Patrick Boucheron (College de France): "The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History"

Beskrivning:

The Black Death is generally dated to 1347, when Genoese ships arrived at the port of Marseille, marking the onset of the most acute phase of the second plague pandemic. Recent research in genetics, molecular biology, and environmental sciences, however, has pushed beyond this traditional narrative. It compels us to revisit the “founding scene” of the siege of Caffa in 1346 and to map the plague’s hinterlands—further afield, and further back in time. This, in turn, offers a renewed vision of the pandemic, one that takes on a Eurasian dimension, but that also poses historians with a formidable challenge of narrative: how are we to recount the origins of the affliction when epidemiological timescales do not align with human timescales? In other words, by the time the plague begins, it has already begun.

Patrick Boucheron is professor at College de France. He graduated from the Ecole normale supérieure (ENS) Saint-Cloud, passed the agrégation in history, obtained a PhD and a professorship of medieval history at the University of Paris. He currently holds the chair of History of Powers in Western Europe, 13th-16th century at Collège de France.