Chapter 6: Prosperity and Disease: Lessons from History

The COVID-19 virus is wreaking havoc in every facet of our social and economic landscapes. This chapter takes a historical view of the dynamic relations between prosperity and disease, through which we can better understand the virtues and symptoms of our deeply interconnected world. The chapter considers the way trade on the one hand and the virality of human disease on the other has followed the history of human advancement since time immemorial. What is more, they are not as unrelated as one might think. In fact, we can start to discern a pattern that has already been hinted at by globalization scholars fleshing out a number of social and economic effects of international trade that include the apparent vulnerabilities around contagion and disease (Eriksen, 2007).