Elya Zhang Database

Seven Global Pandemics and the Recovery

Outbreaks of disease and pandemics have recently rocked our global, interconnected world. But in fact, diseases have been a recurring historical phenomenon in world history. Genghis Khan and his descendants built the largest contiguous land empire in human history. Europeans exported disease to the Americas. The whole world writhed in agony from the Spanish Flu. What damages have epidemics done to human societies century after century, and how did those devastated societies transform and rebuild themselves?

This course zooms into six historical and one current multi-continent epidemics: the Black Death in the 14th century, the Smallpox epidemics in the 17th century, the four Cholera pandemics in the 19th century, the 1918 Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, the 2003 SARS outbreak, and the ongoing Coronavirus terror. Let us learn accessible information about what’s out there and what we should do when a threat emerges.