Plagues Over the Centuries Have Caused Radical Political Shifts – Examples From the Last 2500 Years
by Srdja Trifkovic ()
Serious epidemics can have far-reaching social, cultural, and geopolitical consequences. The plague which devastated Athens in 430 BC—in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach—claimed a quarter of the population, some 75,000 people including Pericles. His successors were weak and incompetent, and Athens suffered a precipitous decline in the observance of “every rule of religion or law,” according to Thucydides. Not until 415 B.C.
Plagues Over the Centuries Have Caused Radical Political Shifts – Examples From the Last 2500 Years