Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:10:36.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Global Explanations Versus Local Interpretations: The Historiography of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Matthew Heaton  and
Toyin Falola
Matthew Heaton
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
Toyin Falola
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1918 an influenza pandemic of unprecedented virulence spread across the planet, infiltrating nearly all areas of human habitation. In less than a year the pandemic had run its course, ultimately responsible for some-where between 30,000,000 and 50,000,000 deaths worldwide. Truly, this was one of the greatest catastrophes in human history. However, despite the fact that the influenza pandemic has few historical rivals in terms of sheer loss of human life, it has not entered the meta-narrative of world history, nor indeed national histories, to the same extent that major wars or natural disasters have. To date, most of the historical work on the influenza pandemic has sought to prove that it does not deserve this relegation to the dustbin of history. Despite this common goal, however, historians have taken different approaches to illustrate the importance of the influenza pandemic of 1918 in Africa.

The purpose of this essay is to categorize the historiography of the influenza pandemic through a discussion of the different approaches taken to the study of the pandemic in Africa. Two distinct categories emerge from this analysis. The first category focuses primarily on the spread and demographic impact of the pandemic in Africa, as well as the official response of colonial governments to the pandemic. Studies in this category seem to be more concerned with emphasizing the commonalities of experience across space. These pieces also tend to compartmentalize the pandemic temporally, focusing only on the period during which the pandemic raged, and not the historical context leading up to the pandemic in a given area, or the lingering impact that the pandemic had on specific societies after its departure. The second category takes the analysis a step further and attempts to determine the relative importance of the influenza pandemic by situating it within the social or local history of a given place. Some articles focus on an entire African colony, while others focus on smaller local regions, but all pieces in this category attempt to understand the influenza not just in terms of similar patterns, numbers, and policies, but in terms of the historical context into which the pandemic occurred and the effect that the pandemic might—or might not—have had on political, economic, or religious trends in a specific area. In order to accomplish this, these studies tend to work within a broad temporal framework in a specific region, and do not engage in comparisons across space to the extent that studies in the first category do.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 33 , 2006 , pp. 205 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jordan, Edwin O, Epidemic Influenza: A Survey (Chicago, 1927)Google Scholar, taken from Patterson, K. David and Pyle, Gerald F., “The Geography and Mortality of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65(1991), 5Google ScholarPubMed.

2 Beveridge, W.I.B., Influenza, the Last Great Plague: An unfinished story of discovery (New York, 1977), 32Google Scholar.

3 Patterson, /Pyle, , “Geography and Mortality,” 19Google Scholar.

4 Johnson, Niall and Mueller, Jürgen, “Updating the Accounts: Global Mortality of the 1918-1920 ‘Spanish Influenza’ Epidemic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 76(2002), 105–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Balfour, Andrew and Scott, Henry H., Health Problems of the Empire (London, 1924), 218Google Scholar.

6 Patterson, /Pyle, , “Geography and Mortality,” 14Google Scholar.

7 Ibid.

8 Patterson, K. David, “The Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 in the Gold Coast,” JAH 24(1983), 497CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See, for instance, David Arnold, “Introduction: Disease, Medicine and Empire” in idem., ed., Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (New York, 1988), 1-26; Tomkins, Sandra, “Colonial Administration in British Africa during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 28(1994), 60–64Google Scholar.

10 Ibid, 73

11 Ibid.

12 Great Britain. Colonial Office. Colonial Annual Reports. Annual Report, Ashanti, 1918 (London, 1919) 19.

13 Great Britain. Colonial Office. Colonial Annual Reports. Annual Report, Northern Territories, Gold Coast, 1918 (London, 1919) 13.

14 Great Britain. Colonial Office. Colonial Annual Reports. Annual Report, Gold Coast, 1918 (London, 1919) 8.

15 Tomkins, , “Colonial Administration,” 75Google Scholar. For an extended discussion of how colonial administrators explained their “failure” during the influenza epidemic see ibid., 73-78.

16 Great Britain Ministry of Health, Report on the Pandemic of Influenza, 1918-1919 (London, 1920).

17 E. g., compare the Ministry of Health's report on the influenza in Nigeria, 376-77, with the Annual Report, Nigeria, 1918, 18-19. Large chunks of the Ministry of Health's report come directly from the Annual Report.

18 Ibid., vii.

19 Ibid., 202.

20 Balfour, /Scott, , Health Problems, 215Google Scholar.

21 Beveridge, , Influenza, 31Google Scholar.

22 Patterson, /Pyle, , “Geography and Mortality,” 13Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 14.

24 Ibid.

25 Tomkins, , “Colonial Administration,” 72Google Scholar.

26 Musambachime, M.C., “The Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 in Northern Rhodesia,” Zambia Journal of History 6/7(1993/1994), 61Google Scholar.

27 Ohadike, Don C., “Diffusion and Psychological Responses to the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 in Nigeria,” Social Science and Medicine 32(1991), 1398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Spears, John V., “An Epidemic among the Kgatla: the Influenza of 1918,” Botswana Notes and Records 11(1979), 73Google ScholarPubMed.

29 Patterson, /Pyle, , “Geography and Mortality,” 20Google Scholar.

30 Patterson, K. David and Pyle, Gerald F., “The Diffusion of Influenza in Sub-Saharan Africa During the 1918-1919 Pandemic,” Social Science and Medicine 17(1983), 1299CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Patterson, , “Gold Coast,” 500Google Scholar.

34 Phimister, Ian R., “The ‘Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and Its Impact on the Southern Rhodesian Mining Industry,” Central African Journal of Medicine 19/7(1973), 143–48Google ScholarPubMed.

35 Phillips, Howard, “The Local State and Public Health Reform in South Africa: Bloem-fontein and the Consequences of the Spanish ‘Flu Epidemic of 1918,” Journal of Southern African Studies 13(1987), 210–33CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

36 Ibid., 219

37 Phillips, Howard, “Why Did It Happen? Religious and Lay Explanations of the Spanish ‘Flu Epidemic of 1918 in South Africa,” Kronos 12(1987), 72–92Google Scholar.

38 Ranger, Terence O., “The Influenza Pandemic in Southern Rhodesia: a Crisis of Comprehension” in Arnold, David, ed., Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (Manchester, 1988), 172–88Google Scholar.

39 Ohadike, Don C., “The Influenza Pandemi of 1918-19 and the Spread of Cassava Cultivation on the Lower Niger: a Case Study in Historical Linkages,” JAH 22(1981), 379–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Ellison, James G., “A Fierce Hunger:’ Tracing Impacts of the 1918-19 Influenza Epidemic in Southwest Tanzania” in Phillips, Howard and Killingray, David, eds., The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19: New Perspectives (London, 2003), 221–29Google Scholar.

41 Echenberg, Myron, “‘The Dog That Did Not Bark’: Memory and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic in Senegal” in Phillips, /Killingray, , Spanish Influenza, 230–38Google Scholar.

42 The lone exceptions are the pieces by Ranger and Phillips on the religious interpretations of the pandemic in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa respectively. These pieces were published in short succession, so that neither Ranger nor Phillips might have been aware of the work of the other.