William McNeill philosophy of history position paper (Plagues and peoples)

Plagues and peoples

While I was reading William McNeill’s masterpiece “Plagues and peoples,” I was wondering why McNeill wrote such a book and why people think of him as one of “the great historian.” It is probably because my understanding is very much limited when it comes to the biological presentation of data.

The introduction to his book talked about the diseases that killed the Aztecs which brought a massive decline to the Aztec empire. And I again wondered “why would a historian be so much into diseases and medical related events?” Because I thought that observing the plagues, epidemic and viruses isn’t a job for a historian but rather a job for a doctor or pharmacists who develop new vaccinations for people suffering from viruses and diseases.

But as I went deeper into his philosophy, I couldn’t say that I have totally understood why McNeill is a historian rather than a doctor or a pharmacist, I understood some of the factors that McNeill was emphasizing through the diseases and plagues that have occurred in time.

Historians tend to ignore something that is not explainable. The cause of the disease is something that is hard to explain sometimes because these events those historians are referring to sometimes goes beyond thousands of years.

But in case of McNeill, he directly relates the disease and plagues with human history. He uses terms like epidemic, micro parasitism, macro parasitism, mutualism which is biological terms rather than historical terms. Yet these terms are truly important terms that needs clear definition for us to understand what McNeill is trying to say through his philosophy.

First of all I would like to define the word micro parasitism. Micro parasitism according to McNeill means tiny infectious organisms that live inside us that are parasites on us. We probably have incredible amount of parasites living inside our stomach that are infectious but we don’t notice this parasites. We are feeding them while eating and drinking but we know that they are not highly infectious because we don’t feel the pain even though those parasites are living inside us. If we do feel the pain then it means that now, we know that there’s a parasite, a highly infectious one which will make us sick.

The second word that is truly important to understand the key concepts of McNeill is the word macro parasitism. Macro parasitism is parasites that are visible. That is not inside our body but outside the body. For example, tiger or shark is a macro parasite. They bite us and eat us. But in contrary, human also can be or should I say human is already a macro parasites feeding their bellies by killing other animals.

The history of hunting is an example of macro parasitism. Cannibalism that has occurred long time ago well I heard that some tribes in Africa still has these things happening, is also a form of macro parasitism.

This concept of parasitism according to McNeill can lead to two kinds of diseases, the endemic and epidemic. In order for macro parasites to survive they should rely on the host. But when the macro parasite kills the host, then the parasite also dies because of the lack of food supply. That is why macro parasite needs an equilibrium which is a balance for the macro parasite to benefit from the host while not totally killing the host.

But when the macro parasites doesn’t maintain this equilibrium and goes out of control killing everything then it becomes an epidemic. But if it is not epidemic then the parasite relationship is endemic which is fairly stable and to some extent mutually satisfactory relationship.

To conclude all that was said, I would say that McNeill’s view of history according to parasitism is reasonable. Kings of old ages, leaders like Adolph Hitler used their power and authority to get everything that they could from the people under them or should I say weaker than them. But in contrast, human life according to my understanding is more of an endemic relationship where both benefits not perfectly equal yet mutual.




McNeill, W.H. (1998). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books