Dr Erica Charters

erica charters
Associate Professor of Global History and the History of Medicine
Faculty of History
01865 (2)84628
erica.charters@history.ox.ac.uk

My research examines the history of war, disease, and bodies, particularly in the British and French empires.  My current research focuses on manpower during the eighteenth century, examining the history of bodies as well as the history of methods used to measure and enhance bodies, labour, and population as a whole, including the history of statistics. Since disease was the biggest threat to manpower in the early modern world, I look at how disease environments – throughout the world – shaped military, commercial, and agricultural power, as well as how overseas experiences shaped European theories of medicine, biology, and race alongside political methodologies such as statistics and censuses.  My monograph Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of British Armed Forces during the Seven Years War (Chicago, 2014) traces how responses to disease shaped military strategy, medical theory, and the nature of British imperial authority (awarded the AAHM 2016 George Rosen Prize and the SAHR 2014 Best First Book).  You can read about some of my research on my blog https://warhistory.blog/ and follow me @EricaCharters

 

Research Interests

  • Disease and war
  • Cultural history of war
  • Global history and disease

I am particularly interested in reconciling Enlightenment histories of a cosmopolitan Europe with military histories that portray the eighteenth century as a period of near-constant military conflict, in part by tracing how colonial war was a crucial part of Enlightenment intellectual developments.  I have a long-standing interest in the relationship between war and civil society; I have published on the history of prisoners of war and co-edited a volume ‘Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815’.

More broadly, I am interested in global approaches to history, both for research and teaching. One of my current research projects examines the nature of violence in the early modern world, integrating military history into broader cultural histories of violence. I am also part of a transnational and interdisciplinary project that examines the history of methodologies for quantifying and identifying casualties and losses in war, including changing notions of ‘acceptable’ losses in war. 

See page on Wolfson College website

Director, Centre for Global History (2016-18, 2019-20)

Director, Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Humanities Teaching Award for innovative Oxford and Empire Project

Teaching

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding history of war; history of disease and medicine; early modern empires; French Empire 18th century; British Empire 18th century

I would like to hear from any potential Masters students looking at history of war; history of medicine; environmental history; British history; French history; imperial and global history.

I currently teach:

Masters:

  • Methods and Themes in the History of Medicine
  • HSMT Graduate Research Forum
  • Global and Imperial History: Methods and Concepts
  • Disease, Medicine and Empire in the Americas
  • Manpower and State Power

Prelims

 FHS
  Medicine, Empire, and Improvement
  Military and Society in Britain and France

Publications

  • The history of science and medicine in the context of COVID-19

    July 2020
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    Journal article
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    Centaurus
    This spotlight issue encourages reflection on the current COVID-19 pandemic not simply through comparisons with previous epidemics, but also by illustrating that epidemics deserve study within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts. Epidemics are not solely a function of pathogens; they are also a function of how society is structured, how political power is wielded in the name of public health, how quantitative data is collected, how diseases are categorised and modelled, and how histories of disease are narrated. Each of these activities has its own history. As historians of science and medicine have long pointed out, even the most basic methodologies that underpin scientific research – observation, trust in numbers, the use of models, even the experimental method itself – have a history. They should not be taken as a given, but understood as processes, or even strategies, that were negotiated, argued for and against, and developed within particular historical contexts and explanatory schemes. Knowing the history of something – whether of numbers, narratives, or disease – enables us to see a broader range of trajectories available to us. These varied histories also remind us that we are currently in the midst of a chaotic drama of uncertainty, within our own unstable and unfolding narrative.
    FFR

  • Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto

    June 2020
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    Journal article
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    Nature

  • Histories of epidemics in the time of COVID19

    May 2020
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    Other
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    Centaurus
    This spotlight issue provides broad historical insight into COVID-19, showing that epidemics need to be studied within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts, and reflecting on how history can contribute to a better understanding of our current predicament.

  • Review: The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World by Elena A. Schneider

    April 2020
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    Other
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    The William and Mary Quarterly

  • Review: Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation's Fight against Smallpox, 1518-1824

    December 2016
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    Other
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    AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
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