The bonds of community during epidemics

Chapter 4 analyses societal responses to epidemic disease over the long term and argues that most anxieties were not connected to fears of falling sick or dying, but more connected to restrictions and infringements of authorities. Rather than an instrument of control, epidemics in the Low Countries were used by ordinary people to actively or passively resist impositions. Perceived agents of the administration or those involved in the “epidemic economy” were most likely to be subject to pushback—even if those on the receiving end of this resistance, abuse, or violence were often not representatives of the elite but vulnerable people themselves. Epidemic disease did not bring about revolutionary ideals or structural change—quite the opposite, these outbreaks stimulated conservative and reactionary tendencies based around maintaining a kind of lifestyle under threat. Ordinary people, then, did not “manage” epidemic disease outbreaks in the same way that authorities might. They acclimatised themselves to these anticipated hazards, which sometimes stuck in the collective memory for long periods—not featuring as massive departures from the norm but instead part of the norm, blurring the conceptual lines between epidemic and endemic categorisation.