David Depierre

Smallpox Along the Silk Road David Depierre

Disease has always been one of the greatest change agents in history, and while its impact on Western nations has been well documented, no major study exists of the role played by pestilence in the history of East Asia. Illnesses, both individual and epidemic, drove and defined the history of China, Japan, and Korea. Its impact reached into the areas of politics, society, religion, economics, and warfare. At the same time, China served as a transmitter of disease along the Silk Road to the rest of the world. Finally, the elimination of disease by these nations was one of the integral parts of the process of modernization in the 19th and 20th centuries. This book represents the first attempt to tackle the larger story of illness across 3000 years of East Asian history.