When did people figure out that the tropics were a death trap for settlers from temperate lands?

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
LOL!
It is not that you pay two poops and three farts for something.
Here farth=fourth, i.e. one fourth of a Penny.
Think "cvertnik" or something like that in a Slavic language.
What are the four parts of the Shire in Middle Earth called in your tongue? They are "farthings" in English. Of course, there is a fifth territorial unit, but that is only to be expected of the British. After all, a hundredweight has one hundred AND twelve pounds in it ...
BTW - one third of the County of Yorkshire is a Riding, I kid you not.
Um, it is a joke...;)
Since Farthing sounds like Farthing.
:)
 

strunkenwhite

Well-known member
No, my rule is "I don't give a shirt about farenheit" or whatever you are using.
Understandable in a vacuum, but I am finding it hard to reconcile with the fact that you cared enough to guess a number. So you care enough to write down a guess, but don't care if the guess is at all accurate? It's bizarre to me. But OK.
 

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
Understandable in a vacuum, but I am finding it hard to reconcile with the fact that you cared enough to guess a number. So you care enough to write downsn a guess, but don't care if the guess is at all accurate? It's bizarre to me. But OK.
Ok, dude, you probably know my intentions better than I do. :ROFLMAO: 😂
 

strunkenwhite

Well-known member
Ok, dude, you probably know my intentions better than I do. :ROFLMAO: 😂
You TOLD me you don't care if your guess is accurate: "No, my rule is "I don't give a shirt about farenheit" or whatever you are using." As for the other half, that you cared enough to write down a guess, I inferred that from the fact that you posted, "below 30 Celsius cold(That should be -60 for you Murikanski)." I assumed you typed that on purpose but I guess it could have been an accident. Perhaps you're just a lucky monkey sitting at a typewriter?
 

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
You TOLD me you don't care if your guess is accurate: "No, my rule is "I don't give a shirt about farenheit" or whatever you are using." As for the other half, that you cared enough to write down a guess, I inferred that from the fact that you posted, "below 30 Celsius cold(That should be -60 for you Murikanski)." I assumed you typed that on purpose but I guess it could have been an accident. Perhaps you're just a lucky monkey sitting at a typewriter?
Can't decide if elaborate counter-trolling or merely stupid...
 

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
When did Europeans and North Americans figure out that the tropics were a death trap for settlers from temperate lands, due to the high prevalence of tropical disease and extra vulnerability of people who didn't have multi-generational exposure and childhood exposure to such diseases?

Apparently the French were still clueless as late as the 1760s because they tried some major white settler colonialism (that failed) in Guiana in that era.

When Liberia was set up, I don't think people realized the toll tropical disease would take on blacks born in, or even who just grew up in North America. So that's cluelessness as late as the 1820s.

By the 1880s, steamships and quinine were enough to support navigation, and blunt tropical disease enough to allow European conquest of the African interior, and eventually, larger settlement, but even when white settlement happened, they were never the laboring classes.

So did people in Europe and North America basically have naive thoughts they could massively settle the jungle for almost as long as it was a deathtrap, only figuring out it was incredibly stupid, a decade or two before quinine, anti-malarial, and anti-mosquito measures slowly began to make settling jungles and savannas actually less deadly for temperate zone peoples?
There was successful Spanish and Portuguese settlement in the tropics.
 

stevep

Well-known member
There was successful Spanish and Portuguese settlement in the tropics.

There were, as there were in the American tropics after old world diseases reached there and made them similarly lethal. The question was did the rewards of trade in those regions in Africa make the risks worthwhile to many? [IIRC it was a similar although possibly somewhat less dangerous situation for EIC people in India in the 18thC - and probably also the French and Dutch and again the Dutch in their DEI colonies].

I think the Spanish realised the value of quinine some way ahead of their rivals and that would have helped.
 

gral

Well-known member
Sort of successful.
None ever became a settler colony. Colombia, Venezuela or Peru cheat :) by having high mountains.
The settled parts of Mexico or Brazil are outside the tropics and/or elevated.
Not true for Brazil; in fact, Brazilian population would only really get going from 1940s on, due to it mostly(and that includes the main population centres) being between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Ah true I forgot the OP referred to settlers, i.e. it becoming a predominantly settler colony with the bulk of the population being of European descent. :oops:
 

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Sort of successful.
None ever became a settler colony. Colombia, Venezuela or Peru cheat :) by having high mountains.
The settled parts of Mexico or Brazil are outside the tropics and/or elevated.
Puerto Rico is relatively white because of a lot of Canarian settlement in the late 17th century and the 18th century and Catholic European immigration in the 19th century.
 

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Sort of successful.
None ever became a settler colony. Colombia, Venezuela or Peru cheat :) by having high mountains.
The settled parts of Mexico or Brazil are outside the tropics and/or elevated.
Puerto Rico is relatively white because of a lot of Canarian settlement in the late 17th century and the 18th century and Catholic European immigration in the 19th century.
Many areas of Colombia and especially Venezuela still have a tropical climate.
Also, Cuba is fully tropical and is white majority.
 

willdelve4beer

Well-known member
When did Europeans and North Americans figure out that the tropics were a death trap for settlers from temperate lands, due to the high prevalence of tropical disease and extra vulnerability of people who didn't have multi-generational exposure and childhood exposure to such diseases?

Apparently the French were still clueless as late as the 1760s because they tried some major white settler colonialism (that failed) in Guiana in that era.

When Liberia was set up, I don't think people realized the toll tropical disease would take on blacks born in, or even who just grew up in North America. So that's cluelessness as late as the 1820s.

By the 1880s, steamships and quinine were enough to support navigation, and blunt tropical disease enough to allow European conquest of the African interior, and eventually, larger settlement, but even when white settlement happened, they were never the laboring classes.

So did people in Europe and North America basically have naive thoughts they could massively settle the jungle for almost as long as it was a deathtrap, only figuring out it was incredibly stupid, a decade or two before quinine, anti-malarial, and anti-mosquito measures slowly began to make settling jungles and savannas actually less deadly for temperate zone peoples?
Death traps? Please note that from a British perspective, most of the continental US was considered 'tropical' during the colonial & settlement periods? Heck, last I checked, the British ambassadorial staff to DC still get a tropical hazard pay supplement.

Going to have to dispute the premise here, It isn't the /tropics/ per se, that are a unique disease risk, it is any time that you move a regional population into a previously mostly distinct biome that you have a spike in disease risk.

As for colonist/settler death rates, to be blunt, given the population surpluses generated by the shift from agricultural to industrial society that kept piling into the growing cities of the era: A. Cities in the industrializing world had deathrates that were far higher than folks seem to think, and B. sending people who would have died at home accomplishing nothing (from the perspective of their rulers) to die overseas claiming land (for the greater glory of their rulers) was a bargain that their rulers found very easy to make.

IE: Everywhere off the farm was a death trap, so why not have the peasants die somewhere they could make their 'betters' richer and more powerful?
 

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