Week 7 Blog Post: Analyzing the Caribbean Cholera Map

For this week’s blog post, I decided to look at the Caribbean Cholera Map. Opening the site, I was first struck by the very simple layout, consisting of a map constructed with Google, a timeline above ranging from 1833 to 1872, and a “map key” on the right side detailing what each colored landmark on the map signified (either cholera outbreaks, specific hurricanes, tropical storms, or news articles).

However, this simplistic map actually turned out to be quite troublesome. Although the purpose of this map was to portray the cholera outbreaks throughout the caribbean during the nineteenth-century, it seems to be told in the perspective of someone simply trying to tally the number of cholera outbreaks instead of expanding on the implications that it had on both the Caribbean as an economic society and a cultural one. By hovering over the “News Articles” button in specific locations, the main focus is put on showcasing articles that deal with slaves, creating the assumption that the Caribbean was a mostly slave society with nothing else to offer. In addition, many of the news articles focus on the effects that the cholera outbreaks had on the large plantations that held many of the slaves. Thus, many personal stories of hardships within the slave community as a result of the cholera outbreak are obscured, instead revealing the hardships of the plantations.

In addition, hovering over the cholera outbreaks, one is presented with only numbers regarding the numbers of deaths in the population. This undoubtedly takes away from the “human experience” aspect of disease, equating a human passing as just another death in the multitude of lives that cholera took.

The map also reveals a weather aspect such as hurricanes and tropical storms, but it is not made entirely clear the reason that these measures are included. The map nonetheless obscures the impact many of these catastrophic natural events had on the places they struck, only giving us the date and location of where the natural disaster occurred.

As Turnbull points out, all maps are perspectival and this becomes clear when exploring this map. Whilst exploring, I felt that I was looking through the eyes of the white colonizers at the time and their views of natives as “savages.” It is disappointing that the Caribbean painted by the creators of this map is one that is equated with slavery and nothing else. I would have loved to have been presented with particular stories that highlighted the suffering that is disease, especially during a time with such limited medical knowledge.