Samuel Cohn - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Samuel Cohn

Pedralbes. Revista d'Història Moderna

This essay examines popular protest and resistance during the Italian Wars, 1494 to 1559, emphasi... more This essay examines popular protest and resistance during the Italian Wars, 1494 to 1559, emphasizing the importance of the decade of the 1520s. It is acomparative analysis with Italy’s more thoroughly studied epoch of insurrection during the late fourteenth century and concludes that the latter period, characterized by warfare and the growth of absolutism, was rich in new forms of protest wedded to ideals of equality and early practices of democracy.

Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 2020

Social History, 2019

The topography of medieval popular protest The topography of revolt has been essential for unders... more The topography of medieval popular protest The topography of revolt has been essential for understanding changes in popular insurgency during the Middle Ages and to distinguish more broadly and globally 'modern' revolt from what some historians and social scientists have labelled as 'premodern'. To begin, what constituted popular revolt in the Middle Ages remains illdefined, and when defined, the notions are often conflicting. Riots, revolts, risings, uprisings, conflicts, disturbances, popular movements, insurgency, and other terms for popular protest are often used interchangeably. 1 Other historians, however, have drawn a sharp divide between 'riot' or 'revolt' or 'revolution. For Michel Mollat and Philippe Wolff, a revolt is 'a spontaneous reaction, a reflect of anger or self-defence', while 'revolution is something planed and prepared', and in the Middle Ages, the authors assert, the latter was extremely rare. 2 Guy Fourquin went further: 'rebellion' was 'the complete overthrow of a society's foundations', and in the Middle Ages this was an impossibility; 'rebellion' had to await the French Revolution. 3 By his account, 'victory was something the medieval 'insurgent never tasted...revolt led only to repression and not to revolution'. 4 Similarly, Perez Zagorin distinguished 'riot' from 'revolution', but defined 'revolution' more broadly as an 'attempt by subordinate groups through the use of violence to bring about (1) a change of government or its policy; 2) a change of regime, or (3) a change in society...' 5 Both Fourquin and Zagorin relied on the sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-94) for their definitions: 'the phenomenon of revolution is without precedent in premodern history'. 6 Apparently, these authors were oblivious to the hundreds of medieval uprisings that overthrew ruling classes or that achieved fundamental constitutional changes granting those outside the realm of the current ruling elite, artisans and, in some cases, manual 2 labourers citizenship and rights to participate in governance as with numerous revolts of the 'popolo' in central and northern Italy from the mid-thirteenth century, ones in Low Countries, as in 1297 to 1305, or in French cities such as Toulouse as early as 1202. 7 I would distinguish a 'riot' from a 'revolt', in that the latter is collective action with evidence of prior planning, negotiation, and implicit or stated demands. By these criteria, all the incidents I am considering in this paper were revolts. None of them fits the patterns that the authors above and many others 8 have assumed as the norm or even the only possibility of popular political action in the Middle Agesthat these acts were 'spontaneous', without planning, organization, or aims. Over forty years ago, through comparative analysis of revolts in Italy, Spain, France, Flanders, and England, Rodney Hilton argued that revolts of the central Middle Ages were largely fixed by village or manorial borders. 9 However, following the Black Death, popular revolts extended over much wider terrain, especially with the so-called English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 that spread beyond Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, and London to places as far north as York, as far west as Shrewsbury, and as far south as Canterbury. Some have even speculated that these protests covered the entirely of England to places yet to be uncovered either because of an absence of historical research or because of the disappearance of documents. Towns as small as Rochester and Guildford had their revolts in 1381. 10 Hilton and others 11 have viewed this fanning out across wider terrains as reflecting progressive changes in the basic elements of revolts, their organization, communication, and ideology, that paralleled changes in state formation. Sociologists and modern historians since the 1950s-George Rudé, Charles

PLoS currents, Jan 26, 2016

In the three West African countries most affected by the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbrea... more In the three West African countries most affected by the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, resistance to public health measures contributed to the startling speed and persistence of this epidemic in the region. But how do we explain this resistance, and how have people in these communities understood their actions? By comparing these recent events to historical precedents during Cholera outbreaks in Europe in the 19th century we show that these events have not been new to history or unique to Africa. Community resistance must be analysed in context and go beyond simple single-variable determinants. Knowledge and respect of the cultures and beliefs of the afflicted is essential for dealing with threatening disease outbreaks and their potential social violence.

Historical Research, 2012

The Economic History Review, 2011

The American Historical Review, 2001

... Introduction The transition from the late—medieval to the Renaissance state' in Florence... more ... Introduction The transition from the late—medieval to the Renaissance state' in Florence has had a long and venerable historiography, spanning the fields of ... began to push its critical moment earlier, even as far back as the creation of its funded state debt, the Monte, in 1345.4 ...

The American Historical Review, 2002

Social History, 2017

Few have studied cholera revolts comparatively, and certainly not over the vast terrain from Asia... more Few have studied cholera revolts comparatively, and certainly not over the vast terrain from Asiatic Russia to Quebec or across time from the first European cholera wave of the 1830s to the twentieth century. Instead, scholars have concentrated on the first cholera wave to penetrate Western Europe in the 1830s and have tended to explain the protest and violence within the political contexts of individual nations, ignoring that, across vast differences in political landscapes from Czarist Russia to New York City, largely the same class configurations emerged of the poor and marginalized attacking governing elites and the medical profession. In addition, despite little evidence of any communication among rioters across national and linguistic divides or even an ocean, the same fears and conspiracy theories arose of elites employing the cholera poison to cull populations of the poor. Moreover, the history of cholera's social toxins runs against present generalizations on why epidemics spawn blame and violence against others. Especially in Russia and Italy, cholera riots continued and became geographically even more widespread, vicious, and destructive long after the disease had lost its novelty and mystery. The article then poses the question: given the stark alignments of class struggle with riots of 10,000 or more, murdering state officials and doctors, destroying hospitals, town halls, and in the case of Donetsk, an entire city, why have historians on the left not noticed them? Finally, the article draws parallels between the nineteenth-and earlytwentieth-century cholera experience in Europe and that of Ebola in Africa in 2014, 2 arguing that historical understanding of epidemics can pose solutions to problems of certain epidemics sparking social violence today.

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2007

The remarkable Books of the Dead from early modern Milan and the parish and tax records of Nonant... more The remarkable Books of the Dead from early modern Milan and the parish and tax records of Nonantola during the plague of 1630 allow historians to reconstitute the patterns of family and household deaths caused by pestilence. Not only did deaths caused by this highly contagious disease cluster tightly within households; the intervals between household deaths were also extremely short. As much as one-quarter of all plague deaths were multiple household deaths that occurred on the same day. Similar to a deadly influenza, the speed and efficiency with which the late medieval and early modern plagues spread depended on unusually short periods of incubation and infectivity.

Popular protest in late-medieval Europe, 2013

Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy, 2021

From over a hundred chronicles, diaries, and the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo’s collection... more From over a hundred chronicles, diaries, and the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo’s collections of reflections, mercantile letters, and diplomatic dispatches, this chapter presents rebels’ chants and their flags and other insignia unfurled during popular insurgency from 1494 to 1559. It then compares these chants and flags to those previously collected and analysed in my Lust for Liberty from the late thirteenth to the early fifteenth century. In contrast to the earlier period’s inventive cries and banners that extolled guild power, rallied to extend the political franchise, and decried new and regressive taxes, those of the Italian wars appealed to outside powers, almost invariably the enemies of their current regimes, to intervene. These included more simplistic chants such as ‘Franza, Franza’, for the French king, and most often, ‘Marco, Marco’ for the Republic of Venice. Moreover, popular rebels of the sixteenth century invented no new flags for their newly-minted causes or r...

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter delves in greater detail into the culture, politics, and ideologies of plague protes... more This chapter delves in greater detail into the culture, politics, and ideologies of plague protest principally in India, distinguishing it from cholera riots in Europe and assertions by colonial magistrates and foreign newspapers that religious fatalism, prejudices against Western medicine and science, and mythologies of poisoning sparked the Indian protests. Instead, this chapter catalogues the abuses suffered by Indian communities and their efforts to negotiate with governments to reform outdated and damaging anti-plague preventive measures. Demonstrations, town meetings with concrete resolutions, and petitions united castes, classes, and the subcontinent’s two major religions. The chapter then compares the Indian ideologies and protests with those in China, Europe, and San Francisco.

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

Unlike previous chapters, which are driven by the primary sources, this one relies on works by sc... more Unlike previous chapters, which are driven by the primary sources, this one relies on works by scholars and activists. From studies of the US, Australia, and Africa, this chapter finds a sharp break during the early 1990s in perceptions of HIV/AIDS’s social and political consequences. From emphasizing hate, violence, discrimination, and stigmatization, AIDS scholars and activists began focusing on the outpouring of volunteerism, charity, compassion, and successes from political activism: organizational developments (CBIs), volunteerism across communities—gay and straight, creativity in the arts, reshaping doctor–patient relations, the enhanced importance of nursing, achievements within the power structures of cities, and advances in gay and lesbian rights. This chapter brings together the book’s three principal categories for exploring the social side effects of epidemics in history—hate, compassion, and politics.

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter asks comparative questions: did other countries experience the same outpouring of vo... more This chapter asks comparative questions: did other countries experience the same outpouring of volunteerism as the US in the Great Influenza? Did women man the front lines of charity and self-sacrifice? It begins with the Deep South, which diverged from the national picture in the US. Here, men and their clubs, not women, played the dominant role, especially in New Orleans—the pattern set by a half-century of yellow fever resistance. The chapter moves on to Italy where there was some evidence of denial, though no blame or social violence. In contrast to the US, no outpouring of volunteerism emerged; rather, governments and the military intervened. France, Switzerland, and the British Isles likewise show no social violence or blaming, and no outpouring of volunteerism, especially among women. However, volunteerism was stronger in Ireland and Switzerland. Reliance on military intervention in civilian health care is the key to explaining these differences.

Pedralbes. Revista d'Història Moderna

This essay examines popular protest and resistance during the Italian Wars, 1494 to 1559, emphasi... more This essay examines popular protest and resistance during the Italian Wars, 1494 to 1559, emphasizing the importance of the decade of the 1520s. It is acomparative analysis with Italy’s more thoroughly studied epoch of insurrection during the late fourteenth century and concludes that the latter period, characterized by warfare and the growth of absolutism, was rich in new forms of protest wedded to ideals of equality and early practices of democracy.

Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 2020

Social History, 2019

The topography of medieval popular protest The topography of revolt has been essential for unders... more The topography of medieval popular protest The topography of revolt has been essential for understanding changes in popular insurgency during the Middle Ages and to distinguish more broadly and globally 'modern' revolt from what some historians and social scientists have labelled as 'premodern'. To begin, what constituted popular revolt in the Middle Ages remains illdefined, and when defined, the notions are often conflicting. Riots, revolts, risings, uprisings, conflicts, disturbances, popular movements, insurgency, and other terms for popular protest are often used interchangeably. 1 Other historians, however, have drawn a sharp divide between 'riot' or 'revolt' or 'revolution. For Michel Mollat and Philippe Wolff, a revolt is 'a spontaneous reaction, a reflect of anger or self-defence', while 'revolution is something planed and prepared', and in the Middle Ages, the authors assert, the latter was extremely rare. 2 Guy Fourquin went further: 'rebellion' was 'the complete overthrow of a society's foundations', and in the Middle Ages this was an impossibility; 'rebellion' had to await the French Revolution. 3 By his account, 'victory was something the medieval 'insurgent never tasted...revolt led only to repression and not to revolution'. 4 Similarly, Perez Zagorin distinguished 'riot' from 'revolution', but defined 'revolution' more broadly as an 'attempt by subordinate groups through the use of violence to bring about (1) a change of government or its policy; 2) a change of regime, or (3) a change in society...' 5 Both Fourquin and Zagorin relied on the sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-94) for their definitions: 'the phenomenon of revolution is without precedent in premodern history'. 6 Apparently, these authors were oblivious to the hundreds of medieval uprisings that overthrew ruling classes or that achieved fundamental constitutional changes granting those outside the realm of the current ruling elite, artisans and, in some cases, manual 2 labourers citizenship and rights to participate in governance as with numerous revolts of the 'popolo' in central and northern Italy from the mid-thirteenth century, ones in Low Countries, as in 1297 to 1305, or in French cities such as Toulouse as early as 1202. 7 I would distinguish a 'riot' from a 'revolt', in that the latter is collective action with evidence of prior planning, negotiation, and implicit or stated demands. By these criteria, all the incidents I am considering in this paper were revolts. None of them fits the patterns that the authors above and many others 8 have assumed as the norm or even the only possibility of popular political action in the Middle Agesthat these acts were 'spontaneous', without planning, organization, or aims. Over forty years ago, through comparative analysis of revolts in Italy, Spain, France, Flanders, and England, Rodney Hilton argued that revolts of the central Middle Ages were largely fixed by village or manorial borders. 9 However, following the Black Death, popular revolts extended over much wider terrain, especially with the so-called English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 that spread beyond Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, and London to places as far north as York, as far west as Shrewsbury, and as far south as Canterbury. Some have even speculated that these protests covered the entirely of England to places yet to be uncovered either because of an absence of historical research or because of the disappearance of documents. Towns as small as Rochester and Guildford had their revolts in 1381. 10 Hilton and others 11 have viewed this fanning out across wider terrains as reflecting progressive changes in the basic elements of revolts, their organization, communication, and ideology, that paralleled changes in state formation. Sociologists and modern historians since the 1950s-George Rudé, Charles

PLoS currents, Jan 26, 2016

In the three West African countries most affected by the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbrea... more In the three West African countries most affected by the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, resistance to public health measures contributed to the startling speed and persistence of this epidemic in the region. But how do we explain this resistance, and how have people in these communities understood their actions? By comparing these recent events to historical precedents during Cholera outbreaks in Europe in the 19th century we show that these events have not been new to history or unique to Africa. Community resistance must be analysed in context and go beyond simple single-variable determinants. Knowledge and respect of the cultures and beliefs of the afflicted is essential for dealing with threatening disease outbreaks and their potential social violence.

Historical Research, 2012

The Economic History Review, 2011

The American Historical Review, 2001

... Introduction The transition from the late—medieval to the Renaissance state' in Florence... more ... Introduction The transition from the late—medieval to the Renaissance state' in Florence has had a long and venerable historiography, spanning the fields of ... began to push its critical moment earlier, even as far back as the creation of its funded state debt, the Monte, in 1345.4 ...

The American Historical Review, 2002

Social History, 2017

Few have studied cholera revolts comparatively, and certainly not over the vast terrain from Asia... more Few have studied cholera revolts comparatively, and certainly not over the vast terrain from Asiatic Russia to Quebec or across time from the first European cholera wave of the 1830s to the twentieth century. Instead, scholars have concentrated on the first cholera wave to penetrate Western Europe in the 1830s and have tended to explain the protest and violence within the political contexts of individual nations, ignoring that, across vast differences in political landscapes from Czarist Russia to New York City, largely the same class configurations emerged of the poor and marginalized attacking governing elites and the medical profession. In addition, despite little evidence of any communication among rioters across national and linguistic divides or even an ocean, the same fears and conspiracy theories arose of elites employing the cholera poison to cull populations of the poor. Moreover, the history of cholera's social toxins runs against present generalizations on why epidemics spawn blame and violence against others. Especially in Russia and Italy, cholera riots continued and became geographically even more widespread, vicious, and destructive long after the disease had lost its novelty and mystery. The article then poses the question: given the stark alignments of class struggle with riots of 10,000 or more, murdering state officials and doctors, destroying hospitals, town halls, and in the case of Donetsk, an entire city, why have historians on the left not noticed them? Finally, the article draws parallels between the nineteenth-and earlytwentieth-century cholera experience in Europe and that of Ebola in Africa in 2014, 2 arguing that historical understanding of epidemics can pose solutions to problems of certain epidemics sparking social violence today.

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2007

The remarkable Books of the Dead from early modern Milan and the parish and tax records of Nonant... more The remarkable Books of the Dead from early modern Milan and the parish and tax records of Nonantola during the plague of 1630 allow historians to reconstitute the patterns of family and household deaths caused by pestilence. Not only did deaths caused by this highly contagious disease cluster tightly within households; the intervals between household deaths were also extremely short. As much as one-quarter of all plague deaths were multiple household deaths that occurred on the same day. Similar to a deadly influenza, the speed and efficiency with which the late medieval and early modern plagues spread depended on unusually short periods of incubation and infectivity.

Popular protest in late-medieval Europe, 2013

Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy, 2021

From over a hundred chronicles, diaries, and the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo’s collection... more From over a hundred chronicles, diaries, and the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo’s collections of reflections, mercantile letters, and diplomatic dispatches, this chapter presents rebels’ chants and their flags and other insignia unfurled during popular insurgency from 1494 to 1559. It then compares these chants and flags to those previously collected and analysed in my Lust for Liberty from the late thirteenth to the early fifteenth century. In contrast to the earlier period’s inventive cries and banners that extolled guild power, rallied to extend the political franchise, and decried new and regressive taxes, those of the Italian wars appealed to outside powers, almost invariably the enemies of their current regimes, to intervene. These included more simplistic chants such as ‘Franza, Franza’, for the French king, and most often, ‘Marco, Marco’ for the Republic of Venice. Moreover, popular rebels of the sixteenth century invented no new flags for their newly-minted causes or r...

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter delves in greater detail into the culture, politics, and ideologies of plague protes... more This chapter delves in greater detail into the culture, politics, and ideologies of plague protest principally in India, distinguishing it from cholera riots in Europe and assertions by colonial magistrates and foreign newspapers that religious fatalism, prejudices against Western medicine and science, and mythologies of poisoning sparked the Indian protests. Instead, this chapter catalogues the abuses suffered by Indian communities and their efforts to negotiate with governments to reform outdated and damaging anti-plague preventive measures. Demonstrations, town meetings with concrete resolutions, and petitions united castes, classes, and the subcontinent’s two major religions. The chapter then compares the Indian ideologies and protests with those in China, Europe, and San Francisco.

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

Unlike previous chapters, which are driven by the primary sources, this one relies on works by sc... more Unlike previous chapters, which are driven by the primary sources, this one relies on works by scholars and activists. From studies of the US, Australia, and Africa, this chapter finds a sharp break during the early 1990s in perceptions of HIV/AIDS’s social and political consequences. From emphasizing hate, violence, discrimination, and stigmatization, AIDS scholars and activists began focusing on the outpouring of volunteerism, charity, compassion, and successes from political activism: organizational developments (CBIs), volunteerism across communities—gay and straight, creativity in the arts, reshaping doctor–patient relations, the enhanced importance of nursing, achievements within the power structures of cities, and advances in gay and lesbian rights. This chapter brings together the book’s three principal categories for exploring the social side effects of epidemics in history—hate, compassion, and politics.

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter asks comparative questions: did other countries experience the same outpouring of vo... more This chapter asks comparative questions: did other countries experience the same outpouring of volunteerism as the US in the Great Influenza? Did women man the front lines of charity and self-sacrifice? It begins with the Deep South, which diverged from the national picture in the US. Here, men and their clubs, not women, played the dominant role, especially in New Orleans—the pattern set by a half-century of yellow fever resistance. The chapter moves on to Italy where there was some evidence of denial, though no blame or social violence. In contrast to the US, no outpouring of volunteerism emerged; rather, governments and the military intervened. France, Switzerland, and the British Isles likewise show no social violence or blaming, and no outpouring of volunteerism, especially among women. However, volunteerism was stronger in Ireland and Switzerland. Reliance on military intervention in civilian health care is the key to explaining these differences.