Past the Virus - How Pandemics Change the Way We See the World

What could history teach us about how humans change and adapt to pandemics and severe health crises? The Past the Virus series will give a four-part answer to this question. Our Special Advisor for Geopolitics, Dominique Moïsi kicks off with an introductory take on virus outbreaks and shifting paradigms.

Can we learn from the history of pandemics in order to better understand the possible, if not probable, impacts of Covid-19 on the (geo)political evolution of our societies? Three historical precedents deserve our attention: the plague that struck Athens between 430 and 426 BC; the bubonic plague or Black Death which raged in Europe and beyond from 1345 to 1730, and particularly from 1347 to 1351; and finally, much more recently, the Spanish flu of 1918-1919.

The plague of Athens entered history through Thucydides’ detailed description of it in The History of the Peloponnesian War. By the way: it was probably typhus that ravaged Athens, and not the plague. Be that as it may, the pandemic was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including Pericles. It is estimated that a quarter to a third of Athens’ population perished, ushering in the end of the city’s golden age. "We civilizations now know ourselves mortal," French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry once wrote of the Athenian Republic.

The best illustration of the Black Death, which caused the loss of at least 30% of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1351, is a famous 1562 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder entitled The Triumph of Death, which can be viewed in Madrid’s Prado Museum. During the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648, the population of Germany - which was nothing more than a geographical description at the time - was halved due to the combination of war, plague and famine.