Books by Philip D. Curtin

In the 1950s, professional historians claiming to specialize in tropical Africa were no more than a handful. The teaching of world history was confined to high school courses, and even those were focused on European history, with a chapter added to account for the history of East and South Asia.

This collection looks at the relationships that bridged the Atlantic between 1700 and 1900, such as the transfer of people through the slave trade; the transfer of ideas (such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man); and the transfer of disease, and how these factors related to human mortality.

This book is a quantitative study of relocation costs among European soldiers in the tropics between about 1815 and 1914. Curtin explores the implications in terms of medicine, Europe's history, global, political and military relations that transformed the people and medical know-how.