Bubonic plague in nineteenth-century China

the long version

This book, the first work in English on the history of disease in China, traces an epidemic of bubonic plague that began in Yunnan province in the late eighteenth century, spread throughout much of southern China in the nineteenth century, and eventually exploded on the world scene as a global pandemic at the end of the century. The book not only adds to our knowledge of the historical epidemiology of one of the major disease outbreaks in world history, it also addresses a number of themes central to late imperial Chinese history: the social and ecological consequences of the expanding frontier, the international politics of public health at the turn of the century, and the changing relationship between the Chinese state and Chinese society at the end of the Qing dynasty.