Diffusion, Mortality and Responses to Pandemic Influenza in Nyasaland, c. 1918–1920

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic played out in one British colony, Nyasaland (now Malawi). Using a variety of data sources, I illustrate how the disease spread from one area to another through lines of communication and population movement and show how the colonial administrators and local people responded to the influenza pandemic. I further highlight the mortality including the reasons for the large gaps in the burden of disease among the local people, Indians and Europeans. This paper offers an example of how to analyse data on this issue in Africa – to stimulate further efforts to redress the current geographic bias of accounts of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic and rethink pandemics from the perspective of the Global South.