It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have long been driving forces - perhaps THE driving force - of world history: fear of God, of famine, war, disease, poverty, and other people. In Fear: An Alternative History of the World, Robert Peckham considers the impact of fear in history, as both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change.

Beginning with the Black Death in the fourteenth century, Peckham traces a shadow history of fear. He takes us through the French Revolution and the social movements of the nineteenth century to modern market crashes, Cold War paranoia and the AIDS pandemic, into a digital culture increasingly marked by uniquely twenty-first-century fears.

What did fear mean to us in the past, and how can a better understanding of it equip us to face the future? As Peckham demonstrates, fear can challenge as well as cement authority. Some crises have destroyed societies; others have been the making of them. Through the stories of the people and the moments that changed history, Fear: An Alternative History of the World reveals how fear and panic made us who we are.

Disease and crime are increasingly conflated in the contemporary world. News reports proclaim "epidemics" of crime, while politicians denounce terrorism as a lethal pathological threat. Recent years have even witnessed the development of a new subfield, "epidemiological criminology," which merges public health with criminal justice to provide analytical tools for criminal justice practitioners and health care professionals. Little attention, however, has been paid to the historical contexts of these disease and crime equations, or to the historical continuities and discontinuities between contemporary invocations of crime as disease and the emergence of criminology, epidemiology, and public health in the second half of the nineteenth century. When, how and why did this pathologization of crime and criminalization of disease come about? This volume addresses these critical questions, exploring the discursive construction of crime and disease across a range of geographical and historical settings.

This book maps the tensions, overlaps, and contradictions within and between social and biological understandings of disease and crime. It considers how and why disease-and, in particular, infectious disease-has come, reciprocally, to be framed as 'criminal.'

Epidemics have played a critical role in shaping modern Asia. Encompassing two centuries of Asian history, Robert Peckham explores the profound impact that infectious disease has had on societies across the region: from India to China and the Russian Far East. The book tracks the links between biology, history, and geopolitics, highlighting infectious disease's interdependencies with empire, modernization, revolution, nationalism, migration, and transnational patterns of trade. By examining the history of Asia through the lens of epidemics, Peckham vividly illustrates how society's material conditions are entangled with social and political processes, offering an entirely fresh perspective on Asia's transformation.

Epidemics have played a critical role in shaping modern Asia. Encompassing two centuries of Asian history, Robert Peckham explores the profound impact that infectious disease has had on societies across the region: from India to China and the Russian Far East. The book tracks the links between biology, history, and geopolitics, highlighting infectious disease's interdependencies with empire, modernization, revolution, nationalism, migration, and transnational patterns of trade. By examining the history of Asia through the lens of epidemics, Peckham vividly illustrates how society's material conditions are entangled with social and political processes, offering an entirely fresh perspective on Asia's transformation.