Summary Of William H. Mcneil's Plagues And Peoples
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William H. McNeil’s’ book, Plagues and Peoples, brings an outstanding thought to the idea of history and how our world has been shaped. That diseases and worldwide plagues that have been involved in many points of our time, should be one of the main focal points in History. Typically disease has been seen more as a nuisance than a critical aspect of historical input. The author presented an interesting view on parasitism by creating and exploring subdivisions in the disease classifications. With the term micro parasites referring to infectious pathogens that cause disease, he describes the way of life in some human communities as an example of macro parasitism, where a conqueror became a parasite on those who produced food. New diseases and…show more content… Once communities became larger and the domestication of livestock began to be practiced “potential disease organisms’ were granted access to ‘a rich and accessible food supply’” (McNeil 25). This environment led to a more rapid development within diseases that were both infectious with humans and their animals. Continuing after more pre-historic times, McNeil goes through and expands the history of how diseases began to spread throughout ancient times. During and after the Roman and Han empires, trade networks on land and sea, gave access for people to be exposed to diseases and other biological entities they had never experienced before. Similar to the ways those diseases developed in the new world, human populations in the Mediterranean and Europe were devastated by the plagues and diseases they were not naturally resistant to. Death and destruction was widespread throughout the lands due to the little resistance which nearly wiped out communities and towns. Later after that, by the year 1200, many different cultures had been exposed to many diseases, and there was a hope that people were now more immune to them. That all changed with the increased trade with the Mongols that ended up bringing a disease that destroyed most of Europe, the Black Death. This plague itself created one of the most massive depopulation events in the world. It spread so intensely mainly due to “the ancient silk road between China and Syria’ that ‘created a territorially vast human web that linked the Mongol Headquarters at Karakorum with Kazan and Astrakhan on the Volga, with Caffa in the Crimea, with Khanbaliq in China and with innumerable other caravanserais in between” (McNeal 143). He proposed that the endemic disease found in India protected their