The role of pandemics and socio-political and economic change in history

Mohsen Shahmanesh

This is a transcript of a talk given in a webinar organised by the journal Critique in October 2021 entitled “Pandemics in junctures of historic change” بیماری‌های عالم‌گیر در برهه‌های دگرگونی تاریخی. The author briefly reviews five pandemics through history: the plague pandemics at the beginning and end of the Middle Ages; the H1N1 influenza pandemic at the end of World War I; the HIV pandemic at the end of the 20th Century; and the current Covid-19 pandemic to argue that infectious pandemics appear on the back of major historic changes and in turn deepen these changes and give them direction.

Read full transcript in Farsi in Critique of Political Economy site

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