★★★★★ I have a new hammer -- look at all these nails!

Plagues and Peoples

William H McNeill

In 1973, as a new freshman at Cornell University, I was required to take a course called a "freshman seminar". The purpose of the freshman seminars was to force all new students to write papers, typically one 5-page paper a week and two ten-page papers per semester. When you do that, of course, you get a lot of really dumb papers from virtually uneducated kids. One of my contributions expanded on the idea that, because we had solved most pre-reproductive survival problems, evolution in The Modern World had ground to a halt. It was a very stupid idea, but, in my defense, many far better educated people believed it, and still do. In fact, since the advent of genome sequencing technology, we (for certain values of "we") know that the human population has been under recent strong evolutionary selective pressure. This should not be a surprise to anyone. New selective pressures result from change.

Possible the most consequential such recent change (recent, in this context, meaning "times in the historical record") was the invention of agriculture in the Middle East several thousands of years ago. This has been one of the greatest disasters in history. Agriculture made it possible to produce foods in much greater quantities and concentrations than hunting and gathering. That made cities possible. Agriculture also facilitated domestication of animals. So, post-agriculture we had a lot of people living together in cities, in close contact with domestic animals.

Suddenly infectious diseases became a huge problem. There is abundant evidence that infectious diseases have been a driving force in human evolution. That is not what Plagues and Peoples is about -- not exactly. William H. McNeill's idea is not that infectious disease is a driver of human evolution, but that it is a driver of human history.

Plagues and Peoples is a classic (1977) of Grand World History. This is one of those "I have a new hammer -- look at all these nails!" books. McNeill wants to convince you that infectious disease has been a major force in world history. I'm not a historian, but my impression is that he succeeded: that most historians now would concede that he was onto something. This is a serious scholarly book: thick and careful. Still, I found that McNeill's missionary zeal made it a good read.

Like most zealots, McNeill probably overstates his case. Still, as grand theories of history go, this is a pretty good one. It is my impression that most history is still taught from the discredited "Great Men" point of view (and yes, I use the word "men" intentionally).

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