The plague that never left: restoring the Second Pandemic to Ottoman and Turkish history in the time of COVID-19

• Published in: New Perspectives on Turkey Vol. 63; pp. 176 - 189
• Main Author: Varlık, Nükhet
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.11.2020
• Subjects: Accidents; Commentary; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Disaster studies; Earthquakes; Epidemics; Historians; Humans; Infectious diseases; Influenza; Mass media images; Mythology; Natural disasters; Pandemics; Plague; Stereotypes; Tornadoes; Tsunamis; Turkish history; Victims; Volcanoes
• ISSN: 0896-6346; 1305-3299
• DOI: 10.1017/npt.2020.27

The mainstream media, fueling this frenzy, is now turning to historians with such questions as “Did pandemics of this scale happen before?” “How did societies react to those situations?” and “What are the lessons to be learned from history?” Different historians have had different answers to these questions, ranging anywhere from seeking comparisons in past pandemics to rejecting altogether the possibility of “drawing lessons” from the past.2 But as much as it is indeed important to use past pandemics to understand the present, we must remember that past and present are intertwined in complex ways that can make comparisons problematic. Contrary to common perception, plague is not an extinct disease; it is very much alive in some parts of the world (e.g., the southwestern United States, Central Asia, and Africa), where it is enzootic among rodent populations, and still sometimes spills over into human populations.4 Worryingly, as if COVID-19 was not enough, human cases of plague have even been on the rise recently: since 2019 frequent cases of bubonic plague have been reported in Mongolia and more recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo.5 Stumbling blocks in our path: plague myths and stereotypes Despite its prevalence and persistence over many centuries and to the present, or perhaps because of it, plague’s history is full of myths and stereotypes that circulate widely. First and foremost is the perennial claim that plague originated in China, which was resurrected again by those who wanted to establish anachronistic comparisons to COVID-19. Drawing on disaster studies (of volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and tsunamis), and especially used in popular books, films, and the media, pandemics are now depicted as freak accidents of nature in which humans are the ultimate victims.