Global History in 15 Epidemics

Contexts and Cultures

Infectious disease has been the biggest threat to human life throughout history, and specific outbreaks have imprinted themselves upon our collective memory for centuries. Drawing lessons from the past to help us grapple with current and future pandemics, Global History in 15 Epidemics focuses on the social, cultural and political dimensions of humanity’s response to the rise and spread of epidemic diseases. Taking a global perspective, this text explores the transnational, environmental and technological factors that promote and sustain outbreaks of epidemic disease.

From smallpox in colonial America to influenza in WWI, tuberculosis in the 19th century and covid-19 in the present day, this book seeks to understand the role played by factors such as climate, migration, imperialism, the environment and human-animal interactions. It also explores the development and evolution of quarantine, public health systems and vaccination to understand state-society responses and the political and legal dimensions of outbreaks. Asking how outbreaks interact with war, racism, cultural memory and social stigma, it takes a comparative approach, exploring how the same diseases were experienced differently depending on their geographical, political and cultural settings. Finally, it asks how these experiences have fed into cultural memory and explores how epidemics and pandemics have been, and continue to be, memorialized throughout time.