The Great Plague Scare of 1720

Laurence Monnais is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Asian Studies (CETASE) at Université de Montréal, Canada. She specializes in the history of medicine in Southeast Asia, global histories of health, and the history of alternative medicines. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she is also co-founder and president of HOMSEA (History of Medicine in Southeast Asia). Global Health Histories

“Historians of colonial medicine and anthropologists of pharmaceuticals have been eagerly awaiting this book. With exceptional panache, Monnais transforms the history of global health into a genealogy of our pharmaceutical present. Just like mosquitoes, it seems, drugs have life cycles and ecological niches, and can serve as vectors – not of disease, but rather of European medicine and modernity.” Warwick Anderson, University of Sydney “From colonial indifference and toxic fears to avid consumerism and hybrid therapeutics, Monnais reveals the dynamic history behind Vietnam’s pharmaceutical pasts. Her meticulous research The Great Plague highlights Vietnamese agency in the making of a modern medical Scare of 1720 culture and provides an exemplary study of the origins of medicalization in the global south.” David Arnold, University of Warwick “Brilliantly crafted and ingeniously researched, this is an absorbing exploration of medicalization and modernization under colonial rule that underscores the foundational agency of the colonized and the persistence of therapeutic pluralism. A richly textured study of Vietnam, it also offers a compelling model for Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century understanding the vital role of medicines as vectors of social Atlantic World change across the Global South.” John Harley Warner, Yale University

Cindy Ermus

Monnais

PHARMACEUTICALS The COLONIAL LIFE o f

theGreat PLAGUE SCARE of 1720

Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Printed in the United Kingdom From 1720 to 1722, the French region of Provence and surrounding areas Jacket illustration: photograph by Jim Holmes, Axiom Photographic Agency, Getty Images. experienced one of the last major epidemics of plague to strike Western Europe. The Plague of Provence was a major disaster that left in its wake as many as 126,000 deaths, as well as new understandings about the nature of contagion and the best ways to manage its threat. In this transnational study, Cindy Ermus focuses on the social, commercial, and diplomatic impact of the epidemic beyond French borders, examining reactions to this public health crisis from Italy to Great Britain to Spain and the overseas colonies. She reveals how a crisis in one part of the globe can transcend geographic boundaries and influence society, politics, and public health policy in regions far from the epicentre of disaster.

Cindy Ermus is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at

San Antonio.

Advance praise

‘Ermus’s important new study shows how a regional disaster that caused catastrophic loss of life only within Provence and Languedoc created novel opportunities for nation-state authorities to centralize power and implement policies that led to trade advantages over their economic rivals. Plague in Provence provided rulers a powerful tool: fear’ Ann G. Carmichael, Indiana University, Bloomington

‘This authoritative account of the impact of the great plague of Provence in the 1720s across Europe, and even across the Atlantic, makes a highly original and immensely rewarding exercise in comparative history on a grand scale.’ Paul Slack, Oxford University

Cindy Ermus

UK publication November 2022 US publication February 2023

300 pages 9781108489546 Hardback

£29.99 | $39.99 USD | $45.95 CAD

At a glance

• Offers new ways of thinking about epidemics at a time when the world is learning how to cope with new diseases • Stresses the relevance of disaster studies to contemporary responses • For scholars and students of the history of medicine, disaster studies, and the eighteenth-century Atlantic world