Plagues And Peoples Chapter Summary

Plagues and Peoples written by William H. McNeill follows the patterns of epidemics and endemics within human history. It is within this history that McNeill finds parallels between diseases and humans in the forms of microparasitism and macroparasitism. Merely from the title, McNeill gives equal importance to viruses and humankind. In several instances, humans behave the same way viruses, bacteria, and parasites do in order to survive and to compete. Surprisingly enough, McNeill’s overarching theme can be summarized using his last sentence, asserting that “Infectious disease which antedated the emergence of humankind will last as long as humanity itself, and will surely remain, as it has been hitherto, one of the fundamental parameters and

determinants of human history.” Until recent medical advancements, disease participated in shaping human history. Though disease is prevalent today, humans are less persistent in consciously combating viruses, bacteria, and parasites.
William H. McNeill spent his academic career studying world history, teaching at the University of Chicago, and authoring more than twenty books. He believed that “history has to look at the whole world and that means you have to know how the rest of the world is, how it got to be the way it is.” Prior to writing Plagues and Peoples, McNeill published such works as History of Western Civilization: A Handbook, The Introduction of the Potato into Ireland, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, The Shape of European History, and Venice: The Hinge of Europe. It is through these works that McNeill acquired a substantial research foundation for Plague and Peoples. McNeill’s expertise and body of work gained him renown and in 2010 President Barack Obama awarded McNeill the National Humanities Medal for his achievements as a professor and scholar at the University of Chicago.
McNeill opened Plagues and Peoples with early humans and their relationship with predator/prey dynamics.

He introduces the book with the concept of parasites and their role in balancing human population growth and their rise in the food chain or how he puts it “compensatory adjustments by other forms of life hemmed in human communities in such a tough and complex way that even after fully human skills had been achieved, the new efficiency attainable through cultural evolution was not sufficient to overpower and revolutionize the ecological system within which humanity evolved.” Interestingly McNeill gives agency to viruses and even distinguishes them as a safety measure preventing humanity from destroying the ecological balance of the world. Throughout Plagues and Peoples, McNeill tracks migration patterns, new points of contact, and warfare across countries and continents and how epidemic outbreak patterns correspond with major events.
Since William H. McNeill organized Plagues and Peoples chronologically, it became clear that his research involved layering timelines between major events and epidemics. Obviously, McNeill focused on migration patterns and the encounters different cultures had from different climates as well as possible animal encounters. Virgin populations became key groups susceptible to plagues as their bodies were not accustomed to foreign contaminants and biological warfare. McNeill used scientific and medical knowledge of the twentieth century to support the majority of his

arguments.
Plagues and Peoples was met with mixed reviews from scholars in the history, sociology, and political fields. Christopher Portal wrote The History Curriculum for Teachers; Brian Stock, the harshest critique of Plagues and Peoples, specialized in literature and society in late antiquity at the University of Toronto; and Bernard Norling, who approached Plagues and Peoples with a political viewpoint, specialized in military history and the history of medicine at the University of Notre Dame. Portal’s, Stock’s, and Norling’s different backgrounds offer different perspectives on Plagues and Peoples.
Although all three reviewers acknowledged McNeill’s wealth of knowledge and his accessible writing style, there were conflicting views on whether Plagues and Peoples presented a decent analysis. While Bernard Norling stated “that McNeill’s book is an unusually good one and that its author is a scholar of exceptional and deserved renown,” Brian Stock contested that “What sometimes makes a good story is not always good history.” Though Stock’s statement seems severe, he may only be critiquing McNeill’s arguments rather than his information or Stock has animosity towards McNeill’s success. Even Norling points out McNeill’s self-proclaimed shortcomings stating that McNeill “emphasizes that his book cannot be definitive; that his conjectures, guesses, and elaborate arguments represent only what can be reasonably deduced from what is known now.” In addition, Christopher Portal found middle ground between Stock and Norling, stating that “the work provides a refreshing revaluation of many important topics, but seems to adopt a simplistic materialism in reducing politics to a parasitic system comparable to bacterial infection.” Portal, more so than the others, reviewed McNeill’s book with an obvious viewpoint. Plagues and Peoples is not a political history; it incorporates war and politics, but overall its arguments cover migration, religion, medicine, sciences, and trade.
Plagues and Peoples felt the most global compared to previous readings. McNeill’s background in world history complimented the purpose of this class more closely than other texts that revolved around western countries specifically Great Britain. He tracked plagues across all inhabitable continents and didn’t remain in Great Britain for the majority of the book. McNeill’s arguments were easy to follow and understand with modern scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, while McNeill acknowledged the lack of accuracy of his arguments for earlier time periods, sentences revealing his imaginative conjectures became too repetitive. In addition, there were too many times, McNeill listed a barrage of diseases that made it harder to remember each disease’s history and significance.