A Bug in the Software

longtime supporters John Andre Saither and Mike Maylebin. You guys are the best for sticking with me all this time. Really appreciate it, Really love getting feedback from you guys directly, and that includes everybody, not just those guys. I mean, I talk to them a fair bit at this point. But if you ever want to get a hold of me, just reach out to History Impossible at gmail dot com. Simple enough. You can find me on all the social

media platforms x Facebook, Instagram. I guess technically I'm on threads as well, though I don't really use that. I started a Blue Sky account, don't really use that, but I'm there. I'm in those places. So yeah. If you also want to support this show, make sure to go to Patreon dot com. Slash History Impossible, or become a pay subscriber on the History Impossible substack. That's History Impossible

dot substack dot com, whatever works. Guys, I just really appreciate any support you can give this show and give me as I go further into debt to get my history education finished up. In all serious as though, you know, financial support is welcome, but if you can't make that work, just telling people about this show, people who might be interested in history but you know, don't really have anything to listen to, will be much appreciated. So with that said,

thank you to everybody. Please consider supporting the show, like I said, and let's get into it, because you guys have probably some of you at least have listened, but some of you probably are still you know, have it

on your that catalog. Listening to my most recent episode, Mother's Wrath, Mankind's Cope, where I talk about the Los Angeles fires of twenty twenty five as well as the downstream effects of them, and more broadly, how humankind copes with natural disasters, I recommend giving that a listen if you haven't already. You don't have to hear it to have This episode makes sense, but it's definitely related in the sense that it is, or was rather my first

exploration into environmental history in grad school. What this episode you're about to listen to is at least the paper that it's based on this time. I mean, we are gonna be talking on environmental history, but it's going to be a little different in its approach. It'll be less story related to, you know, specific events in history, and

more related to subject, more related to theme. Because this is the reason I like to say that I am subjecting you all to the quote unquote delights of historiography. I say that somewhat jokingly. Historiography is not my favorite thing in history, but I've started to grow on me, and we have a couple other things that I've written so far for school that have to do with historiography, and like I said, it's grown on me. It's a

history of history, so to speak. Though. Topic that we're talking about now, though, is, like I said, environmental history, specifically the role of infectious disease, which is sort of the cornerstone, and really it was my entry point into

being interested in environmental history. As a lot of you listening probably remember, I've spoken a number of times on history impossible about infectious disease in history, we had the Spanish flu pandemic episode back in twenty twenty and then the Black Death and downstream effects episode in twenty twenty three, I believe, and in this particular case, we're not going to be looking at any disease in particular, but a

more zoomed out approach is going to be taken. Something you might be surprised to hear that there actually isn't that much in the way of literature on this subject, as you might think, or in my opinion, as there should be, because as I've made pretty clear, I do think that the role of infectious disease, but also the role of nature itself, the environment in which we live, the ecology in which humankind exists, is vital for understanding

the human condition and sometimes even the decisions that we make that we believe we might have a little more

agency over than we actually do. But without totally downplaying the role of agency, which is something that comes up in this essay, the fact that there's not that much literature about the subject in the grand scheme of things, I should say, compared to history of war, for example, the history of politics, or ideology even has added to my suspicion that while there are plenty of people interested in the subject of infectious disease at particular historical crossroads

or causing them, even there does seem to be a bit of an avoidance of the subject. I recently appeared on C. J. Kilmer's Dangerous History podcast to talk about a number of things. It was actually a very wide ranging conversation, but among those things, we talked about the role of nature impact humankind to a certain degree, and how there just doesn't really seem to be a lot of appreciation of that. I'd add to what I said

in that interview that we did. I think the reason people want to avoid such things is because they don't like the idea of there being stuff that challenges our agency. Because we do like to believe that we're in control of everything, and we ultimately are for all intents and purposes. But anything that challenges that is, you know, is hard to stomach. It is natural, I would argue that. But the important thing is that agency can be found in this subject, and I think that we should make an

attempt to do so. And that's what I tried to do with this research. That I did just over a year ago. So with all that said, let's get into some impossible historiography, and lets me to.

The pandemic forced us to consider how significantly transformative historical events might have been impacted by the presence of infectious disease, and how that might allow us to reframe their significance in a different context. However, despite the renewed interests after the pandemic in twenty twenty, previous scholarship had been ax glorying the role of infectious disease and shaping significant human

driven historical events for decades. Like I said in the intro, this was and is still a relatively niche corner of not just history, but even the subfield of environmental history. But it was there, there was a significant number of books that cover that and a fair amount of study, and that became my area of interest for the paper that inspires this podcast that you're listening to right now now.

Studying the role of infectious disease on human driven historical events had frequently faced controversy, thanks largely to its supposedly deterministic nature that felt, at least to a number of critics, like it robbed human beings of agency. No one likes

to feel that way. After all, This concern over agency became particularly acute in conversations about infections diseases role in moments of significant historical change like conflict, conquest, and colonization, which had for many years been ascribed with, for lack of a better way of putting it, total or okay, maybe near total human agency, like, for example, the only reason Europeans were able to conquer North and South America

for a long time was just seen as bloody human conquest. Obviously, that view has changed over the years, and it's pretty much common knowledge now that the indigenous people of North and South America just couldn't handle the role that infectious disease played in their interactions with these new European peoples. Now, this concern was obviously understandable, like I was saying, with many pioneers in this field of environmental history edging closer

to various levels of determinism in their analyzes. But from the nineteen seventies onward, there was a constant conversation occurring within the field and a more nuanced view began to

take shape. I mentioned this book in the last episode of History Impossible when talking about environmental history, so it might sound familiar when I mentioned the publication of J. R. McNeil's Mosquito Empires, Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean sixteen twenty to nineteen fourteen, and with its publication in twenty ten, it became pretty apparent that this more nuanced view of infectious diseases role in human history really started

to come into greater focus. A number of other books since then have been published, but McNeil's Mosquito Empires kind of serves as the culmination point of this change in

the continuity of the scholarship. It had taken many years for us to get to that point anyway, and it had not been without controversy and a fair amount of interdisciplinary soul searching on the part of scholars who wanted to take on this task of recontextualizing the human experience's most dramatic and in a lot of cases, well known historical events. This recontextualization casts the supposedly human driven events of conflict, conquest, and colonization, The Big Three c's there.

I guess we could call them in a new light in which a greater deeper understanding of just how much agency human beings actually have neither total nor all that limited, can be appreciated by the historian. Within some circles, the first half of the twentieth century had seen some discussion of the role that infectious disease had played in human history,

but it was relatively limited. Remember, German theory is not that old at this point, and I can't recall the year that it was proven, but it was in the nineteen thirties that a virus was proven to exist at all, at least in terms of visual evidence, something we talked about in the Spanish flu episode that we did on

History Impossible a number of years ago. Regardless, the biologist Hans Zincer had written a book called Rats License History in nineteen thirty five to some moderate success, and in nineteen forty one a junior statistician named Clara E. Council had written a paper for Public Health Reports in which he stated that quote the waging of war has always been attended by increases in the prevalence of disease unquote, but noted that quote only a blurred picture can be

obtained of the true character and incidents of the great waves of fatal illness that decimated the nations involved in early Wars unquote. This limited appreciation was fully articulated in nineteen forty nine, when the godfather of modern environmentalism, Eldo Leopold, called for a rewriting of history from an ecological perspective.

I mentioned him in the previous episode of History Impossible as well, you might recall, however, a true shift in this direction towards looking at history from an ecological perspective would not begin to appear in earnest until the early

nineteen seventies. During this time, and increasing number of scholars began to take the role of disease far more seriously as a significant contributing factor in events otherwise thought to be primarily the result of human win Like I was saying earlier, and I just mentioned it a little bit ago, but it's worth reiterating and looking at one of the primary books, if not really the first primary major work

that recontextualized the conquest of the Americas. Because of the obvious downstream effects the so called discovery of North America. Therefore proved fertile ground for questions of human agency the

hands of environmental forces like disease. This was at the center of Alfred W. Crosby's The Colombian Exchange, Biological and Cultural Consequences of fourteen ninety two, which was published in nineteen seventy two, in which Crosby demonstrates that quote the fatal diseases of the old world killed more effectively in

the new unquote. This recontextualization of one of the modern world's most significant changes, really the creation of the modern world when you think about it as we know it today, was profoundly significant because it challenged the fundamental assumptions that most historians up until that point and the general public as well, had about the arrival of Europeans on the American continents. Like I said, it was believed to be just a simple act of human conquest, simple in air quotes.

two cultures. As we know, that doesn't necessarily matter all that much on its own at least, and that was what previous scholarship had highlighted, the technological and in some cases in a sort of dated, politically incorrect way of putting it, cultural superiority of the Europeans, and Crosby knew that that wouldn't suffice to explain this significant phenomenon in history, especially because it all neglected the role infectious disease actually played,

as evidence written by accounts from indigenous survivors in the years after European contact. This is an important thing to point out. There were a lot of pieces of evidence out there, primary sources, that made it very clear infectious disease was a major problem, and it wasn't just the smallpox blankets that we've become colloquially aware of. Evidence of mass die offs, complete negation of villages and the like

was well known and recorded at the time. Just awareness of it or appreciation of it as a force, had fallen by the wayside, likely thanks to the like I said, discomfort with the idea that human agencies sometimes can take a back seat, even relatively speaking, so Crosby sought to correct a record by exploring the role of biological exchange, which included narratives of disease exchange, and how that led to shifts that changed and shaped the landscape of the

New World. This included an examination of the botanical and zoological imports from the Old World and how they specifically impacted the peoples already living in the Americas. Because animals are one of the largest vectors for disease exposure, if not the largest, the introduction of several species into the new environment brought with them several of the diseases that ultimately wrought so much havoc on indigenous Americans. Like measles

comes to mind. However, if one counts the arrival of new humans as a zoological import, not just the animals, and Crosby thinks that we should, then that helps explain the introduction of human exclusive disease into the American ecosystem, like smallpox. These introductions and interactions created massive effects on the indigenous populations that went well beyond just killing them

off in droves. As Crosby explains, quote, one can only imagine the psychological impact on quote of the epidemics felt by indigenous people, which quote must have shaken the confidence of the Incans that they still enjoyed the esteem of

their gods unquote. Crosby's ability to reasonably infer the cultural significance of infectious disease upon a people who had once seen few equals, like in the case of the Incas, helps demonstrate the previously less appreciated downstream effects of affectious disease. In the Conquest of the New World. Crosby made some assertions in the Columbian Exchange that would turn out to

be challenged by later scholarships. So it's important for us to remember that none of these claims were infallible, and none of them ever will be. No claim in history in the actual literature will be considered infallible, just varying levels of difficult to challenge meaningfully. For example, Crosby made the claim that syphilis was likely introduced to Europe by indigenous Americans. There's not really much evidence to support that notion,

not anymore, at least not exclusively. However, Crosby's inquiries were central in starting the conversation about what determined the outcomes of European contact. This, in turn opened the field of environmental history to broader questions about the role played by

infectious disease on significant historical events. Essentially supplementing Crosby's work in nineteen seventy two was medical historian Frederick F. Cartwright an historian Michael D. Biddis's book Disease and History, which offered a broader view than Crosby of the various diseases that have affected mankind across time and helped to universalize the idea that infectious disease played a significant role in

human history's most dramatic moments. Cartwright and Biddis made a noteworthy contribution with their work by demonstrating infectious diseases quote effect not only upon historically important individuals, but also upon the people's quote, ranging from diseases of the ancient world

to more modern maladies. For example, they pointed the spread of malaria into romes surrounding agricultural districts in the first century BCE as being quote probably more catastrophic than the attacks of the Goths and the Vandals unquote, since the effects of such an outbreak quote accounted for the slackness

of spirit which characterized the later years of Rome. They also followed the same chain of cultural logic basically used by Crosby and suggests that had it not been for these centuries of plague that convulsed Rome after the death of Christ, the people of the Roman world would not have been so susceptible to the rhetoric and world vision

of early Christianity. This kind of reminds me of how the old religions of Indonesia of Java, specifically the faith in them was so shaken by the explosion of Krakatoa and the apocalyptic destruction that wrought upon so many thousands of people, and how Islam filled that vacuum for a lot of them, leading ultimately to what we now recognize as the most populous Islamic country in the world today.

Now this could well be overstated, all of it, but we do see the beginning of a more environmental and arguably deterministic view of human history forming with work like

that of Cartwright and Biddus. And this can be seen when Cartwright and Biddus highlight the Black Death of the fourteenth century as a worldwide pandemic quote unquote, after which they make the argument that quote the devastation wrought in Scandinavia may ultimately have had a greater effect upon world history than did the English catastrophe of the Black Death unquote.

When you read Cartwrite and Biddus, one can sense a bit of the traditional historiography from before the early seventies slipping into their analyzes, with their frequent invocations of the great men of history, like the Borgeaus, Ivan the than Henry the Eighth in their exploration of the effect that syphilis has had on the course of history. It's not to say that the great men don't matter. They certainly do. Great man theory is a little underrated at this point,

i would say, at least in some circles. And while it is certainly significant that they would approach the behavior of well known rulers and historical figures from this standpoint as opposed to a moral one, this does suggest that some old habits of just singularly placing focus on the great men of history, rather than combining them with the trends and forces out there, that that habit of just

focusing on one dies hard. It would be another four years before the insights explored by the likes of Crosby, Cartwright and Biddus would be given new life within the field. William McNeil, the father of J. R. McNeil. Funny enough, his book Plagues and Peoples from nineteen seventy six helped break new ground with its more nuanced approach than the

previous scholarship that we just looked at. It did so by attempting to further provide quote a fuller comprehension of humanity's ever changing place and the balance of nature unquote, to use McNeil's words, by providing a broad analysis of humanity's interaction with disease, including conflict, conquest, and colonization. There's those three c's again, starting his chronology with the beginning of humankind itself, so don't mistake him for being modest

with his timeline. McNeil was the first to place human beings in a truly environmental context, beginning in prehistory in other words, pre civilization, showing how we are animals and like all animals, are part of a constantly shifting ecosystem. He notes that despite our incredible ability to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, our species is quote relations with microparasites remained until the nineteenth century largely biological, that is, beyond

or beneath human capacity for conscious control unquote. This recontextualization went well beyond historical events and instead focused on humankind as a biological species, which helped then make the case the ultimate case really for which environmental historians had been advocating that human beings are not exempt from environmentally driven forces.

Despite his significant recontextualization of humanity as a species, McNeil follows the trend that had been set by Cartwright and Biddhus by moving through the rest of human history from the ancient world until the modern day and exploring how disease made impacts along the way in broad terms at least, Like Cartwright and Biddus, he also uses cultural responses to disease to help explain the rise of certain religious views,

including Christianity, noting that for Christians believe that quote care of the even in time of pestilence was for them a recognized religious duty. McNeil argues that Christianity thus had an advantage over the old pagan religions of Europe that did not share such views, at least in terms of

incentivizing conversions. He cites early Christian writers such as Cyprian in making this case at least, though unlike Cartwright and Bidus, he outright admits that this is just speculation, however compelling, and therefore cannot be proven. It's still a very interesting idea, though, that the ethics the morals baked into Christian theology in Christian teaching might have actually served a sociobiological purpose in furthering the at least the civilizations that felt under the

sway of Christianity during times of epidemics and whatnot. Now, William McNeil does not always follow his own advice throughout the rest of his monograph, but what this shows is a growing awareness of the limitation of unchecked environmental views of history, especially when they begin to veer too close to cultural determinism. Some of you listening probably already picked up on how we could be going down that path if we just kept following the logical trail being established

by these observations made by people like McNeil. After all, who is to say what singular natural force quote unquote caused a cultural shift more in favor of Christianity, especially in such monocausal terms. Whether he was aware of it or not, McNeil was starting a trend in greater intellectual

humility when he hedged his observations in this way. While some future writers of environmental history would not heed this advice, it does represent the moment that a shift of the historiography, a real shift, began to occur.

effects of infectious disease. Most apparent and arguably famous in this trend from this decade was William Cronin's famous nineteen eighty three monograph Changes in the Land, which had influence matched by very few other historians. On a funny side note, Cronin wrote that as a dissertation, while he was just

in a master's program. He just ended up getting essentially carried away with his own studies, which one can relate to that, especially if they have a tendency to overdo it on making things a little too long, as listeners of this show probably know, has happened more than once to me at least. But I can't even begin to imagine writing something as great as Changes in the Land.

It's one of the best historical books I've ever read, and I never thought I would say that about a book so pastoral, but it's a very incredible book that I recommend people check out. It's probably the most accessible book that I will talk about in this episode here. Like I said, the influence on other historians is great, and it's not just because the scholarship was so superb and everything was written so tightly together and concisely. Despite

being a full length book. It's just very well written and very compelling, and as J. R. McNeill put it when he was writing a historiography of environmental history and a paper, Changes in the Land quote enjoyed great success and inspired unabashed imitation unquote. So it's a very well known book, at least in the field of environmental history,

and I highly recommend people check it out. Like I was saying, it makes use of primary source documents like diaries, letters, and other period accounts, as well interestingly as archaeological records, and in doing that, Cronin takes a broader approach similar to Crosby's when looking at the eponymous changes in the North American landscape, but he spends some significant energy exploring the role of infectious disease in working to the European

colonist's advantage. As he refers to it, it was quote the single most dramatic ecological change in Indian lives, one whose full significance historians have only recently come to understand. Quote.

By describing the lack of natural defenses against Eurasian and African diseases as simultaneously a blessing and a curse, Cronin broke ground by detailing the human cost of Old World diseases upon the people of the New World, noting astonishing village mortality rates of up to ninety five percent like I was mentioning off the cuff a little bit ago, as well as documenting the social cost of epidemics that brought low more than just tribal leaders, including the effect

on powwows and interestingly, the christianizing effect on some of the populations. This again makes sure to de emphasize the role of great men in history in order to emphasize

the role of environmental forces. But Cronin pushed the field forward in one very important way by noting how the interaction between indigenous Americans and European colonists, including the introduction of infectious disease, created different relationships between human being and landscape, thus demonstrating a novel causal chain that at that point

had not yet been fully appreciated. As Cronin notes at the very end of his work, quote colonists and Indians together began a dynamic and unstable process of ecological change quote,

suggesting as much of what I just said. This notion of an ecologically driven causal chain was noteworthy for highlighting the relationship implied by the term ecological, symbiotic, parasitic, or otherwise, which in turn provided a future foothold for scholars and critics of environmental history that were concerned by the question of agency. By emphasizing the ecological role of infectious disease

in conflict, conquest, and colonization. Cronin was laying a more interdisciplinary groundwork for further development in the scholarship of infectious diseases role on history. It was not until the nineteen nineties that the question of whether or not disease was a significant causal driver for historical events like conflict, conquest,

and colonization began to take a clearer shape. It was during this time that we saw the rise in non historians contributing to the conversation, including the geographically focused book Guns, Germs and Steel by the Physiologists by Training Jared Diamond, probably one of the most famous books in broad scale global environmental history that likely a lot of you listening

have read, or at the very least heard of. Diamond's core argument that the answer to the question of why history unfolded differently on different continents lays in expanding the scientific frontiers of the study of history, was provocative for the time and remained so to this very day. This was for many reasons, not least of which was Diamonds status as a non historian, combined with his work winning

the esteemed Pulitzer Prize. However, it was also because Diamond considered his work part of the environmental history canon, something with which many environmental historians did not and do not agree. This includes JR. McNeil, who wrote in twenty ten at the quote aroused sharp criticisms for its efforts to explain the long term distribution of wealth and power around the

world in environmental terms. It is understandable that this pushback would occur not just because Diamond is not a historian, but because his argument that geographical distribution lies at the core of civilization's success or failure in air quotes there

struck a lot of historians understandably as fundamentally deterministic. However, because Diamond's analysis allowed for a significant role of infectious disease than this sweeping narrative of civilization's rise and fall, and was so culturally resonant to the point of becoming a household name, it is without question that his place,

Jared Diamond's, that is, in the historiography, is deserved. While discussing the broader implications of Eurasian germ exposure, reaching beyond the quote collision of the Old and New World's unquote into the worlds of quote, the Pacific Islanders, Aboriginal Australians and the Hojin peoples of southern Africa. While doing that, Diamond is calling to mind the same kind of all encompassing arguments made by the likes of William McNeil two

decades earlier. But he is more forthrightly answering the oftentimes silent question that makes many historians shift in their shoes, why do some societies fail and why do some succeed? To be clear, Diamond does not stoop as previous generations of historians and scholars did by invoking arguments that suggested inherent cultural or in darker cases, biological superiority of some

peoples over others. Rather, he acknowledges from the outset that quote the so called blessings of civilization are mixed, and that quote history followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people's environments, not because of biological differences

among peoples themselves. This, combined with Diamond's desire to see history become more scientific, demonstrates both a preemptive awareness of many criticisms that would be directed at his book and a desire to see his work expanded upon in the years to come, and his contribution however controversial in the eye of trained historians, did indeed serve as a very important catalyst for further study of infectious disease in the

field of environmental history. In nineteen ninety eight, Diamond was joined by several other writers, some historians and others not demonstrating both the influence of Diamond's arguments and the need to approach the history of infectious disease in ways apart

from a strictly historical perspective. The virologist by training, doctor Michael Oldstone, was one of these non historians with his nineteen ninety eight monograph Viruses, Plagues, and History, which sought to describe quote the politics and the superstitions evoked by viruses and the diseases they cause unquote to use Oldstone's words in his introduction, Oldstone uses his background to explain the principles of virology and immunology, setting the groundwork for

the rest of the monograph, in which he discusses what he calls the quote unquote success stories of smallpox, yellow fever, measles, and polio. This places Oldstone's work in a unique context where his professional expertise in medicine prompts him to look at infectious disease as something to be solved, even with

its attendant power over the course of human events. For example, old Stone makes it clear that quote smallpox played a crucial role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, the Portuguese colonization of Brazil, the settlement of North America by the English and French, as well as the settlements

of Australia. And While old Stone explores the downstream effects of smallpox, including the incentive it created to import more African slaves for labor, he also spends considerable time exploring the progress made towards vaccination against smallpox and eventually the eradication of the disease. In this way, Oldstone's approach casts human agency in a brighter light than the pre scholarship on the subject and is something that would start to

make a greater appearance in the years to come. That is agency. That same year, nineteen ninety eight also included the works from more traditional historians like the medievalist John Abberth's The First Horseman Disease in Human History and Philip D. Curtin's Disease in Empire, The Health of European troops in

the conquest of Africa. Aberth's book takes a broader approach by building on his previous work that solely focused on medieval Europe and expanding it to include the epidemics of European diseases in the Americas, the spread of the plague in India and China during the nineteenth century, and even the modern spread of HIV AIDS in Africa after nineteen eighty two. This mirrors the global approach that made its appearance from the very beginning of the historiography that we

were talking about. But where Aberth diverged from the likes of William McNeil was his interest in the policies that

were put forth by the authorities. For example, in the middle section of his book exploring the outbreaks of bubonic and pneumonic plague in India during the reign of the British Raj in the late nineteenth century, Aberth looks at quote the most concerted effort ever undertaken to date in order to combat a disease unquote, referring to the passage of something called the Epidemic Diseases Act in eighteen ninety seven.

This colonial policy was not just altruistic, Abirth notes, but also, like in true colonialist imperialist fashion, self serving in the sense that quote, the preservation of its lucrative trade within and without India was a high priority for the British government.

This interest in imperial policy from Abirth makes it clear that the view being adopted by historians of infectious disease was taking on the same ecological tint that had been pioneered by the likes of William Cronin during the previous fifteen years. The word ecology, to make clear again, in this case, implies more than just the natural world. It indeed implies a relationship, and in the historical context, the relationship between human decision making and environmental pressure is the

ecosystem at work. Aberth is among the first historians to make this point explicit. The relationship between policy and infectious disease only really hinted at from the likes of Michael Oldstone places human agency in an even more nuanced light. Instead of simply looking at disease the way a physician or a scientist would, Abirth makes it clear that it

is a driving force and something with which humans interact. Conversely, yet similarly, historian Philip D. Curtin uses his expertise in African history to explore the role disease and its treatment played during the relatively brief window of eighteen fifteen to nineteen fourteen, during which European troops grappled with infectious disease

while attempting to conquer Africa. This was novel in that it narrowed the focus of scholarship on the role of infectious disease to specifically question its role in the idea creation and maintenance of empire during the nineteenth century. While Abirth placed focus on imperial policy as it related to infectious disease in some instances of his work, Curtain made

it his monograph's entire focus. Compiling data of mortality rates from different periods of conquest and conflict and the reactions experienced by citizens of the home country, Curtin is able to demonstrate that attitudes on disease were strongly correlated with

attitudes of imperial conquest. For example, while death rates due to disease were shockingly high at times, sometimes as high as twenty five percent, in Curtain's words quote, the public was apparently unconcerned as long as the actual number seemed

small and the national gain seemed large. By linking public attitudes toward imperial conquest the disease related death rates, Philip Kurton is engaging in an ecological argument in which the ideas at the core of imperial conquest could override what might be seen as a typical appreciation of public health. Curtain also explores the role of imperial competition in Africa in the last decade of the nineteenth century and how

infectious disease played a role in affecting that competition. While malaria infections drove back French forces in Madagascar, the British used their knowledge gained over their years dealing with tropical diseases to secure a victory in Soudan and more importantly, quote a major victory over a European rival, thus placing

imperial conquest and competition in a disease based context. This, like aberth recontextualization, shows the further development of the field toward a broader scale ecological approach to explaining the role infectious disease has played in the most significant events of modern history, and more importantly, paving the way for scholarship

that was to come over the next decade. In the two thousands, the scholarship on diseases role in historical events grew ever more diverse, with many non historians continuing to discuss the role disease played in human history, sometimes in the context of public health and other times in the context of national security. However, historians M. R. Smallman, Rayner and Ad Cliff sought to examine the role disease played

in the history of modern conflict. In their work War Epidemics, An Historical Geography of Infectious Diseases in Military Conflict and Civil Strife eighteen fifty to two thousand from the year two thousand four, they demonstrate that, in their words quote, the link between war and disease remains as strong as ever. They, like Philip Curtin before them, restrain their time scale to the modern era, but like Michael Oldstone, bring it up

to what was for them at least present day. They first provide a general overview of infectious diseases relationship to war and conflict throughout history, and then transition to trends across space that is, regional and time. Smallman, Rainers and Cliff's granular data driven approach demonstrates that death rates during war. Even in the modern era, which we often associate with scientific progress, were vastly inflated by the role played by

infectious disease. As a write quote, infectious diseases were the most significant causes of mortality in the nineteenth century. However, they take a different approach than one might expect, pointing to the fact that it is war that increases the

casualties caused by disease, not the other way around. In pointing to the fact that disease spreads among the civilian population thanks to the effects of war such as mass population displacement combined with the lowering of hygienic standards, Smallman, Rayner, and Cliff demonstrate that disease is part of the relationship

the ecology, if you will, of human conflict. Their approach came closer to Jared Diamond's sweeping vision to applying scientific rigor to the study of history, but six years later, the relationship between disease and supposedly human driven events would

be distilled into a more singular essence. In twenty ten, J R. McNeil, the son of William McNeil, who we've quoted from before, released his book Mosquito Empires, Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbe in sixteen twenty to nineteen fourteen, which persuasively answers the question of diseases role in the shaping of the New World's formative conflicts and revolutions. We briefly touched on it in the previous episode, you guys might recall in which I was talking about humankind's relationship

with natural disasters. But in focusing on this book, what makes it so important to the historiography is that McNeil's contribution to the scholarship is to fully foreground the relationship between disease and human behavior and thus historical consequences. As he writes, quote, viruses made history, but they did so only because soldiers and statesmen, slaves and revolutionaries acted in

certain specific ways unquote. McNeil examines what is frequently cited as the most significant change in modern history, that is, the Concqoes West and colonization of the New World, and he examines how infectious disease played a role in the outcomes of this conquest in colonization as well as the

conflicts that followed. He does not discount agency. Again, we're kind of past that at this point, but he also explains that quote outbreaks were not random except in their timing quote and quote formed a regular pattern that constrained randomness and severely narrowed the range of likely outcomes of

the political struggles of the Greater Caribbean. Taking a page from William Cronin by focusing on the land itself, McNeil also shows that the environment itself was ideal for the flourishing of the disease carrying mosquitoes that ravaged the Caribbean Sea and all the islands there because quote no native American mosquito occupied a Egypti's favored niche unquote, leaving it free from basically natural competition, and that the Caribbean's rainy

season and subsequent humidity quote normally brought a surge in

mosquito populations. This demonstrates that while human agency may have been behind the introduction of such invasive species with virulent diseases carried within them, the environment didn't even need human activity to let these species and diseases to thrive and spread, though it did certainly help in addition by finding an environment perfectly suited for the spread of infectious disease the early European colonists also secured their domination and ability to

resist rival imperial forces, not just the indigenous peoples that they were conquering. As McNeil shows, the presence of disease also helped determine the outcomes of military campaigns, primarily those between the British and the Spanish in the mid eight century, and thus the outcome of imperial dominance in the region

for years to come centuries. Even the fact that infectious disease was responsible for such staggering losses at Cartena by the British eight thousand dead total, by the way, with one regiment suffering eighty five percent losses, is very significant when quote the black vomit left the Spanish untouched thanks largely to the differential immunity possessed by the defending Spanish, since they had developed it over the years that the British didn't have. Remember, the Spanish got to the New

World well before the British did. That gave them a sort of home team advantage one could call it, in terms of their immunity. By centering differential immunity in this way, McNeil actually helps us see the importance of forces well beyond the locus of human control, but also shows us how human agency was able to flourish had it not been for the differential immunity itself and the Spanish knowledge of it. Because they did have it, they did know

that they had an advantage. In this way, the outcomes of many of the Caribbean's conflicts in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries might have been very different, producing vastly different outcomes over time. That potential alone is what demonstrates the significance of the complex ecological relationship at work

between human behavior and environmental pressure. One could reduce it to between great men and trends enforces, or, if you want to go down the psychology route, nature and nurture. The continuity of historical scholarship from Crosby's to Colombian Exchange in nineteen seventy two to JR. McNeil's Mosquito Empires in twenty ten suggests that our interest in infectious disease playing a role in affecting the outcomes of significant pasties events

is still developing. More books have been written on this subject since twenty ten, but that was where we ended our historiography In this particular case, the movement from a more general view of environmental effects determining outcomes to a more ecological view of environmental pressures interacting constantly with human agency has really left the door open for future scholarship.

This scholarship can take a more nuanced view both on the effects of infectious diseases on event shaping behavior and on how the outcomes of significant events like conflict, conquest, and colonization are Big three c's may require some recontextualization. The continued embrace of a multidisciplinary approach may also yield rewards, such as incorporating things things that I really like, like psychology or sociology and to the study of infectious diseases

of FEFFE on human history. This could do the same for say, for example, political history, as it has done for military history or the history of colonization or revolution. This is a theme that I've returned to multiple times on history Impossible, so it should be no surprise that I feel this way, But I really do. I think

that there is major opportunities at hand here. We can recognize the importance of agency while also acknowledging that as these four decades of scholarship and environmental history have shown us that agency only takes us so far. Striking this balance has not been easy, and it will continue to create challenges and probably a lot of controversies with future scholarship.

But the potential for a deeper understanding of human agency and environmental pressures always interacting together like a dance in history is immense. History Impossible has been made possible by the kind and generous donations of great folks like the following people. I want to shout out Bob Downing, Greg Hunter, s O, Skip, Pa Chaco, Molly Pan, John Pisano, Anna R PJ Raider, Matthew m Rice, Emily Schmidt, Pierre Vorpuni, and of course Fu. I really appreciate all the support

you guys have been giving me over the years. At this point, I really can't express enough gratitude, I think,

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just having you here to listen to me ramble on and on about history for all these years is oftentimes enough to get me out of bed in the morning. So thank you again, guys, very much again, and stay tuned for the next episode of History Impossible.