Política de Saúde, Política de Morte: A Peste e a Realeza em Portugal (Séculos XIV-XVI)

Abstract

Pre-capitalist societies have been hit by several epidemics, notably the frequent epidemic cycles of plague since the outbreak of the great epidemic of 1348, promoting sudden and systematic increases in mortality rates, and causing destruction, fear and social chaos. In Portugal, there was at least one epidemic every decade throughout the period. The disease was a factor of destabilization and social disorder that caused royalty to promote clashes through various actions. In this article, we rehearsed the proposition that the public health policy forged by the state contained in itself an intrinsic expression of what Achille Mbembe characterized as «necropolitics».