallpox pustule and inserting the pus into one or more incisions on another person’s body. In addition to controlling the spread of smallpox, inoculation functioned as a mode of expressing and protecting kin and community relationships in some West African communities. In the eighteenth century, European medical practitioners and slave owners appropriated inoculation to control the spread of smallpox along Atlantic slave trading routes in Europe, West Africa, and the Americas. They used inoculation to protect their families, safeguard colonial settlements, and expand the slave trade and slavery. Nevertheless, Africans and their descendants continued to perform inoculations in contexts where slavery and colonialism constantly threatened their social ties. Enslaved Africans imbued inoculation with new significance as they struggled to protect and reaffirm their communities’ intergenerational ties to place, ancestry, and kin. The slave trade had an indelible impact on the cultural significance of inoculation in the Atlantic World. The imbricated geographies of the circulation of inoculation knowledge and the slave trade expose the political, cultural, and social dimensions of collective suffering and healing.