Quarantine as a tool of 'Modernity' and the construction of the 'Contagious Arab' through the International Sanitary Conferences : 1851-1890s

Abstract

Taking advances in medicine and public health/sanitization as instruments of societal improvements, which can reflect and buttress the so-called transition from traditional vulnerable societies into modernity, this paper explores the intricate effects which Western European Sanitary institutional practices (such as the organisation of Western-style quarantine systems e.g. Lazzaretto infrastructures), imposed as 'international obligations' from 1851, had on the Arab-Mediterranean countries. To be more specific, this study seeks to investigate in what ways did the International maritime sanitary regulations constructed, directed and implemented by the great European powers in the Mediterranean, to combat and stop the spread of contagious disease, effect the transition of Arab societies into what can be called subdued forms of modernity (which in turn would facilitate economic dependency and colonial subjugation). Based on original research in various archives and in the proceedings of the International Sanitary Conferences (from the first ISC organised in Paris in 1851 to the following ones set in various other European capitals up till I 895), this work will also investigate in what ways did the decisions taken, and the international sanitary measures imposed, by these International bodies assist or hinder social and economic development as measured in terms of improved social welfare, rising life opportunities, standards of living and public health -in the Arab-Mediterranean region during the period under review. This work will keep in mind the wider Western European geostrategic interests evident at the time, as well as their prevailing representation of the Arab world under Ottoman rule as "in need of Sanitization". Indeed, the International Sanitary Conferences organised from 1851 to 1895 -even through their contrasting Quarantinist/ AntiQuarantinist positions - reveal each European power's preoccupation with the speed by which Asiatic Cholera was spreading to their borders, due to increasingly rapid transport. The measures they adopted reflected this anxiety. Essentially, the delegates at these conferences intended to protect. "Civilized Europe" from this and other "exotic disease" which, most of them converged into thinking, were generated from and transmitted by the "Arab territories" under Ottoman rule (with the Muslim pilgrimage to the Mecca indicated as a principal conduit). Concurrently, of course, European diplomacy was constructing the image of the "Sick man" to represent a collapsing Ottoman Empire, coupling this with the emerging perception of the Mecca Pilgrims as the "diseased Other" - both these metaphors being very significant to the core arguments and theoretical approach presented in this paper.