Yellow fever and malaria outbreaks threatened West African trade.
Evidence
Realizing that loans by themselves would hardly suffice, Roume also took a number of legislative steps designed to improve health conditions in the federation. At the time of his arrival, West Africa still had a reputation for insalubrity, which a murderous outbreak of yellow fever in Saint-Louis in 1900 had helped dramatize. Roume was interested in stemming the spread of malaria and yellow fever in port cities, where trade stood to suffer the most from outbreaks of those diseases. Only when all member colonies were rid of these epidemics, he felt, would it be possible for West Africa to prosper. The recent discovery that these diseases were mosquito-borne led Roume to try and eliminate all possible breeding grounds for the insects. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 166
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Colonial health policy driven by trade protection connects to the reader’s theme of how French republican interests (economic) shaped imposed reforms in West Africa.
Related
- French colonial officials fought tropical disease mainly to protect trade (similarity 0.93)
- French West Africa adopted mosquito eradication as an innovation against malaria (similarity 0.81)
- French colonial policy shifted to mosquito eradication rather than prophylactic quinine (similarity 0.80)
- French colonialism reduced malaria in West Africa rather than malaria decline enabling French conquest (similarity 0.80)
- Bacteriological confidence and scarce resources undermined French colonial sanitation (similarity 0.79)
- Postwar manpower needs shifted colonial health policy to rural preventive care (similarity 0.78)