DONDENA Seminar - Charlie Udale

“The Incidence of Plague in Early Modern England”

ABSTRACT:

Using a dataset constructed from c.4,000 English burial registers covering a period of c.130 years, I investigate the dynamics of plague during the Second Pandemic with unprecedented breadth and precision. The main contribution is a description of plague’s impact at the national, regional, county, and settlement levels that forms the first substantive chapter of my thesis. But illustrating these dynamics so clearly provides fresh insights for three big debates on the historical epidemiology of plague – concerning its demographic impact, transmission mechanisms, and the origins of distinct plague surges. Was plague capable of regulating aggregate population size after the Black Death? I argue the answer to this is no. At most, plague affected 5% to 8% of English settlements during a major surge and killed 5%-6% of the English population. There is no compelling evidence that plague’s dynamics changed over time, and its reliance on water transportation suggests it could never have travelled far enough to control aggregate population levels. Other diseases (or changing fertility) were responsible for supressed population after the Black Death, not plague. Could plague travel between humans, either directly or using a human ectoparasite? By comparing the dynamics of plague to influenza, I rule out human to human transmission. By revealing the relative importance of water transportation, I show plagues were highly likely to be driven by underlying rat epizootics. Yet by revealing the still heightened vulnerability of settlements located on principal roads, I suggest some form of human-to-human transmission is likely. The most plausible candidate is an ectoparasite like the rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis. Finally, did new surges of plague activity originate domestically, or were they imported? Whilst important per se, this question is also crucial for determining whether ship quarantine might have led to the disappearance of plague from England after 1667. I find strong evidence port towns were important sources of inland epidemics. Through distance and spatio-temporal analysis, I also show English plague surges did not always originate in London – the only suggested site of an English plague reservoir. Instead, concurrent epidemics emerge in coastal areas in the east and southeast. This fits the evidence suggesting surges were pan-European in nature and secures the ship quarantine thesis for plague’s disappearance.

BIO:

Charlie Udale is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economic History at The London School of Economics and Political Science. His research combines big data analysis and micro-historical approaches to understand responses to plague epidemics in early modern England.

You may follow the seminar online via ZOOM Meetings at the following link:  https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/91573716233