Black Death Defense Strategies along the French Coast (1680-1760)
Profile
- Principal Investigator
- Prof. Dr. Mark Hengerer
- Researcher
- Sébastien Demichel
- Project Description
- The project aims to examine vigilance along the French Mediterranean coast from around 1680 to 1760.
Even though the Black Death was still endemic, in particular in the Levant, the intensity of maritime trade taking place in French Mediterranean ports increased. A kind of public health department, the bureau de la santé, was responsible for implementing measures to defend the public against the Black Death. The department’s main measure consisted of enabling access to the French coast by canalization, combined with a quarantine regime. The department was more strictly regulated after the 1720-1722 Black Death epidemic. Even though further cases of the disease were recorded in quarantined areas in the eighteenth century, the disease did not spread to, and along, the coast. In research relating to this period, this fact is attributed to the successful institutionalization of the coastal region after the (big) Black Death epidemic. However, the general public’s involvement is, for the most part, not taken into account.
The project aims to tackle this desideratum of research using a multi-step approach. Firstly, notices/reports/announcements from that time will be analysed. Secondly, standardization and accountability, in combination with an increase in the bureaucratization of the coastal region, will be examined. In addition to these detailed contextualisations, case studies on legal proceedings related to smuggling, due to the quarantine breaches usually involved in such cases, will be investigated. - Phase 2
- Click here for the second funding phase