For the Health of the Enslaved: Slaves, Medicine and Power in the Danish West Indies, 1803-1848

With the abolition of the Danish slave trade in the early nineteenth century, slave health had become a central concern in the Danish West Indies for plantation owners and colonial administrators who were no longer able to replace a population decimated by high mortality rates with slaves from Africa. In For the Health of the Enslaved, Niklas Thode Jensen offers a comprehensive look at the health conditions of the enslaved at that time and how health care policy fueled an ongoing power struggle between planters, administrators, and the enslaved in the waning years of human bondage in the New World.