Possibly be given the truly crazy world in which we live at the moment. Im scott henkel, im the director of wyoming institute for Humanities Research and im so happy to welcome you to tonights think and drink. The topic of which is, pandemics in historical perspective. So, im so happy to introduce dr. Melissa morris, who is assistant professor of history and american studies here at the university of wyoming and a member of the Humanities Research institutes steering committee, who will be our moderator tonight and who will introduce our speakers. So, please, welcome. Thank you, scott. Thank you to all of our panelists for agreeing to participate, who i know are in later time zones. So, thank you for sticking with us. And, of course, to all of you out there tuning in in some form or another. Im just going to do a brief introduction to our panelists and then ill let them each talk for a couple of minutes more about how their work intersects with our theme tonight. First we have Michael Christopher low, who is an assistants professor of history at iowa state university. He is the author of imperial mecca in the indian ocean due out from Columbia University press in september. Exciting. Next we have Elise Mitchell who is a ph. D. Candidate in history at New York University and her work focuses on slavery and medicine from about 1500 to 1800. She is the author of a recent piece on, perhaps, what earlier pandemics can teach us about our Current Crisis that appeared in the atlantic magazine. Third up we have jacob steerewilliams, associate professor of history at the college of charleston. He specializes in the history of science medicine, disease and is working on a book that examines scientific attitudes and cultural constructions of typhoid fever in the 19th century. And hes also an editor of the journal of the journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences. So, i will hand it over to them to offer kind of a brief perhaps a little bit more of an overview of their work and how it intersects with our theme here tonight. And we can just go in the order that i introduced you, i suppose, if that works. Thank you for having us. So, my work centers around cholera and plague in the early 18th and 19th century. I have focused on primarily mecca, looking at the ways in which the ecological fallout of British Colonialism impacted the Ottoman Empire and spilled over and became a truly global issue in the late 19th century. Also my work has sort of spun off in a couple of Different Directions but most notably ive written some about desalniization technology which started to be used one of the solutions to this problem to today in Arabian Peninsula, salinated water is the wellspring of water of life in the peninsula. Thats sort of the second project that sprang out of this initial pandemic work that i was doing. Thank you so much for having us. So, yeah, my work focuses most broadly on the intersections of slavery and the slave trade and medicine in the early modern americas, but my current project focuses on smallpox and slavery, specifically enslaved african experiences of different Public Health interventions geared towards curtailing smallpox during slave trades and quarantines and also their experiences with smallpox inoculation with indigenous western practices and west africa and in different parts of the caribbean. Because the slave trade took enslaved people to a variety of locations to different parts of america and spread people across different ethnic backgrounds, i look across british, french, spanish, portuguese territories to sort of put together what the implications of different Public Health interventions and the implications of different smallpox epidemics were in the period before 1800, so before the invention and promise ul gags of the smallpox vaccine. So, ive spent probably about a decade researching the history of typhoid fever and the rise of epidemiology in victorian britain. Typhoid has been this really interesting disease for me to look at because its often been seen alongside cholera in the rise of Public Health and municipal sanitation. Whats so interesting in my research that i found about typhoid is the role of British Colonialism in the process. So, in the earlier period of the midvictorian era, typhoid was almost seen as inherently a british disease, Indigenous People of india and africa couldnt get. By the end of the 19th century it was seen as a disease for which colonialism brought across the world. So, it was seen as a global disease visavis these larger kind of colonial processes. So, i have a book on typhoid a little later than chriss, coming out in november with the university of rochester, and the second book im working on is on bubonic plague in late 19th, early 20th century in british colonies and south africa. A lot of great intersections here between the three of us. Yeah, i agree. So, a couple of you have kind of started to touch upon this, but just as a broad opening question, i thought id ask, you know, what parallels do you see between your own time period, of course being careful historians as we all are, but between your own time period you stud and maybe some things that are happening today. Whoever wants to go first. Ill jump in and take a stap at that one. One of the things that has struck me in the last few weeks is really the parallel about testing and for cholera, really cholera leaps onto the global stage. When you start to get outbreaks moving from the endemic sink of the ganges delta in the 1820s and 18 30z but certainly by the 1860s cholera is on the global radar and is impacting not only india, the middle east, europe, but also making its way all the way to north america. One of the things that i think is interesting is really from these early periods, 1830s through the 1880s and 90s is that everyone was flying blind. No one understand the back tearology, no one understood the entology, really how cholera works and spreads. And so for the better part of three decades in the sort of middle part of my work, you have a British Empire that object stantly denies that india is the source of cholera. And you have a sort of beleaguered ottoma in. Empire following the developments of people like robert cook and pasture. And yet theyre being blamed by the British Empire saying that, you know, mecca is this font of cholera and not india. So, this blame game internationally and lack of clarity about how the disease works is strikingly similar to me. Yeah, ill jump in next. In a similar way the flying blind aspect is pretty similar to some of the early outbreaks that i study. Around 500 years ago the americas saw their first documented smallpox outbreak. In the 1590, early 1520s and at that time smallpox was a novel virus, similar to how the coronavirus is a novel virus globally. So native americans had a variety of different medical practices that might have been helpful for the disease but they didnt have experience with that disease specifically prior to this. So, i think the sort of sense of being in uncharted territory and not having a vaccine or any kind of medical or having to sort of figure out along the way the medical practices that would be most effective is one similarity, another one thats heart breaking but effective is the demographics of whos being affected by this disease. The demographics that black people dying at a much higher rate and being affected and the devastating impact on native American Communities in the u. S. As well as abroad. Is very, very, very similar to the outbreaks that i study. That has everything to do with the way that labor is performed in america, the way that the kind of socioeconomic disparities we have as well as the underresourcing of communities that put them at further risk for contracting this disease. And the fact that there was not a conscious effort early on to make any kind of Public Health interventions that were directed at preserving the lives of native and black people in the u. S. And then now and like looking at that in the past where a lot of times black and native people were paying the cost of mitigation in different Colonial Health strategies, theres definitely a lineage there worth acknowledging. I would say those are probably the two greatest similarities ive seen. Thank you both so much. Just to dovetail with how my work intersects with a couple of the themes we just heard from. One, i think this question that chris brought up about internationalism is super interesting and how it parallels to others. Theres this interesting phenomenon that happens from 1851 with the rise of these International Sanitary conferences of european nations, plus turkey, coming together starting in 1851 in paris trying to think about the spread of cholera, the spread of yellow fever and the spread of plague and think about measures of quarantine and diplomacy and global politics. And whats so fascinating, if you look at those International Sanitary conferences is, one, how much uncertainty there is, like chris mentioned, and, two, that even when they vote on issues and try to come up with global regulations, once those diplomats and the doctors come back to their home countries, they dont often get followed or put in place anyway. So theres this super interesting, i think, acknowledgment from the mid19th century that internationalism as a kind of response to pandemics is something that is a positive sort of public good, but then putting in the practice is constrained from that period, right . Its constrained by local politics. Its constrained by issues of race and labor certainly. So thats sort of definitely one theme that i see resonate in my work, too. This other one that elise brings up about labor and the uneven ways in which antipandemic practices get spread out unevenly, particularly via a race. Thats something thats the focus of my current project on bubonic plague in south africa and india. If you look at the antiplague practices in those colonial locations, what you see is Indigenous Peoples in india and africa being blamed especially for the spread of plague, harbingers of plague, and also doing the antiplague work, like the everyday work of using disinfectants, of tearing down houses, of using dangerous chemic chemicals. I think you seeing that being parallel today, too, of in spite of the fact that we have these stay in shelter in place quarantine measures, theres real on the ground labor happening right now, too, and thats affecting people disproportionately in this country and around the world. I want to pick off pick up on this note of how diseases are fought or, you know, methods effective or otherwise at combating disease that you introduced with this sort of 1851 on meeting. What other ideas are circulating in your projects about how to fight disease or where diseases come from. One of the things that emerges in my work is, again, sort of jacob mentions internationalism. One of the big themes in my work is the Ottoman Empire takes nationalism quite seriously. They want to be viewed as a sort of power player in europe and be taken seriously and have their sovereignty protected under international law. So, they really sort of try to play the game of internationalism. Whereas the british are sort of the big bad in this story. And sort of a weak internationalism cant restrain british free trade, which refuses to be caught in any International Legal agreements, which force them to quarantine or force them to restrict Labor Mobility or pilgrimage mobility in my case. And this becomes a real stumbling block for effective controls. They were certainly times when it would have been appropriate to restrict mobility, whether it be european traders, muslim pilgrims or labor migrants, but either for free trade or for fear of backlash among their subjects, they often refuse to do so. Thats such a tough question for an early modernist to unpack because people had very different ideas about what diseases were and what their significance was in the period i study than we do now. So, for smallpox, i guess the most question i get asked is whether the disease was racialized. For the period i study it wasnt, europeans and africans as well as native people all recognize this was a disease that almost anyone could contract, especially if they didnt have it before, from pretty early on. Of course, folks from different cultural backgrounds ascribe different meanings to it. Sometimes they had spiritual or religious connotations to it or geopolitical connotations. Africans in west africa as well as in the americas, many of them practice smallpox inoculation or rudimentary vaccine that was taking pus from one persons pustule, usually performed on children. And for europeans, western europeans were not really familiar with any form of imyou mization practices until the early 18th century. It was a big part of eastern medicine in east asia as well as turkey, much of the near east, much of the middle east. In the early 18th century, it sort of got an uneven adoption. Folks in the americas were a little bit more willing to experiment with it and adopt it quickly in the early 18th century, in large part because of their contact with west africans and their familiarity with the practice. But western europeans didnt really sanction the practice until the mid18th century. And then it was in use much more. Prior to that they tended to rely on smallpox quarantines, which is similar to the social distancing practices that were doing now, still leave leave anyone whos infected in a very vulnerable position and also doesnt really do anything to prevent the disease from spreading, if it already is. And so, i mean, one of the a big part of my work is focusing on maritime quarantines and quarantining of enslaved africans and slave trade throughout different coastal ports and the americas. I guess that summarizes to answer the question. Thats really interesting, too, elise, that you talk about the ways in which race impacted discussions about slavery and smallpox, but at the same time, theres yellow fever happening here, too, which is patholo pathologyized so thats super interesting to bring up. If i try to think through whats happening in the late 19th century with bubonic plague, for example, in india and south africa and you think about some of these questions of differential blame, xenophobe yeah and labor, im going to try to share a screen, an image here to see if that looks like its disabled. That may not work. One of the things thats so fascinating to me. I found this photograph from 1898 that is depicts its from a kamari dipping station in karachi, and it was this port city central to the British Empire in this period. Its a photograph that shows human dipping, british plague officials dipping indigenous indians in a vat of car bolic acid. Whats to interesting to me about this example that i explore that was happening, both in india and in south africa in this time, its just really harrowing photograph. Its the only photograph that i found that existed of human dipping in this dangerous vat of carbolic acid, which was known to burn the skin. So theres this moment where were in the middle of a pandemic in the late 19th century. Bubonic plague is sweeping across the globe. Its disrupting daily life and trade and everything in between. And theres also this new bacteria knowledge. Theres knowledge about the bacillus and knowledge about the rat, flea, human zoonotic connection and yet the response is to blame africans for bringing in the disease. I think like if you think about some of the visuals that are happening here, too, i think that helps to sort of nuance and contextualize the labor practices and the differential immunity questions, as elise says, are super longstanding in this period. Thanks, thats yeah. Sorry. I mean, its interesting to piggyback on the stratification issue with plague, and certainly cholera and plague were running concurrently during this period, but all of these International Sanitary conferences they tended to enshrine European Mobility and continue to protect trade and european troop movements and tended to demonize labor migrants from places like china and india or muslim and hindu pilgrims coming from the india or indian ocean. This is one of the worries i have about this idea of immunity passports is we end up not really with something that covers or really thinks carefully about immunity but, instead, is just another way to practice these racial inequalities. Yeah, if i can just jump in really quick, i think that pointing out these are ways that sort of enshrine European Mobility is really important because part of the reason why european colonial officials were creating different kinds of maritime quarantine policies is so the slave trade could continue. The perfect solution to stopping smallpox outbreaks on slave ships was to stop enslaving people but thats not what anybody was interested in at the time. So, you know, sort of developing these different kinds of Public Health policies that allow for things to continue along a certain, quote unquote, normal in the way people are kind of trying to figure out how we can get to a normal before that we realize now, at least that the pandemic that our current pandemic has laid bare is not necessarily thats sustainable or safe for everyone in the first place. Yeah. Im glad this question of immunity came up because its obviously something people are talking about so much now. Like, how do you prove immunity . Does having the disease even confirm immunity . Its not, perhaps, unsurprising those were concerns in previous eras as well. Another thing i wanted to ask you all about was kind of the broader effects that pandemics have had. Elise, in your piece that you published recently, you talk a lot about how, you know, the pandemic is one thing, but its like some of the other knockon effects of pandemics that are actually more detrimental to societies and certainly in our own time