Pestilence and politics: A global history of the Marseille plague

From 1720 until 1722, the French region of Provence suffered an epidemic of plague, caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, that arrived from the Levant at the port of Marseille in May 1720. During this time, it may have claimed as many as 40,000 to 45,000 lives in Marseille alone – reportedly about half of the city's population. While effective quarantine efforts, both in France and abroad, successfully prevented the scourge from spreading beyond the region of Provence, effects of the plague nevertheless managed to manifest themselves beyond Gallic borders in many ways.

This dissertation is a comparative, transnational study that uses the plague as a lens to explore the diplomatic and commercial interests, as well as the unique responses to biological threat, of three of the most important port cities in the eighteenth-century world, namely, Marseille, London, and Cádiz (which was the capital of the Carrera de Indias, or Route to the Indies). Following the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, these cities shared a deeply intertwined diplomatic relationship. Ramifications also extended to the major colonial centers with which these ports were most closely associated, both in the Americas and Asia.

This study will argue that the 1720 Plague of Provence marked a major shift in Europe from local or municipal-level disaster management, toward more centralized methods for handling calamity. This represents an earlier example of the state-level approach to disaster management and prevention employed around the globe today. Moreover, the unique ways in which European states responded to the Peste of Provence and the Great European Plague Scare that ensued varied according to their diplomatic and commercial interests and objectives, and to the regions' unique historical context and political culture leading up to the outbreak in 1720.

This unique study explores the intersection of commerce, diplomacy, and disease by offering a transnational look at both the plague itself, and eighteenth-century port cities and diplomacy. It reveals the interconnectedness of the early modern world, and highlights biological disasters as major historical forces. In this way, it emphasizes the importance of tracing the ramifications of historical disasters across national and regional boundaries. Fundamentally, the present study provides the reader with a greater understanding of the complex network of forces that have influenced disaster management in the past, and continue to shape such high-level decision making to this day.