THE PLAGUE AND THE PARTHENON: CRUSADE, CLIMATE CHANGE AND DISEASE IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN

The present study examines the role epidemic diseases, specifically malaria and bubonic plague, played on the course of the Morean War (1684-1699). The Morean War was a major offensive by Christian powers, led by the Venetian Republic, against Ottoman controlled Greece. Christian victories during the war were widely celebrated across western Europe, but even in victory Christian forces took severe casualties from multiple disease outbreaks. First, this study seeks to explain the terrestrial and maritime networks the war was fought over, and how those networks either led the opposing forces into regions of endemic disease (malaria), or how they allowed other diseases (bubonic plague), to be distributed around the region. Furthermore, this demonstrates the impact of epidemic events on the Christian armies and the subsequent prosecution of the war, and that epidemic disease was a major catalyst behind demographic change in the Peloponnese, the principal theater of conflict