The Ghost Map Summary

During the 19th century, there were major changes in terms of living conditions and the mindset of people, to the lives of poor Europeans and Africans. The book The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, gives a very important example of a tragedy going on in the 19th century. The position of the people in England and how they wanted to handle the situation during their most terrifying epidemic is an important reflection of how the people were during that time. Abina and the Important Men, by Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke gives the history of women without history through the real court case in West Africa. The start of innovation and technology plays a huge role in life during the 19th century.

In England during the 19th century, there was a huge amount

of poverty. Many towns grew rapidly into large, bustling cities Many people moved to the cities for work, so there were often too few buildings for them to live in. Many people lived in terrible poverty. Most of them lived close to their factories, with whole families sharing one or two rooms. There was no running water: water had to be collected from a public tap. Instead of flushing toilets, many people had to use cesspits, which were emptied infrequently. Children often shared beds.

The cholera outbreak is the most terrifying epidemic in London history. The book The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson explains this terrible time. People would wash their dirty clothes and other thins in the mine water, which would go to the pipes of drinking water. That water caused the city to smell really bad. During the outbreak, people believed that it was just the air that was causing the deadly disease. Dr. John Snow and Rev. Henry Whitehead were the ones who saved the city. After taking samples of water from different water pumps he was eventually led to the Broad Street water pump. Snow knew for a fact that the outbreak was because of this pump. He ended up having it removed so it doesn’t cause further damage, but the people believed that it should be put back. Henry Whitehead ended up being the one who proved Snow right, as he knew many of the victims and survivors of this epidemic.

The people, who lived through the technological changes, felt them to be much more than technological innovations. To them, these technologies seemed to erase the primeval boundaries of human experience, and to usher in a New Age. The 1850 song, “Uncle Sam’s Farm,” written by Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., captured this sense that a unique historical rupture had occurred as a result of scientific and social progress:
Our fathers gave us liberty, but little did they dream
The grand results that pour along this mighty age of steam;
For our mountains, lakes and rivers are all a blaze of fire,
And we send our news by lightning on the telegraphic wires. (Buescher)
These lyrics give the mood of disappointment in how society has all of a sudden changed in this time. Certain ways to do things have suddenly changed and affected the norm so it was hard for many to deal with. Daily life was hanged by the innovation of reorganizing work as a mechanical process, with humans as a part of that process. The work in manufacturing was divided so that each single workman performed only one stage in the process, which beforehand was broken into sequential parts. Individual workers usually guided the entire process of manufacturing from start to finish before this innovation. Rationalization of the manufacturing process was an essential element of the industrialization that advanced throughout the 19th century. Even though it made mass production of goods possible, it required the tight reorganization of workers into a workforce that could be controlled in ways in order to increase manufacturing efficiency. Individuals experienced this reorganization as conflict. The individual workers felt that it brought good and bad changes to their daily lives. (Buescher)

There were good and bad consequences of the innovation and technology. Negatively, it threatened the integrity of the family because parents and children drawn away from home to work in factories and in dense urban areas. Workers became more like cogs in a large machine performing a limited set of functions, and not responsible for the whole. Positively, it made it possible for more people to enjoy goods that only the wealthy people would have been able to afford in earlier times, or even good that wouldn’t have been available to anyone before. The rationalization of the manufacturing process broadened their experiences through varied work, travel, and education that would have been impossible before. (Buescher)

In Africa slavery, though nominally illegal in the Gold Coast Colony and Protectorate was actually flourishing and countenanced by the British.

The book Abina and the Important Men, by Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke gives information about this time. Slavery flourished precisely because it buttressed the region's economic system built upon the production of so-called “legitimate” products. By the 1870s, the Gold Coast was an important palm oil producer. Palm oil was a major export from West Africa to Europe, particularly England, during the 19th century. Many of the palm oil plantations depended upon a slave labor force. Since the abolition decree did not affect the condition of wives or concubines, slave owners began to import slave girls to work on plantations and perform other work, as a way of evading the abolition decree. Slave owners would import female slaves and pass them off as members of the household or wives. This was how Abina Mensah came to life as a slave in the Gold Coast.

(Okia)

During the 19th century, Europeans had their own beliefs about Africa.

After three centuries of the slave trade, Europeans had the impression that Africans were inferior. That belief helped to justify imperialism in the minds of many Europeans. Ironically, slave abolitionists contributed to this by arguing that Africans had to be “protected” from slavers, basically saying that they couldn’t fend for themselves. Victorian philosophers had an explanation for African backwardness. Accarding to late 19th century science, human development took place in in three stages: savagery, marked by hunting and gathering, barbarism, accompanied by the beginning of settled agriculture, and civilization, which required the development of commerce. European scientists believed that Africa was stuck in the stage of barbarism because they lived in a place with such good soil and climate. It provided “tropical abundance.” The ease of life in Africa made Africans fat and lazy. For proof, Europeans relied on data about the work habits of African-American slaves, and ignored how seasons determined the rhythm of work for African farmers.

(Jones)

Africans had a different understanding of their culture and institutions in the 19th century. Due to the impact of regular contacts with Europeans beginning in the 15th century, Africa was in a state of turmoil by the 19th century. European military officers often had a more realistic view of Africa. As the French learned in West Africa, the coastal states in Senegal were small and relatively weak, but beyond the town of Medine in the Upper Senegal River valley, two large interior states were still healthy enough to block French efforts for roughly forty years. (Jones)