Necropolis : disease, power, and capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom / Kathryn Olivarius.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Olivarius, Kathryn Meyer McAllister, 1989- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Immunity--Social aspects--History--19th century.

Immunity.

Race discrimination--Louisiana--New Orleans--History--19th century.

Race discrimination.

Enslaved persons--Louisiana--New Orleans--History--19th century.

Enslaved persons.

Social stratification--Louisiana--New Orleans--History--19th century.

Social stratification.

Yellow fever--Louisiana--New Orleans--History--19th century.

Yellow fever.

New Orleans (La.)--Race relations--History--19th century.

New Orleans (La.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (336 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2022.

Summary:

Disease is thought to be a great leveler of humanity, but in antebellum New Orleans acquiring immunity from the scourge of yellow fever magnified the brutal inequities of slave-powered capitalism. Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms. It was also where yellow fever epidemics killed as many as 150,000 people during the nineteenth century. With little understanding of mosquito-borne viruses—and meager public health infrastructure—a person’s only protection against the scourge was to “get acclimated” by surviving the disease. About half of those who contracted yellow fever died. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans’s strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, what Kathryn Olivarius terms “immunocapital.” As this highly original analysis shows, white survivors could leverage their immunity as evidence that they had paid their biological dues and could then pursue economic and political advancement. For enslaved Blacks, the story was different. Immunity protected them from yellow fever, but as embodied capital, they saw the social and monetary value of their acclimation accrue to their white owners. Whereas immunity conferred opportunity and privilege on whites, it relegated enslaved people to the most grueling labor. The question of good health—who has it, who doesn’t, and why—is always in part political. Necropolis shows how powerful nineteenth-century white Orleanians—all allegedly immune—pushed this politics to the extreme. They constructed a society that capitalized mortal risk and equated perceived immunity with creditworthiness and reliability. Instead of trying to curb yellow fever through sanitation or quarantines, immune white Orleanians took advantage of the chaos disease caused. Immunological discrimination therefore became one more form of bias in a society premised on inequality, one more channel by which capital disciplined and divided the population.

Contents:

Introduction: A Rising Necropolis

1. Patriotic Fever

2. Danse Macabre

3. Immunocapital

4. Public Health, Private Acclimation

5. Denial, Delusion, and Disunion

6. Incumbent Arrogance

Epilogue: Fever and Folly.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Olivarius, Kathryn Necropolis

ISBN:

9780674276086

0674276086

OCLC:

1303086802