Lazarettos in the Mediterranean : the role of quarantine institutions between 1650-1850

Abstract

About a year ago, I had to decide the topic of my dissertation, as a historian and a student of Mediterranean Studies I began to think about a theme that is present throughout the Mediterranean basin and linked with history. During my B.A. (Hons.) course in History in my second year I had a study unit relating public health among the southern Mediterranean states, conducted by Professor John Chircop. I really enjoyed this particular study unit and my assignment was related to the lazaretto of Malta, an institution that really stoke my interest. From that point onwards I kept interesting myself in quarantine, in particular the role of the lazarettos. Thus, it was a natural choice that this was the perfect match for my dissertation work during the M.A. in Mediterranean Studies. Due to time and word limit, it is an impossible task to cover all the time span history and to give a look to all the lazarettos around the Mediterranean. My scope of this work is to show the evolution of the lazarettos from their primary origin in the Italian city states as medical institutions that safeguarded the homeland population from epidemic outbreaks to a much complex function. In fact, through time and in different Mediterranean regions the lazarettos changed their nature and prime focus from a medical perspective to a rather political one. In fact, during the mercantilist era lazarettos were state run for border control, duty tariffs and economic interests. Their scope continued to change radically during the nineteenth century when they were used by imperial mechanism to establish and legitimize their colonial rule. Thus, Chapter One begins with a general overview of the role of the lazaretto, its origin and its function. As it is the Italian city states who gave birth to these institutions of defence against epidemic disease, nonetheless although some practises still exist among us, through time their role changed. In the following chapters I went into detail at three different scenarios during different time periods to show how the role of the lazarettos changed through time and space. Chapter two focuses on France, in particular the Marseilles lazaretto and the creation of the Marsellian quarantine model, which was considered as a revolutionary model when compared to the traditional Italian model. Chapter three focuses on the British possessions in the Mediterranean, showing how by the nineteenth century the British back home were totally against quarantine, but they preserved the lazaretto system that they found in their Mediterranean colonies in order to develop them into an institution of border control that safeguarded their commercial links. Ultimately chapter four regards the Ottoman regions, who through time always neglected quarantine measures, but during the nineteenth century lazarettos were constructed turning into mechanisms of colonization. As the conclusion shows, my intention is to produce a historical study of the changing role of the lazarettos in the Mediterranean basin. From a historical and geographical perspective, I depart from the origin of the lazaretto system in Venice, which created the Italian model of quarantine and gradually expanded throughout the Northern part of the Mediterranean basin. Merging the chapters chronologically I used three separate case studies from different regions across the Mediterranean basin and in different periods throughout my two-century time span. This was done in order to make a strong argument, showing how the lazaretto’s developed their primary objective of medical protection to a much more complex institution that was tied to economic, political, cultural, social and epidemiological dimensions of quarantine.