The pandemic lesson

The history of humanity is due to sudden incontrivance with pathogens capable of spreading on multiple continents (dunque, di causare pandemic), and voltage on the world inside. The most recent episode is clearly about Covid-19, but it is more brutal than ever, even more so, the Black Plague of XIV secolo – o more precisely, almeno per quanto riguarda Europa e Mediterraneo, la peste del 1347-52, capace di causare, in quest’area, la morte della metà circa degli abitanti (la stima estatta rimane incerta), ovvero più o less than fifty million of lives. The plague deeply affects not only the knowledge of society, but also Western culture (and not only Western culture) in general. Altrettanto importanti furono la sue conseguenze demografiche ed economiche: la terrible pandemic, i cui efti furono ampliati e resi duraturi slab frequenti successive pestilenze, causò una continuante scarsità di uomini – ma, per tale via, ebbe anche conseguenze positive (ovviamente solo per quanti erano stati così fortunati da sopravvivere), produce an increase in the availability of pro-capite profits, an increase in salary and in general conditions offered to workers, and a reduction in economic disadvantage.

Lo strano clamor del presente

Given the centrality of the global history, and certainly in Europe, all the Plague will have its own dedicated text: ora and Patrick Boucheron, with its imponent saggio Black Death. Si tratta, va chiarito, de un livre scritto da uno storico medievista molto affermato, cattedratico del College of France He is the author of the volume of great ambition and success, my non-specialist in the studio of the plague or other epidemic. Boucheron’s interest in the plague, as egli narra in the introduction to the volume, comes from the experience of Covid-19. The author has some experimentation, like all of us, “the direct cry is produced by the surprise of the present day” (p.18), and I have said – from the brave university professor – to make it intelligible at the same time and agli altri tramite lo studio e l’insegnamento.

He libro, dunque, ha all’origine due anni di corsi presso il College of Francesince I was a Boucheron, if I immersed myself in the literature of a recent story about the plague, since then, it has to be found for many surprising verses. Whoever boasts of the non-specialist: he keeps his guard up and is curious about how much he knows, collects all his competency properties, and proporlo sotto form di libro to an ampio public, also tends to be non-specialist, with great efficiency. Diciamolosubito: come to hope of alta, anzi altissima, divulgazione scientifica, Black Death It’s perfectly riuscito. If you read a meticulous book, you should generally read it carefully. The style of writing is certainly attractive, but at some point it’s too straight. Sarebbe errato say che si tratta di saggio che si legge come un romanzo, anche perché il fine non è certamente quello di fare concurrenza alla narrativa: piuttosto, si può to say che si tratta di un saggio accessible in modo comiabile and che non mangerà di appassionare quei lettori colti e curiosi che non si lasceranno scoraggiare slab sue oltre 500 pages.

The story of no genius

The book begins with the identification of the plague, starting from the protagonist of the “battery revolution” that occurred early on in the Hong Kong epidemic of 1894 in order to identify the pathogen and cause it to affect human society; He is the scientific doctor of Alexandre Yersin, a natural French medic and allied with Louis Pasteur. It is necessary to introduce a disease into the nature of the pathogenic medicine and its epidemiologic and biological characteristics. At the end of the day, there is information coming from the recent search based on its trace. DNA Sopravvissute nei remained scheletrici dei cimiteri della peste stanno transformando profoundly our conoscenze surll’origine et la diffusione del pathogeno. And Boucheron is the first to respond to our new results, which is extremely interesting – and also (the author is eager to respond) to the best of our ability to respond adequately to all our demands, including the nature of the epidemiology. Ad esempio, perché la plague sparì dall’Europa e dal Mediterraneo dopo l’VIII secolo, did a long cycle epidemic begin with the plague of Giustiniano del 541-542? E perched, nel XVII Secondly, how much longer does the South rise to the North of our continent, favoring the position of the economic center of Europe in the Mediterranean in the Baltic?

The volume proceeds five times ad confront aspetti circa i quali le nostre conoscenze sono assai più ampie rispetto ad appena qualche anno fa, e spesso contrastano nettamente con ciò che un tempo si dava quasi per secontato. Not only the geographical origin of the Nera Plague, this recent study was collocated in the region of Tian Shan in Central Asia in 1338 (it is likely that it will remain in the future for a long time), but it is widely distributed in non-European countries, particularly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. If you have a fundamental pass there is a superimposed setting that is too much for you to focus on almost exclusively in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Next to the volume, please note that you should pay attention to Europe, so you may have access to the database that accumulates in the history of various specializations and nationalities. This is why: the linguistic competence of Boucheron is written and it is my consent to supersede and limited too much of my content in the ambiziosi libri ambiziosi ma costuiti almost exclusively from the published research in the English language. However, we face the fact that the account of the outbreak of the epidemic, it has the impact on the disclosure of the reddit and the story (che, almeno in Europa, si ridussero considerevolmente: evento rare in the history of the Occidente!), and the practice and the doctrine sviluppate to cercare to contain the diffusion of the contagio. This book concludes with an analysis of the impatto of the Plague Nera on its psychology collection, on its culture and its form of artistic expression, fornendo qualche rapido cenno circa le ultimate epidemic attestate in Europe and altrove, and sottolineando il modo in cui la Peste Nera ha segnato letteratura e arte nel corso dei secoli.

“Big picture” and “vita vissuta”

Come here, you can enjoy it as much as possible Black Death. From the perspective of economic history and demographic history – that is what I write – it is always positive that it is evident how sappiamo della “vita vissuta” during the terrible pandemic, not alone to provide this esempi accattivanti, my pericordarci che, other than the “big picture” that oggi tends to have dominates the scene of the international historical narrative (also proprietorship for the growing interaction with the “hard science”), has a micro-historical dimension and humanity – other than “umanistica” – almeno altrettanto important. When writing a book written by a non-specialist with the intention, it is difficult to read, it is not accessible, but it is also ingenious because it is a series of imprecisions, for which it is refused, it is probably inevitable in a book written from a mass that is full of literature.

From a scientific point of view, it is possible to discuss the adozione acritica della tradizionale divisione de la storia della plague in tre “pandemic”. As a result, the Plague will not enter the second phase of the pandemic, but it will end alone. XVIII secolo, between the third “pandemia” avrebbe avuto origin nello Yunnan in Cina nel XIX secolo and continueebbe tutt’oggi. This division does not correspond to the modalità corretta di impiego del vocabolo “pandemia” che propriamente indica, as evident in apertura, an’epidemia capace di diffondersi sur plus continenti. Così, the Plague Nera di metà XIV Secondly, there was a pandemic in Séante, which distinguished its successive episodes of the spread of the contagion.

If you do not wish to be informed by any affermazioni, ad esempio quella secondo cui “i nostri libri di storia non organizzano la loro narrazione da una parte e dall’altra della cesura (della Peste Nera)” (p. 18), sono probabilmente vere en generale, ma non applicate à settori specifici della ricerca storica – certainly not all the economic history of this, negli ultimi decenni (e da ben prima del Covid), ha identificato in questa terribile pandemic uno spartiacque fundamentale nella storia dell’umanità. Così, alcuni studiosi vi hanno identificato (a torto oa ragione) the origin of the success of Western Europe rises to Eastern Asia; It is part of a growing divergence, across North and South Europe, where there is no salary and there is no female participation in the world of labor; a radical re-balancing of the population and risk ratio; and così via. Ultimately, this book is dedicated to the kindly attention you receive. XIX first XX Secondly, as the quote “gara” for the identification of the pathogen – but it is modern, it attracts many studies of the plague and the latest innovations (also data on the availability of archival fonts more in number and variety in the media), curiously sotto-rappresentata.

The story and the science

For this reason, there is a reasonable aspect to the quality Boucheron seems to have found a good point of balance: it relates to the history and science that lasts. Infatti, nell’analizzare e rielaborare i risultati della literatura scientifica (in particolare quella che ha alla sua origine i dati paleo-biologici e gli studi filogenetici), da cui è chiaramente, e comprensibilmente, affascinato, egli non cade nella trappola di affidarvisi ciecamente. Anyway, aglio di chi ha seguito gli sviluppi di tale letteratura nel corso degli anni, esporrebbe agravi rischi visto la tendenza degli studi more recenti a modificare radicalmente, se non ribaltare, quelli precedenti: non meno “scientifici”, ma basati su meno casi di studio e realizzati del tecniche di laboratory e the analysis of the data is less refined. As the author rightly asserts, “science cannot abolish a historical question” (p. 74); al massimo, the spiazzerà and the spreaderà – and make it more interesting.