All posts by David Ludden

Gaza

With the start of Ramadan, friends and colleagues associated with Duke’s Palestine Seminar have put together this linktree of organizations that need immediate support. There has been a special request for donations to go to Care for Gaza and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which are focusing on food donations, an issue of urgent concern. I hope you’ll consider giving what you can, and do please share the link with others who may be interested.
 
 

https://wp.nyu.edu/davidluddenhomepage/2023/10/18/conditions-in-gaza-2023/

2024 J-Term Abu Dhabi

 

Pandemic World History

Draft 1 Oct 2023

J-Term Schedule 2024 

Faculty arrive: January 2, 2024 (Tuesday)
Required Faculty Orientation: January 3, 2024 (Wednesday)

Classes start: January 4, 2024 (Thursday)
Additional class day: January 6, 2024 (Saturday)
Last day of classes: January 19, 2024 (Friday) 

Faculty depart: January 20, 2024 (Saturday)

Class:

CSTS-UH 1106J 

1:00pm-4:00pm MTWThur and Friday 2:20pm-5:20pm.

Location: TBA

Core Curriculum > Structures of Thought and Society Majors > History > Atlantic World

Credits: 4. Prerequisites: none

David Ludden

Office Hours: Wed 12-2

 Student Google Folder

Research Resources:

Pandemic Studies Webpage 

PubMed Search

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Pandemics have traveled among distant places from ancient times, provoking political, social, and cultural change; stimulating intellectual activity, ranging from medicine to philosophy, poetry, polemics, and folklore; and affecting the everyday health of human populations around the world. This course explores the long history of pandemics in order to contextualize modern trends, contemporary problems, and pressing policy challenges. Our central concern is to understand how pandemic disease mobility interacts with territorial social formations; with that concern, we focus particularly on the historically expanding scale of mobility among territorial structures of social power and inequity.

Work for this course will contribute to our pandemic studies webpage, a evolving digital platform for the wholistic study of public health, combining epidemiology with spatial, social, political, cultural, and economic history, focusing on health inequities in empires, capitalism, and globalization. 

In the NYUAD 2023 J-Term, we travel to Bangladesh to study the complexity of pandemic health environments in poverty environments. We will spend three full days in class and in field visits at the James P. Grant School of Public Health, at the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh, and among Readymade Garment Workers, seeing how pandemics complicate everyday health crises in slums, hospitals, and factories.

COURSE OUTLINE

Part 1. January 4-6. Ancient Times to the Twentieth Century

Part 2. January 8-13. Pandemic Environments in Bangladesh

Part 3. January 15-19. Our Pandemic Era

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Upon successful completion of this course the student will be able to describe orally and in writing worlds of pandemic mobility at various times; effectively use concepts and methodologies for relevant studies of globalization; critically interpret maps and other visual representations of historical information; think critically about territorial boundaries as features of pandemic histories; understand how different world regions participate in pandemic histories; and understand problems that pertain specifically Bangladesh and low-income Afro-Asia.     

TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODOLOGIES

ALL information on this course is on his website. We do not use Brightspace. All student writing is submitted in GoogleDoc individual student Google Folders. 

This course combines lecture presentations, course discussions, and field experience in Bangladesh. Each class includes a lecture presentation with Q&A and class discussion of readings and presentations. Presentations will not focus only on the reading but will add significant information, including online materials. Students will lead class discussion and make presentations.

Writing assignments enable students to develop their understanding of the reading and class material. Oral presentations enable students to formulate ideas for group discussion and to seek assistance from classmates in resolving challenges they face in their own research and writing.

 COURSE MATERIALS

Reading: All required reading is online. Readings average less than 100 pages per class and need to be done before each class meeting.

 ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADES

Grading: There are no exams. Grading is on a point system. One-page papers earn 6 points each (6 x 10 = 60) and ten-page papers earn 30 points. Attendance and participation earn 10 points. (Total: 60+30+10 = 100).

Final grade point equivalents: A = 94-100; A- = 90-93; B+ = 85-89; B = 80-84; B- = 75-79; C+ = 70-74; C = 65-69; C- = 60-64; D=50-59; F=<50.

Writing Assignments: Students put all writing into individual Google Drive folders.

  1. TEN 1-page response papers. One-page response papers are based on readings, presentations, field visits, and a prompt in the assignment post. They should reflect an understanding of main points in readings and presentations and provide ideas – including questions and doubts — for discussion. 
  2. One 10-page synthetic paper. This essay is on a topic of your choice, based on all cumulative course material and approved outside sources. These papers should represent a student’s synthesis of course material in response to the problem posed by the prompt. 

ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES

  • All page limits are loose – a little more is fine. All papers are double spaced, 12-point font, with one-inch margins, in DOC format (not PDF).
  • All assignments go into the Google Student Folder, NUMBERED in sequential order, with the ten page paper last. 
  • Comments inserted into the 1-page assignment DOC responses indicate the evaluation of their quality and provide suggestions for improvement. 
  • Papers will be judged on all aspects of quality: organized prose in a coherent sequence of paragraphs should focus clearly on the assignment and display a strong understanding of ideas and information from relevant course material. They should organize prose in a coherent sequence of paragraphs and focus clearly on the themes in the prompt to present a firm understanding of the reading, discussions, and class presentations.
  • Classroom participation. This grade is based on levels of personal participation in the course. Minimally, students should always show they are paying attention and never get distracted by computers, phones, doodling, daydreams, or chit chat. They should ask questions in class. They should participate in discussions. They should respond intelligently when the instructor asks, “What do you think about this?” Students will also make presentations to generate discussion; these presentations count for one- third of participation grade.
  • Concerns about class Students who are concerned for any reason about their ability to participate in the classroom discussion should contact the professor as early as possible to work out a solution.

Course Schedule

 NOTE: For NYU e-book readings, you must be signed into NYUHome.

1. Thurs. Jan 4. Getting Started.

No reading required. 

At 4pm, we will have an orientation meeting with our hosts in Bangladesh at the James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University

Time: Jan 4, 2023 06:00 PM Astana, Dhaka
Join Zoom Meeting
 
STUDENT INTRODUCTIONS: please put some sentences introducing yourself into this googledoc. Include any dietary restrictions. Getting this done before the start of the first class is part of your participation grade. 
 
Going over the syllabus, the intellectual framework, and Q&A. 
 
 

2. Fri. Jan 5. The Ancient Sea-Space of Mobility. 1-page paper #1 due today by midnight. See Assignments

         In class NYUAD J-Term Traveling Seminar Orientation. 

        PPT presentation: Plague space in Ancient Rome

         Reading:

Raoul McLaughlin, Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China, pp. 83-111.

Marco Galli, “Beyond frontiers: Ancient Rome and the Eurasian trade networks,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 8 (2017) 3–9 (PDF online)

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, Rowman & Littlefield, 2011, pp.19-33, 73-78.

Catherine Thèves, Eric Crubézy, Philippe Biagini, “History of Smallpox and Its Spread  in Human Populations,” Environmental Microbiology,4,4,2016 (PDF online 12pp); and CDC: History of Smallpox (for a quick survey)

Jean-Paul Gonzalez, et al “Pathocoenosis: A Holistic Approach to Disease Ecology,” by EcoHealth, 7, 237-240, 2010. (PDF online)

Danielle Gourevitch,”The Galenic Plague: a Breakdown of the Imperial Pathocoenosis: Pathocoenosis and Longue Durée,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2005, 27, 1, 57-69. (PDF online)

Viewing:

A Brief History of the Plague of Justinian.” Dr. Robert McEachnie. Youtube (22:20)

3. Sat. Jan 6. Land Routes, Plague, and Responses. 1-page paper #2.

In class presentation/discussion: Professor Justin Stearns, “Plague and Contagion in the Premodern Muslim World”

PPT: The Black Plague

Reading:

Lynda Shaffer, “Southernization.” Journal of World History, 5, 1, 1994, 1–21.

Michal Biran, “The Mongol Empire and inter-civilizational exchange” (PDF), Chapter 20 in The Cambridge World History, 2015, pp.534-558 (Cambridge Core Link).

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, Chap 1, pp.34-72.

Luisa Maria Arvide Cambra, “The causes of the Black Death described by Ibn Khātima in the work Taḥṣīl al- garaḍ,” Annals of Review and Research 4, 1, 2018, (2pp) PDF online

Ewen Callaway, “Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death,” Nature, 15 June 2022. (2pp PDF online)

BBC Website: Dubrovnik: The medieval city designed around quarantine.

Recommended (as potential for final paper: plague is a great topic):

Monica H. Green, “Global Health in a Semi-Globalized World: History of Infectious Diseases in the Medieval Period” IsisCB Special Issue, ed. by Stephen P. Weldon and Neeraja Sankaran. 2021, 21pp. 

Justin K. Stearns, Infectious Ideas : Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011, 1-36, 79-86.

Plague History PubMed Search results

Nükhet Varlık, “Plague in the Mediterranean/Islamicate World: A Bibliographic Review” IsisCB Special Issue, ed. by Stephen P. Weldon and Neeraja Sankaran. 2021, 28pp.

Dols MW. The second plague pandemic and its recurrences in the Middle East: 1347- 1894. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 22, 2, 1979: 162-89 (PDF online).

William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples. Random House, 1998, pp.94-242.

Justin Stearns, “Essential Readings on Epidemics in the Middle East,” Jadaliyya.comessential readings. and essay on Islamicate plague treatises.

Sheldon Watts, “The Human Responses to Plague in Western Europe and the Middle East, 1347-1844,” in Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997, pp.1-39. (PDF online)

Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China, Stanford, 1996, pp.1-72, 150-171.

The last great plague pandemic.

4. Sat. Jan 7. The Globalization of Disease. 1-page paper #3.

Reading:

James L. A. Webb, “Globalization of disease, 1300 to 1900,” in The Cambridge World History, pp 54-75.John Aberth, Plagues in World History, Chap 1, pp.101-111.

PPT : The Global Age of Sail

PPT: Global Empires, WW1, and Pandemic Flu 

Video: 200 years that changed the world.  Is the World a Better Place (get)

Bangladesh GoogleMap

PPT: Locating (Pandemic) Dhaka

Recommended:

Sheldon Watts, “Smallpox in the New World and in the Old: From Holocaust to Eradication, 1518-1977,” Chapter 3, in Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History, Yale University Pres, 1997, pp.84-121.

Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24, 2, 2010, 163–188. (PDF online)

Sheldon Watts, “Cholera and Civilization: Great Britain and India, 1817-1920,” in Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History, Yale University Pres, 1997, 167-212.

Hays and Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History, Chapter 7, “Cholera and Sanitation,” pp.135-154

Sagaree Jain, “Anti-Asian Racism in the 1817 Cholera Pandemic.” April 2020, (9pp)

Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China, Stanford, 1996, pp.1-72.

Myron Echenberg, Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp.13-86.

David Arnold, “Cholera and Colonialism in British India.” Past & Present, no. 113, 1986, pp. 118–51.

Dr. John Bell (1796-1872), All the material facts in the history of epidemic cholera: being a report of the College of physicians of Philadelphia, to the Board of health: and a full account of the causes, post mortem appearances, and treatment of the disease. Philadelphia: Desilver, 1832.

Cholera in New York City: “Density, Equity, and the History of Epidemics in New York City,”BY RICHARD PLUNZ AND ANDRÉS ÁLVAREZ-DÁVILA |JUNE 30, 2020. 

Mon. Jan 9. Travel to Dhaka (no class).

05:00 Meet at Welcome Center for bus to airport

16:20 Arrive Dhaka for trip to Renaissance Hotel

1-page paper #4 due by midnight.

5. Tues-Wed, Jan 10-11: Korail Public Health

Seminar and Field Visit with faculty and researchers at the BRAC University James P. Grant School of Public Health.

1-page paper #5 due at 12 midnight.

08:00 Leave for full day of seminar and field trip with faculty and researchers ad the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health. Here are the orientation slides, which were discussed at the Zoom orientation on Jan 4, for students visiting Dhaka and for the field visit to the Korail neighborhood. 

19:00 Discussion of BRAC presentation projects after dinner at the hotel (on zoom)

6. Wed. Jan 11. Pandemic Public Health  

1-page paper #6 due at midnight

8:00 Leave for BRAC seminar with presentations. The “NYU field presentation template” and “Understanding Health Holistically” file are in this folder.

2:30 Return to hotel after lunch at BRAC and do reading below to be prepared for class discussion on Zoom, 4:30-6:00

 4:30 Class discussion of BRAC reading below

7:00 Group discussion in meeting room with Alexandra and Paul

Be Prepared to discuss the BRAC reading in this Folder. (Be prepared to discuss Sabina Faiz Rashid, Selima Sara Kabir, Kim Ozano, Sally Theobald,Bachera Aktar and Aisha Siddika, “Scarcity and resilience in the slums of Dhaka city, Bangladesh.” (PDF online.), Daily Star on Covid in the Slums, 2020. (PDF online), and Covid impact in Chittagong (PDF online)

7. Thurs Jan 12: Pathocoenosis Treatment and Research at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh

1-page paper #7 due by midnight.

10:00 Class discussion of readings below in hotel (on zoom). 

13:00 Depart Hotel for ICDDR,B

19:00 Class Discussion after dinner at hotel.

Reading:  Enteric and respiratory infectionsexplore research themes and.Cholera Report.

Murphy, Michelle. The Economization of Life. Duke University Press, 2017, pp.95-105

ICDDR,B study: 72% slum dwellers carrying Covid antibodies.

‘Rich man’s disease’: Curious case of Covid in Dhaka slums.

Md Taufiqul Islam, John D Clemens, Firdausi Qadri, “Cholera Control and Prevention in Bangladesh: An Evaluation of the Situation and Solutions,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 218, Issue suppl_3, 15 November 2018, Pages S171–S172, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiy470(PDF online)

Government of Bangladesh, National Cholera Control Plan, 2019-2030. (PDF online)

Fri Jan 13:  No Class. Touring Dhaka and flight back to Abu Dhabi

09:00  depart hotel with all bags packed for the Bangladesh Liberation War Museum and the airport

22:25 Return to NYUAD campus

8. Mon Jan 16. Political Economy and Public Health

1-page paper #8 due by midnight.

In class: (1) be prepared to discuss reading by Paul Farmer and JP Mackenbach (below), but above all, YOU MUST WATCH, take notes on , and be ready to discuss this Al Jazeera video: TIME OF PANDEMICS (45:57). (2) we will also discuss brief preliminary descriptions of final paper themes,

Reading.

Murphy, Michelle. The Economization of Life. Duke University Press, 2017, pp.95-105

Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. University of California Press, 2004, pp.1-22, 213-46.

JP Mackenbach, “Politics is nothing but medicine at a larger scale: reflections on public health’s biggest idea,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 3 December 2008, 181-184. (Good Wikipedia on Rudolph Virchow)

Hays and Hays. The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History. Chapter 9, “Disease, Medicine, and Western Imperialism,” pp.179-213 and Chapter 12, “Disease and Power,” pp. 283-314.

Sandhya Polu, Infectious Disease in India, 1892-1940: Policy-Making and the Perception of Risk, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp.140-157.

Franklin White, Global Public Health: Ecological Foundations, Oxford University Press, 2013, Chap 1, “History, Aims, and Methods of Public Health,” pp. 1-26.

Great Viewing: David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything – especially health

Jay S. Kaufman, “Science Alone Can’t Heal a Sick Society,” NYTimes, Sept 12, 2021

9. Tues Jan 17. Pandemic Space: Mobility, Immobility, Migrant Workers and Other Foreigners in National Territory 

Please attend the Roundtable discussion of “Mobility/Immobility” after class today in A6-001.

1-page paper #9 due at midnight.

Media coverage re COVID-19 & Risks to Migrant Workers in Qatar & the UAE Supply Chain capitalism global connectivity 1

Bangladesh Garment workers Bangladesh migrant workers Internal Migrants and Slums

Dina Siddiqi, “What the Pandemic Reveals: Workers’ Rights in Bangladesh and Garment Supply Chains,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Sept 2, 2020.

Neha Vora, “Pandemic security and insecurity in the Gulf,” SSRC Immanent Frame

Andrea Wright, “No Good Options for Migrant Workers in Gulf COVID-19 Lockdown.” MERIP

Glenn Coin, “Utica embraces its refugees, but they’re bearing the brunt of coronavirus”(Syracuse.com)

Viewing: (36min): Ludden, “Global Pandemic in National Territory.” Oct 5, 2020. And Global Asia Webinar on Migration, Globalization, and Covid-19, Oct 23, 2020.

10. Wed Jan 18. Pandemic Space: Globalization, Capitalist Accumulation, and Imperial Inequity. 

1-page paper #10.

Let’s do course evaluations today; here is the update: We have been informed by the Registrar’s Office that the course evaluation system is now open but will end at 11:59 pm on Thursday, January 19.  It will be closed on Friday and not available to students after Thursday. 

In class: A brief expansion of your final paper. 

NOTE: a number of students are interested in the politics of healthcare; its connectiond to the political economy of global capitalism is relevant. Why NGOs are so important? How does “the market” figure in government health policy?

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, pp 111-135. (on 1918 flu)

Maura Chhun, “1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians …” The Conversation. April 17, 2020.

David Patterson and Gerald Pyle, “ The diffusion of influenza in sub-Saharan Africa during the 1918–1919 pandemic,” Social Science & Medicine, 17, 1, 1983, 1299-

Paul Farmer, “Ebola, Spanish Flu and the Memory of disease,“ Critical Inquiry, 46, 2019, 56-71. 

David Ludden, “Imperial Modernity: history and global inequity
in rising Asia,” Third World Quarterly, Published online: 30 Apr 2012. 

India Today: “How Covid-19 crisis has exposed India’s growing wealth gap

Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Sundaram, “Privatized Healthcare Worsens Pandemic.” (2pp)

Human Rights Watch, “United States: Pandemic Impact on People in Poverty,” 2021.

Oxfam report: “The Inequality Virus

Pandemics and the Poor,” The Brookings Institute, 2017.

Nancy Tomes, “’Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918-1919 Flu Pandemic.” Public Health Reports, 2010, 125, 48-62.

11. Thurs Jan 19. Pandemic Space in the Anthropocene

REMEMBER: Course evaluations.

Reading:

New York Times: Cholera Outbreaks Today, and Discovering Black Plague Immunity Gene.

Nature, September 2022: “Evolution of immune genes is associated
with the Black Death,” by Jennifer Klunk et al

World Economic Forum, “Coronavirus isn’t an outlier,,,”

Pierre-Marie David, Nicolas Le Dévédec, Anouck Alary, “Pandemics in the age of the Anthropocene: Is ‘planetary health’ the answer?” Global Public Health, 16, 2021, 8-9: “Politics and Pandemics,” 1141-1154 (PDF online)

NCBI Review of Mike Davis, The Monster Enters: COVID 19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism. New York and London: OR Books. 205 pp. (PDF online 4pp)

Jeff Tollefson, “Why deforestation makes pandemics more likely,” Nature, 584, 13 August 2020 (online PDF) (2pp)

Institute of Medicine, et al. The Influence of Global Environmental Change on Infectious Disease Dynamics. Workshop Summary, edited by Alison Mack, and Eileen R. Choffnes, National Academies Press, 2014.

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, pp.135-179.

AIDS mortality Map 2017.

Covid-19: An Occupational Disease. Where Frontline Workers are Best Protected. GlobalUnion, 2013, 13pp.

WHO official says Booster shots “make a mockery of vaccine equity. NYT 20 Aug21

D.Bhattacharya et al, “Dealing with the Aftermath of Covid-19: Adjustments and Adaptation Efforts of the Apparel Workers in Bangladesh.” Citizen’s Platform Working Paper 6, Dhaka, 2022. 25pp.

Xiaoping Fang. China and the Cholera Pandemic: Restructuring Society under Mao, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

Patricia Siplon, “The Troubled Path to HIV/AIDS Universal Treatment Access: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?” Chapter 1, in Global HIV/AIDS Politics, Policy, and Activism : Persistent Challenges and Emerging Issues, edited by Raymond A. Smith, and Raymond A Smith, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013, pp.3-26.

12. Fri Jan 20. Class Presentations.

Final 10 page paper due at midnight.

                                     ——————————————————————–

POLICY STATEMENTS

Attendance Statement:

Due to the condensed nature of J-term, each absence is the equivalent of missing a full week in a regular semester – with less of an opportunity to make up for missed material. Each unexcused absence results in the deduction of one mark from the final course grade (e.g. from an A- to a B+). Excusing absence is at the discretion of the instructor. Students who miss more than three classes, excused or unexcused, cannot pass the course. If the absences are excused, the student will be withdrawn from the course. If more than one of the absences is unexcused, the student will fail the course.

Academic Integrity:

At NYU Abu Dhabi, a commitment to excellence, fairness, honesty, and respect within and outside the classroom is essential to maintaining the integrity of our community. By accepting membership in this community, students, faculty, and staff take responsibility for demonstrating these values in their own conduct and for recognizing and supporting these values in others. In turn, these values create a campus climate that encourages the free exchange of ideas, promotes scholarly excellence through active and creative thought, and allows community members to achieve and be recognized for achieving their highest potential. As part of the NYU global network, NYUAD students are also subject to NYU’s all-school policy on Academic Integrity for Students at NYU. Alleged integrity violations are resolved using NYUAD’s Academic Integrity Procedure

Moses Center for Student Accessibility (CSA): mosescsa@nyu.edu           
New York University is committed to providing equal educational opportunity and participation for students with disabilities. CSA works with students to determine appropriate and reasonable accommodations that support equal access to a world-class education. Confidentiality is of the utmost importance. Disability-related information is never disclosed without student permission. If you have any questions or would like to have further information about the Moses Center, please visit the following link.

Health Resources:

As a University student, you may experience a range of issues that can interfere with your ability to perform academically or impact your daily functioning, such as heightened stress, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, sleep disturbance, strained relationships, grief and loss, personal struggles. If you have any well-being or mental health concerns please visit the Counseling Center on the ground floor of the campus center from 9am-5pm, Monday – Friday, or schedule an appointment to meet with a counselor by calling: 02-628-8100, or  emailing: nyuad.healthcenter@nyu.edu. If you require mental health support outside of these hours, call NYU’s Wellness Exchange hotline at 02-628-5555, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also utilize the Wellness Exchange mobile chat feature,  details of which you can find on the student portal.  These services are available remotely for students studying outside of the UAE.

Religious Holidays:
Students need to make sure they are familiar with the provisions and obligations of The University Calendar Policy on Religious Holidays, which states, in part: “Students who anticipate being absent because of any religious observance should, whenever possible, notify faculty in advance of such anticipated absence.”

APPENDIX 1

Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) for Core courses:
1)  Critically examine historical and contemporary topics of global significance, which includes   formulating clear, precise questions and arriving at well-reasoned conclusions using
                          a) qualitative,
                          b) quantitative,
                          c) contextual, and
                          d) creative modes of reasoning;
2)  Communicate effectively for various audiences and purposes, including participation in public settings;
3)  Demonstrate self-understanding and intercultural competency; and
4)  Identify and reflect critically on conceptual and ethical complexity.

On Colonialism and Empire

On “colonialism versus empire” as frames for modern South Asian History. 
 
“Colonialism” literally refers to an ideology or process of producing and maintaining colonies; it seems to be applied exclusively to European colonies, going back to Greek and Roman times, when ancient “empires” consisted of Greek and Roman settlements (colonies) scattered around the Mediterranean. Rome is the model (See Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History:  Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 2010.) 
 
Enforcing Roman law among peoples subjected to the military power of Roman rulers in and around Roman colonies produced Roman imperial subjects who were not Roman and subjected to superior Roman authority and power; that subjugation became the basis of what we could call subaltern identities. Colonial subjects were ranked as imperial subjects; fighting colonial power meant fighting imperial power in or around a Roman colony; living with Roman power became practical and its influences suffused local societies. That colonial modeling of empire has been imported into modern world history.
 
The term colonialism has not been applied to pre-modern Asian imperial territories, which were in fact formed in ways similar to the empires built around colonies around the Mediterranean. The idea that colonial subjugation to imperial territorial expansion has produced modern nation-state territories is becoming acceptable with reference to Xinjiang, Tibet, Kashmir, NE India, and elsewhere. It is very more broadly useful in a long-term view but has been buried under the global authority of national territorialism. 
 
What are called “national territories” all across Eurasia today were formed by many centuries of mobile colony formation by imperial powers and with the subjugation of peoples who became subjects under forms ruling authority which came from elsewhere — notably North India and North China — and which produced superior classes of people who lived and settled among locals and wrote their history — e.g. in South India, South China, and Central Asia — creating what came to be called “civilizations.” Imperial status ranks that formed territorial power relations and underpinned cultural authority in the classical Asian empires have been turned into timeless traditions bleached of their imperial conquest heritage by imperial authorities who composed the texts that modern scholars have used to write pre-modern Asian history. 
 
When modern scholars use European colonialism as a frame for modern history, they implicitly endorse that civilization frame, by treating the only relevant colonial conquest narrative as beginning with Europeans. The politics of that framing become more obvious when we notice that Hindutva ideologues have extended the timeline of colonial subjugation back to include the Mughals. We can usefully extend it back further to include the colonial conquests by Hindu imperialists who established Brahmanical hegemony. 
 
That longer view thus takes seriously the long and diverse historical layering of imperial power relations, over many centuries, which came to include the long period of European ascendancy to the higher echelons of imperial authority in South Asia. Colonialism studies instead start with the “rise of the West” and project modern colonial domination back to early European settlements. This seems most compelling in Bengal, which became the “beachhead” for British European expansion, its imperial capital, and the homeland of Indian nationalism; so it seems that British imperial domination was in the cards in Bengal from the outset, which is hardly true.
 
The truth is well known: coastal British colonies became centers for inland imperial expansion by engaging with, emulating, and expanding military dynamics and strategies of territorial power around their settlements; and like imperial powers before them, by attracting allies to their cause from various levels in existing imperial ranks. So modern colonial imperialism in South Asia was embedded in evolving dynamics of imperial territorialism, as it was also fed and enriched by networks of mobility and capital accumulation in which the British scrambled for supremacy around the world, and which  included a great many non-British actors who made the British Empire possible. Landed, commercial, and ruling elites at various levels around South Asia made The Raj possible and made it work. Those alliances and interdependencies began to fray as upwardly mobile subaltern groups scrambled to capture higher and higher levels of imperial authority; that scramble became nationalism. 
 
The survival and renovation of imperial ranks inside national politics is increasingly prominent today. All of this leads me to argue that studies of “colonialism” may provide a good way to draw a line between Europeans and subject Others on all the continents and thus to unify the world history of European expansion, which makes sense and is useful politically; but colonialism does not capture the historical dynamics of power relations in Asia that actually explain how Europeans rose for a time to the top ranks in the world of imperial capitalism. Colonialism is better understood when it is located inside processes of empire that reach far back into the Asian past and continue into the future. [Ref: “Imperial Modernity: history and global inequity,” Third World Quarterly, 33:4, 2012, 581-601)

Mobile Missionary Spaces: The Basel Mission

The BASEL MISSION mission was founded as the German Missionary Society in 1815. The mission later changed its name to the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, and finally the Basel Mission. The society built a school to train Dutch and British missionaries in 1816. Since this time, the mission has worked in Russia and the Gold Coast (Ghana) from 1828, India from 1834, China from 1847, Cameroon from 1886, Borneo from 1921, Nigeria from 1951, and Latin America and the Sudan from 1972 and 1973. On 18 December 1828, the Basel Mission Society, coordinating with the Danish Missionary Society, sent its first missionaries, Johannes Phillip Henke, Gottlieb Holzwarth, Carl Friedrich Salbach and Johannes Gottlieb Schmid, to take up work in the Danish Protectorate at ChristiansborgGold Coast.[3] On 21 March 1832, a second group of missionaries including Andreas Riis, Peter Peterson Jäger, and Christian Heinze, the first mission doctor, arrived on the Gold Coast only to discover that Henke had died four months earlier.

A major focus for the Basel Mission was to create employment opportunities for the people of the area where each mission is located. To this end the society taught printing, tile manufacturing, and weaving, and employed people in these fields.[4] The Basel Mission tile factory in Mangalore, India, is such an endeavour. 

Arijit Chatterjee has been researching the Tile Factories and the printing press in Mangalore to study their architectural characteristics and social relevance. Some of my publications can expand the subject  here: 

https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-193723
https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-1937248

With the decline of the terracotta industry in the latter half of the 19th century, local factories which sustained a century of cross-continental trade are being demolished and I have made use of its material remains as a point of departure to ‘make’ and accommodate reuse  and repair as a core focus in my practice : 


https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-193590
https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-193632

Arjit is currently the 2021 James Harrison Seteedman fellow (Washington University in St Louis,MO,USA) and I will be travelling to the US next year to present the fellowship. Maybe we can meet then. Do let me know if your students or any program wants to work on this subject. My partner is currently enrolled as a phd fellow in AArhus School of Architecture, Denmark and her research focus is on the ‘ecologies of residue’ as the tile travelled, its imprints in contemporary building culture.

IIAS: Visualising history and space in the Basel Mission Archives (PDF file).

Assignments

All assignments go into the Student Google Folder. Assignments are due in the folder by midnight on the date listed below. 

These are one-page minimum reflections on the prompt listed below, based on readings, discussion, and field visits. The first four are phrased as questions to which I append my own answers AFTER I have read through student papers, to clarify points that that I want to get across in the first part of the cours. 

1. Thursday Jan 5. Q: What were the causes of the plagues in ancient Rome? (And think about why we do not have accounts of ancient plagues in Asia.) A: Roman demand for Asian products brought pepper and other commodities to the ancient Mediterranean, some by land but mostly by sea, up the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Roman consumer demand also brought plague, which infected troops fighting Roman imperial wars in Mesopotamia, who carried both Antonine and Justinian plagues back to Rome. Soldiers and workers died during the Justinian Plague in sufficient numbers to weaken Roman imperial power, notably in Syria, where early Muslim communities encountered the plague. (We lack records of plague in ancient Asia because of the mobility and low-density of populations in areas where plague travelled, but there were clearly outbreaks in densely populated parts of India and China.) 

2.  Friday Jan 6. Q: How did the Black Death reflect historical change in the previous millennium? A: The Mongol Empire built routes of mobility and centers of trade and political power inside expansive Turkic spaces of mobility all across the steppe. Mongol expansion increased the mobility of people and animals that carried the plague to Europe. At the same time, centuries of agricultural and population expansion, particularly in warm centuries after 800, increased the density of populations in places where pandemics became killer epidemics. 

3.  Saturday Jan 7. Q: What could be said to be historical stages in the globalization of disease? A: Stage One is the ancient (pre-600CE) commercial interaction of Europe and Mediterranean, by land and sea. Stage two: their more intensive late medieval interaction after the Mongols (note the travels of Marco Polo in the 1300s). Three: the post-1500 seaborne Columbian exchange. Stage Four: the post-1600 global expansion of European seaborne empires. Those can reasonably defined as the four main historical stages in the globalization of pandemic disease into the 20th century. 

4. Monday Jan 9. Q: Consider the case of cholera as pandemic, epidemic, and endemic? A: Cholera seems originally to have been endemic in deltaic localities in lower Bengal (and perhaps in some other watery coastal regions of tropical India). It became epidemic in coastal regions because of increasing population density in urban areas driven by ongoing commercial and English imperial expansion, around Madras and Calcutta, in 1817. Cholera became pandemic by traveling with troops, merchants, and other migrants along routes of British imperial globalization, which eventually brought cholera to coastal regions and to port cities around the world, including New York City.   

5. Tuesday Jan 10. Write your paper on your BRAC presentation project theme,. 

6. Wednesday Jan 11. Consider your theme in the context of socio-economic inequality.

7. Thursday Jan 12. Discuss pathocoenosis in the Bangladesh context

8. Monday Jan 16. Discuss the politics of public health in the context of globalization.

9. Tuesday Jan 17. Write a brief description of your paper topic and indicate some source materials that you will use. 

10. Wednesday Jan 18. Write up a short presentation your final paper.

10 page paper due at midnight on Jan 20. Discussion and Presentations in class. Jan 19-20.