The Global History Podcast

Click on the images below to open the gallery and view them full-size. Thank you to Professor Cagle for providing and/or recommending several of the images below.

Welcome to the ninth episode of the Global History Podcast, which is also the next installment in our series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World‘. 

On this segment, we’d like to welcome Hugh Cagle, an Associate Professor of History and the Director of International Studies at the College of Humanities at the University of Utah. Professor Cagle’s research focuses thematically on comparative colonialism and on science and technology studies, and geographically on Latin America, especially Brazil, as well as the broader Portuguese World. He is the author of Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal’s Empire, 1450-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 Leo Gershoy Award from the American Historical Association.

About a week and a half ago, Chase spoke with Professor Cagle over skype about his research on the creation of the idea of the ‘tropics’, focusing on knowledge about nature, medicine, and disease in the Portuguese empire during the late medieval and early modern periods. Listen on to find out more.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram. And if you’d like to listen to more segments in this series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World’, click here or listen to the playlist on Spotify.

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IMAGE 1: Carta universal de Juan de la Cosa, 1500. Place of publication: El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz. Material: parchment. Scale: ca. 1:1.900.000. Dimensions: Height: 96 cm (37.7 in), Width: 183 cm (72 in). Museo Naval de Madrid — Signatura: MNM-257. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. See the Biblioteca Virtual del Ministerio de Defensa for detailed information on the map, in Spanish.

IMAGE 2 and COVER IMAGE: Cantino Planisphere (Carta del Cantino), ca. 1502. Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena, Italy. Material: parchment. Dimensions: 220 cm x 105 cm. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Italy License.

IMAGE 3: Oliphant (hunting horn), ca. 1525. Description: “Images highlighting the intertropical situation of Portugal’s empire were characteristic of Manueline architecture. An armillary sphere (bottom) and the coat of arms of the Portuguese House of Aviz (top) adorn an olifant made by craftsmen in Benin. Ivory objects like this horn from ca. 1525 were commissioned and purchased from West African artisans by Iberian travelers beginning in the late fifteenth century.” Description from Hugh Cagle, Assembling the Tropics (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 52. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Thank you to Prof. Cagle for providing this image.

IMAGE 4: Ivory Salt Cellar Base, Sierra Leone, 16th c. Image downloaded from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Exposition: ‘A Cidade Global: Lisboa no Renascimento’. © Proprietário/Onshot, Rui Carvalho. Object description from The History Blog.

IMAGE 5: Nautical chart of Western Europe and West Africa, in the Atlas of Lázaro Luís, 1563. Creator: Lázaro Luís, Portuguese cartographer. Academia das Ciências, Lisboa. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. For a modern edition of the Atlas, see the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.

IMAGE 6: Title page, Garcia da Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he coisas mediçinais da Índia (Goa, 1563). Downloaded from the Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo. © 2008 – DGARQ – Direcção-Geral de Arquivos.

IMAGE 7: Title Page, Carolus Clusius, Aromatvm, et simplicivm aliqvot medicamentorvm apvd indos nascentivm historia: Primùm quidem Lusitanica lingua per Dialogos conscripta, / D. Garçia ab Horto, Proregis Indiae Medico, auctore. Nunc verò Latino sermone in Epitomen contracta, & iconibus ad viuum expressis, locupletioribusq[ue] annotatiunculis illustrata à Carolo Clvsio Atrebate (Antwerp, Ex officina Christophori Plantini, Architypographi Regii, 1574). Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Biblioteca Digital, A CLU 80.

IMAGE 8: Image of ‘TAMALAPATRA CVM SVO RAMVSCVLO’, in Carolus Clusius, Aromatvm, et simplicivm, fol. 80. Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Biblioteca Digital, A CLU 80. Thank you to Prof. Cagle for suggesting this image.

IMAGE 9: Jan Huygen van Linschoten, La Ville de Goa (‘A ilha e cidade de Goa metropolitana da India e partes Orientais qve esta en 15 graos da banda do norte’), 1595, in Jan Huygen van Linschoten and Bernard Paludanus, Histoire de la navigation de Jean Hugues de Linschot Hollandois, aux Indes Orientales (Amsterdam: Chez Evert Cloppenburgh, 1638), third edition, after page 54. Object Height: 60 cm, Object Width: 81 cm. Pub List Number: 12236.000. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. © 2000 by Cartography Associates. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Thank you to Prof. Cagle for suggesting this image.

IMAGE 10: Goa’s marketplace, in Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Histoire de la navigatione de Jan Huygen van Linschoten aux Indes Orientales (Amsterdam: Jan Evertz Cloppenburgh, 1619), second edition. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Thank you to Prof. Cagle for providing this image.

IMAGE 11: “Anonymous Portuguese watercolour illustration from the Códice Casanatense, depicting a Portuguese nobleman in India with his entourage.” Album di disegni, illustranti usi e costumi dei popoli d’Asia e d’Africa con brevi dichiarazioni in lingua portoghese, ca. 1540. Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

IMAGE 12: “An anonymous Portuguese watercolour illustration of an Hindu Brahmin goldsmith from Goa, from the 16th century Códice Casanatense. The inscription reads: ‘Brahmins of Goa, goldsmiths, gentiles'”. Album di disegni, illustranti usi e costumi dei popoli d’Asia e d’Africa con brevi dichiarazioni in lingua portoghese, ca. 1540. Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

IMAGE 13: “Anonymous 16th century Portuguese illustration from the Códice Casanatense, depicting blacksmiths from Goa, in the Kanara Coast. The inscription reads: ‘Kanarese blacksmiths from Goa. Gentiles'”. Album di disegni, illustranti usi e costumi dei popoli d’Asia e d’Africa con brevi dichiarazioni in lingua portoghese, ca. 1540. Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

IMAGE 14: An elephant beneath a coconut palm, in Christovão da Costa, Tractado Delas drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, con sus Plantas debuxadas al biuo / por Christoual de Acosta medico y cirujano que las vio ocularmente. En el qual se verifica mucho de lo que escriuio el Doctor Garcia de Orta. Dirigido a la muy noble y más leal ciudad de Burgos cabeça de Castilla y camara de su Magestad (Burgos: Martín de Victoria, 1578), fol. 418. Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Biblioteca Digital, A ACO.

IMAGE 15: Northern Indian Ocean, in Atlas nautique du Monde, dit atlas Miller, 1519, fol. 3r. Notice n° : FRBNF40887480. Description from the World Digital Library: “The map presented here is from the Miller Atlas in the collections of the National Library of France. Produced for King Manuel I of Portugal in 1519 by cartographers Pedro Reinel, his son Jorge Reinel, and Lopo Homem and miniaturist António de Holanda, the atlas contains eight maps on six loose sheets, painted on both sides. The maps were richly decorated and illuminated by António de Holanda, a Dutch native who had been in Portugal for nearly ten years. The illustrations include ornate images of castles, towns, and architectural wonders; views of forests and other vegetation; and depictions of native peoples and animals. The shapes of some towns and coastlines are quite detailed. For other parts of the world about which Europeans still had limited knowledge, geographic details are drawn from the cartographer’s imagination or informed by views that originated with Ptolemy. One side of the map (folio 3 recto of the atlas) shows the Northern Indian Ocean with Arabia and India. The equator is shown; other features include the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Persian Gulf, Ganges Delta, and the Nicobar Islands. The reverse side (folio 3 verso) depicts the southern Indian Ocean with Insulindia (maritime Southeast Asia) on the left and Madagascar on the right. Both sides of the map have ornamental gold leaf, red banners with gold lettering for place-names, heraldic shields and flags, and vessels flying either the Portuguese Cross of the Order of Christ or the Ottoman crescent. The atlas takes its name from Emmanuel Miller, who purchased it in 1855 from a bookseller in Santarém, Portugal. Miller’s widow sold it to the National Library of France in 1897.” Bibliothèque nationale de France, downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 16: “Southwestern Atlantic Ocean with Brazil”, in Atlas nautique du Monde, dit atlas Miller, 1519, fol. 5r. Notice n° :  FRBNF40887480. Description from the World Digital Library: “This map (folio 5 recto in the atlas) shows the southwestern Atlantic Ocean with Brazil; folio 5 verso is blank. The people of Brazil are shown as naked, or almost so, collecting wood or preparing for a hunt, and watched by exotic birds and beasts. A cartouche states that the Brazilians are ‘savage and very brutal.'” Bibliothèque nationale de France, downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 17: Title Page, Aleixo de Abreu, Tratado de las siete enfermedades (Lisbon: Pedro Craesbeeck, 1623). Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Thank you to Prof. Cagle for providing this image.

IMAGE 18: View of Lisbon, in Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, Civitates orbis terrarum (Cologne, 1572), vol. I. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

IMAGE 19: Anonymous, 16th c. “Painting depicting the Rua Nova dos Mercadores (lit. New Street of Merchants), the main commercial hub of 16th-century Lisbon, Portugal. The street was completely destroyed during the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake.” First part. Society of Antiquaries of London, Kelmscott Manor. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

IMAGE 20: Anonymous, 16th c. “Painting depicting the Rua Nova dos Mercadores”. Second part. Society of Antiquaries of London, Kelmscott Manor. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

The Global History Podcast is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://theglobalhistorypodcast.com/

To view the images below in full size, click on them to open the gallery. Thank you to Professor Varlık for providing and/or suggesting several of these images.

Welcome to the eighth episode of the Global History Podcast, which is also the next installment in our series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World‘. 

Today, we’d like to welcome Nükhet Varlık, Associate Professor in the Faculty of History at Rutgers University–Newark and Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. * In her own words, “Dr. Varlık is a historian of the Ottoman Empire with a keen interest in disease, medicine and other traditions of healing, and public health.” She is the author of Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600 (Cambridge University Press, 2015; paperback, 2017; Turkish translation: Akdeniz Dünyasında ve Osmanlılarda Veba, 1347-1600, 2017), and the editor of the collected volume Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean: New Histories of Disease in Ottoman Society (Arc Humanities Press, 2017). Her current book project is titled Empire, Ecology, and Plague: Rethinking the Second Pandemic (ca.1340s-ca.1840s). **

Last Friday, Chase spoke with Professor Varlık over skype about her research on plague, healing, and public health in the early modern Ottoman Empire, and they discussed topics including the importance of considering the Ottoman experience in the broader history of plague, the links between Ottoman imperial expansion and the spread of plague, and practices of healing in early modern Ottoman society. Listen on to find out more.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram. And if you’d like to listen to more segments in this series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World’, click here or listen to the playlist on Spotify.

* CORRECTIONS: Please note that Professor Varlık has two different faculty affiliations, rather than only the one (Rutgers University–Newark) mentioned in the audio. ** Please also note that this current book project title is more up-to-date than the title mentioned in the audio.

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IMAGE 1: After Pieter Coecke van Aelst, A Turkish Funeral from the frieze Ces Moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz (Customs and Fashions of the Turks), 1553. Publisher: Mayken Verhulst, in Antwerp (?) Medium: Woodcut. Dimensions: Sheet: 13 11/16 × 21 1/4 in. (34.7 × 53.9 cm). Accession Number: 28.85.5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1928. Public Domain.

IMAGE 2: Alexis Hubert Jaillot, ‘Estats de l’Empire du Grand Seigneur des Turcs’, 1700. In Atlas Francois, Contenant les Cartes Geographiques dans lesquelles sont tres exactement remarquez Les Empires, Monarchies, Royaumes et Estats de Europe, de l’Asie, de l’Afrique et de l’Amerique (Paris: Chez le Sr. Hubert Jaillot, 1695), page 109. Obj. Height: 47 cm. Obj. Width: 66 cm. Scale 1:10,200,000. Pub. List Number: 12044.000. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. © 2000 by Cartography Associates. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

IMAGE 3: Melchior Lorck, Prospect of Constantinople, Sheet 9, 1559. Form: 21 drawings; 42.5 x 1127.5 cm. Shelf-mark: BPL 1758 / 9. Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, accessed via Wikipedia. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

IMAGE 4: Detail of Süleymaniye Mosque from Melchior Lorck, Prospect of Constantinople, Sheet 10, 1559. Form: 21 drawings; 42.5 x 1127.5 cm. Shelf-mark: BPL 1758 / 10. Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, accessed via Wikipedia. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

IMAGE 5: Piri Reis, Map of the City of Istanbul, from Book on Navigation, late 11th century AH/17th century AD – early 12th century AH/18th century AD. Description: “Originally composed in 932 AH/AD 1525 and dedicated to Sultan Süleyman I (“The Magnificent”), this great work by Piri Reis (d. 962 AH/AD 1555) on navigation was later revised and expanded. Walters manuscript W.658, made mostly in the late 11th century AH/AD 17th, is based on the later expanded version and has some 240 exquisitely executed maps and portolan charts.” Medium: opaque watercolor and ink on laid European paper; bound between boards covered with red leather and gold. Accession Number: W.658.370B. Height: 13 3/8 in. x Width 9 7/16 in. (34 cm x 24 cm). Place of Origin: Turkey. The Walters Art Museum. Acquired by Henry Walters. CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.

IMAGE 6: Bowl, Hegira 10th-11th century / AD 16th-17th century. Description: “This bowl has a central high boss and gadrooned sides. Vessels of this shape, harking back to antique libation bowls, were used in the Islamic world in the hammam or as magic bowls. The magic healing properties of this particular bowl are betrayed by the undeciphered symbols on the rim. Qur’anic verses ornament the frieze under the rim and the sides of the boss, while on its flattened top is inscribed, within a six-pointed star, the name of Allah.” Material: tinned cooper. Diameter: 18 cm. Period: Ottoman. Provenance: Turkey. Holding Museum: Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece. Museum Inventory Number: 13761. Webpage Credit: “Bowl” in Explore Islamic Art Collections. Museum With No Frontiers, 2020. MWNF Working Number: GR 24. © Museum With No Frontiers (MWNF) 2004 – 2020. Image: © Benaki Museum.

IMAGE 7: Pieter Coecke van Aelst, ‘Byzantium Nunc Constantinopolis’, 1553, in The Turks in MDXXXIII : a series of drawings made in that year at Constantinople / by Peter Coeck Aelst ; … published from woodblocks by his widow at Antwerp in MDLIII … ; with an introduction by Sir William Stirling Maxwell (London and Edinburgh: Privately Printed, 1873). Oblong fol. : ill. 100 copies. Provenance: Presented to Queen Victoria by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, the editor, 24 April 1874. RCIN 1070326. Royal Collection Trust. Image suggested by Professor Varlık.

IMAGE 8: Jean-Antoine Guer, La Ville et le Port de Constantinople (View of Istanbul), in Moeurs et usages des Turcs, leur religion, leur gouvernement civil, militaire et politique: avec un abrégé de l’histoire Ottomane, par M. Guer, Avocat (Paris, Chez Coustelier, 1746), vol. Ι. Hellenic Library – Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. Copyright 2014: Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation. Image suggested by Professor Varlık.

IMAGE 9: Jean-Antoine Guer, Vue du Grand Sérail de Constantinople (View of the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul), in Moeurs et usages des Turcs, leur religion, leur gouvernement civil, militaire et politique: avec un abrégé de l’histoire Ottomane, par M. Guer, Avocat (Paris, Chez Coustelier, 1746), vol. Ι. Hellenic Library – Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. Copyright 2014: Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation. Image suggested by Professor Varlık.

IMAGE 10: Melchior Lorck, A Turkish burial site on a highway, protected with large rocks against hyenas and jackals, in Wohlgerissene und geschnittene Figuren… (ca. 1619–26). Medium: Woodcut. Dimensions: Overall: 10 7/8 x 7 3/8 x 9/16 in. (27.6 x 18.8 x 1.5 cm). Accession Number: 32.86. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932. Public Domain. Image suggested by Professor Varlık. Title provided by Professor Varlık.

IMAGE 11: Jewish Burial in Turkey, from the Travel Album of Bartholomäus Schachman (17r), 1590. Orientalist Museum, Doha, OM. 749. Image provided by Professor Varlık.

IMAGE 12: Christians Lamenting Their Dead, from the Travel Album of Bartholomäus Schachman (86v), 1590. Orientalist Museum, Doha, OM. 749. Image provided by Professor Varlık.

IMAGE 13: Turkish Burial, from the Travel Album of Bartholomäus Schachman (3v), 1590. Orientalist Museum, Doha, OM. 749. Image provided by Professor Varlık.

The Global History Podcast is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://theglobalhistorypodcast.com/

To view the images below in full-screen, click on them to open the gallery. And listen to this episode to learn more about Georg Joseph Kamel’s beautiful drawings of Philippine nature, and why they were not published during his lifetime.

Welcome to the seventh episode of the Global History Podcast, which is also the next installment in our series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World‘. 

This week, we’d like to welcome Dr. Sebestian Kroupa, who completed his PhD last year in the History of Science at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Wellcome Trust project ‘Renaissance Skin‘ at King’s College, London. Dr. Kroupa is a historian of early modern science and medicine, interested in cross-cultural histories of science and medicine, global circulations of knowledge and objects, early modern natural history, and Jesuit knowledge-making. In addition to serving as lead editor on a special issue of the The British Journal for the History of Science on ‘Science and Islands in Indo-Pacific Worlds’, Dr. Kroupa’s academic articles have appeared in International History Review, Centaurus, and Evolutionary Anthropology.

This week, Chase spoke with Dr. Kroupa over skype about his research on the Bohemian Jesuit pharmacist Georg Joseph Kamel, who was stationed in the colonial Spanish Philippines at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. The conversation centered on how Kamel’s life, work, and correspondence can illuminate the ways knowledge was produced in cross-cultural, cross-imperial, and cross-oceanic settings in the early modern world.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram. And if you’d like to listen to more segments in this series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World’, click here or listen to the playlist on Spotify.

IMAGE 1: ‘Carta hydrographica y chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas : dedicada al Rey Nuestro Señor por el Mariscal d. Campo D. Fernando Valdes Tamon Cavallo del Orden de Santiago de Govor. Y Capn’. Contributors: Pedro Murillo Velarde and Nicolás de la Cruz Bagay. Manila, 1734. Description: “Relief shown pictorially. Shows names of coastal towns and historical sailing routes. In lower portion of map: Le esculpio Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay … 1734. Includes text, descriptive notes, ancillary maps of Guam, cities of Manila, Cavite, and Zamboanga, and illustrations depicting episodes from the daily life of different peoples on the islands.” Call Number/Physical Location: G8060 1734 .M8. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C.

IMAGE 2: Detail of the city of Manila from the ‘Carta hydrographica’.

IMAGE 3: Part of the first page of Georg Joseph Kamel’s ‘Appendix’ to John Ray, Historia plantarum (London: S. Smith and B. Walford, 1704), Vol. III. Smithsonian Libraries, via archive.org.

IMAGE 4: A specimen of camellia, collected and pressed by Georg Joseph Kamel and sent to London. The Sir Hans Sloane Herbarium, Natural History Museum, London.

IMAGE 5: Georg Joseph Kamel, ‘Camellus. Drawings from the Philippine Islands’ Vol. I. Sloane MS 4080: 1686-1706, fol. 39r. Description of the manuscript’s contents: “Drawings and descriptions of plants from the Philippines by George Joseph Kamel. Volume 1 of 6. This volume contains 123 sheets of annotated drawings and 16 sheets containing descriptions of the plants. Many of the plants in this volume were described in an appendix to the third volume of John Ray’s Historia plantarum (London: S. Smith and B. Walford, 1704). References to each work (‘G.N.’ or ‘Ray’) have been added to the drawings, some in the hand of James Petiver.” Part of the Sloane Manuscripts (Sloane MS 1-4100: c. 1000-c. 1750). British Library.

IMAGE 6: Sloane MS 4080, fol. 67r.

IMAGE 7: Detail from Sloane MS 4080, fol. 67r.

IMAGE 8: Sloane MS 4080, fol. 73r.

IMAGE 9: Sloane MS 4080, fol. 77r.

IMAGE 10 and COVER IMAGE: Detail from Sloane MS 4080, fol. 77r.

The Global History Podcast is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://theglobalhistorypodcast.com/

Click on the images below to open the gallery and see them full-size. For a brief commentary on the difficulties of sourcing images that depict the medical effects of the mid-fourteenth-century wave of plague firsthand, see this article in NPR, which quotes Dr. Green.

Welcome to the sixth episode of the Global History Podcast. This is the first segment of our new mini-series, ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World’. We’ve decided that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it hopefully could be relevant and helpful to speak with several scholars about disease, health, and medicine in the past in a global perspective, as well as the potential relevance of these histories in the present. 

To start us off, we’re pleased to welcome Dr Monica H. Green, Independent Scholar and an elected Fellow of The Medieval Academy of America, whose research career has spanned from the histories of women’s medicine in medieval Europe to the global history of the Black Death and beyond.

Some of her key works include the inaugural volume of The Medieval Globe, called Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death,  which she edited, as well as her 2018 article ‘Putting Africa on the Black Death Map: Narratives from Genetics and History‘. Coming up, she’ll be publishing an article in Centaurus called ‘Emerging Diseases, Re-emerging Histories’. She’ll also be speaking in a public webinar of the Medieval Academy of America this Friday, the 15th of May, at 1-3 PM Eastern Daylight Time, called “The Mother of All Pandemics: The State of Black Death Research in the Era of Covid-19”. You can join the session via zoom, and if you aren’t able to listen live, it will also be recorded and posted online. In the longer term, Dr. Green is working on a book project about the global history of the Black Death.

This week, Chase spoke with Dr. Green over skype about the global history of disease. The conversation focused on the global black death, but also addressed ways in which historians and scientists can collaborate in writing global histories of disease, queried at what point a disease can be called global, and discussed the role of colonization and trade in spreading disease. While the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth-century is chronologically located in the medieval period, its effects were long-lasting, and many of the points Dr. Green makes about the global history of disease more broadly can be applied to many time periods, including the early modern.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram. And if you’d like to listen to more segments in this series on ‘Global Histories of Health, Medicine, and Disease in the Early Modern World’, click here or listen to the playlist on Spotify.

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IMAGE 1 and COVER IMAGE: Piérart dou Tielt (miniaturist), Gilles li Muisis (author), Antiquitates Flandriae (tome 2), fol. 24 v, Peste à Tournai, en 1349. 1349-1352. Materials: Parchment, ink, paint. Dimensions: 273 mm x 205 mm. Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. © KIK-IRPA, Brussels. Downloaded from Belgian Art Links and Tools.

IMAGE 2: ‘Maximum-likelihood tree of modern and ancient genomes of Y. pestis‘, adapted by Monica H. Green, in Zhemin Zhou et al, ‘The EnteroBase user’s guide, with case studies on Salmonella transmissions, Yersinia pestis phylogeny, and Escherichia core genomic diversity‘, Genome Research 30 (2020), pp. 138-152. Open Access Article.

IMAGE 3: Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken. Creator: Josse Lieferinxe (French, active 1493-1505). Period: 1497-1499 (Renaissance). Medium: oil painting on wood. Accession Number: 37.1995. Dimensions: height: 32 3/16. Width: 21 13/16 in. (81.8 x 55.4 cm). Place of Origin: Provence, France. “St. Sebastian was a Roman military officer martyred about AD 300 by being shot full of arrows and then clubbed to death. He was prayed to for protection against the plague. This painting depicts one instance of his intercession. According to legend, this event occurred long after the saint’s death, during an outbreak of the plague in 7th-century Pavia, Italy. Here, just as a victim is to be buried, a grave attendant is struck by the disease. The plague-or Black Death-devastated Europe for centuries, and the painting’s viewers would have known its horrors. St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, kneels before God to plead on behalf of humanity, while an angel and a demon battle in the sky. The artist was never in Italy and based the appearance of Pavia on that of Avignon. In 1497, Lieferinxe contracted with the Confraternity of St. Sebastian to paint an altarpiece dedicated to their patron saint in the church of Notre-Dame-des-Accoules (now destroyed) in Marseille, France. Six other panels from this altarpiece are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Johnson Collection), the Museo di Palazo Venezia in Rome, and the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. For more information, see the article by Melissa R. Katz, ‘Preventative Medicine: Josse Lieferinxe’s Retable Altar of St. Sebastian as a Defense Against Plague in 15th Century Provence.’ Interfaces 26 (2006-7): 59-82.” The Walters Art Museum. Creative Commons License.

IMAGE 4: The Doctor (or Physician), from The Dance of Death. Artist: Designed by Hans Holbein the Younger (German, Augsburg 1497/98–1543 London). Printmaker: Hans Lützelburger (German, died Basel, before 1526). Date: ca. 1526, published 1538. Medium: Woodcut. Dimensions: sheet: 2 5/8 x 1 15/16 in. (6.6 x 4.9 cm). Accession Number: 19.57.26. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

IMAGE 5: The port of Marseille during the plague of 1720. Etching by J. Rigaud (1681-1754) after M. Serre (1658-1733). Lettering: “Vüe de l’hostel de ville de Marseille et d’une partie du port dessiné sur le lieu pandant la peste arrivee en 1720. J. Rigaud inv. sculpsit.” Print: etching; platemark 24 x 48 cm. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

IMAGE 6: The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Etching by L. Sabatelli (1772-1850), after himself. Print: etching; platemark. 65.7 x 86.5 cm. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

IMAGE 7: Robert Koch and Richard Pfeiffer working in a laboratory, investigating the plague in Bombay. Photograph attributed to Captain C. Moss, 1897. In Captain C. Moss, fl. ca. 1897, ‘Plague Visitation, Bombay, 1896-97‘ (The Bombay plague epidemic of 1896-1897: work of the Bombay Plague Committee), fol. 9. Lettering: “Foreign scientists. Professors Koch and Pfeiffer.” Photograph: photoprint, albumen; Dimensions: 10.6 x 7.6 cm. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

IMAGE 8: A group comprising doctors, health and public officials gathered on a street in Bombay about to begin the day’s work, during an outbreak of plague. Photograph, 1896/1897. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

IMAGE 9: A twentieth-century artist’s depiction of a physician wearing a plague preventive costume in Marseille in 1720. Lettering: “Costume worn by doctors during an outbreak of plague Marseilles, 1720.” Watercolour, 20th century. Dimensions: 58.9 x 21.9 cm. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

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Welcome to the fifth episode of the Global History Podcast. Today, we’ll be hearing from Bronwen Everill, 1973 Lecturer in History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Dr. Everill is broadly interested, as she phrases it, “in the place of Africa and the role of Africans in the shaping of ideas about humanitarianism, empire, and commerce in the modern period.”

Her key works include the monograph Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the edited collection The History and Practice of Humanitarian Intervention and Aid in Africa, co-edited with Josiah Kaplan. She’ll also have a new book out this year, titled Not Made By Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition. 

Last spring, when Chase was visiting the UK, he and Dr. Everill had a discussion about abolition and empire in West Africa in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And on this segment, we’ll be sharing that conversation with you. 

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram.

GALLERY IMAGE 1: “John Leighton Wilson or an uncredited artist employed or licensed by him”, in Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects, by John Leighton Wilson (London; New York, 1856), opposite p. 419, downloaded from Wikipedia.

GALLERY IMAGE 2: “Unidentified Liberian man in suit with watch fob and papers and pencil in his breast pocket”, between 1853 and 1890. Photograph: approximate sixth-plate tintype, hand-colored; 9 x 6.5 cm (plate). AMB/TIN no. 1032 [P&P] LOT 8554, no. 1 (former call number). American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 3: “Unidentified Liberian man in suit and bowtie”, between 1853 and 1890. Photograph: approximate sixth-plate tintype, hand-colored ; 9 x 6.5 cm (plate). AMB/TIN no. 1033 [P&P] LOT 8554, no. 2 (former call number). American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 4: “Philip Coker [Chaplain of the Senate of Liberia], three-quarter length portrait, full face, seated, wearing spectacles”, between 1856 and 1860. Photograph: sixth plate daguerreotype. DAG no. 1010. American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 5: “Captain Paul Cuffee 1812 / engraved for Abrm. L. Pennock by Mason & Maas.” “Print shows a silhouette head-and-shoulders portrait of Paul Cuffe, a prosperous businessman and sea captain, above a ship docked in a tropical region, possibly Sierra Leone”. Print: engraving. PGA – Mason & Maas–Captain Paul Cuffee 1812 (AA size) [P&P]. Popular Graphic Art Print Filing Series, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 6: “Mrs. James Cheeseman, wife of the president of Liberia, full-length portrait, standing, facing left”. “A souvenir photograph produced by the Liberian Art Publishing Co. for distribution at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Ill.” 1893. Photographic print. LOT 8546 [item] [P&P]. American Colonization Society Collection, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 7: “Map of the West Coast of Africa from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas, including the colony of Liberia”. Philad[elphi]a [Pa.] : A. Finley, 1830. Contributors: Jehudi Ashmun, James Hamilton Young, Anthony Finley. Hand colored; 21 x 28 cm. G8882.C6 1830 .A8. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 8: “Map of Liberia”. Insert: “Vicinity of Monrovia / surveyed by J. Ashmun, 1825.” Baltimore [Md.] : Lith. by E. Weber & Co., 1845. Contributors: Randolph Coyle, William M’Lain, Jehudi Ashmun, Edward Weber & Co. “Relief shown by hachures.” 45 x 62 cm. Gift from the American Colonization Society in 1968. G8880 1845 .C6. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 9: “H. W. Erskine / T. M. Schleier, photographer, Nashville & Knoxville, Tenn.”, November 1866. “Photograph shows portrait of Liberian man in suit and bowtie.” Photographer: Theodore M. Schleier. photograph : approximate sixteenth-plate tintype; 10 x 6 cm (mat). AMB/TIN no. 1031 [P&P]. American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 10: Liberian College, Monrovia. “Photograph shows male students posed on the balconies of Liberian College, Monrovia, Liberia.” Philadelphia: Liberian Art Publishing Co., 1893. Photographic print: albumen. “Printed on back of mount: Exhibit, World’s Fair, Chicago, Ill., U.S.A., 1893.” LOT 8546 [item] [P&P]. American Colonization Society Collection, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 11: “James Skivring Smith, three-quarter length portrait, three-quarters view, seated at desk”, between 1856 and 1850. “Smith was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Arrived in Liberia in 1833. Secretary of State of Liberia, 1856-1860. Senator, Grand Bassa County, 1868-1869. Vice president under Edward Roye, 1870-1871. Superintendent Grand Bassa County, 1874-1884.” “Written on back plate: Doctor J. S. Smith, Senator from Bassa Co.” Photograph: sixth plate daguerreotype. DAG no. 1002. American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 12: A. J. Cross, between 1853 and 1900. “Photograph shows portrait of Liberian man in suit and tie with hat.” Photograph: approximate sixth-plate tintype, hand-colored; 9 x 6 cm (plate). AMB/TIN no. 1030 [P&P] LOT 8554, no. 3 (former call number). American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964, Library of Congress.

GALLERY IMAGE 13 and COVER IMAGE: Liberated Slaves Arriving in Sierra Leone, from Samuel Griswold Goodrich, A System of School Geography Chiefly Derived from Malte-Brun, 20th ed. (New York, 1839), p. 194, accessed via archive.org.

The Global History Podcast is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://theglobalhistorypodcast.com/

For examples of Sri Lankan palm leaf manuscripts, a type of source material discussed in the interview, click on the images below to open the gallery and view them full-size.

Welcome to the fourth episode of the Global History Podcast. In this segment, we hear from Sujit Sivasundaram, Professor of World History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow and College Lecturer in History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.

Professor Sivasundaram has published widely on the histories of the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the 18th and 19th centuries. His previous works include Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795-1850 and Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony. He’ll also have a new book out this summer, titled Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire. 

Last spring, when Chase visited Cambridge, he and Professor Sivasundaram had a discussion about the importance of islands in global history, with a particular focus on Sri Lanka, and on this segment, we’ll be sharing that conversation with you.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram.

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COVER IMAGE CREDIT: Carte plate qui comprend l’Isle de Ceylan, et une partie des Côtes de Malabar et de Cormandel, engraved by De La Haye for Jean-Baptiste d’Après de Mannevillette’s Neptune Oriental (Paris; Brest, 1775). 27 in (68.5 cm) x 20 in (50.8 cm). Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

IMAGE GALLERY CREDITS: All palm leaf manuscript images were downloaded from the Royal Danish Library.

The Global History Podcast is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://theglobalhistorypodcast.com/

To refer to some of the maps, places, and documents discussed in the episode, click on the images below to open the gallery and view them full-size.

Welcome to the third episode of the Global History Podcast. Today we’d like to extend a warm welcome to Barbara E. Mundy, Professor of Art History at Fordham University. 

Professor Mundy teaches on art history in Latin America, with a particular interest in indigenous sixteenth-century art and cartography. Her publications include The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City, and the co-edited volume Painting a Map of Sixteenth-Century Mexico City: Land, Writing and Native Rule. She is also the co-creator of the digital art history project, Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820, co-authored with Dana Leibsohn. 

On this episode, we’ll be diving into the complex world of colonial Mexico. So, what are the maps of the relaciones geográficas of New Spain, and why are they so fascinating? Why is it essential to study indigenous sources for the post-conquest world of Mexico, rather than just European ones? And why are images so important in our investigation of the past? Listen on to find out more.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram.

IMAGE 1 and COVER PHOTO: Map of Tenochtitlán from the first Latin edition of the Second Letter of Hernán Cortés to Emperor Charles V, 1524. The Newberry Library, Chicago. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 2: Map of Cholula, Mexico, 1581. Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala, 1577-1585, Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. 31 x 44 cm. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 3: The Oztoticpac Lands Map, c. 1540. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 76 x 84 cm. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 4: First Page of the Relaciones Geográficas questionaire, 1577. Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala, 1577-1585, Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. Image downloaded from the University of Texas at Austin here.

IMAGE 5: Facade of San Gabriel de Cholula, Mexico. Photograph taken by Alexandro G. Alonso S. on June 27, 2013. Image downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

IMAGE 6: Map of Culhuacán, Mexico, January 17, 1580. Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala, 1577-1585, Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. 70 x 54 cm. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 7: Map of Cempoala, Mexico, November 1, 1580. Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala, 1577-1585, Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. 83 x 66 cm. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

IMAGE 8: Map of Muchitlan, Mexico, March 7, 1582. Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala, 1577-1585, Joaquín García Icazbalceta Manuscript Collection, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin. 56.5 x 76 cm. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

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Court Ladies Sewing Western Clothing (Jokan yōfuku saihō no zu), August 23rd, 1887. Yōshū (Hashimoto) Chikanobu. Triptych of polychrome woodblock prints; ink and color on paper. Dimensions: 14 5/16 x 29 11/16 in. (36.4 x 75.4 cm). Accession Number: JP3340. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Welcome to the second episode of the Global History Podcast. We would like to extend a warm welcome to Professor Dr. Sebastian Conrad, who holds the Chair of Modern History at the Freie Universität Berlin. Professor Conrad has a background in both modern European and Japanese history, and his recent work has extensively explored transnational and global approaches to studying the past.

His publications include German Colonialism: A Short History, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany, and The Quest for the Lost Nation: Writing History in Germany and Japan in the American Century.

On this episode, we will be discussing Prof. Conrad’s well-known critical approach toward the burgeoning discipline of global history, entitled What Is Global History?, published by Princeton University Press in 2016. So far translated into Chinese, Spanish, Russian, and Estonian, and with further translations into Turkish, Portuguese and Japanese under contract, this is a book that has had wide resonance with the academic community worldwide.

So, how does one go about writing the history of the world, and who is global history written by and for whom? Listen on to find out more.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram.

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COVER IMAGE: Time Zone Chart of the World. “Used for laying out route for New York to Paris flight, San Diego, California, 1927 C.A.L.” Annotator: Charles Lindbergh. Map: Hydrographic Office, Washington, D.C. January 1927. 67 x 119 cm. Scale: 1:28,500,000. 5th edition. H.O. chart no. 5192. American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Image downloaded from the World Digital Library.

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Click on the images below to open the gallery and view them full-size.

Welcome to the first episode of the Global History Podcast. We would like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Alan Strathern, Associate Professor of History at the University of Oxford, Fellow at Brasenose College, and Lecturer at St. John’s College. Alan’s work has, in his own words, focused on “the global history of religious encounter and conversion, particularly in those regions that came into contact with European travelers in the early modern period (1500-1800).”

Initially specializing in Sri Lankan history, his first monograph, published in 2007, was entitled Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land, and he has written on such diverse themes as origin myths, sacred kingship, and ethnic identity. His latest work, Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History, will be published by Cambridge University Press this spring. This is the first of a planned two-part series, the companion volume of which is called Converting Kings: Central Africa, Oceania, Japan and Thailand Compared, 1450-1850.

Unearthly Powers is a very exciting new book, and one which asks interesting and expansive questions about the relationship between religion and political authority across many areas of the pre-modern world. Cambridge University Press summarizes the key questions Alan poses in the book like this: “Why was religion so important for rulers in the pre-modern world? And how did the world come to be dominated by just a handful of religious traditions, especially Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism?” The book draws extensively on sociological and anthropological literature, with wide-ranging implications for the writing of global history. 

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments about this episode, or would like to pitch us an idea for a new episode, feel free to email us at [email protected], or send us a message on our website’s contact form, facebook, twitter, or instagram.

Image 1 Pendant: Saint Anthony of Padua, 16th–19th century. Kingdom of Kongo. Partially hollow cast brass. Height: 4 in. (10.2 cm). Width: 13/8 in. (3.5 cm). Depth: 11/8 in. (2.9 cm). Accession Number: 1999.295.1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photograph by Peter Zeray. Public Domain.

IMAGE 2: Buddha Expounding the Dharma, late 8th century. Sri Lanka (Anuradhapura). Copper alloy. Height: 10 1/2 in. (26.7 cm), Width: 11 in. (7.9 cm), Depth: 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm). Accession Number: 2009.60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.

IMAGE 3: Crucifix, 16th–17th century. Kingdom of Kongo. Brass (solid cast); Height: 10 3/4 in. (27.3 cm). Width: 7 in (17.8 cm). Depth: 3/4 in. (1.9 cm). Accession Number: 1999.295.7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photograph by Peter Zeray. Public Domain.

The Global History Podcast is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://theglobalhistorypodcast.com/