This piece seeks to elucidate how and why Latin America is neither anecdotal nor peripheral to pandemic preoccupations—nor to larger health and disease narratives—past and present. First, it examines the world's proportionately most destructive pandemic as coterminous with the rise of imperialism. Next, it traces how the impetus for international health cooperation based on regional crises predated and informed efforts elsewhere. Finally, it explores two under-charted narratives: the creative harnessing of data produced under adversity, and alternative health solidarities that bypass (...) reigning hierarchies of “humanitarian” aid. Together, these glimpses underscore a fundamental need for incorporating histories of and from Latin America to overcome the “history-telling injustice” created by the centuries-long Western dismissal of knowledge, practices, experiences, and existential meaning generated in the Global South. In short, these accounts provide a more complex and possibility-filled restructuring of dominant narratives around the diverse trajectories and consequences, as well as varieties of resistance, that shape understandings of pandemics. (shrink)

This spotlight article reflects on President Xi Jinping's handling of the COVID-19 epidemic and evaluates its specificities by making a brief incursion into the history of Chinese official responses to epidemics. This analysis shows that Xi Jinping's response to the COVID-19 epidemic differs from official responses to the 2003 SARS epidemic and the cerebrospinal meningitis epidemic of 1966–1967, and is used to assert his legitimacy on both the local and the international stage. By sharing data, even if it was not (...) as accurate as claimed, Xi Jinping has presented himself as a trustworthy international partner, leading a country that is at the forefront of scientific research, capable of vigorously implementing epidemic preparedness measures, and destined to become a major player in global health. On the Chinese stage, he showed that the central government has regained control over local public health organizations and that public health is once again a key government priority. As part of his response, Xi Jinping also honored gods of the Chinese pantheon, in a seeming contradiction with communism and science. I argue that, by combining the most advanced technology with a religious heritage, Xi Jinping is skillfully creating an image of himself not only as powerful and modern, but also as a leader undeniably rooted in Chinese tradition. (shrink)

This article traces the historical co-evolution of microbiology, bacteriology, and virology, framed within industrial and agricultural contexts, as well as their role in colonial and national history between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. The epistemology of germ theory, coupled with the economic interests of European colonies, has shaped the understanding of human-microbial relationships in a reductionist way. We explore a brief history of the medical and biological sciences, focusing on microbes and (...) the difficulty of implementing germ theory outside of biology laboratories. Furthermore, we highlight the work of Lynn Margulis, who conceptualized microbes within their ecological contexts. Such research shows the active role microbes play in handling life-sustaining biological and biochemical processes. We outline how the industrial and technological advancements of the last two centuries not only impacted almost all human societies, but also changed the world on microbial, biological, and geological levels. The narration of these histories is a complex task, and depends on how national, international, and intergovernmental institutions (such as the World Health Organization) conceive of the selective environmental pressures exerted by industry and biotechnological companies. (shrink)

Amid the current COVID-19 crisis, everyone has been called upon to offer assistance. What can historians contribute? One obvious approach is to draw on our knowledge of the history of epidemics and proclaim the lessons of history. But does history offer clear lessons? To make their expertise relevant, some historians assert that there are enduring patterns in how societies respond to all epidemics that can inform our experiences today. Others argue that there are informative analogies between specific past epidemics and (...) our present crisis, for instance between COVID-19 and prior outbreaks of SARS or influenza. Both strategies can be pursued, but each must be done with care. It is certainly possible to map COVID-19 onto the classic dramatic structure of an epidemic, but we cannot yet know how it will end, a failure of prognostication that constrains the advice we can offer. It is likewise possible to draw on the history of medical therapeutics and public health interventions to identify the risks we face of both underuse and overuse of our remedies, but we cannot yet judge whether our current commitment to heroic social distancing is warranted. While historians can offer insight, we must temper our contributions with humility. (shrink)

The development of both the modern state and modern scientific discourses in the non-Western world are closely linked together, both being the outcome of the colonial encounter. Using a Foucauldian framework of power/knowledge and his notions of ‘episteme’ and ‘governmentality’, this article explores how colonial governmentality in India produced statistical knowledge of the country thus ushering in a new social scientific discourse of ‘progress’, ‘history’, ‘economy’ and ‘society’.

The current SARS-CoV-2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter to the prevailing approach of the previous two centuries that developed an international public health space. This article examines the measures adopted by European states (...) in order to contain 19th-century cholera pandemics, which took shape through the development of an international maritime quarantine system, based primarily on the implementation of national regulations and local decision-making. This regime was quickly viewed as ineffective and out of step with liberal ideas that urged a “laissez-faire” approach to public health matters. In its stead, a long-term trend developed towards easing quarantine measures. Nation states supported the internationalisation of the fight against pandemics, which chiefly consisted of externalising quarantine measures to the East in order to eliminate them in Europe. This process was based on a subtle dialectical relationship between the construction of an international public health space and the affirmation of state sovereignty, and continued into the 20th century with the progressive creation of international institutions responsible for advancing global health. (shrink)

This paper looks at the role of state and society in the history of epidemic governance in China for an appreciation of the way China manages the current COVID-19 epidemic.

The current SARS-CoV-2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter to the prevailing approach of the previous two centuries that developed an international public health space. This article examines the measures adopted by European states (...) in order to contain 19th-century cholera pandemics, which took shape through the development of an international maritime quarantine system, based primarily on the implementation of national regulations and local decision-making. This regime was quickly viewed as ineffective and out of step with liberal ideas that urged a “laissez-faire” approach to public health matters. In its stead, a long-term trend developed towards easing quarantine measures. Nation states supported the internationalisation of the fight against pandemics, which chiefly consisted of externalising quarantine measures to the East in order to eliminate them in Europe. This process was based on a subtle dialectical relationship between the construction of an international public health space and the affirmation of state sovereignty, and continued into the 20th century with the progressive creation of international institutions responsible for advancing global health. (shrink)

The epidemic of COVID-19 appears to be reshaping the world, separating before and after, present and past. Its perceived novelty raises the question of what role the past might play in the present epidemic and in responses to it. Taking the view that the past has not passed, but is present in is material and immaterial remains, and continuously emerging from these, we argue that it should not be studied as closed narration but through the array of its traces, which (...) constitute the texture of the present. To that end, and building on long-term ethnographic research on past and present epidemics in western Kenya, we assemble here some preliminary observations on the first weeks of COVID-19 in Kenya. We explore how the acute epidemic crisis currently unfolding is intertwined with layered fragments of earlier epidemic events, attending to material infrastructures, institutional practices, and ritual responses, to the presence of virally loaded bodies, pharmaceuticals, and their residues, and to the resurgence of often painful memories and emotions. People in this region have experienced a long century of epidemics and anti-epidemic measures of varying duration and intensity, from colonial and postcolonial sleeping sickness and smallpox to HIV/AIDS and more recently cancer, alongside actual or anticipated outbreaks of cholera and Ebola. This local perception of one long epidemic qualifies the notion of a radical temporal break that the COVID-19 pandemic is often associated with in European conversations. (shrink)