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S8 Ep1123: Headline: Mosquito Empires and the Ecology of the Slave Trade Guest: Professor Peter Frankopan Book Title: The Earth Transformed:
Headline: Mosquito Empires and the Ecology of the Slave Trade Guest: Professor Peter Frankopan Book Title:The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Frankopan discusses the "mosquito empires" of the 17th and 18th centuries, where malaria and yellow fever dictated colonial limits. West Africa became known as the "white man's grave" due to high European mortality rates. Ironically, the transatlantic slave trade was partially driven by the genetic resistance to malaria found in some West African populations, making them "desirable" to colonizers for labor in malarial zones like North Carolina. The…
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