Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism
Watts, Sheldon
Sold by RatBooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since 5 September 2025
Used - Hardcover
Condition: Used - Fine
Ships within U.S.A.
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketSold by RatBooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since 5 September 2025
Condition: Used - Fine
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketOwner's bookplate inside front cover. Book is in excellent condition. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked.
A wide ranging study of the great epidemic scourges of humanity - plague, leprosy. smallpox, syphilis, cholera and yellow fever/malaria - over the last six centuries. Sheldon Watts, applies his perspective to the study of global disease, exploring the connections between the movement of epidemics and the manifestations of imperial power in the Americas, Asia, Africa and in European homelands. He shows how the perceptions of whom a disease targeted changed over time and effected various political and medical responses. He argues that not only did western medicine fail to cure the diseases that its own expansion engendered, but that imperial medicine was in fact an agent and tool of empire. Watts examines the relationship between the pre-modern medical profession and such epidemic disasters as the plague in western Europe and the Middle East; leprosy in the medieval west and in the 19th-century tropical world; the spread of smallpox to the new world in the age of exploration; syphilis and nonsexual diseases in Europe's connection with Asia; cholera in India during British rule; and malaria in the Atlantic basin during the eras of slavery and social Darwinism. He investigates in detail the relation between violent environmental changes and disease, and between disease and society, both in the material sphere and in the minds and spirit of rulers and those who where ruled. This book is an account of the way diseases - arising through chance, through reckless environmental change engineered by man, or through a combination of each - were interpreted in western Europe and in the colonized world.
Seller Inventory # ABE-1764600891033
"a large and at times complex work of historical synthesis. The convenience of so much history of diseases in one place is obvious. [An] engrossing book." (Gert Brieger, M.D. of Harvard Medical School, _New England Journal of Medicine_, 7/2/98)
"Based in Cairo and hence immune from automatic Eurocentricism, Watts is as sceptical of the medical profession as of the governments and business interests they ultimately served. His case carries much conviction." (Roy Porter of Wellcome History of Medicine, London, _The Times_, 11/20/97)
"[Watts] shows how widely human predatory instincts have always conditioned attitudes to disease so as to exploit any prevailing epidemic--the darker side of history as it were---and a compelling and dramatic read." (Alan Cameron, _Lloyd's List_, 1/10/98)
"[Watts] has taken upon himself the task of crossing the no man's land between the liberal arts and sciences and deserves a pat on the back...it's fascinating." (Alfred Crosby of the University of Texas, _Washington Post_, 8/18/98).
"a massive work of synthesis...Watts's book draws on recent critical studies which demonstrate how during times of epedemic disease, and in the heyday of communicable diseases such as leprosy and syphillis, coercive power was imposed on the weak, the politically and socially undesirable, and especially on the colonized under the guise of disease prevention." (Andrew Wear of Wellcome History of Medicine, London, _Times literary Supplement_, 6/19/98)
"a bold and imaginative attempt at synthesis. Yellow fever and malaria provide him with striking examples of how disease was used to bolster arguments about racial superiority and segregation in the American south and colonial west Africa." (David Arnold of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, _The Times Higher Education Supplement, 1/16/98).
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