The Age of Pandemics, 1817-1920: How they shaped India and the world

Welcome to our special session co-organised by South Asia WG, History of Economic Thought WG and Economic History WG! We are delighted to have Julia Marchevsky, History of Economic Thought, and Sergio Castellanos-Gamboa, Economic History as co-organisers of this session within our larger project!

The special session will discuss the core thesis of Chinmay Tumbe's recent book, The Age of Pandemics, 1817-1920: How they shaped India and the world (2020), HarperCollins India.

From lockdowns to lockups, viruses to vaccination, the movement of people to the movement of bowels, from rats to cats, and more, The Age of Pandemics chronicles the many facets of the cholera, plague and influenza pandemics, which claimed over 70 million lives between 1817 and 1920, with India being the epicentre in all these episodes.

Speaker's bio:

Chinmay Tumbe loves to laugh and learn. He is a faculty member in the Economics Area of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and the author of India Moving: A History of Migration (2018) and The Age of Pandemics, 1817-1920: How they shaped India and the world (2020).

Format:

The presentations will be typically 30 min long, followed by Q & A.

This session is a part of the larger project:
Expanding the frontiers of economics: Evidence from South Asia

This project aims to organise series of special sessions on emerging areas of research in Economics. By synthesising theoretical assumptions of sociology, psychology, anthropology and political sciences, a new generation of researchers are rediscovering the principles which govern the actions and interaction among ‘economic (hu)man’.

This will be a year-long project. In this series, we hope to ensure inclusivity across different schools of thoughts and across genders.