Reading an article published in the New York Times a few days ago reminded me of an earlier quote from Clavin, that the value of transnational history ‘lies in its openness as a historical concept’ – though arguably, it has not been effectively studied as such. This article described the recent rise of a fungus called Candida auris; a drug-resistant germ which preys on people with weakened immune systems and has been ‘quietly spreading across the globe’ (Richtel and Jacobs, 2019). Risking sounding gloomy and pessimistic, it made me question, where is the negativity in transnational history?
So far we have seen the field of transnational history largely focused on positive, progressive themes like the growth of international organisations or inter-cultural communities, which Clavin argues has been a way for the field to legitimate and sustain itself by reference to a teleological enthusiasm for globalization (Clavin, 2005: 424). For the sake of ‘openness’ and balance, we should pay attention to mechanisms of exclusion and repulsion, as well as inclusion and attraction.
Notably, global history and histories of disease have in part accounted for the fact that ‘pathogens know no borders’ (Harrison, 2015). Alfred Crosby’s Columbian Exchange is a notorious example, which points to how disease has shaped the destiny of civilisations and played a key role in historical milestones like the demise of feudalism. Yet these works in themselves have sometimes fallen foul of imposing ‘grand narratives’ and overly-deterministic theories of the effect of disease on a global scale. Historians have gone on to study ‘pandemics’ across the globe, such as the global epidemics of influenza in 1889–93 and in 1918–19. Though they have risked over-emphasising other scales – analysing local manifestations of pandemics and rarely the connections between them. Pathogenic exchanges have for example, arisen from the global trade in agricultural commodities.
This recent New York Times article is both a story of exchange and circulation and of exclusion which can provide a useful example for transnational history. The Candida auris germ has arisen over the past five years in tandem with the increasing overuse of antibiotics and the explosion of resistant fungi. Thus, it has reflected a common practice around the world of reliance on antibiotics but also the factors easing the active spread of germs across borders – the ease of travel across borders being one of them. The germ has presented itself in a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical centre to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa (Richtel and Jacobs, 2019).
At the same time, this pandemic has been manipulated for the purposes of exclusion and secrecy. The public know very little about this partly because when it comes to bacteria and fungi, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of ‘being seen as infection hubs’ (Ibid.). Even the Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C.) in America, given its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. This has facilitated a divide between institutions, state and local governments on the one hand, and the public/patients on the other.
The general importance of studying such topics as global health pandemics across various disciplines is clear. Yet this recent story also provides an illustrative example for how we can broaden our analytical scope when doing transnational history, to study previously neglected issues which aren’t always positive but nonetheless greatly (sometimes more) significant. The case of health pandemics taken here is one of many issues in need of further study, others being the rise of criminal networks, the global spread of nationalism, informal ties between dictatorships or international flows of corruption, to name a few.
Studying these ‘negative’ topics from the perspective of transnational history can highlight forces which are simultaneously inclusive by way of their indiscriminate and arbitrary nature but also exclusive in terms of how they are managed and how they evolve over time.
References
Patricia Clavin, ‘Defining Transnationalism’, Contemporary European History 14:4 (2005), pp. 421-439.
Matt Richtel and Andrew Jacobs, ‘A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy’, New York Times, 6th April 2019. Accessible at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html (accessed 07/04/2019).
Mark Harrison, ‘A Global Perspective: Reframing the History of Health, Medicine, and Disease’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 89:4 (2015), pp. 639-689.
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Connecticut, 1792).
I read this article last night. I found it frightening how widespread cases of C Auris had become over the past few years. Perhaps ‘negative’ topics like pandemics can be overlooked in transnational history because they are not grounded in human agency. Yet pandemics, due to their indiscriminate natures, are incredibly effective at creating transnational networks. The 2014 Ebola outbreak as is an example of this. While it was mainly concentrated in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, brought together an international group of health officials and doctors that coordinated across national boundaries to ensure that the disease was contained and eventually combated. I remember I was living in China at the time and both the Americans and Chinese alike were frightened of a potential world-wide outbreak. Although it is rather horrible to think about, pandemics, by easily traversing the globe, can present excellent examples of transnational historical networks.
Nick, I would absolutely agree with your suggestion that transnational history has not yet been studied to its full potential when it comes to certain topics. However, I would also incline to agree with Kai, that this is perhaps more to do with our unfamiliarity (as scholars of the humanities) with studying and writing about non-human actors rather than a general aversion to topics with an excessive doom-and-gloom factor.
Arguably there are certain topics within transnational history, especially in studies of the Atlantic world, which have been intensively interrogated precisely because they are so entirely horrific: the transatlantic slave trade is the classic example, however one might also turn to studies of other difficult or forced migrations: of Native American slaves within and between the American colonies, or of the many thousands of indentured servants from the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe: many of them convicts, captives, or victims of desperation themselves.
Of course, we might complicate this argument by raising the argument that some non-human actors, especially in the case of certain technologies, have been extensively studied by historians in the past.
So perhaps it is only the combination of non-human AND negative which creates our historical blindspots? The history of disease, perhaps natural disasters too, or in other words, the ‘bad’ which lies for the most part beyond human control?
I would love to hear what you think. Can anyone else think of a counter to this suggestion?
At the moment I’m stuck trying to remember details of some dodgy old documentary about possibly-real-possibly-not-real tsunamis recorded in the Bible, though I’m sure there must be something a little more convincing!