Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award
Winner of James H. Broussard Best First Book Prize, SHEAR
Winner of the Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History
Winner of the Humanities Book of the Year Award, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities

“A brilliant book…This transformative work is a pivotal addition to the scholarship on American slavery.”
—Annette Gordon-Reed

“A stunning account of ‘high-risk, high-reward’ profiteering in the yellow fever–ridden Crescent City…a world in which a deadly virus altered every aspect of a brutal social system, exacerbating savage inequalities of enslavement, race, and class.”
—John Fabian Witt, author of American Contagions

“Olivarius’s new perspectives on yellow fever, immunocapitalism, and the politics of acclimation…will influence a generation of scholars to come on the intersections of racism, slavery, and public health.”
—The Lancet

In antebellum New Orleans, at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms, epidemics of yellow fever killed as many as 150,000 people. With little understanding of the origins of the illness—and meager public health infrastructure—one’s only hope if infected was to survive, providing the lucky few with a mysterious form of immunity. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans’s strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, a form of “immunocapital,” as white survivors leveraged their immunity to pursue economic and political advancement while enslaved Blacks were relegated to the most grueling labor.

The question of health—who has it, who doesn’t, and why—is always in part political. Necropolis shows how powerful nineteenth-century Orleanians constructed a society that capitalized on mortal risk and benefited from the chaos that ensued.

"This book is prescient for the questions it provokes about our experiences of COVID-19…Necropolis shows how elite white people exploited disease in this uniquely unhealthy space for their own personal gain…Olivarius’s new perspectives on yellow fever, immunocapitalism, and the politics of acclimation are a powerful addition to this important body of scholarship that will influence a generation of scholars to come on the intersections of racism, slavery, and public health." - The Lancet

"More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the social, economic and political implications of public health crises are more apparent than ever—as is the fact that people of color and poorer communities often bear the brunt of these contagions’ consequences. [This] new analysis of yellow fever in antebellum New Orleans highlights striking parallels with the ongoing pandemic." - Smithsonian

"Olivarius’s account is rich in thick descriptions of this fevered environment. She adeptly resurrects voices not just from elite men but from women, the impoverished, and even from former slaves…An excellent reconsideration of the impact of yellow fever on a major southern trading port in the antebellum era." - Civil War Book Review

"Necropolis makes a compelling argument for the near-determinative nature of disease in antebellum New Orleans…It is also hard to imagine [a book] more thought-provoking or more appropriate as a mirror to our current moment. Thus, Necropolis will stimulate all readers—as much the general public as students of medical history, American slavery, capitalism, or the South writ large." - H-Net Reviews

"Necropolis offers revelatory insights into how capitalism controls responses to disease, and how disease exacerbates inequalities, arguments that feel particularly prescient in the midst of an ongoing coronavirus pandemic…An engrossing and timely work of scholarship." - Journal of Southern History

"Olivarius puts a rich trove of primary sources to good use, lending the volume authenticity in its arguments and engaging readability while demonstrating the lengths to which New Orleans residents went to preserve the cyclical epidemic status quo, which preserved Creole dominance and limited the success of American and European immigrants." - Choice

"Captivating…Olivarius illuminates the complex workings of ‘immunocapitalism’ and paints a vivid picture of antebellum New Orleans. This is a timely and thought-provoking look at how disease outbreaks have exacerbated inequality in America." - Publishers Weekly