Pandemics & Borders

Scrolls & Leaves: World History Podcast

10-11-2021 • 36 mins

The world’s borders are clamping down for un-vaccinated people, most of whom are poor and/or from the Global South. This echoes events following a 19th century pandemic of cholera which killed millions of people worldwide. The colonial power improved water and sanitation in their European and American cities, but left their colonies undeveloped. They instead set up surveillance and border control to keep disease within those faraway borders. The race-based policies can be traced to present day.