Toynbee Coronavirus Series: A Global Historical View of the Pandemic

If we are stuck with analogies of war, then these same histories warn us not only that we cannot wait for the pandemic to be “over”, but also that during each major war extensive political and social movements supported intertwined national and multilateral responses to the global dimensions of health and economic challenges. But where invocations of war, of battles against the virus enemy, might offer comfort precisely because they posit a moment of victory—a V-Day—the intersecting global challenges of pandemic, capitalism and planetary destruction we now face allow us no such complacency.

Archival Reflections

Using the register of seventeenth century media anata payments in Manila, Filipinas.

Lauren Benton has been named winner of the 2019 Toynbee Prize.

The Toynbee Prize Foundation has selected Jürgen Osterhammel as the recipient of the 2017 Toynbee Prize. The Prize, given every other year to a distinguished practitioner of global history will be formally awarded at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Denver, Colorado on January 6, 2017.