Timothy Winegard:

I'll say upfront that the book excels in trivia and details that have nothing to do with mosquitoes. Winegard is simply an erudite historians and a gifted storyteller. He can tell a historical event in a way that feels like it happened in your backyard. The sheer wealth of obscure details, spanning several centuries, is mindboggling. The real appeal of the book is simply as a book of history that offers us a "behind the scenes" view of historical events. He also demystifies many of the legendary "heroes" of the past, showing how they collide with today's moral values.

The book is a little less exciting wwhen it comes to the topic at the core of its very existence: how mosquito-borne diseases shaped historical events. Winegard gets carried away a little bit by the numbers and decides that mosquito-borne diseases determined the fate of empires. He starts the story from an unlikely place: Africa. The Bantu population survived the advent of sickle-cell in their original lands because sickle cell came with an important gift: sickle cell trait confers 90% immunity from falciparum malaria. Winegard thinks that this is the reason that the Bantus were able to conquer the lands of other African tribes: they didn't die of malaria. It is proven that infected sickled red blood cell constitute a hostile environment for the plasmodium parasite. However, he doesn't show numerically that the protection provided by sickle cell trait is enough to cause significant differences in population growth. (Winegard also claims that thalassemia causes a 50% reduction in malaria mortality, but this is far from proven). A more general point is that the agricultural revolution of thousand of years ago created the conditions for the deadly spread of diseases that the previous generations ofhunters and gatherers never experienced. In particular, irrigation created mosquito-friendly ecosystems in places where the density population was increasing (the first agricultural communities). And the domestication of animals increased close contacts with carriers of diseases. Winegard claims that horses gave us the virus of the cold, chickens gave us bird flu, chickenpox and shingles, pigs gave us the influenza virus, and cattle gave us measles, tuberculosis and smallpox. This is all speculation: virologists speculate that smallpox evolved from an African rodent; bacterium Mycobacterium bovis behind tuberculosis infects a wide range of animals, including deer, elk, meerkats and even lions; the main natural reservoir of influenza viruses seems to be the waterfowl; and the common cold most likely originated in birds.

Winegard then embarks in a historical survey of ancient Greece, Roman Empire, the Muslim invasions and the Crusades, the Mongols, the colonization of America, the British Empire, the rise of the USA, all viewed through the lenses of mosquito-borne diseases. He combs through three thousand years of history to find examples of how mosquitoes determined the outcome of battles, explorations and dynasties. It's a narrower research than the one in Kyle Harper's book "Plagues upon the Earth - Disease and the Course of Human History" (2021). That one doesn't discriminate whether a disease was mosquito-borne or not: disease certainly shaped a lot of history. a history of plagues and pandemics, their roles in the rise and fall of dynasties,

First Winegard quickly disposes of the Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite and Egyptian empires as being devastated by the "sea people" in 1200 BC, somehow accompanied by malaia, although he provides no evidence of it. Out of this devastation Greece and Persia emerged and in 490 BC they faced each other at the battle of Marathon. Winegard thinks that the smaller Greek army won because the Persians were camped in a swampy area, presumably mosquito-infested. Malaria again would be a protagonist in the battle of 479 BC that terminated Persia's campaign.

Winegard argues that Alexander's conquest of the Middle East and Egypt was facilitated by the outcomes of the Graeco-Persian wars and of the Peloponnesian War (Athens vs Sparta), which most historians would agree with, but adds that those wars were decided by mosquito-borne diseases. According to him, the "malaria" (Italian: "bad air") spread from Ethiopia to Egypt to Greece in 430 BC and within three years it killed 100,000 people. He sees the hand of the mosquito in Athens' defeat and Sparta's victory (although it is not clear why the mosquito would kill more Athenians than Spartans). Macedonia took advantage of the civil war. Its king Philip defeated Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea in 338 BC and his son Alexander completed the conquest of Greece. Winegard argues again that mosquito-borne diseases facilitated the Macedonian conquest, but this invasion happened a century after the "plague" and, again, it is not clear why the Macedonians were not affected by mosquito-borne diseases. Winegard speculates that malaria stopped Alexander on his way to conquer India. It is a fact that Alexander died of malaria, although he was already on his way back to Greece and died in Babylonia.

After the disintegration of the Macedonia empire, a new power emerged in the west, in mosquito-plagued Italy: Rome. Carthage had already failed to invade Italy in 397 BC and Winegard credits the mosquito for halting them (he doesn't explain why they were no mosquitoes in Carthage, only in Sicily). Winegard thinks that malaria protected Rome from Hannibal's invasion, first in the Po valley (where his wife and son died of malaria), and then in the Pontine Marshes, that kept him from taking Rome itself despite having won in 217 BC at the battle of the Trasimene and at Cannae. The extent of malaria in Italy was analyzed by Robert Sallares in "Malaria and Rome - A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy" (2002), so malaria was certainly an issue, but Winegard assumes that malaria was "only" in Italy, whereas it's likely that France, Spain and Egypt had it too. If Carthage (today's Tunisia) didn't have it, that would have been an interesting topic to discuss, although it sounds unlikely that the biggest port of the Mediterranean (trading intensely with other Phoenician ports) would be spared. Rome's destiny was shaped by malaria: malaria halted invasions by the Vandals and Huns, while at the same time weakening Rome's economy and society. The malaria epidemic of 79 AD was particularly severe. Historians agree that the "Antonine plague" of 165-89 and the "Cyprian plague" of 249-66 must have taken a heavy toll. Winegard blames the spread of malaria in the city on the Roman passion for gardens, fountains, cisterns and aqueducts. This is likely correct. Winegard also claims (without any evidence) that the Roman Empire at its peak spread malaria all over Europe, although he acknowledges that the German tribes fought the Romans in mosquito-infested regions (and won decisively in 9 AD at the Teutoburg Forest) and the Scots tribe too repelled the Romans thanks to malaria. Winegard focuses on the mosquito, but Kyle Harper's book "The Fate of Rome" (2018), subtitled "Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire" seems a broader and more accurate survey of all the natural disasters (not just mosquitoes) that accelerated the fall of Rome.

Winegard suggests that Christianity's rise in Rome despite the persecution may have been due to its character as a "healing cult". Christian values mandate that we take care of the sick, and Christians believe that Jesus healed and even resurrected people.

Winegard thinks that all five Italian campaigns by Friedrich "Barbarossa" were stopped by malaria. The mosquito saved the pope. Malaria also affected the outcome of the Crusades. The Arabs were immune to the most severe strains of the local malaria, but the Europeans were not. The Europeans were penalized by malaria in the first three Crusades (the serious ones). This thesis was first popularized by Alfred Crosby's book "Ecological Imperialism" (1986). Crosby pointed out that the main obstacle to the colonization of the Middle East was not military or diplomatic but... medical.

The Mongols of Temujin (better known as Genghis Khan) conquered the largest empire of all time, extending from China to almost Poland, but were stopped by mosquito-borne diseases (that were rare in the Central Asia steppes) both in central Europe, Middle East and Indochina. (Winegard doesn't mention that the the Delhi Sultanate stopped the Mongols from conquering India, probably because it didn't involve miasmatic swamps). Temujin himself probably died of malaria.

The chapter on the colonization of America follows Alfred Crosby's book "The Columbian Exchange" (1972): European germs and not European guns killed most Amerindians. Winegard mentions only in a footnote that diseases mostly went from Europe to America and rarely traveled in the other direction. For this important fact check out McNeill's "Plagues and People" (1976) and Oldstone's "Viruses, Plagues & History" (2010). If diseases had traveled in both directions, American germs would have exterminated Europeans the same way that European germs exterminated Americans. Columbus and his followers also introduced zoonotic hosts like horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, goats and sheep. Winegard repeats the unproven theory that yellow fever arrived in 1647 on a Dutch ship carrying slaves (in Mexico Spanish colonists were not affected by the disease), but it is certain that yellow fever was another European gift to the Americas (except that it killed Europeans too).

Winegard mentions in passing that the mosquitoes blocked Europeans from entering the forests and swamps of Africa, and that Africans were therefore captured not by white men but by black men, an obvious truth that one rarely reads in history books. The first African slave traders were Africans, not Europeans. African traders sold slaves to Europeans just like they sold anything else that Europeans wanted to buy. The myth of Europeans hunting slaves in the forests of Africa is just that: a myth. Europeans were dying like flies in the coastal regions of Africa.

Winegard also mentions in passing that Asia has been largely immune from yellow fever. Winegard argues that it's because Asia was not affected by the Atlantic slave trade (that was moving in the opposite direction), but in reality why yellow fever has shunned Asia over the centuries remains a mystery.

Winegard's knack for trivia and unorthodox history peaks in the second half of the book, starting with Columbus (who comes through as a derange mystic) and peaking with the early British colonies.

New Orleans was founded by the French to trade along the Mississippi, but it was such a mosquito-infested hurricane-pounded swamp that the Mississippi Company couldn't attract enough French colonists and so between 1719 and 1921 it organized three ships of prisoners who had accepted to marry prostitutes in return for freedom.

We then follow Francis Drake as he brings malaria from Cape Verde to Florida in 1586 and has to leave North America without having established an English colony, and then dies of malaria in 1596 still having failed in his patriotic mission. We follow the adventures of Walter Raleigh, who funds the first and second English attempt to settle Roanoke (North Carolina), and then sails to Guyana in search of the El Dorado. We follow the mission of John Smith, who spent years in Turkey as a slave, charged with opening the first English colony in Jamestown (later the colony of Virginia). We follow John Rolfe, shipwrecked in Bermuda (where his wife and child die) before reaching Jamestown, where he starts a tobacco plantation, gets rich, marries an "Indian" princess, Pocahontas in 1614, and takes her to England in 1616, where she becomes a sensation. Rolfe meanwhile becomes a tobacco tycoon, de facto the first self-made tycoon of North America. The portraits of these characters are vivid and humorous.

Winegard argues that most British colonizers of North America came from England's "malaria belt", that they were escaping malaria and that they involuntarily transplanted malaria in North America. This is all hard to prove. Cromwell himself, the dictator who launched the "western campaign" of England to conquer Jamaica, died of malaria.

The story of Scotland is more interesting (and credible). In 1693-1700 a “Great Famine” killed one million people in Scotland. In 1698 William Paterson organized Scotland’s exploration of Panama’s Darien Gap hoping that the riches of America would solve Scotland's poverty problem, but most Scottish colonists died of malaria and yellow fever. The failure of the Panama mission forced Scotland to accept the union with England in 1707. "Great Britain" was indirectly created by the mosquitoes that killed Scotland's last hope to rescue its plunging economy. Another side effect of the Scottish mission was to prove once and for all that white Europeans were not suited for working in the jungles of America, and therefore African slaves were needed to develop those areas.

Moving towards the Seven Years War, Winegard tells how in 1741 British troops tried to seize Cartagena from Spain but were massacred by disease, how malaria in the Caribbean islands and a smallpox epidemic in Quebec crippled France in the Seven Years' War, and how an ambitious French project to establish a large town on the Kourou river, north of the Guyanese capital of Cayenne, with 13,000 colonists were actively recruited throughout France, ended in disaster when in 1764 they were massacred by a triple epidemic of yellow fever, malaria and dengue. Here the book largely follows John McNeill's "Mosquito Empires - Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean 1620–1914" and, like McNeill, Winegard speculates that the independence movements of the early 19th century in America succeeded because of yellow fever and malaria.

The story gets ever more interesting as the book enters the era of the USA. The "American Revolution" was decisively influenced by mosquito-borne diseases that inflected huge casualties to the British troops. An attempt by the British to invade Nicaragua in 1780 failed because 85% of the British soldiers died of dengue, malaria or yellow fever. The battle of Yorktown in 1781 was decided by the same diseases. And so the mosquito was the real winner of the American Revolution. A side-effect of the American Revolution was that Britain had to stop shipping convicts to America and started shipping them to Australia, starting in January 1788. The other side-effect was that many loyalists moved from the newly founded USA to Canada, therefore tilting the Canadian population towards the English side. The American Revolution also inspired the slave rebellion in Haiti. The British, afraid of a domino effect (slave rebellions in their own islands), invaded Haiti to restore order but in 1798 had to give up, mainly because of the diseases. In 1802-03 Napoleon tried to regain Haiti but his expeditionary force was massacred by the deadliest recorded epidemic of yellow fever (Toussaint L’Ouverture deliberately spread the disease). A similar fate befell the Spanish troops that tried to restore order in New Grenada in 1813-19: yellow fever and malaria killed the vast majority of the troops.

And so the very mosquito-borne diseases that had helped the Europeans conquer the Amerindian empires ended up costing the Europeans their own empires because the colonists and the slaves had acquired better immunity than the European troops sent to control them.

Winegard sees more irony in the outcome of the Civil War of 1861: malaria (originally imported from African slaves) helped the Union win the civil war against the Confederacy, which also resulted in the emancipation of African slaves.

Eventually, humans understood that the real enemy was the mosquito. Winegard summarizes the story told by Oldstone in "Viruses, Plagues & History" (2010). In 1807 John Crawford argued that mosquitoes carried malaria and yellow fever, but he couldn't prove it. In 1877 Patrick Manson proved that the mosquito transmits disease. In 1881 the Cuban physician Carlos Finlay argued that yellow fever must be spread by mosquitoes, but again he had no proof. In 1884 the French physician Alphonse Laveran argued that the mosquito spreads malaria. When in 1897 British physician Ronald Ross proved that malaria is spread by mosquitoes, and Giovanni Grassi proved that malaria is spread specifically by the Anopheles mosquito, Finlay's theory didn't sound so far fetched. Also in 1897 Robert Koch in Namibia proved that quinine kills the malaria parasite. In 1900 a US team led by Walter Reed, inspired by Ross' experiment, proved that Finlay was right (Cuba at the time was administered by the USA). And then the canal through the swamps of Panama could finally be built.

The chapter on the two world wars is full of trivia (although some of the data need to be doublechecked: Winegard mentions 600,000 Russians killed by malaria in 1923 but the documented number is probably 60,000 - 1925 report by Anigstein and Pittaluga). We learn that in 1917 the Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg inoculated malaria parasites into patients suffering from neurosyphilis and it worked: the fever caused by malaria killed the bacteria (this was before antibiotics, of course). Malaria became briefly less of a threat when simultaneously scientists developed synthetic malaria drugs that replaced quinine (chloroquinine, discovered in 1934 by Hans Andersag at Bayer IG Farbenindustrie in Germany, and atabrine discovered in 1931 also at Bayer) and the pesticide DDT (its insecticidal properties were discovered in 1939 by Swiss chemist Paul-Hermann Mueller and it was mass produced first by the USA in 1942 for its overseas troops and in 1945 for its farmers). The USA was highly motivated to use both antimalarials and DDT after Germany invaded the Netherlands (which had an almost monopoly on quinine) and Japan occupied Dutch Indonesia (where quinine was coming from). In 1944 Nazi general Albert Kesselring used mosquitoes as biological weapons in Italy: he made sure that mosquitoes multiplied and carried malaria (one of Mussolini's great achievements had been the defeat of malaria). The fighting powers were aware that eliminating malaria would help their troops and all experimented. A joint team of North Americans and British scientists worked at Fort Detrick on antimalarian drugs, while Nazi doctor Claus Schilling at Dachau and Japan's Unit 731 in China experimented on prisoners (Japan's goal was to send balloons infected with plague over California). The US effort was centered upon the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, which in 1946 became the CDC. The USA was malaria-free in 1961 and Europe in 1975. However, in 1962 Rachel Carson published the book that launched environmentalism, "Silent Spring", whose main target was DDT, depicted as responsible for an environmental catastrophe. In 1972 the USA banned DDT. Needless to say, the mosquitoes came back and so did malaria. However, Winegard argues that the mosquitoes were coming back anyway because they had adapted to DDT (ah Darwin) and that the malaria parasite had adapted to chloroquinine (ah Darwin again), so that DDT was no longer effective. In 1963 the USA launched the Army Antimalarial Drug Development Program based at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (near Fort Detrick), which in the 1970s discovered mefloquine (better known as Lariam), but the parasite adapted to that too, In 1967 communist China launched a similar program, Project 523, to discover antimalarial medications and in 1971 Tu Youyou's team discovered that artemisin is an antimalarial. The rival US and Chinese programs were motivated by the war in Vietnam. China revealed its discovery only in 1979, after the USA had left Vietnam. Alas, the parasite soon evolved resistance also to artemisin.

In 1999 there was a West Nile epidemic in New York, spread by mosquitoes, which then affected most of the world. Then in 2016 there was the Zika epidemic in Brazil, also spread by mosquitoes. Winegard mentions the first vaccine against malaria, dubbed "RTS,S", which was eventually approved in 2021 (it was still under trial when Winegard's book came out), but its protection is not even 50%. Given that mosquitoes are the main killers of humans, you'd imagine that there would be consensus to exterminate the insect. Winegard introduces CRISPR and explains how CRISPR could be used to exterminate them or to mutate them into harmless insects. He cautions that the side effects of any change to the ecosystem are unpredictable: exterminating the mosquito could create the conditions for something worse to emerge.

The book is a wonderful read, especially the second half, but i wish the author had spent more time doublechecking data that will certainly be repeated by readers. For example, towards the end (page 431) it mentions the often repeated story that 300 million people died of smallpox in the 20th century: since smallpox was eradicated in 1977, and no major epidemic of smallpox took place in the century before, i would imagine that only a few thousand people died of smallpox in the 20th century. The number 300 million can be found in many books and all over the Internet, but it makes no sense to anybody to think about it for a few seconds.