 Hello everyone and welcome to our History Taster Day session. I'm Ann Harrod and I'll be the host for today. So today we'll hear from Dr Lars Laman, who is a senior lecturer in the history of China, and Dr Andrea Yangu, head of history. And they'll be talking about epidemics in history. And we'll also have Daniel Sabir, who is a current history student at SOAS. So if you have any questions about what's it like studying here, then you can ask that in the chat and that will be answered for you. Okay, so if you can hear me, that's fine. I just have the impression nobody could hear me. So if you can, I just go with what I wanted to introduce to you. So the second slide, if it appears on your screen, as I said, I just would like to welcome you and briefly introduce the departments. All the photos of colleagues together so that you can get an idea of who you will meet, should you decide to come to SOAS to study history. So this is maybe just to highlight, I've been a bit unfair to some colleagues. So you have Roy Fishel, who has his email address there, who is a historian of early modern South Asia and the reason why I highlight him, he's the convener of the BA History Program. So if you have any questions about the program in particular, I would like to get in touch with somebody. Roy might be the person to ask, apart from Lars, my colleague who you've already met, who is our recruitment officer. Or you can also get in touch with me. So this is the three people for which you have email contacts on these slides and if the slides, obviously you can also find them on the home page anyway. I did ask on the second slide, where are you joining us from? I've already seen your answers in the chat, so maybe we can skip that one. So that I'll leave some time for Lars later on. I'm really happy to see that you're coming from so many different places. That's absolutely fantastic. And I wanted to say two words about the kind of history that we teach and study at SELAS, because we've often had people say, why don't you do a program in global history? Because that's what you do. And our answer is that's not quite what we do, even though we're looking at many different places in the world that maybe a regular history program at other universities won't necessarily cover in that kind of detail. So we are looking at all kinds of places across the globe, but not from a Western perspective, but all the colleagues of whom you saw photos at the beginning are studying particular regions outside of Europe and America and the Western world. So the thing we are really proud of is that we do actually understand and study the cultures and the languages of the places whose history we're looking at. And one of the key points of interest in a way, and one of the obviously the areas that's become increasingly important and relevant today is to look at global encounters from perspectives that are not Western and trying to understand how different cultures and people met each other. So it's understanding the world from different perspectives really, and you can see that from some of the work that colleagues have produced. So the next slide is about introducing a couple of books that have been published in the last couple of years by colleagues in the department. So it's obviously topics such as slavery in the Atlantic slave trade, colonial rule in Africa, but also looking at pre-colonial, non-European countries, pre-colonial South Asia, which is the area that Roy Fish is particularly interested in, or if you want to more fur on about the Hindu family, the emergence of modern India in a more recent period where you have all these tensions and ambiguities that emerge from those cultural encounters that I mentioned earlier. So the point is to emphasize these different perspectives and try to understand a variety of different opinions on views about what is happening in the world, and today even, and how this came about in the course of a longer history. So the next slide gives you, so the next part of what I want to say just in a few minutes is to talk a bit about the history program that we teach. Obviously you have in the first year, this kind of introductions to the discipline and historical approaches that you probably find in any history program, and some of the things that we've added to the program since about, I think, two years ago, that's when my colleague, Eleanor, began to start teaching this module called Colonial Curricular Empire and Education at SOAS and beyond. And I've highlighted this because, in a way, it kind of stands for what is different about SOAS and what is a particular challenge, I think, for us as SOAS as you might be aware is an institution that emerged from, I mean, is part of the history of empire, very much so, and you can see that in the coat of arms that you can still find in the school, that, I mean, knowledge is power, right? So this is really an institution that was meant to train people to work for Britain in its imperial enterprise, basically. But on the other hand, you see that there were a lot of people who came from the colonised countries who were studying and teaching at SOAS and you have from the beginning a very diverse group of people that come together and bring views and opinions to this debate that are quite different from a purely colonial perspective on what is happening in the world. And this is obviously a debate that's very relevant today, it's very active, very lively, and it's very much pushed also by SOAS students in many different bodies at the school. And this is one of the reasons why we now have integrated this module that looks at SOAS history, the history of education generally throughout the last century mainly. And it's kind of, I think, a very good basis to engage in a critical study of the history of the world and how it became the way it is today. And maybe also encourage thinking about what we can do to change it in ways that we think might make it a better place. So I've just kind of randomly added some other titles of modules that we'll be running next year, such as South African apartheid, nationalism identity in South Asia, political Islam. It's just to give you some kind of idea of what we are doing and what we hope will be attractive for you. We are also trying to go a bit beyond the narrow confines, I guess, of the teaching curriculum and started before the disaster with the pandemic started last, the year before last, to launch a project called, which was meant as the beginning of a series of projects that then got interrupted unfortunately by the pandemic, what we hope to be able to pick up on this next year. Decolonizing history where we invite invited young playwrights from very diverse backgrounds to join us, to join our classes and seminars, and engage with students and in that dialogue develop audio plays about the histories that we study at SOAS and the way we study history at SOAS of these two perspectives and the result of that was five short audio plays that we then, where we had kind of gathered listenings, kind of a new invention of a public event by the artistic director of the theater company that cooperated with us in this project. So we try to kind of add more of these kinds of elements where we engage with communities beyond the university to bring the history that we studied to other audiences and to show why it's important to do so. Okay, so we hope that that we can continue these activities and then pick up again where we left it basically not entirely it's not that we had didn't do anything through during the last year but it was a bit more difficult generally as it was for everybody, I guess. So what is in there for you. Obviously, studying histories about studying history so you want to learn about the past, I guess, and the ways in which it is relevant for the present. But you also want to, I guess, improve your own skills and get skills that will allow you to do whatever you want to do with your life and what you want to do. After you've completed your studies at university. So apart from the contents of the histories that we teach. A very important part of the program is also to to train you in these skills and and maybe to in a nutshell the point of it is really to to learn to ask questions and to find ways to answer them. So this is why I'm studying history exploring archives collecting knowledge, talking to people, weighing opinions against each other find ways to support arguments that you want to make. I mean all of these things are really quite quite crucial. And maybe looking at the time I just the next three slides are kind of an overview of the structure of the program and I think I don't really want to go into this detail now. If you can get the slides later on have a look at it and if you have questions about this in more detail. You can maybe ask via email so the point is really that you always have one part that talks about the skills that I just mentioned and and then we cover kind of areas in global history and then particular histories of regions you might have specific in and obviously the big emphasis is on allowing you to to learn how to do your own research and how to create your own work in the process, which then ends in the final year with with your dissertation or other subjects. Maybe I'll leave it at that. And think about your questions keep them in mind. I would like to pass on to my colleague last lemon to give you more kind of interesting and more engaging insight into what a history class might look like before we come to questions and answers at the end I would suggest. Thank you very much Andrea. It's always a pleasure to listen to your explanations about the purpose of studying history at so as and of course, if in the towards the end of the session today. We have concrete questions concerning the uses of studying history, then this will both relate to the structure of what we're doing, and the courses that we teach. So one, if there's any one topic that dominated our lives last year, then it must have been pandemic because there is simply no other event in my lifetime, and I have an uncle who's going to turn 103. And in his words, there's nothing, not even the Second World War, which was as influential in his life than the period of seclusion and not being able to see loved ones and going about the, you know, one's life as it has been from birth to you. Now I somehow lost the slides one second to you who have in essence been brought up by your parents and then perhaps lived in various places on your own. And this is certainly also a very important event, and this event is something that is actually experienced by all of us as being incredibly restrictive, and this, these restrictions come from come in many ways and I hope you can see the PowerPoint right now. I entitled it black death in China but strictly speaking it's not the black death it's not the bubonic plague. It's the pneumonic plague pneumonic plague it's the plague that affects the lungs and this occurred 110 years ago in so 1910 to 1912 roughly, and in the northeastern parts of China. That part is generally known as Manchuria because it's also the cradle of Manchu civilization but in historical terms, this was the time when China was in the transition from being an empire ruled over by a dynasty of emperors stretching back more or less 2000 years. It's not the same dynasty but the system had been in place for more than 2000 years at that point to a republic. And so in other words it's the beginning of China's modern era. And my question here, that's what Andrea of course referred to in the end, what do you get out of studying history anywhere on earth, anybody's history, and then also the history of specific places such as China, because you do so, because you can follow patterns in the developments in the historical developments but then also how people react and especially how societies react. We need to start not with people but with a little animal, which was, which looked very cute, and it's one of the original inhabitants of Manchuria, of northeastern China, of southern Siberia, the Harabagan, that's the Manchu word, Jumara is the Mongolian word. It's simply known as the Marmot in English but you would confuse it with Marmite if you grew up here because there are no Marmots where we live usually. This is something that is very much in demand. The animals fur is very much in demand in places in the northern hemisphere, and therefore the Siberian Manchurian fur trade is something that had come to, to characterize the economic life of this region. Why am I mentioning this cute little animal? Essentially, because it acted as a host for fleas, and these fleas, if you, I mean since it's recorded, you can enlarge it then, or I could maybe enlarge it, let's see what that works. If it does not work, you're entitled to kill me. Does it work? It works in class. I've learned a few things during the pandemic, for example, to run classes from my computer at work. Today I'm in my computer in our kitchen, which is freezing cold, but it's, so I hope you're all nicely wrapped up. But this is a historic picture of a flea, call it a historic flea, because this flea is infected by a virus known as Yersinia pestis, and this pestis of course refers to the bubonic plague. But in this case, the plague was the pneumonic plague, so it was the lung plague, and the gentleman who you can see here investigating the marmots, which they had caught, are in essence, are in essence, or let me go back, in the top you can see a modern flea, a more modern flea in colour, and everything that is black in the centre is essentially the virus. And if you have a flea that is infected in the same way, then they can transmit diseases, and in this case it is the type of subtype of the plague. And why is this important? Because like all the predecessors of the plague, it spreads like wildfire, it spreads like the plague, and it spreads along the sea routes. And here you have especially the southern coastal ports that are important, connecting China with other parts of Southeast Asia, with India, and thus with the Middle East and the Mediterranean, on the other side of the Pacific also with the Californian sequels. So, but the historic plagues, they travelled along the Silk Route, and the Silk Route takes you all along north of the Tibetan mountains through the Takla Mahan, into the western parts of Asia, and then all the way towards the Mediterranean. And you can see that, actually, if you travel along the Siberian routes in the north, this distance is shorter, and this was another route for the plague to develop, for example, when the Mongols moved westwards. So, this is the historic picture, so in other words, any local epidemic can very easily turn into a pandemic, simply by travelling along the trade routes, and by the time of the end of the Qing period, so 1910. Manchuria would be up here, that's the region, and historic Manchuria also includes this part which is the Primorsky cry, which is the province belonging to Russia, which was annexed in 1858, and still belongs to the Russian Federation. Vladivostok is one of the, is the principal port here. So, in this region, you have a high concentration of traders who interact with the rest of the world, and if you have a plague that originates here, it can very easily spread into Korea, to Japan, but then also along the trade routes into Central Asia and into Russia and further on. This was the main threat which the, the virologists, you could say, saw, and they began to make a comparison between, or they started looking at the lifestyles of the people who worked as settlers, as hunters, and as also as agrarians. And they found out that these people lived in very crowded conditions. And this is something that you will remember from the, all the government information that you get on COVID that you should leave at least two meters distance always air your rooms and so on and so on. And this is something that for the first time was actually being turned into applied science, and this science is medical science. And I'm going to, so here you can see the sleeping quarters and eating quarters of the people involved. The people who worked in these, as medics in these conditions were more or less volunteers, of course they got paid, but they were prepared to sacrifice their lives. And here we have the principal plague fighter. That's an epithet that he later got. He goes under different names because he's, his family is originally from China south. So in Chaozhou, and in Cantonese, you can, you can get these other renderings. Yandere is a different type of romanization of the Chinese characters that you can see who is the family name so with a surname if you like. Yandere is his personal name. And he lived. I can move this. No, I can't. Oh, so he lived from the end of the Qing period, right into the republican era. And the perhaps surprising thing is that he decided to work for his country, although he was actually the national of a different country, namely he was he was Malaysian. Malaysia, at that very point was administered by the British colonial enterprise. Although in the area you always have the Dutch who controlled most of the southern parts of the of the Indochinese so called Indochinese islands, namely Indonesia. Importantly, we have a, a system that is based on family networks that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years at that point roughly 1000 years and William is part of this network of Chinese traders, and he feels the outbreak of this of this illness as a personal and as a national challenge, educated, it was educated in modern scientific medicine in Cambridge at that time one of the leading centers of medicine in in the world. The medical science, keep that in mind was less than a generation old, also in the West. So this is the cutting edge of medical science and this patriotic and adventurous young man goes northwards in order to try to help the American patriots in Manchuria. So what does he try to do. First of all he's trying to intercept the hosts, and the hosts are these cute little marmots that you see in the beginning by means by very traditional means these are traps, and the traps, you can also use for boxes for, not for bears but for for smaller rat type creatures that also have a beautiful furs and on its minx, and, and all of these are perfect hosts for viruses means they also came up in the context of COVID, if you remember. And this is so if these are the tools that trappers use down here you have the boxes in which the, the marmots are being stored and keep in mind that this is, although it's fairly cold territory at the same time in the summer, it can be for a few weeks it can be really really hot. So what you get here is a very, well, I don't know how well you can see it but it's these are black and white pictures of one living and one dead marmot and these are basically specimen, and these are being I investigated for medical research, and now something happens, namely, he decides that this disease is being transmitted in little globules, namely in drops. So what is his solution, essentially, to wear a mask and to get everybody who is in the vicinity of these marmots to wear face masks, so that they can transmit these drops. So the cold job, the face mask which we are all familiar with by now. That was quite different about a year ago. This goes back to the public use during epidemics goes back to the Manchurian plague of 1910. So you can see Manchuria at the crossroads down at the bottom you have the traditional traditional your, let me see, let me try to enlarge this. This is the accommodation which the temporary accommodation because it's always temporary these are nomadic populations who use them, usually Mongols. And one of the beauties of so is is that you never really sure where in the world you are. And so, one of the features that you get in the summer is that all of a sudden your peers out of nowhere, and is being established in the field on a little grass plane opposite so as usually, and you can look at that you can go inside. I don't actually know who owns the yacht but it's always there and then you have other public weeks, devoted to animals of transport, beasts of burden like donkeys and camel so being at so as is an unpredictable experience. Up here you have the bearers of modernity, namely modern science these are the scientists who come as part of an expedition. This time it's a Russian expedition and the, these Russian scientists so you can see that they arrived on the trans Siberian railway on the trans Manchurian extension. In other words, these are very much at the forefront of the investigation into the diseases 1911 July so this is in the dying days of the of the Qing Empire. So if you study politics, of course, it's a little reminder that the, that we're in the age of imperialism, and that at no point in time, people were safe from in China, people were safe from the grasp of France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia, because there was always the idea that they could extend their empires by carving out small pieces of China. So, this is one of the last pictures. It just shows to goes to show how closely related how closely linked the area where you had the outbreak of the Manchurian plague pointed in yellow. So it was to the trade routes of the time and here on the right you can see a waterborne trade route, namely the one of the ports of the Amur River, and on the left. I don't know how clearly you can see that you can enlarge it later if, since this is recorded, you have China here, you have Mongolia over here you have Russian territories over here already at that time so Vladivostok goes down all the way down and then the Manchuria, sorry, Korea, developing, sorry, extending south eastwards further down. So, this is all connected through river transport but also through train transport so very easily have William and his, his people not managed to contain this contain and fight this epidemic, it could have turned into another epidemic, seven years before the so called Spanish plane, Spanish plate. So, the Amur River, if you're interested in Northeast Asian minorities, I can help you with that. There are so as is one of the few places on earth, where you can study Manchu, for example. I think the last picture. And so, not just could this disease have spread throughout the, along the trade routes throughout Asia, but also into China and of course this is a picture of a map of Beijing in 1911. Last year when it was the capital of the Chinese Empire, the Qing Empire. He divided into two parts the Chinese city and the, the so called Chinese city and the so called Tata city so it's the, the Manchu Mongolian precincts of the city with the, with the forbidden city in the center. It had the disease spread throughout China with its then already enormous population, you would have seen a disaster without any comparison because the mnemonic plague would have needed to be restricted in the same way as in sparsely populated Syria, but that was really not possible at the time. Also, because China was not governed effectively by any government after 1911, and, at least until the communists come in 1949. So, in other words, if I were to sum up the, the essence of today's lecture is that epidemics, if they're not contained by courageous people who make use of the latest science spread with an ease that easily reveals that of COVID-19, even in times when travel was not as widespread. And so, follow the science, follow the historical evidence that we have, and come to so as and study history with us because it would be a great pleasure to introduce you to some of the things that we have done research in and that we take great pleasure in teaching. Thank you very much. Lars and Andrea. We've now got time for a Q&A. So if anyone wants to ask a question, either in person or via the Q&A button at the bottom, please go ahead. Yeah. Opening the floor. Oh, Andrea. Okay. Thank you. In normal times it's one of the obvious places. Yes, that's true. So, let me just see. I go into the chat. Sorry, I realised I'd send it to the wrong address again. So if you, Lars, if you look at the bottom on the Q&A section, we've already had two questions. Yes, I'm trying to look up here. So, how are the lessons taught is the first one? Semina, so tutorials, that's a really great question because at the moment there are people thinking about how the current experience with online teaching might have an impact on how university teaching will be done in the future. The standard format is probably, it's actually not a straightforward answer because in the core module for the first year, for example, this is entirely small group seminar teaching in groups of around 15 to 20 students at most. But most other modules would normally be taught in one hour lecture plus smaller tutorial groups of where you have another hour to discuss the material that was covered. Lars, would you want to move on? I don't want to monoblade. I can see that you're referring to a comment, but I can't see it. Could you just read out the comment that you see? Oh, I see. Okay. Okay, the second question, if I see that correctly, is how does historic knowledge positively impact society? And I think that's a fantastic question really. And it's exactly one of the things that we're working on in terms of, I mean, this is why I say we try to connect to communities outside the university and try to bring other groups into the university to have this conversation going really. And I mean, at the moment, the thing that is most at the heart of this is probably, I mean, this year was tremendous in that respect. Obviously, you had the Black Lives Matter movement that's very much at the core of what many of our colleagues are doing. So it's a big question that is very hard to give a very brief answer to, but it's one of the things that is at the core of the interest of, I think so as an institution really, and history is part of that. Yes. Yes, so I just want to just reiterate what Andrea said right now, I mean, we live for that, you know, this is our, it's not just a job, this is actually our mission if you like. Whenever there is a new event, whenever there's a new movement, whenever you have historic changes that take place, we try to bring the context closer to our students and not just our students. I mean, one thing that we should actually, I mean that became clear when Andrea put the titles of the books that our colleagues published here. And one thing that became clear is that our teaching actually is directly derived from our research. And what we do day and night and in places that are far away from us and in our own archives. What we come up with that is actually what we teach and in sometimes indirectly sometimes extremely directly just straight up with our movements. So this is one way of connecting with history if you like, so where life and history interconnect. Yes. So there was another question Lars about year abroad. Are students able to go on a year abroad if they're only studying history or is it only if you're doing a joint degree. No, you have to do a joint degree with a language. And only then is it actually integrated into the into the program. I mean there is the possibility of normally I would have said Erasmus but that's just been asked by becoming political now but it's yes that's not possible at the moment. So there are bilateral exchange programs that you can subscribe to but then you would have to organize it yourself. We can help you with that but it's, it's definitely something that you would have to take a year out and then rejoin the program. So it's not part of your, your history course as such. And this will probably have to be our final question because we need to wrap up fairly soon so the next session can get going. So the first example is the course and can you decide what areas you're interested in. Actually start just started typing an answer to that. There are core modules it for each year that you have to take and there are compulsory modules where you have to take one or two from a particular list of modules. There's a bit of flexibility in this core part, but it's not entirely flexible but then in each year you have the opportunity to take up to 30 credits which would mean one more. Oh, it seems we've lost. Andrea could too long list of open options from other departments. So they're open options. I think you cut out the crucial point with the open options. So there is. I'm sorry. Yes, if you look at the list which Andrea produced it becomes sometimes it says it's like a compulsory course. But then you also have a list of optional courses within a compulsory mix, it depends which year you're in. And so, and then third year is very interesting because that's where you write your dissertation and the dissertation is, you're completely free to agree on a topic with your, with your supervisor supervisor who you choose. Daniel if you just answer our final question. What is the workload like so as for history and what's the work like. Yeah, I was just typing the answer for that but generally the workload is well spread and what you'll find is that obviously throughout the course there'll be essays I need handed on time, but it won't be, it won't be too much pressure like it can be quite flexible and the only thing is that there is a fair bit of reading, but usually it's well spread out and the work is, it can be interesting. I mean if you pick modules that you're interested in then obviously you're going to enjoy it. Yeah, I enjoy a lot so yeah, it's great. Good student. Thank you. Thank you very much, Lars Andrea and Daniel. If we didn't get to answer your question. We might be able to do some sort of email, maybe with some history staff so we can get those questions answered. And we will circulate the recording if you want to watch anything again. So thank you everyone for attending and thank you very much to our speakers.