The arrival of West African pathogens turned the Caribbean into a new white man’s grave. Yellow fever epidemics rather than malaria were the major killer of Europeans, but the basic outcome was the same: almost everyone who had grown up in West Africa would have been exposed to yellow fever and acquired lifelong immunity, whereas new settlers from Europe hadn’t developed any tolerance and so died in droves.[23] As a result, African labor became the economically “rational” option for plantation owners.
