IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB521501901

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

Bonhomme, Edna (Author)
Burnett, David Graham (Advisor)

Princeton University
Burnett, David Graham
Publication date: 2017
Language: English

URI: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1984449707?accountid=12964

Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 269 pp.

Outside Links

Germ theory of disease Medicine and politics Imperialism Plague Death Medicine Commercialization 19th century 18th century Tunisia Egypt Ottoman Empire

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

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB521501901

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Trais Pearson; (2020)
Sovereign Necropolis: The Politics of Death in Semi-Colonial Siam (/p/isis/citation/CBB099369294/)

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

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

Chapter Mahdi Abdeljaouad; (2014)
Mathematics Education in Islamic Countries in the Modern Time: Case Study of Tunisia (/p/isis/citation/CBB346881103/)

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

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

Book Edoardo Pittalis; (2021)
La Serenissima e le epidemie. Scienza, fede e superstizione: come Venezia affrontò il nemico invisibile (/p/isis/citation/CBB615185893/)

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

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

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

Article Chahrour, Marcel; (2007)
“A Civilizing Mission”? Austrian Medicine and the Reform of Medical Structures in the Ottoman Empire, 1838--1850 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000831414/)

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

Book Chakrabarti, Pratik; (2012)
Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics (/p/isis/citation/CBB001252484/)