Disease landscapes beyond the “Spanish flu” pandemic: temporal patterns, re-centered narratives (1889-1970s)

“C’est par l’accent que l’histoire met sur le changement et sur les différences ou écarts affectant les changements qu’elle se distingue des autres sciences sociales et principalement de la sociologie”, argued Paul Ricoeur in his classic study La mémoire, l’histoire,l’oubli. We could add to this that change —the passage from one collective situation or circumstance to another— would constitute not only the most specific object of history, but also a major impetus for historians to do research and, in general, for thedevelopment of historical science. As Reinhart Koselleck pointed out in Future Pasts. On the semantics of historical time, changesproduce a “penetration [rupture] of the horizon of expectations” (taking these as “the future made present”) that inevitably leads to a “restructuring of the space of experiences” (taking these as “the past made present”). Each generation of historians would, thus, feel compelled from the changes occurring in its present to rewrite history in order to re-imagine collective destiny (and vice versa).