Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom

Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom

Metzger, Janet

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ISBN13: 9798212134613
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: Sep 27 2022
Language: English
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, 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 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 is always in part political. Necropolis shows how powerful nineteenth-century white Orleanians pushed this politics to the extreme. They constructed a society that capitalized mortal risk and equated perceived immunity with creditworthiness and reliability.

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