The "Globalization" of Disease? India and the Plague

In the sphere of disease, so it often seems, "globalization" began relatively early. According to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, the first "paroxysm" of the "microbian unification of the world" occurred between about 1300 and 1650. 1 This was the era of the plague of the Black Death; the era, too, of the catastrophically rapid spread of smallpox, measles, and syphilis over much of the known world. A growth in human movement, through conquest, trade and travel, is seen as the key factor in this process.