Ancient viral genomes reveal introduction of human pathogenic viruses into Mexico during the transatlantic slave trade

After the European colonization of the Americas, there was a dramatic population collapse of the Indigenous inhabitants caused in part by the introduction of new pathogens. Although there is much speculation on the etiology of the Colonial epidemics, direct evidence for the presence of specific viruses during the Colonial era is lacking. To uncover the diversity of viral pathogens during this period, we designed an enrichment assay targeting ancient DNA (aDNA) from viruses of clinical importance and applied it to DNA extracts from individuals found in a Colonial hospital and a Colonial chapel (16th-18th century) where records suggest that victims of epidemics were buried during important outbreaks in Mexico City. This allowed us to reconstruct three ancient human parvovirus B19 genomes and one ancient human hepatitis B virus genome from distinct individuals. The viral genomes are similar to African strains, consistent with the inferred morphological and genetic African ancestry of the hosts as well as with the isotopic analysis of the human remains, suggesting an origin on the African continent. This study provides direct molecular evidence of ancient viruses being transported to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade and their subsequent introduction to New Spain. Altogether, our observations enrich the discussion about the etiology of infectious diseases during the Colonial period in Mexico.

Structural Racism and Maternal Health Among Black Women

Historical foundations rooted in reproductive oppression have implications for how racism has been integrated into the structures of society, including public policies, institutional practices, and cultural representations that reinforce racial inequality in maternal health. This article examines these connections and sheds light on how they perpetuate both racial disparities in maternal health and high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity among Black women.

From ethnobotany to emancipation: Slaves, plant knowledge, and gardens on eighteenth-century Isle de France

This essay examines the relationship between slavery and plant knowledge for cultivational activities and medicinal purposes on Isle de France (Mauritius) in the second half of the eighteenth century. It builds on recent scholarship to argue for the significance of slaves in the acquisition of plant material and related knowledge in pharmaceutical, acclimatization, and private gardens on the French colonial island. I highlight the degree to which French colonial officials relied on slaves' ethnobotanical knowledge but neglected to include such information in their published works. Rather than seeking to explore the status of such knowledge within European frameworks of natural history as an endpoint of knowledge production, this essay calls upon us to think about the plant knowledge that slaves possessed for its practical implementations in the local island context. Both female and male slaves' plant-based knowledge enriched - even initiated - practices of cultivation and preparation techniques of plants for nourishment and medicinal uses. Here, cultivational knowledge and skills determined a slave's hierarchical rank. As the case of the slave gardener Rama and his family reveals, plant knowledge sometimes offered slaves opportunities for social mobility and, even though on extremely rare occasions, enabled them to become legally free.

The biological standard of living in pre-modern Korea: Determinants of height of militia recruits during the Chosŏn dynasty

This paper extends the research on the biological standard of living in the Korean peninsula back to pre-modern times. Drawing on militia rosters of the Chosŏn Dynasty from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, we tentatively conclude that the final height of Korean men during this period was 166cm and thus slightly above that of modern North Korean men (165cm). On the other hand, the average height of modern South Korean men is 172cm, 6cm more than what we tentatively estimate for pre-modern Korean men. Regression analysis of the height of pre-modern Korean men finds that un-free Koreans ("slaves") were significantly shorter by about 0.6-0.7cm than commoners, whereas the average height of recruits suffering from smallpox did not differ significantly from that of other recruits. Moreover, regional, as opposed to birth-dummy, variables account, and to a significant degree, for most of the differences in height. Whether or not this is a result of socioeconomic differences across provinces or a result of other regionally-varying factors remains an open question.

The Medicinal Rod: Slave Health and Redhibition Law in George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes

The economic transactions and litigation necessary for slavery to function, coupled with the South's honor culture, meant skepticism and posturing frequently attended the buying and selling of enslaved people. This atmosphere provided opportunities for enslaved individuals familiar with the symbiotic ways their health and value intertwined to manipulate owners by feigning illness or adopting behaviors contrary to those of a "sound and sane" captive under Louisiana's redhibitory (slave warranty) law. Such actions offered a chance at preserving that which slavery denied its victims: proximity to family, a reduced chance of being sold, and an opportunity to exert agency within a strictly oppressive system. In dramatizing these paradoxes, George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes illustrates the vile hollowness of owners' paternalistic attitudes towards the enslaved, acknowledges the subjectivity and will of enslaved individuals, and castigates the return of slavery-like conditions in the form of the convict lease system.

[Antonio de Saldanha da Gama's proposals to improve the slave trade "for humanitarian and economic reasons," Rio de Janeiro, 1810]

In 1808, Dom João VI issued an edict which regulated the shipping and treatment of slaves on the transatlantic crossing from Africa. Two years later, Antonio de Saldanha da Gama, a member of the Treasury Council, drafted a letter discussing some points of the resolution. This key figure in the Portuguese administration of Brazil argued that his respectful considerations concerning the determinations of His Royal Highness were designed to improve them "for humanitarian and economic reasons." Safeguarded in the archives of Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, this letter is transcribed, annotated, and contextualized here, supplying an interesting perspective on the prevailing concerns and justifications about the trafficking of African slaves to Brazil.

The Psychohistory of Child Maltreatment Among Antebellum Slaveholders

Examining the inner workings of the slaveholder family, including slave caretakers, this article probes the psychodynamics of slaveholder development to assess the extent of child abuse in the Old South. Childcare was haphazard and premised on paternal absence, maternal ambivalence, and the exigencies of slave surrogacy. Corporal punishment, sanctified by southern religion, was the rule. The likelihood of slave negligence and retaliatory attacks against slaveholder children are addressed. Childrearing practices such as swaddling, aunt adoption, and maternal incest are considered, as well as the possible usage of a West African cleansing ritual. The article classifies planter families within the Ambivalent Mode of parent-child relations and suggests the restaging of childhood trauma as the underlying dynamic in the march to civil war.

[Luís Gomes Ferreira reports on the health of slaves in his work entitled Erário mineral (1735)]

The article analyzes the reports of Luís Gomes Ferreira published in his manual on practical medicine entitled Erário mineral, of 1735, on the most common illnesses in captivity. It is shown that such reports can be interpreted as a criticism of the social relations of the slave era by issuing some warnings to the landowners who failed to look after the health of their slaves.

[Frontier, sugarcane and trafficking: slavery, disease and death in Capivari, São Paulo, 1821-1869]

The deaths and diseases of slaves in the São Paulo State sugarcane municipality of Capivari are addressed, associating the causes attributed to these deaths to the social and economic context and characteristics of the local slave communities. The impact of malaria, relating it to the age brackets, the environment created by work on the sugarcane plantations and the evolution of the occupation of the area, initially by expanding frontiers, is emphasized. The relationship between illness and work processes, as well as the post-disembarkation mortality of Africans and the possibility of mortality crises among the sugarcane captives is explored. The results lead to a discussion of the impact of habitat and Atlantic displacement and the difficulty in acclimatizing.

The eponymous Dr James Marion Sims MD, LLD (1813-1883)

Dr James Marion Sims was born in 1813 in Lancaster County, South Carolina. It was while pioneering numerous surgical procedures in Alabama that in 1849 he achieved the outstanding landmark in medical history of successfully, and consistently, repairing vesicovaginal fistulae. Sims soon developed a reputation as a fine surgeon, with new operations and techniques, using novel surgical instruments and his innovative approaches frequently published. Moving to New York City in 1853, he further established hospitals devoted entirely to women's health. Sims was controversial, with flamboyant descriptions of self-confident success, yet they were tempered with sober reflection of failure and loss. Today we remain with the Sims speculum and Sims position, eponymous tributes to his accomplishments as the 'Father of Gynaecology'.

Genetic evidence of African slavery at the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade

An archaeological excavation in Valle da Gafaria (Lagos, Portugal), revealed two contiguous burial places outside the medieval city walls, dating from the 15(th)-17(th) centuries AD: one was interpreted as a Leprosarium cemetery and the second as an urban discard deposit, where signs of violent, unceremonious burials suggested that these remains may belong to slaves captured in Africa by the Portuguese. We obtained random short autosomal sequence reads from seven individuals: two from the latter site and five from the Leprosarium and used these to call SNP identities and estimate ancestral affinities with modern reference data. The Leprosarium site samples were less preserved but gave some probability of both African and European ancestry. The two discard deposit burials each gave African affinity signals, which were further refined toward modern West African or Bantu genotyped samples. These data from distressed burials illustrate an African contribution to a low status stratum of Lagos society at a time when this port became a hub of the European trade in African slaves which formed a precursor to the transatlantic transfer of millions.

"Ask a slave" and interpreting race on public history's front line: interview with Azie Mira Dungey

In this interview, Azie Mira Dungey (creator of the web series, "Ask a Slave") and Amy M. Tyson (Associate Professor of History at DePaul University and author of The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History's Front Lines) discuss Dungey's web series, as well as her experiences as a living history interpreter at both the Smithsonian Museum of American History and at Mount Vernon.