Historical and Social Contexts of HIV-1 Emergence
Moderator: Janet Roitman (New School for Social Research)
Tamara Giles-Vernick (Institut Pasteur)
“Rethinking the Early Emergence of HIV-1 in Central Africa: Why We Need to Consider the Nineteenth Century Sangha Basin”
This presentation will examine the nineteenth-century historical setting from which early HIV emerged. Most historical assessments of this emergence begin with the early twentieth century, arguing that European colonialism and the importation of firearms constituted a cataclysmic transformation of equatorial African livelihoods that greatly increased the exposure of humans to simian immunodeficiency virus because on enhanced hunting capability. This presentation argues for earlier historical exploration of patterns of human and human-great ape interaction for several reasons. Human-great ape “contact” long predated colonial rule; certainly it comprised hunting, but it extended well beyond killing and butchering nonhuman primates for consumption. Moreover, certain patterns of human interaction were already well in place during the nineteenth century – a century that was marked by conflict and upheaval as well as dynamic trade and human mobility. The presentation draws upon both field research in southeastern Cameroon and the Central African Republic, as well as archival research in Cameroon, France and Germany.
