Dr Daniel R. Curtis, associate professor at the History Department of Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, has published a new book with Routledge with the title Epidemic Disease and Society in the Premodern Low Countries | Inequality and Community.
The book is entirely open access and funded by the EUR Library Open Access Fund. It is the product of almost a decade's work and back-to-back NWO grants in the VENI and VIDI schemes.
Curtis uses the context of the premodern Low Countries to establish the point that most epidemics were "accommodated" by communities. Rather than substantial transitions or sharp divergences, Curtis argues that epidemics' capacity to invoke change was often modest, despite severe mortality. Most social responses were to protect the status quo under threat, and economic redistribution was largely temporary. In turn, Curtis criticises a modernist preoccupation with viewing epidemics as “sub-normal” or “crisis” conditions to be “managed”.
The book is supported by a wealth of qualitative and quantitative evidence from more than five centuries, and includes significant demographic data - of which the raw material can be openly accessible at Dataverse.
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