“Stepping into the Same River Twice: Comparing the 1st and 2nd Plague Pandemics as Pan-Afro-Eurasian Events”
Monica Green
Professor emerita, Department of History
Arizona State University
Advance reading:
•Monica H. Green, “When Numbers Don’t Count: Changing Perspectives on the Justinianic Plague,” Eidolon, 18 November 2019, https://eidolon.pub/when-numbers-dont-count-56a2b3c3d07. (This can be supplemented, if people have time, by Peter Sarris’s wonderful state-of-the-field essay: https://academic.oup.com/past/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pastj/gtab024/….)
•Monica H. Green, “The Four Black Deaths,” American Historical Review 125, no. 5 (December 2020), 1600-1631; includes Supplemental Data, “Marmots and Their Plague Strains,” online only (https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/125/5/1601/6040962). If people are pressed for time, the most pertinent parts of the essay (for the comparative points I’ll be making) can be found on pp. 1607-11 and 1615-20. One of the major points I want to make is that with a rodent disease like plague (which does not normally persist in humans), we need to constantly be attuned to the ecological landscape in which the disease is moving. The fact that the Mongols were nomads is a key factor.