Transport and the Transmission of Plague across Settlements in Early Modern England
Transport and the Transmission of Plague across Settlements in Early Modern England
Plague was the most lethal disease in early modern England. However, there is limited large-scale quantitative evidence about the factors that allowed plague to spread between settlements. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Eric B. Schneider of the London School of Economics and Political Science will present a study using a novel dataset of aggregated monthly burial totals covering more than 4,000 parishes between 1557 and 1667. Eric and his co-authors measure how frequently settlements experienced plague epidemics and analyses the factors leading to outbreaks—particularly whether the transmission of plague was affected by the transport network. They find that plague affected relatively few settlements in this period, did not spread in the characteristic wave of the Black Death, and was not strongly linked to transport. Settlements on arterial roads running from London to other major towns had an increased chance of experiencing a plague outbreak, while settlements on other principal roads and along rivers did not. They also find that spillovers from locations on arterial roads were non-existent. Taken together, these results suggest that plague was not spreading via sustained human-to-human transmission in England in our period. The low share of settlements affected also contrasts strikingly with both the Black Death and with early modern plague epidemics on the continent, such as those in Northern Italy in the 1630s. Overall, their evidence indicates that the transport network was not a primary driver of plague spread, highlighting that the rat–flea transmission chain of plague could be broken with only partially effective quarantines.
Eric B. Schneider’s co-authors: Charles Udale (London School of Economics and Political Science), Max Satchell (University of Cambridge), and Henry Yeomans (University of Leeds)
Discussants: Hanzhi Deng, Assitant Professor, Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Fudan University, and Xiaowen (Oliver) Zhou, PhD candidate, Institute of Neurology, Fudan University Huashan Hospital
Date: May 7, 2026
Time: 16:00 – 17:30
16:00 (Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore)
04:00 (New York)|01:00 (Los Angeles)|09:00 (London)|17:00 (Tokyo)|18:00 (Sydney)
Venue: Zoom Webinar
Language: English
The Quantitative History (QH) Webinar Series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The QH Webinar Series, now entering its sixth year, is co-organized by the Centre for Quantitative History at the HKU Business School and the International Society for Quantitative History in partnership with the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Series is now substantially supported by the Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. [AoE/B-704/22-R]).
Conveners: Professors Zhiwu Chen & Chicheng Ma
