Epidemics in Modern Asia

Robert Peckham is Associate Professor in History and Co-Director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at The University of Hong Kong. His recent books include Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning in Asia (co-editor, 2013) and Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties (editor, 2015).

• Introduction: contagious histories; 1. Mobility; 2. Cities; 3. Environment; 4. War; 5. Globalization; Conclusion: epidemics and the end of history; Glossary; Select timeline; Suggested reading; Index.

'Richly researched and keenly argued, Robert Peckham puts epidemic disease at the centre of a modern history of Asia. From China to India, this book unravels a history in which biology and Asian modernities have shaped one another. In so doing, he freshly recasts our understanding of how disease and social worlds are linked in complex political ecologies with unexpected pasts.' Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge