Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

In August 2019 the New York Times launched its 1619 Project, with the aim of “placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative.” The inaugural magazine issue, which has been turned into a bestselling book, contained an array of articles that emphasized the profound influence that racialized slavery has had on almost every aspect of contemporary American society, from traffic jams to health care. The project’s title and the date of the publication referred to the arrival of the first trafficked Africans in Britain’s North American colonies exactly 400 years earlier; the twenty-odd men and women had been transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese slave traders, but were then seized off the coast of Mexico by English pirates and brought to Point Comfort in Virginia. The fact that Africans have been present on the continent since 1619 is remarkable: even the Pilgrim Fathers—whose story plays such a central role in American mythology—didn’t get there until the following year.