Mosquito Empires

''Mosquito Empires'' sets out to prove an ambitious claim; the ecology of the Greater Caribbean played a large role in colonization and subsequent rebellion against the colonial rulers. The ecology being the warm environment needed to sustain Malaria and Yellow Fever, as well as the human impact that came from setting up farms. Within his argument he is also attempting to prove a greater point. "To some extent, almost all human history is really a co-evolutionary process involving society and nature." A message, no doubt, enjoyed by Environment and History, the journal that published his first paper on the subject. In many ways his book is making an argument for environment playing a larger role in history on top of the aforementioned thesis. The book is organized in two parts. One is "setting the stage" and the other is made up of instances and evidence for his larger argument. This means that the earlier chunks of the book are more thematic and the latter half is chronological. The first part gives you the tools to understand the significance of the later half, which is the crux of his argument. The environment was used both by the conquerors and the conquered. The Europeans used the environment to bolster economic growth back home, through the trade of gold, sugar, and other resources found. However, sometimes the conquered themselves used the Malaria and Yellow fever to fight the Europeans, as was the case during a plantation uprising. Other times, the author seems to give the environment itself agency, a place that if not respected could easily destroy the unwary traveler as evidenced by the destruction of the Scottish colonization attempt.

The author uses many sources written in Cuba and the Greater Caribbean during the 1800's and earlier along with reports from the conquerors and the conquered. The bibliography is everything that could be expected from a good historian. It acknowledges the other writers on the subject and also gives a multifaceted view of the events from the eyes of the people that experienced it. ''Mosquito Empires'' successfully inserts environment into the historical discourse of the Atlantic world.