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

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

Featured Publication

Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces During the Seven Years' War (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces During the Seven Years' War

The Seven Years' War, often called the first global war, spanned North America, the West Indies, Europe, and India. In these locations diseases such as scurvy, smallpox, and yellow fever killed far more than combat did, stretching the resources of European states. In Disease, War, and the Imperial State, Erica Charters demonstrates how disease played a vital role in shaping strategy and campaigning, British state policy, and imperial relations during the Seven Years' War. Military medicine was a crucial component of the British war effort; it was central to both eighteenth-century scientific innovation and the moral authority of the British state. Looking beyond the traditional focus on the British state as a fiscal war-making machine, Charters uncovers an imperial state conspicuously attending to the welfare of its armed forces, investing in medical research, and responding to local public opinion. Charters shows military medicine to be a credible scientific endeavor that was similarly responsive to local conditions and demands. Disease, War, and the Imperial State is an engaging study of early modern warfare and statecraft, one focused on the endless and laborious task of managing manpower in the face of virulent disease in the field, political opposition at home, and the clamor of public opinion in both Britain and its colonies.

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

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).    

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. 

 

Publications

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

    2020
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    Journal article
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    Nature

  • Histories of epidemics in the time of COVID19

    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.

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

    2020
    |
    Journal article
    |
    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

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

    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

    2016
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    Other
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    AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

  • Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World

    2016
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    Journal article
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    Oxford Bibliographies in ‘Atlantic History’

  • L’histoire de la quantification : les guerres franco-britanniques et le développement de la statistique médicale (The history of quantification: Anglo-French wars and the development of medical statistics )

    2015
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    Journal article
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    Dix-Huitieme Siecle

  • Review of: Jeremiah Dancy, The Myth of the Press Gang: Volunteers, impressment and the naval manpower problem in the late eighteenth century

    2015
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    Other
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    MARINERS MIRROR

  • The Administration of War and French Prisoners of War in Britain, 1756–1763

    2014
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    Chapter
    |
    Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815
    The intimate relationship between warfare and political administration in early modern Europe has been extensively detailed through the debates regarding the military revolution. First outlined by Michael Roberts in 1955 and thoroughly expanded by Geoffrey Parker, the concept of the military revolution explains the growth of the armed forces during the early modern period, and fundamentally links it to the expansion of state power. While historians continue to debate the extent of this revolution, as well as its timing, geographical location and causality, its widespread influence demonstrates the energy of investigations into the relationship between war and the development of the early modern European state.

  • Colonial Disease, Translation, and Enlightenment: Franco-British Medicine and the Seven Years‘ War

    2014
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    Chapter
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    The Culture of the Seven Years' War: Empire, Identity, and the Arts in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
    • More
Teaching

I would be willing 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 be willing 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
In the Media

Disease & The Seven Years' War (Ben Franklin's World - 9 January 2017)