American History Shaped by Mosquitoes

By Charles R. Flowers

Who would have imagined that mosquitoes would play such an important role in shaping events of early American history?

In the early 1800s, France owned vast areas of land in North America. Napoleon Bonaparte planned to send a large army to North America, commanded by Charles LeClerc, his brother-in-law. LeClerc was ordered to take control of New Orleans and open the door for French colonists to populate this vast and wealthy area. Bonaparte wanted to name this area New France!

Before Napoleon could send troops to North America, he first sent his brother-in-law to put down a bloody slave rebellion in Haiti. The soldiers arrived and in just a few weeks easily took control of the country. The Haitians were no match for modern French Soldiers and were quickly overwhelmed. As a result, thousands of Haitians were killed.

Then the spring rains came. Suddenly French soldiers were sick with fever and dying by the hundreds. No one knew what was happening. This sickness was apparently carried by mosquitoes spawned during the seasonal rains. The Haitians were largely immune to it, but not so the French soldiers. So many French soldiers were lost to this sickness that France had to send reinforcements to Haiti. Soon after their arrival, these soldiers too became sick and began dying. Seeing what was happening to the French soldiers, the Haitians rose up again and this time defeated the French.

 

Napoleon lost over 50,000 soldiers in Haiti. These were soldiers that were supposed to go to New Orleans and establish New France. Because of the mosquitoes and the sickness they spread, Napoleon had no soldiers to send. Napoleon soon changed his mind about New France and agreed to sell the French territory of 828,000 square miles to the United States, one of the largest real estate transactions in history. It is now known as The Louisiana Purchase!

In 1902, Walter Reed, a U.S. Army Doctor, proved that mosquitoes transmit to humans the sickness known as Yellow Fever. Reed's name is forever enshrined on the hospital named for him in Washington, D.C.

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