Plague, People, and Citification

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Plague, People, and Citification
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Today

• Origins and Transmission
• Contemporary perceptions
• Causes
• Responses
• Consequences
• Disease in a Global Age

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Key Points

• Bubonic plague originated in China (1330s)and
  traveled quickly along trade routes across
  Eurasia (crossed Europe by 1349)
• Responses to the disease varied significantly
  across different regions and cultures
• Global connectedness spreads disease as well as
  fostering cultural, economic, and intellectual
  interaction

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Black Death is a modern termcontemporaries
spoke instead of the Great Mortality, the Great
Death, or the Pestilence
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Plague in South and East Asia in 1890s sparked
scientific interest in the disease (ie, Swiss
biologist Alexander Yersin)
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Yersinia Pestis
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Cross-Cultural Exchange
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Responses to the Plague

• What does each of your authors identify as the
  cause of plague?
• What different responses to plague do they
  describe?
• What do they set forth as the immediate
  consequences of the disease for their societies?

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The danse macabre in 14th/15th-century artwork
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• . . . Dust you are and unto dust you shall
  return, rotten corpse, morsel and meal for worms.

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Scapegoating of Jewish communities in
late-medieval Europe
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Flagellants processions of self-inflicted
penitents
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Ibn Khaldun 14th-century scholar from North
Africa (like Ibn Battuta)

• Claimed that civilizations contain the seeds of
  their own collapse, and identified the pattern of
  historical interaction between dynamic nomadic
  peoples and stagnant sedentary societies
• Population growth will be checked, even if by
  catastrophe

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Small Group Discussion

• Explain research portfolio to your peers
• Why did this topic interest you?
• What part of the course does it relate to?
• What challenges did you face in the research?
• How could you turn this topic into a paper or
  research project for another course?
• What themes/topics from the course would you like
  to learn more about?