1500-1900
A01=Ben Mutschler
advancement
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Ben Mutschler
automatic-update
autonomy
belonging
calamity
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=MBP
Category=MBX
Category=NHK
colonial america
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
disability
disease
economy
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
family
government
history
household
IL
illness
individualism
labor
Language_English
new england
nonfiction
PA=Available
patients
paupers
pensioners
perseverance
political science
politics
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
public health
regionalism
responsibility
revolution
revolutionary invalid corps
smallpox
SN=American Beginnings
social credit
softlaunch
survival
town governance
war
welfare
work
Product details
- ISBN 9780226714424
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Aug 2020
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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How do we balance individual and collective responsibility for illness? This question, which continues to resonate today, was especially pressing in colonial America, where episodic bouts of sickness were pervasive, chronic ails common, and epidemics all too familiar.
In The Province of Affliction, Ben Mutschler explores the surprising roles that illness played in shaping the foundations of New England society and government from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century. Considered healthier than residents in many other regions of early America, and yet still riddled with disease, New Englanders grappled steadily with what could be expected of the sick and what allowances made to them and their providers. Mutschler integrates the history of disease into the narrative of early American cultural and political development, illuminating the fragility of autonomy, individualism, and advancement in this period. Each sickness in early New England created its own web of interdependent social relations that could both enable survival and set off a long bureaucratic struggle to determine responsibility for the misfortune. From families and households to townships, colonies, and states, illness both defined and strained the institutions of the day, bringing people together in the face of calamity, yet also driving them apart when the cost of persevering grew overwhelming. In the process, domestic turmoil circulated through the social and political world to permeate the very bedrock of early American civic life.
Ben Mutschler is associate professor of history at Oregon State University.
