Contagion

Disease and commerce are among the most powerful forces that have shaped the modern world. They are also closely intertwined: over many centuries trade has been the single most important factor in the spread of diseases throughout the world. In this pathbreaking book, Mark Harrison provides the first major historical study of contagious illness and commerce. Beginning with the plagues which ravaged much of Eurasia in the fourteenth century, Harrison charts both the passage of disease and measures taken to prevent it. He examines the emergence of public health in the Western world and its subsequent development elsewhere, highlighting the persistent abuse of sanitary measures for economic and political gain, revealing how quarantines and sanitary embargoes have even become weapons of war. Harrison also traces growing opposition to these practices among merchants, medical practitioners and humanitarian reformers, and examines the development of international regulations and institutions to govern public health. Drawing on a wealth of original source material from archives and libraries around the world, Harrison offers a new and horrifyingly relevant perspective on the history of humanity and the world we inhabit today.