Epidemics in the Past and Now: A roundtable on colonial and postcolonial history

ABSTRACT

[...]there is something in the granular nature of history, in its quirks and specificities, as well as in broad-sweep comparisons and analysis, that fascinates as well as informs. No, they remained open, somewhat to the consternation of public health officials who (then as now) thought them likely to spread the disease. (Here I rather agree with Alfred Crosby's 1989 analysis of America's Forgotten Pandemic on influenza in the United States that while it had a profound, indeed shattering, effect on individual lives, it left political and social institutions almost entirely unchanged). Surprisingly little has been written, for example, comparing public health measures used during COVID-19 with colonial efforts to manage the plague pandemic in the 1890s.