Thesis ID: CBB521501901

Plagued Bodies and Spaces: Medicine, Trade, and Death in Ottoman Egypt and Tunisia, 1705-1830 CE (2017)

unapi

This dissertation examines the history of the bubonic plague, trade, and imperialism in Ottoman Egypt and Tunisia between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before there was a cure for Yersenia pestis (the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague), the disease posed a demographic crisis in North Africa and disrupted merchant trade, funeral rites, and social life. When the epidemic struck, it generated anxiety and fear among authorities and laypeople alike, thus spawning a call to action by those who were directly impacted by the disease. This research shows how contagion theory, merchant capital, and political leadership influenced the ability for state and non-state actors to manage several plague outbreaks in Ottoman Egypt and Tunisia. What it goes to show is how autochthons and denizens incorporated quarantine in port areas, utilized popular healing techniques, and buried the recently plagued corpses. Eighteenth-century Egyptians and Tunisians experienced plague in a number of ways, however, the customs and habits that authorities, merchants, and 'ulamā' (scholars) exercised dovetailed with their access to resources and power. The plague outbreaks during the eighteenth century also coincided with the expansion of merchant capital in Egypt and Tunisia—mostly with the East India Company and the Royal African Company. These constituents and their agents influenced the ability of goods and people to migrate across the Mediterranean Sea and across the African continent. While power dynamics were more horizontal in the early eighteenth century, the French military occupation (1798-1801) was a major site of contestation for how local authorities managed the plague outbreaks in Egypt. Two consequences of the bubonic plague epidemic are that officials labeled marginalized groups as vectors of disease and non-elites plague victims often lacked commemoration. Overall, this project sheds light on the political developments and tensions during several major epidemics in Cairo and Tunis while attending to nascent modernization projects in North Africa.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB521501901/

Similar Citations

Article Mikhail, Alan; (2008)
The Nature of Plague in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt (/isis/citation/CBB000930703/)

Book Bulmus, Birsen; (2012)
Plague, Quarantines, and Geopolitics in the Ottoman Empire (/isis/citation/CBB001251697/)

Thesis Bulmus, Birsen; (2008)
The Plague in the Ottoman Empire, 1300--1838 (/isis/citation/CBB001561189/)

Chapter George Michael La Rue; (2016)
Treating Black Deaths in Egypt: Clot-Bey, African Slaves, and the Plague Epidemic of 1834-1835 (/isis/citation/CBB438622060/)

Article Barry, Stéphane; (2008)
La peste: de la 3e pandémie à sa réémergence actuelle (/isis/citation/CBB000932488/)

Thesis Lorenzo Servitje; (2017)
Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture (/isis/citation/CBB079759500/)

Article Gadelrab, Sherry Sayed; (2010)
Medical Healers in Ottoman Egypt, 1517--1805 (/isis/citation/CBB001230193/)

Book Mikhail, Alan; (2011)
Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (/isis/citation/CBB001200956/)

Book Ebrahimnejad, Hormoz; (2009)
The Development of Modern Medicine in Non-Western Countries: Historical Perspectives (/isis/citation/CBB000933048/)

Article Yuval Ben-Bassat; Yossi Ben-Artzi; (2018)
Ottoman Maps of the Empire’s Arab Provinces, 1850s to the First World War (/isis/citation/CBB167184609/)

Book Mikhail, Alan; (2014)
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (/isis/citation/CBB001422352/)

Book Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini; (2022)
Guardarsi da chi non si guarda. La Repubblica di Venezia e il controllo delle pandemie (/isis/citation/CBB098126566/)

Book Bala, Poonam; (2009)
Biomedicine as a Contested Site: Some Revelations in Imperial Contexts (/isis/citation/CBB000950294/)

Book Alberto Tanturri; (2018)
"Il soffio avvelenato del contagio": La peste di Noja del 1815-16 (/isis/citation/CBB014506181/)

Article Néfissa, Kmar Ben; Moulin, Anne Marie; (2010)
La peste nord-africaine et la théorie de Charles Nicolle sur les maladies infectieuses (/isis/citation/CBB001220543/)

Article Kyu-hwan Sihn; (2017)
Reorganizing Hospital Space: The 1894 Plague Epidemic in Hong Kong and the Germ Theory (/isis/citation/CBB906774070/)

Article Gallois, William; (2007)
Local Responses to French Medical Imperialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Algeria (/isis/citation/CBB000772505/)

Authors & Contributors
Mikhail, Alan
Bulmus, Birsen
Zieger, Susan
George Michael La Rue
Tanturri, Alberto
Pittalis, Edoardo
Concepts
Medicine
Plague
Epidemics
Medicine and politics
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Public health
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
16th century
Early modern
20th century
Places
Ottoman Empire
Egypt
Italy
Vietnam
India
Arabian peninsula
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment