Abstract
On 25 May 1720, the Grand Saint-Antoine arrived in Marseilles with a rich cargo from the Levant to be traded in the Provençal city. The Grand Saint-Antoine, according to the well-known story, brought not only riches, but also the plague, giving rise to what historians have traditionally called the Plague of Marseilles. The epidemic lasted for two years and almost half of Marseilles’ population lost their lives. However, the plague had wider and more important repercussions, which reached beyond local geographical boundaries from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic World. Cindy Ermus's The Great Plague Scare of 1720 focuses on the impact of the epidemic on a large scale, from a transnational and transoceanic perspective – a side of the story that has not been previously investigated by scholarship on any extensive basis. First, Ermus renames the disaster as the Plague of Provence, underlining its wider impact beyond the city of Marseilles; second, and more importantly, the book traces the several repercussions prompted by the disaster in different locations. Together with this transoceanic approach, Ermus's key contribution lies in situating the analysis of the Plague of Provence within the framework of disaster studies. The key argument of Ermus's book is that the 1720 plague marked the beginning of what she terms ‘disaster centralism’ – that is, the shift of disaster management from a local level to a centralized approach. This shift is usually traced back to the birth of the welfare state in the nineteenth century, but Ermus proves that this trend started at least a century earlier. This key claim is excellently framed and argued by combining it with the transoceanic perspective of her study and by supporting it with a variety of sources. The wide scope also allows the author to explore in depth the link between the plague, public health measures, and the political and commercial rivalries of key European powers of the time. The book presents a wide range of arguments on a broad geographical scale that are well situated in the contemporary European and Atlantic context. It will be of interest not only to historians focusing on the plague and public health, but also to those interested in the commercial and political dynamics of eighteenth-century European and Atlantic maritime powers.
The book starts in Provence and then gradually broadens its focus to the Atlantic World. Chapter 1 presents the emergence of the plague in Marseilles and its spread through the south of France. Ermus questions the traditional narrative of the Grand Saint-Antoine by suggesting that genomic DNA analysis, which has proved useful in determining the aetiology of the Black Death and other later epidemics, could help prove where the plague actually came from. Ermus underlines that the widely accepted story of the Grand Saint-Antoine bringing the plague from the Levant replicated a key contemporary understanding of the disease as a Levantine product imported into Europe through commerce. This is indeed a much-needed analysis as the scholarship has oftentimes accepted the alleged fault of the Levant in the origin of the disease instead of framing this narrative as part of contemporary medical and cultural discourses. After delineating the emergence and the progress of the plague in Marseilles and Provence, the chapter delves into the analysis of the reactions and the measures undertaken during the epidemic, underlining the unprecedented degree of control exercised by central authorities in Paris.
Chapter 2 moves from Provence to Italy, focusing on Genoa's reaction to the outbreak. Ermus first analyses Genoa's public health measures, focusing on the development of health boards in Italy and the key role of collaboration and standardization in public health matters on the peninsula. The chapter then introduces what Ermus refers to as ‘the invisible commonwealth’ – the communication network on the plague that crossed Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic World. The chapter also focuses on how the Plague of Provence gave rise to a ‘health war’ between Italian states, which would use the crisis as an excuse to jeopardize rivals’ economies, such as in the case of Genoa and Livorno.
The focus moves to Great Britain in Chapter 3. Ermus analyses the British reaction – especially that of London – to the 1720 plague. The chapter considers the intellectual debate on the nature of contagion and the efficacy of quarantine, which was seen as a despotic measure in the public sphere – a view that was worsened by the concomitant burst of the South Sea Bubble. Chapter 4 focuses on Cadiz, the main Spanish port, and how Spanish centralized measures (such as the centralized Board of Health) that stemmed from the threat of the Plague of Provence were used to secure control over Spain's borders and economic advantages over Great Britain and France. Ermus highlights the role of state formation and the centralization of disaster management in shaping Spain’s policies for the centuries to come, in reducing the role of foreign participation in the Spanish market, and in strengthening control over commerce with the Indies.
The final part of the book, Chapter 5, travels to the Atlantic World, exploring the reactions to the Plague of Provence in the Spanish and French colonial world. The chapter extends the argument on disaster centralism to the colonies. However, it also shows how centralized regulations and impositions needed to be balanced by local officials adapting to local realities first and foremost, to avoid rebellion. This shows how little central governments knew of their colonies’ actual and specific situations: quarantines and embargoes exacerbated conditions that were already difficult, with essential demands from the colonies not being met. The key contribution of this chapter, however, is its innovative focus on the Franco-Spanish relationship in the colonial context. After exploring this relationship on European soil in Chapter 4, the last chapter shows how the Plague of Provence gave rise to anti-French policies in Spanish colonies to secure economic advantages, explaining also why Spanish policies in the colonies were stricter than French ones.
The only criticism, if any, that could be made of the book is that the centralization trend and the consequences of public health measures highlighted in the book are not exclusive to critical plague times but also integral to previous and contemporary plague prevention practices; more detailed references to these procedures would have strengthened the book's argument. Nonetheless, Ermus's book provides an innovative, ambitious and timely account of the global repercussions of the 1720 plague, unveiling the political, economic and diplomatic issues associated with the health crisis in Provence. The COVID-19 pandemic has indeed highlighted the need for such studies to understand the global repercussions of disasters from a historical perspective.