The Third Plague Pandemic in Java with Maurits Meerwijk

 Maurits Meerwijk (Leiden University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss his book on the effects of the third plague pandemic in Java in the first half of the 20th century. The conversation begins with a survey of Java, its location and politics as under Dutch colonialism. Plague reached Java relatively late during the pandemic (1910/1), but resulted in a large number of deaths. The interview focuses in particular on a large-scale program of home improvement that the Dutch initiated as a response to the plague – a project that lasted 30 years and resulted in the improvement of some 1.6 million local houses. The end of the conversation reflects upon Java as a third pandemic case study and considers the (lack of) historical memory of this episode.