Daniel R Curtis | Erasmus University Rotterdam (original) (raw)

Books by Daniel R Curtis

CUP, 2020

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters... more Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Open access funded via NWO Book Grant of Daniel R. Curtis.

Routledge, 2022

This book explores societal vulnerabilities highlighted within cinema and develops an interpretiv... more This book explores societal vulnerabilities highlighted within cinema and develops an interpretive framework for understanding the depiction of societal responses to epidemic disease outbreaks across cinematic history. Drawing on a large database of twentieth-and twenty-first-century films depicting epidemics, the study looks into issues including trust, distrust, and mistrust; different epidemic experiences down the lines of expertise, gender, and wealth; and the difficulties in visualizing the invisible pathogen on screen. The authors argue that epidemics have long been presented in cinema as forming a point of cohesion for the communities portrayed, as individuals and groups "from below" represented as characters in these films find solidarity in battling a common enemy of elite institutions and authority figures. Throughout the book, a central question is also posed: "cohesion for whom?", which sheds light on the fortunes of those characters that are excluded from these expressions of collective solidarity. This book is a valuable reference for scholars and students of film studies and visual studies as well as academic and general readers interested in topics of films and history, and disease and society.

Why in the pre-industrial period were some settlements resilient and stable over the long term wh... more Why in the pre-industrial period were some settlements resilient and stable over the long term while other settlements were vulnerable to crisis? Indeed, what made certain human habitations more prone to decline or even total collapse, than others? All pre-industrial societies had to face certain challenges: exogenous environmental hazards such as earthquakes or plagues, economic or political hazards from ‘outside’ such as warfare or expropriation of property, or hazards of their own-making such as soil erosion or subsistence crises. How then can we explain why some societies were able to overcome or negate these problems, while other societies proved susceptible to failure, as settlements contracted, stagnated, were abandoned, or even disappeared entirely?
This book has been stimulated by the questions and hypotheses put forward by a recent ‘disaster studies’ literature - in particular, by placing the intrinsic arrangement of societies at the forefront of the explanatory framework. Essentially it is suggested that the resilience or vulnerability of habitation has less to do with exogenous crises themselves, but on endogenous societal responses which dictate: (a) the extent of destruction caused by crises and the capacity for society to protect itself; and (b) the capacity to create a sufficient recovery. By empirically testing the explanatory framework on a number of societies between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century in England, the Low Countries, and Italy, it is ultimately argued in this book that rather than the protective functions of the state or the market, or the implementation of technological innovation or capital investment, the most resilient human habitations in the pre-industrial period were those than displayed an equitable distribution of property and a well-balanced distribution of power between social interest groups. Equitable distributions of power and property were the underlying conditions in pre-industrial societies that allowed 'favourable' institutions to emerge with high rates of participation down the social hierarchy, giving people the freedom and room to choose their own fate - not necessarily reliant on one coping strategy but with the capacity to combine many different ones in search of optimum resilience.

Published and Accepted Articles by Daniel R Curtis

Economic History Review, 2024

Economic historians have tried to better understand howand why land was redistributed in rural co... more Economic historians have tried to better understand howand why land was redistributed in rural communities,although our empirical insights have been limited by alack of serial evidence for land distribution within thesame locality across a long period. This article exploits theunusual survival of Veldboeken (field books), which allowa careful annual reconstruction of land distribution withinan unremarkable seventeenth-century village in the southof the modern-day Netherlands. We show that, despite highlevels of dynamism in the local land markets, includinghigh and changing levels of leasehold, varying and flexibletenancies, and frequent transfers of land between parties,the overall aggregate distribution of land did not changevery much over time. Employing a systematic lifecycleanalysis of active land-market participants, we advance abroader concept of pre-industrial ‘decumulation’ – wherelandowners and land users used adaptive mechanismswithin the land market to not just consolidate land butalso work out ways of getting rid of it and achieve opti-mal (and often smaller) farms and estates. Accordingly, wedo not find any social logic or natural tendency towardsaccumulation, consolidation, and greater inequality

TSEG: Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 2024

This article reviews what we know about plague and other epidemic diseases in the northern Low Co... more This article reviews what we know about plague and other epidemic diseases in the northern Low Countries before 1450 – the evidence, its limitations, and its implications. I make three observations. First, sources suggest that the Black Death was severe in central inland areas, although we lack conclusive evidence for its impact in the county of Holland. Second, the recurring epidemics occurring in the northern Low Countries were often severe – in certain localities reaching death rates of 20-25 percent. In this respect, Holland was as afflicted as other areas in the Low Countries. Third, while the outbreak of 1439 was a notable exception, most epidemics in the northern Low Countries rarely occurred during or just after grain price spikes, suggesting that food crises were not major drivers of epidemic disease in the period 1349-1450. I support further attempts to obtain empirical evidence for the mortality effects of epidemics in the medieval Low Countries. Ultimately, this information can be the foundation behind insights into other important long-term narratives in social, demographic, and economic history in the region.

Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia, 2024

In the late medieval period, trade and production created conditions conducive to disease spread,... more In the late medieval period, trade and production created conditions conducive to disease spread, and these diseases, in turn, also had implications for economic development. Typically, historians have tended to emphasise the major redistributive effects of the Black Death - the idea that an affliction which killed large amounts of people but kept resources intact created post-epidemic 'bonuses' for those that survived. Nowadays, however, we are more receptive to the idea that (a) not all social and demographic groups benefitted equally from this outbreak, and (b) epidemics had direct economic costs, rendering the previous idea of 'intact resources' incorrect.

TMG Journal of Media History, 2023

This article analyses continuities and changes in how disease has been instrumentalised in cinema... more This article analyses continuities and changes in how disease has been instrumentalised in cinema as a way of conceptualizing race - comparing five films depicting epidemics produced before the Second World War and five after. In the 1930s films, non-white populations often passively accept assistance in dealing with epidemic disease - a paternalistic white savior narrative - but not always with "gratitude", and sometimes direct resistance. Here, epidemics take root in physical sites of economic "underdevelopment", perpetuated further by perceived "premodern" cultural practices demarcated down the lines of race or ethnicity, and intersect with other gendered and socioeconomic categories. After the war, while some cinematic tropes such as the "white knight" continue, other narratives emerge including a shift in emphasis away from the Othered environment as the nexus of disease (the disease's "incubation"), and towards greater alarm about the appearance of disease within recipient, frequently white, communities.

History Collective: Erasmus Student Journal of History Studies, 2023

Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2022

Access freely at https://rdcu.be/cUZ6p

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2021

I n many different types of films produced across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that h... more I n many different types of films produced across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that have depicted epidemics, women have been visualized according to two recurring characteristic images. On the one hand, women have been portrayed as actual or symbolic "carriers" or "spreaders" of disease-sometimes as a punishment for perceived immorality-and usually connected to female characters deviating from the gender roles prescribed during epidemics, which were often focused on domesticity. 1 On the other hand, women have been shown in films to take on heavy burdens during epidemic outbreaks-often by caring for others, apparently selflessly-a subject that has been highlighted during the world's struggles

Journal of Popular Culture, 2021

We analyze how films have depicted the role and experience of women during epidemics across cinem... more We analyze how films have depicted the role and experience of women during epidemics across cinematic history. We show that women have often been portrayed as symbolic ‘carriers’ or ‘spreaders’ of disease – sometimes as a punishment – often connected to female characters deviating from their ‘expected’ gender roles prescribed to them during epidemics. One prescribed role is for women to take on heavy burdens during epidemic outbreaks – often by ‘selflessly’ caring for others. In extreme cases, this leads to women sacrificing themselves for the ‘greater good’ of the wider community. Both images are mutually reinforcing.

Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and di... more Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and disease. Despite limited empirical evidence, the ensuing mortality effects are regularly invoked by economic historians to explain patterns of economic development. Using newly collected data on adult burials and war events in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, we estimate early modern war-driven mortality in localities close to military activity. We find a clear and significant general mortality effect consistent with the localized presence of diseases. During years with major epidemic disease outbreaks, we demonstrate a stronger and more widely spreading mortality effect. However, war-driven mortality increases during epidemic years are of similar relative magnitude is those in non-epidemic war years. Given the omnipresence of warfare in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, war-driven mortality was remarkably constant rather than a sharp discontinuity. The economic impact of warfare likely played out over the long term rather than driven by sudden large mortality spikes creating rapid structural change.

Explorations in Economic History, 2021

Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and di... more Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and disease. Despite limited empirical evidence, the ensuing mortality effects are regularly invoked by economic historians to explain patterns of economic development. Using newly collected data on adult burials and war events in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, we estimate early modern war-driven mortality in localities close to military activity. We find a clear and significant general mortality effect consistent with the localized presence of diseases. During years with major epidemic disease outbreaks, we demonstrate a stronger and more widely spreading mortality effect. However, war-driven mortality increases during epidemic years are of similar relative magnitude as those in non-epidemic war years. Given the omnipresence of warfare in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, war-driven mortality was remarkably constant rather than a sharp discontinuity. The economic impact of warfare likely played out over the long term rather than driven by sudden large mortality spikes creating rapid structural change.

Visual Studies, 2021

During COVID-19, acts of ‘heroism’ – particularly by ordinary people ‘from below’ – have been for... more During COVID-19, acts of ‘heroism’ – particularly by ordinary people ‘from below’ – have been foregrounded, prompting complicated ethical issues in the public health context. By analysing examples from a large corpus of films about epidemics across the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, this article investigates how cinema has represented public health workers. We find that the public health worker in epidemic-related films tends to be elite or an authority figure with expertise, often male – whose personal burden and sacrifice goes unrecognised by others, or even directly challenged ‘from below’. However, although the public health worker as ‘ordinary hero’ rarely features, the ‘human’ side of epidemiologists, physicians and bacteriologists – through either personal redemption and a return to more humble roots, or recognition of personal error, questioning of official regulations and authorities, and eccentric and unorthodox behaviour – makes these ‘elite’ figures appear more ordinary, bridging the gap between the two.

Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 2020

In recent decades, the West has appeared almost ‘invincible’ when faced with the threat of exogen... more In recent decades, the West has appeared almost ‘invincible’ when faced with the threat of exogenous environmental or biological shocks. In accordance with traditional modernity narratives, infectious diseases particularly seemed to belong to either the premodern world or a contemporary ‘underdeveloped’ world. Now that the West is in the full grip of a pandemic, however, it has become increasingly difficult to uphold the same modern/non-modern dichotomy. Moreover, the arrival of COVID-19 in Western countries has been characterised as a consequence of institutional failure or at least an omen of future structural institutional change. These institutions, however, are known to have been designed for perpetuating the ‘status quo’ rather than protecting the societies they govern against environmental shocks. Accordingly, we argue that modern institutions should not be seen as smooth, hermetically sealed, protective systems, but rather as inherently uneven, imperfect structures whose imperfections come to the surface in times of crisis. That is to say that institutional systems may ultimately prove capable of withstanding environmental shocks, yet social groups and ecological systems may still remain vulnerable, raising questions with regard to theoretical frameworks and methodologies used by historians on this topic.

Speculum, 2021

This article employs a large database of 10,360 deaths taken from registrations of graves dug and... more This article employs a large database of 10,360 deaths taken from registrations of graves dug and church bells tolled at Haarlem between the years 1412 and 1547—one of the largest samples and longest series of mortality evidence ever produced for medieval Holland—and systematically compares findings with a seventeenth-century burial register for the same city. It concludes that we should put aside any lingering notion that late medieval Holland was very lightly affected by epidemic diseases: in fact, in Haarlem, these mortality crises were more severe than those seen in the seventeenth century. The data also reveal not one overarching “medieval mortality regime” but distinct changes between fewer but more severe spikes in the first half of the fifteenth century, and higher frequency of smaller spikes later on—especially in the period 1480–1530—with the number of mortality crises damping down after 1530. These mortality crises tended to produce more adult female victims than male, supporting recent findings from elsewhere in the late medieval Low Countries.

Dutch Crossing, 2021

Recent literature has argued that women in parts of the early modern Low Countries experienced hi... more Recent literature has argued that women in parts of the early
modern Low Countries experienced high levels of ‘agency’ and
‘independence’ – measured through ages and rates of marriage,
participation in economic activities beyond the household, and the
physical occupation of collective or public spaces. Epidemic disease
outbreaks, however, also help bring into focus a number of female
burdens and hardships in the early modern Low Countries, possibly
born out of structural inequalities and vulnerabilities obscured from
view in ‘normal times’, and which is supported by recent demographic
research showing heightened adult female mortality compared
to male during epidemics. For women, these included
expectations of care both inside and outside the familial household,
different forms of persecution, and social controls via authorities
from above and internal regulation within communities from
below – though these were also restrictions that women of course
did not always passively accept, and sometimes violently rejected.

Gender and History, 2020

Data from famines from the nineteenth century onward suggest that women hold a mortality advantag... more Data from famines from the nineteenth century onward suggest that women hold a mortality advantage during times of acute malnutrition, while modern laboratory research suggests that women are more resilient to most pathogens causing epidemic diseases. There is, however, a paucity of sex-disaggregated mortality data for the period prior to the Industrial Revolution to test this view across a broader span of history. We offer a newly compiled database of adult burial information for 293 rural localities and small towns in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, explicitly comparing mortality crises against 'normal' years. In contrast to expected results, we find no clear female mortality advantage during mortality spikes and, more to the point, women tended to die more frequently than men when only taking into account those years with very severe raised mortality. Gender-related differences in levels of protection, but also exposure to vectors and points of contagion, meant that some of these female advantages were 'lost' during food crises or epidemic disease outbreaks. Responses to mortality crises such as epidemics may shine new light on gender-based inequalities perhaps hidden from view in 'normal times'-with relevance for recent work asserting 'female agency' in the early modern Low Countries context.

Medical Humanities, 2020

One key factor that appears to be crucial in the rejection of quarantines, isolation and other so... more One key factor that appears to be crucial in the rejection of quarantines, isolation and other social controls during epidemic outbreaks is trust—or rather distrust. Much like news reporting and social media, popular culture such as fictional novels, television shows and films can influence people’s trust, especially given that the information provided about an epidemic disease is sometimes seen as grounded in ‘scientific fact’ by societies. As well as providing information on the ‘correct science’ behind disease transmission, spread and illness in films and literature, popular culture can also inform societies about how to feel and how to react during epidemics—that is to say create some expectations about the kinds of societal responses that could potentially occur. In this article we closely analyse three films that centre around epidemic diseases—Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011), Blindness (Fernando Meirelles, 2008) and The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006)—in order to highlight three categories of distrust that have recently been identified and conceptualised in broader discussions regarding trust and health: institutional, social and interpersonal. These films raise two key issues about trust and social responses during epidemics. First, while certain aspects of trust are badly diminished during epidemic disease outbreaks, epidemics can also interact with pre-existing structural inequalities within society—based on race, gender or wealth—to create mixed outcomes of discord, prejudice and fear that coexist with new forms of cohesion. Second, the breakdown in trust seen at certain levels during epidemics, such as at the institutional level between communities and authorities or elites, might be mediated or negotiated, perhaps even compensated for, by heightened solidity of trust at the social level, within or between communities.

CUP, 2020

Open access funded via NWO Book Grant of Daniel R. Curtis.

Routledge, 2022

Economic History Review, 2024

TSEG: Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 2024

Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia, 2024

TMG Journal of Media History, 2023

History Collective: Erasmus Student Journal of History Studies, 2023

Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2022

Access freely at https://rdcu.be/cUZ6p

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2021

Journal of Popular Culture, 2021

Explorations in Economic History, 2021

Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and di... more Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and disease. Despite limited empirical evidence, the ensuing mortality effects are regularly invoked by economic historians to explain patterns of economic development. Using newly collected data on adult burials and war events in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, we estimate early modern war-driven mortality in localities close to military activity. We find a clear and significant general mortality effect consistent with the localized presence of diseases. During years with major epidemic disease outbreaks, we demonstrate a stronger and more widely spreading mortality effect. However, war-driven mortality increases during epidemic years are of similar relative magnitude as those in non-epidemic war years. Given the omnipresence of warfare in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, war-driven mortality was remarkably constant rather than a sharp discontinuity. The economic impact of warfare likely played out over the long term rather than driven by sudden large mortality spikes creating rapid structural change.

Visual Studies, 2021

Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 2020

Speculum, 2021

Dutch Crossing, 2021

Gender and History, 2020

Medical Humanities, 2020

Wiley: COVID-19 Resources, 2020

Inequality in Rural Europe (Late Middle Ages - 18th Century), 2020

All authors publishing in the CORN Series have been invited by the editors. All articles are inte... more All authors publishing in the CORN Series have been invited by the editors. All articles are intensively discussed at preparatory meetings, reviewed by the book editors and double blind peer reviewed by external reviewers. CONTENTS List of Contributors List of Figures List of Tables 1 Economic inequality in rural Europe: an introduction Guido Alfani, Erik Thoen 2 Inequality in Spain during the Early Modern Period, 1500-1800. Notes and results Esteban Nicolini, Fernando Ramos-Palencia 3 Land ownership and social inequality: the Algarve example in the 60s and 70s of the eighteenth century Andreia Fidalgo 4 Inequality, growth and taxation in the countryside of the Republic of Venice, c. 1450-c. 1750 Guido Alfani, Matteo Di Tullio 5 Socioeconomic inequalities in fifteenth-century Tuscany: the role of the mezzadria system Davide Cristoferi 6 Land regime and social stratification in sixteenth century Ottoman rural Manisa Pinar Ceylan 7 All equal in the presence of death? Epidemics and redistribution in the pre-industrial period Daniel R. Curtis 8 A regional comparison of social inequality & economic development in 16 th-century Flanders Wouter Ryckbosch 9 Economic inequality in late medieval and early modern rural Hainaut (c. 1420-c. 1540) Thijs Lambrecht

Cambridge University Press (available now in hard copy and open access), 2020

This monograph provides an overview of research into disasters from a historical perspective, mak... more This monograph provides an overview of research into disasters from a historical perspective, making two new contributions. First, it introduces the field of 'disaster studies' to history, showing how we can use history to better understand how societies deal with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. Despite growing recognition of the importance of historical depth by scholars investigating disasters, the temporal dimensions of disasters have been underexploited up to now. Moreover, the historical record sometimes enables us to make a long-term reconstruction of the social, economic and cultural effects of hazards and shocks simply not possible in contemporary disaster studies material. We can therefore use 'the past' as a laboratory to test hypotheses of relevance to the present in a careful way. History lends itself towards this end because of the opportunity it offers to identify distinct and divergent social and environmental patterns and trajectories. We can compare the drivers and constraints of societal responses to shocks spatially and chronologically, and therefore enrich our understanding of responses to stress today.

illustrieren,als zu seiner Lösung beizutragen. Daß Gladigow an benanntemOrt darauf verzichtet, et... more illustrieren,als zu seiner Lösung beizutragen. Daß Gladigow an benanntemOrt darauf verzichtet, etwas über "Stellvertretung" mitzuteilen, wäre demgegenüber zu verschmerzen, wenn er seine Ausführungen nicht unter diese Überschriftg estellt hätte.

Coping with Crisis is a wide-ranging and ambitious book that seeks to test a model that might pre... more Coping with Crisis is a wide-ranging and ambitious book that seeks to test a model that might predict the behavior of settlements in times of crisis . Curtis is interested in why certain communities rebound rapidly after crisis-disease, famine, flood-and others do

Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 2023

American Historical Review, 2023

Agricultural History Review, 2023

https://www.bahs.org.uk/AgHRREV.html?YEAR=2023&MOD=this

Social History of Medicine, 2021

American Historical Review, 2019

Johnson shows how the commercial value of objects from shipwrecks washed up on the Suffolk coast ... more Johnson shows how the commercial value of objects from shipwrecks washed up on the Suffolk coast in the fifteenth century was shaped by the customs of the Leiston Abbey's 'Hethewardmote' or wreck court, which regulated the right of wreck in its locality. Sweetinburgh, looking at the Kent marshlands in the same period, identifies continuities in the distinctive customs and tenures of the region that influenced the path of commercial development to the advantage of yeomen and husbandmen. Meanwhile the chapters on later centuries, such as Sandall's study of Gloucestershire's Forest of Dean, show how custom could be much more explicitly invoked, not only in efforts to resist increasingly intensive commercial exploitation of local resources, but also (as in Sandall's case study) in support of such moves.

Explorations in Economic History, 2021

This document serves as supplementary appendix to the article 'Estimating warfare-related civilia... more This document serves as supplementary appendix to the article 'Estimating warfare-related civilian mortality in the early modern period: Evidence from the Low Countries, 1620-99'. It provides robustness checks mentioned in the main text. Explanations for these tables and figures can be found in the footnotes to each individual table and figure. In addition, it lists all the burial series and most of the literature consulted in the construction of the data underlying the article, except for the primary source references for the burials data, which can be found in the file 'EWM_data-sources.xlsx'.

LvW = Land van Waas; VA = Vier Ambachte 1 We are grateful to Remi van Schaîk for access to his 'c... more LvW = Land van Waas; VA = Vier Ambachte 1 We are grateful to Remi van Schaîk for access to his 'calamiteiten kalender' that pointed us to a number of references to plague in the Northern Netherlands that we had not discovered previously.

OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS: Participants sought for session at ‘Rural History Conference 2025'. This ... more OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS: Participants sought for session at ‘Rural History Conference 2025'.

This open call for papers for the Rural History Conference in Coimbra, Portugal (September 2025) is searching for submissions to make up 1 or 2 sessions. Any papers related to the topic presented above will be considered, and the same goes for place and period – papers on women and land from anywhere in the world and from any period are welcome.

Feel free to sent paper titles, short abstracts of 150 words (if you have one), and your institutional details to me, Daniel R. Curtis at curtis@eshcc.eur.nl by the 15th September 2024. From there I will make the session submission by 30th September 2024.

The IMC provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies... more The IMC provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Proposals on any topic related to the Middle Ages are welcome, while every year the IMC also chooses a special thematic focus. In 2024 this is 'Crisis'.
I am coordinating the call for 2024. Would be happy to discuss any ideas for submissions (or see submissions...).

Participants sought for session at ‘Rural History Conference 2023’, September 11-15, Cluj-Napoca,... more Participants sought for session at ‘Rural History Conference 2023’, September 11-15, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Session deadline is 15 October 2022, so initial expressions of interest are welcome before that date! Let me, Daniel R. Curtis, know at curtis@eshcc.eur.nl

Rural History Conference, 2021

Participants sought for session at ‘Rural History Conference 2021’, August 23-26, Uppsala, Sweden... more Participants sought for session at ‘Rural History Conference 2021’, August 23-26, Uppsala, Sweden.

Session deadline is 15 September 2020, so initial expressions of interest are welcome before that date! Let me, Daniel R. Curtis, know at curtis@eshcc.eur.nl

Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2020

Dr. Daniel Curtis, an associate professor specializing in social responses to historical diseases... more Dr. Daniel Curtis, an associate professor specializing in social responses to historical diseases at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and Sarah Gregory discuss how people in movies react to epidemic disease outbreaks. https://tools.cdc.gov/medialibrary/index.aspx#/media/id/405750

PhD sub-project: The kids are alright: epidemics and the prospects of the young in the early mode... more PhD sub-project: The kids are alright: epidemics and the prospects of the young in the early modern Low Countries (1,0 fte, 4 years)

Catastrophic shocks redistribute economic resources. Indeed, recently it has been argued that epi... more Catastrophic shocks redistribute economic resources. Indeed, recently it has been argued that epidemics and wars alone explain most swings in premodern inequality, and the only times

Infectious Historians, 2021

Daniel Curtis (Erasmus University Rotterdam) talks to Merle and Lee about his diverse work that t... more Daniel Curtis (Erasmus University Rotterdam) talks to Merle and Lee about his diverse work that touches upon multiple disease-related fields. After an overview of the timeframe in which Daniel works – the late medieval and early modern periods, the conversation moves to a discussion of scholarly collaboration in the humanities. Daniel then discusses the benefits and challenges in quantitative work, especially in premodern contexts, and points out that few scholars reflect upon the biases in the datasets. These issues are connected to Daniel’s current project, which looks at inequality in the aftermath of premodern pandemic. The end of the interview focuses on another of Daniel’s recent projects – looking at diseases, epidemics and pandemics in film, where he examines how women or the poor appear in these films, or how they portray heroism.

Disasters are a complex subject, not least because we disagree over how to define them. From a hi... more Disasters are a complex subject, not least because we disagree over how to define them. From a historical perspective, a recent synthesis on "disasters and history" has argued for more clarity in terminology-making a distinction between "hazards" (anticipated environmental or biological processes that create pressure or stress on a society), "shocks" (a hazard that is unexpected), and "disasters". Whether these hazards or shocks turn into full-blown disasters-defined as creating a major negative impact on society-depended on direct interventions from different institutions and individuals, the likelihood and nature of which were dependent on relationships to and distributions of resources (Van Bavel et al., 2020). Those societies able to prevent disasters might well be classified as "resilient"-although, as iterated later in this chapter, this is also a complex term, full of pitfalls and contradictions, with very different meanings across cultural contexts, and often loaded ideological and politicized baggage. When measuring the negative impact of a disaster on society, there are several indicators that spring to mind. Deaths, scale of mass displacement, damage to housing, capital goods, and land, aggregate economic destruction (measured in GDP, for example) or economic redistribution (measured by Gini coefficients of wealth, for example) are quite straightforward to reconstruct and fairly uncontroversial. Others are more difficult or come with nuances-especially if played out over a longer time span such as ecological degradation (the effects unfolding incipiently over the course of centuries before "turning fast" such as sand drifts), diminished health status, and trauma. The next question is to what extent can we reconstruct these indicators in the period 1200-1550CE? The short answer is perhaps unexpected-it is rather difficult. First, we often lack source material. Even with the most basic indicator such as number of deaths caused by a disaster, reliable serial information does not exist in large amounts prior to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Where we do have fragments of this information before 1550CE, it is usually for a select few areas of western Europe (less frequently, eastern Europe: Guzowski,

textabstractAs COVID-19 continues to cause further suffering across the world, historians have su... more textabstractAs COVID-19 continues to cause further suffering across the world, historians have suddenly been in demand. Opinion pieces are piling up day after day, and every historian – regardless of whether they work on epidemic disease or not – has a view. What lessons can we draw from the influenza pandemic a century ago? Why is coronavirus not like the Black Death? Partially, of course, some of this trend can be explained by the fact that some of our public health responses – isolation and distancing, in particular – are found in historical sources going back centuries. Overall, however, we wonder whether there is more for us as historians to take on board from COVID-19, rather than the other way around.

Explorations in Economic History

The History of the Family, 2024