European Medicine and Foreign Diseases in a Global War
October 2024
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Chapter
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The Oxford Handbook of the Seven Years' War
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Smallpox and War in America
January 2024
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Chapter
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Routledge Handbook of the Global History of Warfare
Review of: Blood Waters: War, Disease and Race in the Eighteenth-Century British Caribbean, by Nicholas Rogers
December 2023
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Other
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The English Historical Review
The drama of epidemics and the promise of vaccines: Review of Schama's Foreign Bodies
January 2023
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Other
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LANCET
Information, Expertise, and Authority: The Many Ends of Epidemics
May 2022
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Journal article
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Centaurus
What does it mean for an epidemic to end, and who gets to declare that it is over? This multidisciplinary spotlight issue provides 18 case studies, each examining specific epidemics and their ends as well as the methodologies used to measure, gauge, and define an epidemic's end. They demonstrate that an epidemic's end is often contentious, raising issues of competing authority. Various forms of expertise jostle over who declares an end, as well as what data and information should be used to measure and define the end of an epidemic. As a result, it is more accurate to describe multiple endings to an epidemic: the medical end, the political end, and the social end. At the same time, multidisciplinary research into the ends of epidemics highlights the crucial role of information and measurement in an epidemic's end, as well as the ways in which ending forces observers to rethink and reconceptualize time. Whereas the declaration of an epidemic suggests a neatly defined period of emergency, the end is a messy process incorporating competing accounts of what went wrong and fears of the next epidemic, in which cycles of multiple diseases and overlapping social crises disrupt a simple return to normal life, articulating the nature of epidemics not just as medical phenomena, but also as fundamentally political and social ones. The end period therefore looks both forward and backward, often applying “lessons learned” from the history of the ended epidemic to the future, in anticipation of the next outbreak. Re-envisioning the future is a way to analyse and understand the past epidemic, and thereby to restore human agency into society's relationship with disease.
Spotlight Journal Issue: How Epidemics End
May 2022
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Other
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Centaurus
What does it mean for an epidemic to end, and who gets to declare that it is over? This multidisciplinary spotlight issue provides 18 case studies, each examining specific epidemics and their ends as well as the methodologies used to measure, gauge, and define an epidemic's end. They demonstrate that an epidemic's end is often contentious, raising issues of competing authority. Various forms of expertise jostle over who declares an end, as well as what data and information should be used to measure and define the end of an epidemic. As a result, it is more accurate to describe multiple endings to an epidemic: the medical end, the political end, and the social end. At the same time, multidisciplinary research into the ends of epidemics highlights the crucial role of information and measurement in an epidemic's end, as well as the ways in which ending forces observers to rethink and reconceptualize time. Whereas the declaration of an epidemic suggests a neatly defined period of emergency, the end is a messy process incorporating competing accounts of what went wrong and fears of the next epidemic, in which cycles of multiple diseases and overlapping social crises disrupt a simple return to normal life, articulating the nature of epidemics not just as medical phenomena, but also as fundamentally political and social ones. The end period therefore looks both forward and backward, often applying “lessons learned” from the history of the ended epidemic to the future, in anticipation of the next outbreak. Re-envisioning the future is a way to analyse and understand the past epidemic, and thereby to restore human agency into society's relationship with disease.
Empires und Manpower
April 2021
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Chapter
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Der Siebenjährige Krieg 1756–1763
How epidemics end
February 2021
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Journal article
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Centaurus
As COVID-19 drags on and new vaccines promise widespread immunity, the world's attention has turned to predicting how the present pandemic will end. How do societies know when an epidemic is over and normal life can resume? What criteria and markers indicate such an end? Who has the insight, authority, and credibility to decipher these signs? Detailed research on past epidemics has demonstrated that they do not end suddenly; indeed, only rarely do the diseases in question actually end. This article examines the ways in which scholars have identified and described the end stages of previous epidemics, pointing out that significantly less attention has been paid to these periods than to origins and climaxes. Analysis of the ends of epidemics illustrates that epidemics are as much social, political, and economic events as they are biological; the "end," therefore, is as much a process of social and political negotiation as it is biomedical. Equally important, epidemics end at different times for different groups, both within one society and across regions. Multidisciplinary research into how epidemics end reveals how the end of an epidemic shifts according to perspective, whether temporal, geographic, or methodological. A multidisciplinary analysis of how epidemics end suggests that epidemics should therefore be framed not as linear narratives-from outbreak to intervention to termination-but within cycles of disease and with a multiplicity of endings.
The history of science and medicine in the context of COVID-19
July 2020
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Journal article
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Centaurus
This spotlight issue encourages reflection on the current COVID-19 pandemic not simply through
comparisons with previous epidemics, but also by illustrating that epidemics deserve study within
their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts. Epidemics are not solely a
function of pathogens; they are also a function of how society is structured, how political power is
wielded in the name of public health, how quantitative data is collected, how diseases are
categorised and modelled, and how histories of disease are narrated. Each of these activities has its
own history. As historians of science and medicine have long pointed out, even the most basic
methodologies that underpin scientific research – observation, trust in numbers, the use of models,
even the experimental method itself – have a history. They should not be taken as a given, but
understood as processes, or even strategies, that were negotiated, argued for and against, and
developed within particular historical contexts and explanatory schemes. Knowing the history of
something – whether of numbers, narratives, or disease – enables us to see a broader range of
trajectories available to us. These varied histories also remind us that we are currently in the midst
of a chaotic drama of uncertainty, within our own unstable and unfolding narrative.
Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto
June 2020
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Journal article
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Nature
Spotlight Journal Issue: Histories of epidemics in the time of COVID19
May 2020
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Other
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Centaurus
This spotlight issue provides broad historical insight into COVID-19, showing that epidemics need to be studied within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts, and reflecting on how history can contribute to a better understanding of our current predicament.
Review: The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World by Elena A. Schneider
April 2020
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Other
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The William and Mary Quarterly
Introduction: violence and the early modern world
January 2020
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Chapter
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GLOBAL HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN VIOLENCE
Review: Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation's Fight against Smallpox, 1518-1824
December 2016
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Other
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AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
August 2016
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Journal article
Review of: Marriage & the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century: ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’
April 2016
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Other
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Cultural and Social History
L’histoire de la quantification : les guerres franco-britanniques et le développement de la statistique médicale (The history of quantification: Anglo-French wars and the development of medical statistics )
January 2015
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Journal article
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Dix-Huitieme Siecle
Review of: Jeremiah Dancy, The Myth of the Press Gang: Volunteers, impressment and the naval manpower problem in the late eighteenth century
January 2015
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Other
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MARINERS MIRROR
The Administration of War and French Prisoners of War in Britain, 1756–1763
May 2014
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Chapter
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Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815
The intimate relationship between warfare and political administration in early modern Europe has been extensively detailed through the debates regarding the military revolution. First outlined by Michael Roberts in 1955 and thoroughly expanded by Geoffrey Parker, the concept of the military revolution explains the growth of the armed forces during the early modern period, and fundamentally links it to the expansion of state power. While historians continue to debate the extent of this revolution, as well as its timing, geographical location and causality, its widespread influence demonstrates the energy of investigations into the relationship between war and the development of the early modern European state.
Colonial Disease, Translation, and Enlightenment: Franco-British Medicine and the Seven Years‘ War
January 2014
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Chapter
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The Culture of the Seven Years' War: Empire, Identity, and the Arts in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Disease, War, and the Imperial State
January 2014
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Book
Review of: Paul Kopperman's Regimental Practice by John Buchanan, MD: An Eighteenth-Century Medical Diary and Manual
August 2013
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Other
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SOCIAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Making the Body Modern: Race, Medicine, and the Colonial Soldier in the Mid Eighteenth Century
September 2012
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Journal article
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Patterns of Prejudice
Introduction
February 2012
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Chapter
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Civilians and War in Europe 1618–1815
Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815
January 2012
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Book
This book examines the relationship between civilians and warfare from the start of the Thirty Years War to the end of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It interrogates received narratives of warfare that identify the development of modern ‘total’ war with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and instead considers the continuities and transformations in warfare over the course of 200 years. The book examines prisoners of war, the cultures of plunder, the tensions of billeting, and war-time atrocities throughout England, France, Spain, and the German territories. It also explores the legal practices surrounding the conduct and aftermath of war; representations of civilians, soldiers, and militias; and the philosophical underpinnings of warfare. The book probes what it meant to be a civilian in territories beset by invasion and civil war or in times when ‘peace’ at home was accompanied by almost continuous military engagement abroad. It shows civilians not only as anguished sufferers, but also directly involved with war: fighting back with shocking violence, profiting from war-time needs, and negotiating for material and social redress. Finally, the book shows us individuals and societies coming to terms with the moral and political challenges posed by the business of drawing lines between ‘civilians’ and ‘soldiers’.
The Administration of War and French Prisoners of War in Britain, 1756-1763
January 2012
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Chapter
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Civilians and war in Europe, 1618-1815
Review: Ship's Surgeons of the Dutch East India Company: Commerce and the Progress of Medicine in the Eighteenth Century
January 2011
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Other
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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY
Military Medicine and the Ethics of War: British Colonial Warfare During the Seven Years War (1756-63).
January 2010
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Journal article
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Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
This article examines 18th-century European warfare, tracing the first formal codifications of conventions of war, frequently introduced by military physicians and initially regarding the treatment of the sick and wounded. It outlines to what extent these conventions were followed in practice, particularly in the challenging environment of American irregular warfare, with a focus on the most well-known incident of "biological warfare" in the period: the deliberate spread of smallpox by British officers among Amerindians in 1763. More broadly, it demonstrates that the history of military medicine provides a fruitful method with which to uncover assumptions about the ethics of war.
Biological Warfare, Colonialism, Great Britain, History, 18th Century, Humans, Indians, North American, Military Medicine, Smallpox, United States, Warfare
Review: Peninsular Eyewitnesses: The Experience of War in Spain and Portugal, 1808-1815
January 2010
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Other
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JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY
Review: British Military and Naval Medicine, 1600-1830
December 2009
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Other
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SOCIAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
The Western Squadron, Medical Trials, and the Sick and Hurt Board during the Seven Years War
November 2009
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Chapter
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Health & Medicine at Sea 1700-1900
History
Disease, Wilderness Warfare, and Imperial Relations: The Battle for Quebec, 1759-1760
January 2009
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Journal article
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War in History
During the siege at Quebec, 1759–60, which followed the battle on the
Plains of Abraham, high rates of disease contributed to the British defeat by
French forces in April 1760. While historians have not previously discussed
military medical preventative measures, a detailed examination of the siege
demonstrates sophisticated attempts to adapt to a foreign environment and
its disease, as well as how disease contributed to the development of
American provincial and British antagonism and perceptions of difference.
The Caring Fiscal-Military State during the Seven Years War, 1756-1763
January 2009
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Journal article
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Historical Journal
This article re-examines the concept of the fiscal-military state in the context of the British
armed forces during the Seven Years War (1756–63). This war, characteristic of British warfare during the
eighteenth century, demonstrates that British victory depended on the state caring about the wellbeing of its
troops, as well as being perceived to care. At the practical level, disease among troops led to manpower
shortages and hence likely defeat, especially during sieges and colonial campaigns. During the 1762–3
Portuguese campaign, disease was regarded as a sign of ill-discipline, and jeopardized military and political
alliances. At Havana in 1762, the fear, reports, and actual outbreaks of disease threatened American colonial
support and recruitment for British campaigns. Throughout the controversial campaigns in the German
states, disease was interpreted as a symptom of bad governance, and used in partisan criticisms concerning
the conduct of the war. Military victory was not only about strategy, command, and technology, but nor was
it solely a question of money. Manpower could not simply be bought, but needed to be nurtured in the long
term through a demonstration that the British state cared about the welfare of its armies.
Routledge Handbook of the Global History of Warfare
Book
Uprooting the forest: timber surveying and state formation in the British Atlantic, 1608-1806
Thesis / Dissertation
<p>This thesis argues that surveyors and surveys were key to state forestry schemes in Britain’s early modern Atlantic empire. By studying colonial state forestry schemes <em>in situ</em> from 1608 to 1806, from their beginnings in England and Ireland, to their application in New England, and culmination in Nova Scotia, this thesis offers a diachronic analysis of forestry surveying as an exercise in state formation, with implications for understandings of British imperial governance, and surveys as part of administrative practice.</p>
<br>
<p>Forestry surveyors were both practitioners of traditional resource management and professionals at the cutting edge of technology, low level functionaries and powerful state agents. Their surveys were highly flexible administrative tools that could adapt to reflect changing metropolitan visions for empire, the experiences of the practitioners who fashioned them, and the realities of the landscapes they scrutinised. The technical development of surveying was not an inevitable march toward the cartographic form – forestry surveys reached their greatest administrative potential when maps were tamed down to strictly utilitarian ends, supplemented by textual surveys, tables, the activities of surveyors in the field, and adjacent legal structures.</p>
<br>
<p>Yet surveys were not all-powerful – in practice they simply communicated ambition rather than creating material change on the ground. Circumstance, not technological sophistication, dictated the success of surveying projects – only when land unencumbered by preexisting titles or property systems was transferred <em>en-masse</em> to politically weak, smallholding settlers could the state reshape landholding to suit its resource needs. This thesis uses both these structural limitations, and the examples of state forestry projects to characterise British imperial governance, arguing that interventionism had always been an aspiration of the metropole, but that it materialised more prominently in the later eighteenth century because conquest, population transfers, deliberate policy structuring, and political exigency created the necessary circumstances for it to flourish.</p>
administrative history, environmental history, imperial history, forestry surveying, history of cartography
