Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria successfully illuminates the history of unfree laborers in a little studied region and is able to do so persuasively by using limited source material. Reilly has been particularly resourceful in drawing upon diverse disciplines and datasets. The result is a bold, stimulating study that will hopefully provoke furth scholarly engagement with this important topic. Reilly's valuable book is a rare environmental and medical history of the Arabian Peninsula, which fills a gap in the literature. This study will benefit not only specialists in environmental history but also students and researchers of the history of medicine and technology. Reilly's valuable book is a rare environmental and medical history of the Arabian Peninsula, which fills a gap in the literature. This study will benefit not only specialists in environmental history but also students and researchers of the history of medicine and technology. A lucid and compelling account of the slave experience in a region long ignored by historians of slavery.... [It is] a valuable case study that underscores the need for historians to pay closer attention to the ways in which environmental factors shaped the slave experience in various parts of the world.
Richard B. Allen, author of European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850