The Unification of the Globe by Disease?

The International Sanitary Conferences on

Cholera, 1851-1894
Author(s): Valeska Huber
Source: The Historical Journal , Jun., 2006, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), pp. 453-476
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4091623

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The Historical Journal, 49, 2 (2006), pp. 453-476 ? 2oo6 Cambridge University Press
doi:Io.IoI7/SooI8246Xo6oo528o Printed in the United Kingdom

THE UNIFICATION OF THE GLOBE BY

DISEASE? THE INTERNATIONAL
SANITARY CONFERENCES ON

CHOLER A, 1851-1894"
VALESKA HUBER

University of Konstanz

ABSTRAC T. This article analyses the proceedings of eight International S

convened between I85I and 1894 to address the danger that cholera e
conferences are examined in the context of the intellectual and institutional c
in the light of the changing structure of internationalist endeavours that
nineteenth century. The article shows that the International Sanitary Conf
operation as they were arenas where differences and boundaries between
were defined. Furthermore, it seeks to shed light on a broader tension of the
that the world was growing together to an unprecedented extent due to n
Europeans to establish and expand profitable commercial and colonial r
development increased the vulnerability of Europe -for example to the im
ception that the world was becoming increasingly interconnected was th
trollable boundaries. The conferences attempted to find solutions as to ho
resorting to traditional barriers; like semipermeable membranes they
communication but closed for others.

In the context of the plague and influenza epidemics of

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has coined the expression o
globe by disease.1 He argued that in this time a 'comm
created along trade routes and through the movement
even more suitable to describe the cholera epidemics of
Historians have been interested for many years in the d
disease, which haunted Europe from the 1830s onward

Beerenstr. 47a, I4163 Berlin, Germany [email protected]

* This article is based on my M.Phil. dissertation (University of Ca
thank Richard Evans for his supervision, Ludmilla Jordanova for
anonymous referee for this journal for helpful suggestions guiding the t
into article.

1 Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, 'A concept: the unification of the globe

and method of the historian (Brighton, i98i), pp. 28-91. 2

453

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 454 VALESKA HUBER

century. Two seminal articles in t

Asa Briggs set the framework for num
of localized social histories looking at
munity.3 This article approaches the h
historians have become increasingl
connections and entanglements betw
and continents.4 Inspired by these wor
Sanitary Conferences together wit
pamphlets will be used here to interpr
After outlining why the cholera ep
of the unification of the globe by dise
by looking at the unification of the g
discoveries concerning the causation
to foster international co-operation in
of weight and measures or of postal
sanitary conferences mark the first a
gation of disease through internation
procedures. After a chronological dis
here, the article will turn in a concludin
disease. The debates of the confere
traditional barriers against epidemic
keeping Europe secure from the impo

Unknown in Europe before the nineteenth century, cholera spread there from its
origins in India along increasingly busy trade routes and waterways in several
epidemic waves between 183o and the 189os. Once inside Europe, cholera spot-
lighted the downside of industrialization and drew attention to the living con-
ditions of the poor, urbanization, overcrowding, and lack of sanitation. By exposing
the Janus-faced nature of progress and modernity, it undermined the optimism of
the increasingly confident middle classes. The rapidity and violence with which it
struck and the sudden diarrhoeic attacks which accompanied it were especially
shocking for nineteenth-century sensibilities. This aspect of the disease's impact

3 Asa Briggs, 'Cholera and society in the nineteenth century', Past and Present, ig (I96I), pp. 76-96;
Roderick E. McGrew, 'The first cholera epidemic and social history', Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
34 (i96o), pp. 61-73. Amongst other studies see Francois Delaporte, Disease and civilization: the cholera in
Paris, 1832 (Cambridge, MA, 1986); Barbara Dettke, Die asiatische Hydra: Die Cholera von 183o/31 in Berlin
und den preufischen Provinzen Posen, Preufen und Schlesien (Berlin and New York, 1995); Michael Durey, The
return of the plague: British society and the cholera, i83I-2 (Dublin, 1979); RichardJ. Evans, Death in Hamburg:
society and politics in the cholera years, 183o-i91o (Oxford, 1987); Roderick E. McGrew, Russia and the cholera,
1823-1832 (Madison, 1965); Frank M. Snowden, Naples in the time of cholera, 1884-I9ii (Cambridge,
1995).
4 See for example Christopher A. Bayly, The birth of the modem world, 178o-I9i4: global connections and
comparisons (Oxford, 2004);Jiorgen Osterhammel, Geschichtswissenschaftjenseits des Nationalstaats: Studien zu
Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich (Gottingen, 2ool).

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 455

has been analysed in depth by the studies mentione

colonial India has also been fruitfully explored.5 How
assessment that in cholera's 'status as invader, and i
graphical range, lay its impact and its influence on n
the degree to which contemporaries associated the e
transport, exploding international trade, and the in
enterprises has caught academic interest to a more li
The transmission of diseases between distant place
enon of the nineteenth century, as Le Roy Ladurie d
cholera, however, diseases could travel at a new spee
profit from the revolution in transport achieved by th
and railways. Migratory patterns changed and waves
Western Europe on their way to the New World. The
also led to a shifting perception of time and space.' No
of unlimited and borderless space appeared frequentl
International Sanitary Conferences: 'Today, as ste
munication so swift, as thoughts, associated to electric
space in a moment, as, in a word, man attempts
the world was moving closer together: 'Southern Ru
railways; she enters in relation with Persia, with Mes
from now one will travel by express train from Bag
of a shrinking and boundless world went hand in han
exposed and vulnerable. Cholera increased this perce
gility in a period when technology was changing th
extent: 'The Asiatic cholera, profiting, like man, fr
makes its incursions much easier than fifty years ago
the rapidity of steamships and railway'.1'

5 See David Arnold, Colonizing the body: state medicine and epidemic
(Berkeley, 1993); Mark Harrison, Public health in British India: Anglo-In
(Cambridge, 1994); and idem, 'A question of locality: the iden
860-1890', in David Arnold, ed., Warm climates and Western medicine:
15oo-19oo (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 133-59; Sheldon Watts, 'From
sponses to cholera in British-ruled India and Egypt 186o to c. I921', Jo
PP. 321-74-

6 Anne Hardy, 'Cholera, quarantine, and the English preventive system', Medical History, 37 (1993),
pp. 250-69, at p. 250.
7 Stephen Kern, The culture of time and space, 1880-1918 (London, 1983); Wolfgang Schivelbusch,
'Railroad space and railroad time', New German Critique, 14 (1978), pp. 31-40.
8 Ministere des Affaires Etranghres, Procis-verbaux de la Confirence sanitaire internationale ouverte a Paris le
27juillet 1851 (Paris, 1852), Protocol No 25, 31 Oct. 1851, delegate of the Two Sicilies Carbonaro, p. 6. In
the following, the proceedings of the conferences will be abbreviated as, for example, Paris 1851. All
translations are by the author.
9 Protocoles et procis-verbaux de la Confirence sanitaire internationale de Rome inaugurie le 20 mai 1885 (Rome,
1885), Proces-Verbal (Commission Technique) N' 2, 23 May 1885, French delegate Rochard, p. 88.
10 Procis-verbaux de la Confirence sanitaire internationale ouverte a Constantinople le 13 fivrier 1866
(Constantinople, i866), Annexe au Proces-Verbal de la 240 Seance, Rapport sur les mesures d'hygihne
a prendre contre le cholera Asiatique, p. 4.

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456 VALESKA HUBER

Fig. I. Edmund Charles Wendt, A treatise on Asiatic cholera (New

of the Wellcome Library, London.

While this discourse relating to a world witho

classic debate about the protection from epidem
cerned with the defence of borders. When cho
of reference was the plague, which had haunte
century onwards. The traditional methods to fen
the plague were quarantine systems and cordons s
confinement - obviously never implemented in
authors such as Michel Foucault and Albert C
impracticable and undesirable in a world of incr
connections, where ever larger sums of money d
borders. Many Europeans profited from this gro
were therefore in favour of dismantling travel res
By the time cholera arrived in Europe, ant
tradition in Britain. Pamphlets against quarant
as useless, a nuisance to trade, obnoxious, and

n See Howard Markel, Quarantine! East European Jewish immig

1892 (Baltimore and London, 1997), pp. iff; Oleg P. Schepin an
quarantine (Madison, i991); Gunther E. Rothenberg, 'The Aus
the bubonic plague: 1710-1871 ', Journal of the History of Medic
12 Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth oftheprison
Camus, The plague (London, 1987).

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 457

quarantine after its failure to halt the first wave of

widespread, the supporting arguments varied, as thi
scientific debate about the origins of the disease. Erwin
seminal yet controversial article about the conflict b
miasmatists or anticontagionists, as he calls them, w
ditions were decisive for the outbreak of diseases such
presence of the causative agent which could be trans
another."3 He argued that the political culture of libe
rise of anticontagionism in the nineteenth century.
under scrutiny here covers the period from the heyd
contagionist period to the triumph of Koch's bacteri
cerning the causation of cholera. While the scientific d
at the centre of this article, the close reading of the deb
between contagionists and anticontagionists is not so
describes it, but that one could at the same time b
causative principle for diseases such as cholera and
their unfeasibility and uselessness. It furthermore sh
between science and politics and shows that the g
science went hand in hand with a growing standardi
of internationalist meetings.
Already in 1851 most of the doctors involved at
that cholera was a problem that transcended nat
international co-operation was needed to tackle it. In
English translation of the work of Robert Koch
Pettenkofer, Thomas Whiteside Hime remarked that
concerns most immediately, not only our personal an
may be said without exaggeration, it concerns the w
cholera epidemics were an international problem in
hand the disease travelled at new speed without resp
the other the heterogeneous quarantine regulations -
and haggling - should be transformed into an interna
uniformity. If both cholera and its prevention were
solution could not come about on a national level. Or
Ladurie's formulation of the unification of the globe b

13 Erwin H. Ackerknecht, 'Anticontagionism between 1821 and

Medicine, 22 (1948), pp. 532-93. Margaret Pelling and Roger Coo
model as simplifying: Margaret Pelling, Cholera, fever, and English
Roger Cooter, 'Anticontagionism and history's medical record
Treacher, eds., The problem of medical knowledge: examining the social
1982), pp. 87-io8. For a more recent discussion of contagionism in
Contagion: disease, government, and the 'social question' in nineteenth-c

conparative contribution see Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the s

1999).
14 Introduction to Max von Pettenkofer, Cholera: how to prevent and resist it (London, 1883), pp. 5ff

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458 VALESKA HUBER
different parts of the globe had to be unified not
to deal with it.

The second half of the nineteenth century wi

national events. A list of international meetings
twenty-four entries up to 1851 (and only one be
1851 and 1899.15 Scientific congresses multiplied
ment of international standards and to the prof
International Telegraphic Union (1865), the Uni
International Union of Weights and Measures (18
meridian in Greenwich as a basis for the world's
were examples of regulation in areas that could n
from state to state." Despite their diversity, ma
organizations shared some characteristics. Th
awareness of an increasingly interlinked world
self-confidence, and were part of a broader tend
regularization. Furthermore, they provided speci
identity formation, especially between represe
Nationalism and internationalism thus appeared
The series of International Sanitary Conferenc
ceived scarce attention by historians. Barkhuus
and Foley, and the authors of The first ten years o
interpreted the conferences in passing as the slo
operation in the domain of health - a teleologica
on when they wrote, culminated in the creation of
the World Health Organization (WHO).19 Norm
the most profound study on the topic, likewis
painted a more confrontational picture of the con
the shifting medical theories. William Bynum ha
is attempting. While he established some comp
and other internationalist endeavours, he fa

15 Union des Associations Internationales, Les Congris Inter

(Brussels, 1960). See also Claude Tapia andJacques Taieb, 'C
de 1815 ' 1913', Relations Internationales, 5 (1976), pp. 11-35-
16 For the analysis of a variety of these congresses, see Le
(i85o-I914), special issue Mil Neuf Cent Cahiers Georges Sorel: Revue
scientifiques internationaux, special issue Relations Internationales, 6
17 For contributions on further internationalist projects a
Geyer and Johannes Paulmann, eds., The mechanics of internation
184os to the First World War (Oxford, 2001). is
19 Arne Barkhuus, 'The Sanitary Conferences', Ciba Sympos
Goodman, International health organizations and their work
Maylott, and John W. Foley, 'International health securi
Conventions and the World Health Organisation', Departmen
Organization, he first ten years of the World Health Organizatio
20 Norman Howard-Jones, The scientific background of the Int
(Geneva, 1975).

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 459

comparisons in greater depth as he attempted to

fourteen conferences between 1851 and 1938.21 M
and Krista Maglen have used the proceedings of
broader scope.22 Contrary to the aim of this artic
implementation of preventive strategies and
International Sanitary Conferences exclusively as a
in disease prevention. Other authors such as Mar
have referred to specific conferences, especially
context of their research on the regulation of th
focus here is not so much on the implementation
of science and diplomacy and the workings of nas
to reveal the broader themes debated at the conf
question of disease protection.

II

After some abortive initiatives the first International Sanitary Conference was
convened in 1851 - the year of the Great Exhibition in London which has often
been interpreted as the starting point of internationalism. It was held in Paris, the
capital of nineteenth-century internationalism. Ten such meetings took place
until the turn of the century, eight of which dealt partly or exclusively with the
defence of Europe against cholera and will be surveyed here. The International
Sanitary Conference in Paris (23July 1851-I9January 1852) started off without a
precise programme.24 The rules of the game (such as the voting procedures for
example) were constantly under debate and a lot of time was spent on organiza-
tional points. This showed to what extent internationalism was still in its infancy
and explained the length of the conference lasting just under six months.
A further reason for the length of the conference was the attempt of co-
operation between scientists and diplomats. The International Sanitary
Conferences (with the exception of the 1859 conference) differed from the
mushrooming scientific congresses of the period in that they gathered scientist
and diplomats and had a political rather than a scientific agenda. Although in
the opening session it was stated that scientific discussions were to be avoided, the

21 William F. Bynum, 'Policing hearts of darkness: aspects of the International Sanitary

Conferences', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 15 (1993), PP. 421-34, with pp. 426-34 actually
analysing the conferences.
22 Baldwin, Contagion and the state; Krista Maglen, 'Intercepting infection: quarantine, the port
sanitary authority and immigration in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain' (Ph.D.
thesis, Glasgow, 2001).
23 Mark Harrison, 'Quarantine, pilgrimage, and colonial trade', The Indian Economic and Social
Histoy Review, 29 (1992, pp. 117-44; William R. Roff, 'Sanitation and security: the imperial powers and
the nineteenth-century Hajj', in R. Serjeant and R. L. Bidwell, eds., Arabian Studies, vi (London, 1982),
pp. I43-60.
24 Delegations from Austria-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Greece, the Papal States, Portugal,
Russia, Sardinia, the Two Sicilies, Spain, Turkey, and Tuscany.

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 460 VALESKA HUBER
conference abounded in lengthy debates over d
garding the causation of diseases such as choler
sented this lack of clarity and the battles betwee
opinions and criticized the scientists as being lon
This implied that the remedies proposed agains
However, many delegates agreed that barriers
sanitaires were unfeasible - for example the Aus
provided the cordon sanitaire against the plague
lishing maritime quarantines against cholera, we
land borders are concerned; and we cannot act
recognize, I think, the impossibility of erecting a
country. '25
The French delegate went even further in pointing out the anachronism of the
traditional measures:

Add now the communications between the peoples, today so numerous and more and
more rapid; the navigation by steamship, the railways, and on top of that this happy
tendency of the populations to visit each other, to mix, to merge, a tendency that seems to
make of different peoples a sole and large family, and you will be forced to admit that for
such a disease, so widespread and under these conditions, cordons and quarantines are not
only powerless and useless, but they are, in the very great majority of cases, impossible, and
that everything shows that their time has passed.26

Contrary to this description of humanity as one big family, the conference was
heavily biased towards Europe, as the list of members shows. According to Akira
Iriye, the fundamental flaw of internationalism was its Eurocentrism.27 The pro-
ceedings are teeming with condescending Eurocentric expressions. More than
once Europeans conceptualized the project of the conferences as a civilizing
mission geared towards the 'Orient' under the aegis of hygiene and compared
themselves either to the Roman Empire or to the Christian crusaders. While
France and Britain were formally co-operating at the early conferences, the con-
flict over influence in the Middle East - the so-called Eastern question - gained
importance and influenced the debates about the restructuring of the sanitary
administration of the Ottoman Empire at the different conferences.28
Despite the depiction of a world that was growing closer together, through the
danger of cholera, through the increase in communication and transport, or
through the internationalist project itself, the delegates of the International
Sanitary Conferences stated again and again that their aim was the defence of

25 Paris 1851, Protocol N' 5, 14 Aug. 1851, Austrian delegate Menis, p. 8.

26 Ibid., Protocol N?II, 27 Sept. 1851, French delegate Melier, pp. 9ff
27 See Akira Iriye, Cultural internationalism and world order (Baltimore and London, 1997), p. 50.
28 For the British-French conflict see Report of Perrier and Sutherland to Earl Granville on the
political role of the French Sanitary posts in the Levant, 22Jan. 1852, London, National Archives (NA),

International Sanitary Conference at Paris: reports from the British delegates (July I85I-February
1852), PC/I/4533.

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 461
Europe against an evil originating in Asia - hence the focus of the
the danger cholera posed to European countries, although it
higher mortality in other regions of the world.29 However, the de
against cholera was to be achieved not through old-fashioned barr
Europe from Asia, but through new types of transit, and by actio
cholera passed through on its way to Europe. This made actors at t
Europe clearly relevant to the questions debated at the conference
to the east of Europe thus highlighted the importance of their role a
between where the disease originated and Western Europe.

At the very moment when, thanks to the railway, the borders of the di
Europe crumble, it is to be hoped that all the vows of the Occident be
Russia, so that she finds it worthy of her greatness to accept, against As
noble role that Austria has fulfilled for a long time against the Oriental p

The outcome of the 1851 conference was a detailed convention, w

ratified by France, Portugal, and Sardinia - the latter two withdre
this small number of ratifying countries, in 1859 a second conferenc
Paris (9 April-30 August 1859) to modify the convention. While the
as at the first conference were represented, this was the sole con
only diplomats were invited to avoid the lengthy and unproductiv
1851 conference. However, the conference was still very long and
cessful, due to the still too limited agreement about the causation
and because of European disunity chiefly linked to the war in Ita
Similar to the first conference the treatment of the delegates o
Empire showed a double standard with regard to different states.
states often easily outvoted and overlooked the Ottoman Empire, w
very concerned about breaches of their own national sovereignty
also saw the development of different strategies to establish influen
of the Ottoman Empire: while the British opted for more infor
French stood for a more formalized European presence.31
This conference also introduced double standards with regard to
of cross-border enterprises. While troopships possessed a high risk
were not to be subjected to controls: 'The warships should, as a ge
themselves with a bill of health at the port of departure; howeve
exempt from this formality under exceptional circumstances whic

29 Sheldon Watts has claimed that while in Britain 130,ooo deaths from chol
during the nineteenth century, in India between 18oo and 1925 more than 25
disease. Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and history: disease, power, and imperialism (New
1997), p. 167. See also Ahmad Seyf, 'Iran and cholera in the nineteenth century', Mid
38 (2002), pp. 169-78.
30 Paris 1851, Protocol N' 12, 30 Sept. 1851, delegate of the Two Sicilies Carbona
31 See letter Perrier to earl of Malmesbury, 20 June 1859, and Perrier to Ru
London, NA, International Conference for the improvement of the system of
Mediterranean; copies of the despatches from Sir Anthony Perrier, UK delegat
and related papers, PC/I/267o.

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 462 VALESKA HUBER
estimation of the commander and for which
government. '32
The 1866 Conference (13 February-26 Septembe
distinguishing different cross-border enterprises
after the fourth epidemic which had travelled
after a cholera outbreak in Mecca. At this conference the conflict between the
'Orient' and the West became more explicit. The distinction between different
types of mobility is a revealing example as to how the differences between West
and 'Orient' were reinforced. Mobility and exchange were seen as markers of
modernity and civilization:
In the Orient, for example, where the villages are relatively rare, where the relations
between one town and another are not as frequent as in central Europe and where the
populations have a sedentary lifestyle, isolation is more easily applied than in those countries
where the rapidity and multiplicity of communications, the commercial activity, and the
exchange of interests keep the waves of populations in constant movement.34

At the same time, mobility and fluidity could also be markers of backwardness:
while in Europe, the borders were demarcated and controllable, in the Orient
the populations most of the time itinerant and nomad cross the borders unceasingly and in
great numbers at a hundred different points. These populations only subject themselves to
material force and do not have the least respect for the law, be it sanitary or civil; on the
contrary, they do everything they can to violate it.35

This distinction between different types of mobility ties into the categorization
effort that has been touched upon and is one of the themes that runs like a thread
through the conferences. The main example for such a category was the Mecca
pilgrim. The debate concerning the regulation of the pilgrim traffic led to huge
antagonisms between Western Europeans and the delegates of the Muslim
countries. At this conference an emergency measure was enacted against the
heavy protest of the Muslim representatives. The French proposal of simply in-
terrupting all maritime communication with the Hedjaz and thereby detaining
the pilgrims without sufficient food or space in Mecca, which was presented just
after the opening speeches praising the unity of all humankind, stood for a radical
form of confinement that the delegates would have dismissed as completely
anachronistic if aimed at a European region. Euphemistically, the proposal stated:
'The pilgrims will be subjected to quarantine, either on the spot for those who
prefer to await the end of the epidemic in the Hedjaz, or in the desert for the

32 Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Protocoles de la Conference sanitaire internationale ouverte a Paris le 9
avril 1859 (Paris, 1859), Annex Protocol N' 24, Rapport sur la patente des Bitiments de Guerre, p. 9-10.
33 Delegations from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain,
Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Persia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.
34 Constantinople i866, Rapport sur les mesures quarantenaires applicables aux provenances choler-
iques, p. 18. Note: in what follows, the term 'Orient' will be used without quotation marks for the sake
of readability, always being aware of the nineteenth-century connotations of the term.
35 Ibid., Protocol NO 38, 17 Sept. 1866, Persian delegate Sawas, p. Io.

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 463
greater number, who will follow the caravans.'36 Despite the pr
Muslim delegates who condemned the proposal as cynical (the w
desert was only feasible for the physically strong), the emergenc
enacted; however, in spite of persistent rumours cholera did no
Mecca that year.
The Ottoman and Persian delegates reacted to the unequal trea
they received at the conferences with scathing irony:

If I have difficulties grasping the sense and the connections between your
should not astonish you: I come from the centre of Asia, and I would like
origin would suffice to make me at a European conference the object of
would moreover only heighten your superiority.37

However, the self-depiction of the Ottoman and Persian

ambiguous. While they stressed that Europe and the Orient were
different, they still wanted to belong to the emerging internation
Mirza Malkom Khan formulated the dilemma: 'I am Oriental at the same time
as being member of this conference; I want to work towards the aim of this
conference without forgetting anything of what we owe to the Asian spirit.'38 One
reaction to the hardening of the distinction between East and West was the
attempt of the delegates of countries at Europe's Eastern border, especially Russia
and the Ottoman Empire, to fashion themselves as equals to Europe's core
powers by depicting their countries as hygienically trustworthy, reforming, and
modern, and by stressing their strategic roles as collaborators in the fight against
cholera. Persia, represented for the first time at the 1866 conference, portrayed
itself as a modern and civilized country because of the country's connection to
Europe by the trinity of administration (for more than sixty years there had been
more than twenty European ambassadors in Persia), education (Persians studying
in Europe and bringing European knowledge to Persia), and information tech-
nology (the telegraph which connected Persia and Europe).39 Mirza Malcom
Khan, the delegate of Persia, referred to the geographic location of his country.
'The Persian government, could, despite its willingness, only stop the march of
cholera on one side, towards its Eastern borders. There, it could act energetically
and it would be able to set a tremendous barrier against cholera.'40 The Ottoman
Empire was applying for financial support as 'Turkey had not only to protect

36 Ibid., Annexe au Proces-Verbal N? i, Proposition sur les mesures A prendre dans le cas of0 le
cholera se manifersterait cette annee parmi les pelerins reunis A La Mecque, presentie par les Dledguis
du Gouvernement frangais.
37 Printed addition to an interrupted speech by Mirza Malkom Khan, p. I, London, NA, Cholera
Conferences, Constantinople, Commissioners, vol. 2 (1866), FO/78/2006.
38 Considirants presentes par le general Mirza Malkom Khan, A l'appui du projet d'amendement
elabore par son collegue Dr Savas, delegue de Perse, London, NA, Cholera Conferences,
Constantinople, Commissioners, vol. 2 (1866), FO/78/2006.

39 Constantinople 1866, Protocol N? 13, 7June 1866, Persian delegate Mirza Malkom Khan, pp. 6-7.
40 Ibid., Protocol N? 30, 27 Aug. 1866, Persian delegate Mirza Malkom Khan, p. 15.

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464 VALESKA HUBER
itself, but, owing to its geographic position, it h
geographically located on the border of Europe
the attempt to be taken seriously as a partner a
At the 1866 conference, the scientists were able t
its aftermath, Dr Fauvel published the outcomes
nature of the disease.42 After the 1873 epidemic
this time in Vienna, with the aim of translating
international agreement which was designed to
geneous protective measures against cholera (i J
objective was to intervene near the areas in whi
disease could reach Europe: 'We have to stop th
India, everyone knows it, from taking his trips; at
as closely as possible to its departure point.'44
This conference was much shorter than the ear
growing standardization of internationalism. Ho
tions never materialized into legal documen
strengthening nationalism of the European state
between European states were negotiated throu
compromising. Alliances were forged accord
especially if a country had not many interests a
International Sanitary Conferences witnessed str
ferent delegations. These conflicts intensified, how
Especially the relationship between France and G
1874 conference in the aftermath of the Franco-
cisms of internationalism began to be formulated:
were afraid of a diminution of their sovereignty t
'India ought not to be fettered or cramped by an
The 1885 conference in Rome (20 May-I3 June
national than its predecessors in terms of the co
this did not change the Eurocentric character of

41 Ibid., Protocol N' 29, 25 Aug. 1866, Ottoman delegate

42 A. Fauvel, Le cholira: itiologie et prophylaxie - origine, endim
d'hygiine, mesures de quarantaine et mesures spiciales a prendre en Orien
en Europe. Exposi des travaux de la confirence sanitaire internationale
43 Delegations from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, E
Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Persia, Po
Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.
44 Procis-verbaux de la Confirence sanitaire internationale ouve
Protocol No2, 2July 1874, Italian delegate Dr Mariano Sem
45 Letter India Office, 14 Oct. 1875, London, NA, Internat
of Enquiry, Permanent Council, vol. I. Proposals for prevent
the East (Dec. 1874-Dec. 1876), FO/7/982.
46 Delegations from Argentina, Austria-Hungary, Belgium
Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, India, Italy,Jap
Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzer

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 465
dominated by Britain, the British delegate for India, and the con
and the aim remained the defence of Europe against cholera and
standardized measures.
The debates revolved around the control of the Suez Canal, which had been
opened in 1869 and diminished the distance between India, the origin of cholera,
and Europe by around 40 per cent. While the topic had been deliberately avoided
at the 1874 conference, the first conference after the opening of the canal, now it
came to the forefront. The canal was a powerful symbol for both the technological
supremacy of Europe and its increasing vulnerability. Thomas Cook hailed it as
'the greatest engineering feat of the present century'.47 While Egypt's role as the
'natural barrier to the invasion of the epidemic from the tropics'48 had been
formulated before the opening of the Canal, after 1869, Suez became the main
gate which had to be shut in cholera's face to make Europe secure. A second theme
of the conference was the creation of an International Agency of Notification
which should track down border crossers and disseminate the knowledge of
cholera outbreaks more quickly through the use of information technology.
However, the conference failed to come to an agreement.
This time, the failure was not due to conflicts in medical science. The 1885
conference in Rome was the first after Robert Koch's successful 1883 expedition
to Egypt. Despite the fact that the Florentine scientist Filippo Pacini had first
described cholera bacillus in 1854, it was only thirty years later and in the context
of the wider triumph of bacteriology that Robert Koch's proof of the vibrio cholerae
became more generally accepted.49 As the century unfolded, laboratory science
and bacteriology overruled the reference to past experiences prevalent at the first
conferences and uniformity replaced the co-existence of different theories. The
new methods were associated with coherence, exactitude, and modernity, while
at the first conferences science was seen as long-winded and impractible. Medical
knowledge became specialist knowledge which was complicated and not access-
ible to the diplomats. In relation to this development stood the increasing influ-
ence of individual doctors such as Robert Koch and Adrien Proust at the
conferences. While this self-fashioning of the modern scientist meant on the one
hand that diplomacy and science belonged now to completely different spheres,
at the same time science became relevant to politics to a formerly unknown

47 Thomas Cook in the Excursionist and Tourist Advertiser, I July 1869, quoted in Edward Said,
Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient (London, 1978), p. 88.
48 Letter from Henri H. Calvert (British delegate to the Egyptian board of Health) to Colonel E.
Stanton, 7 Oct. 1865, London, NA, Cholera Conferences, Constantinople, Diplomatic, Lord Cowley,
Mr Grey, Lord Lyons, Colonel Stanton, M. Musurus, Domestic various, vol. I (1865), FO/78/2005.
49 See William Coleman, 'Koch's comma bacillus: the first year', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 61
(1987), pp. 315-42; Mariko Ogawa, 'Uneasy bedfellows: science and politics in the refutation of Koch's
bacterial theory of cholera', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 74 (2oo000), pp. 67I-707; Christoph
Gradmann, 'Das reisende Labor: Robert Koch erforscht die Cholera 1883/84', Medizinhistorisches
Journal, 38 (2003), pp. 35-56.

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 466 VALESKA HUBER
extent. In the fight against cholera politicians h
and prescriptions.
It was not the conflict between different scienti
ference to fail. Nevertheless, science did become
competition. The rivalry between Pasteur und
German and French commissions to isolate the vib
illustration of this development: 'At the same ti
the British, and other nations were engaged in a
in the name of civilization, they were also invol
conquer disease in the name of science. '5 This
more explicitly due to political nationalism. The
expanding Britain and the continental states be
The internationalist meetings thus became place
measures which were taken to force England to rec
conference of Berlin, which had the aim of giving inst
territories ('herrenlose Lainder'); the conference of Par
the Suez Canal out of England's grasp; the conferen
occupation in Egypt of control over sanitary measures, w
trade.51

However, the European powers did not succeed in counterbalancing British

dominance through the weak apparatus of internationalism. At the 1885 confer-
ence, Britain withdrew from the debates and made sure that the conference was
adjourned without being reconvened. More decisive than the question of who
had the power to voice their interests at these conferences was therefore that of
who had the power simply to refuse to co-operate.
After the failure to come to a solution in 1885, the main topic at the 1892
conference in Venice (5-31 January 1892) was again passage in quarantine
through the Suez Canal.52 The delegates agreed upon a scheme, which brought
together many of the themes which had been touched upon at earlier con-
ferences. All the ships passing the canal were to be classified according to whether
they had had a case of cholera on board (pilgrim ships were always treated as
suspicious, even without a documented case of cholera). While those without any
registered case could pass the canal without stopping at any harbour on their way,
suspected ships could only pass without inspection and observation if they tele-
graphically informed the ports they were passing and if they had a doctor and a
disinfecting machine on board.53 Information technology thus became a crucial

50 Evans, Death in Hamburg, p. 269.

51 Nationalzeitung, 20 May 1885, Berlin, Bundesarchiv, Berufung einer Sanittitskonferenz nach
Rom, R/901/220399.
52 Delegations from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain,
Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, and Turkey (including
Egypt).
53 Protocoles etprocis-verbaux de la Confirence sanitaire internationale de Venise inaugurie le5janvier 1892 (Rome,
1892), Protocol No 4, 9Jan. 2892, p. 114.

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 467
element. As the Austrian delegate put it: 'The telegram is a proph
in the largest sense of the word. '5
The role of the new medical science was equally extended. Che
fection and modern scientific devices such as disinfection mach
the passage from a diseased to a healthy region without implemen
in quarantine. The 1892 conference put a much stronger emphasis
bacteriological tests on the spot and on disinfection in making th
Asia to Europe more secure: Argopoulos, the representative of Gr
which had previously been strongly in favour of quarantine dec
ence of our days is able to suffocate the germs of the scourge on th
is why we all agree upon protecting ourselves against the danger
by measures based on disinfection in place of quarantine.'55
However the new methods also received criticism. Dr Karlinski,
ited the El-Tor lazaretto for Mecca pilgrims, reported in 1892:

Despite remaining for twenty minutes in the sterilizer, not only were th
not killed which I could see by transferring them to a fresh culture med
sealing wax and the normal wax had not melted - however this would ha
already at a temperature of 450 ... The shirts soiled with pus and blood of
were covered with boils were simply given to the next.56

The Suez Canal compromise highlighted the boundaries betwee

diplomacy, nationalism and internationalism, and the West and th
fundamentally, the idea was to create a gate between the Orient a
which was open for commercial enterprises but closed for micr
suspicious elements. The proposal came in a specifically scientifi
presented by one of the most influential doctors at the conferences,
Thereby it shed light on the professionalization of science and th
modern science could be used for political or commercial purpose
the affair gave proof of the intricate relationship between n
internationalism. For Britain, the conference was an arena to sh
supremacy; for the other powers it was a question of alliance with
negotiation of a limited compromise. The British attitude of br
national agreements and of acting to promote her trade interests
the French depiction of cholera as an international problem
action: 'The English argument "'Everyone is master in his own ho
irrefutable if the ships did not pass through the Canal which is a
England and to the other European nations. Here, the quest
national; it is international. '58

54 Venice 1892, Protocol N' 6, I Jan. 1892, Austrian delegate Kuefstein, p. 146.
55 Ibid., Protocol N' Io, 23Jan. 1892, p. 175.
56 Ibid., Annex vi, Protocol N' 2, Bericht des Distriktsarztes Dr Justin
Landesregierung in Sarajevo, Konjika, 19 Oct. 1892, p. 91.
57 See for example Venice r892, Protocol N? 4, 9Jan. 1892, p. 104.
58 Ibid., French delegate Proust, p. 116.

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468 VALESKA HUBER
The Suez Canal issue finally highlighted the r
Europe and the Orient, ambiguously shifting b
tation. While treating the countries of the Middl
relied on their assistance. 'You make of Egypt a
then you tell her "Pay for it! "'59 protested the
demonstrating that for him, the relationship b
essentially an unequal one.
The 1893 conference in Dresden (11 March-15
debate the cholera invasions by land and the co
again this was an attempt to replace arbitrary
measures by uniform regulations (especially rega
rivers) to counter the resentment caused by th
measures during the 1892 cholera epidemic.
The expansion of the railway network posed
inspections and disinfection take place in a tim
ered without any contact between the passenger
was passing? Should they be performed at the po
on board the train? The debate bore signific
through the Suez Canal: both were addressin
changed the way in which space was traversed. N
brought into contact with each other - another
elling was that one could cross large parts of the
with it, as those in favour of reducing restrictio
The 1893 convention which was ratified by el
cedented success, stressed disinfection. Although
cerning the objects which could transmit chole
agreed concerning disinfection and inspection at
topic was the amelioration of the information ne
added some more categories to the list of suspe
scribed special precautions against different gro
'against gypsies and habitually itinerant people,
who, to practise their job, have to wander back
The 1894 conference, once again held in Paris,
cholera.62 The debate returned to the Mecca pilg

59 Ibid., Protocol No 14, 27Jan. 1892, Egyptian delegate Bo

60 Delegations from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denma
Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, Po
Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey.
61 Fragebogen fuir eine internationale Sanitaitskonferenz zu
Staatsarchiv, Die Abhaltung internationaler Cholera-Confe
1894), Rep. 77 Tit. 247 Nr. 64; see also International S
Parliamentary Papers, 1893-4, vol. cIx, pp. 153-80, at p. 16I.
62 Delegations from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, F
Italy, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden a

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 469
the 1892 and 1893 conferences to facilitate agreement. Once aga
provoked an especially condescending treatment of the Ottoman
British delegate Phipps, who backed the Ottoman delegates in the
the conference, gave the following description of a meeting wit
delegate after the Turkish delegation had opted out of the confer

Turkhan dined with me on Monday ... and never ceased talking. After
through the whole Conference, he said that he had been boiling internal
progress at the manner in which it pretended to legislate on internal ma
('qui est, que diable, un Empire independant!') ... The whole proceed
discussion in the presence of a corpse as to its ultimate disposal. At the m
the coffin the corpse, which had every opportunity of asserting itself and o
arrangements being made, suddenly revived and made its own arrangem

The delegates identified the Mecca pilgrims once again as carry

responsibility for the entry of cholera into Europe although the
Dickson pointed out that

it seems moreover strange that the conference should have taken pains to
to prevent the introduction of cholera into the Hedjaz, from which plac
Europe only once, in 1865, and that not a word should have been said
defence of the Russo-Afghan territory, through which cholera has penet
several times.64

Many found quarantine measures acceptable for pilgrims while

from them in most other contexts: 'The Mecca pilgrims must b
quarantine in the lazaretto of Camaran. This measure will undou
the danger of the introduction of cholera.'65 Strict disinfection wa
if it meant treating the pilgrims harshly, for example forcing wo
publicly.66
Further proposals at the 1894 conference included a requirement that pil-
grims should not be allowed to embark unless they possessed sufficient pecuniary
means for the pilgrimage and for their return travel, a measure already in use
for the Dutch Indies, Algeria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. While Britain and its
Indian administration were willing to accept harsher measures, such as policing,
detention, and disinfection, they were opposed to the financial guarantee.
Furthermore, they did not want to increase the space allotted to pilgrims on the

63 Letter Mr Phipps to Foreign Office, Paris, 28 Mar. 1894, London, NA, Government Offices
Correspondence. Cholera: Dresden Sanitary Convention (1893 to 1896); Paris Sanitary Convention
(1894 to 1897), MH/19/238.
64 Letter of E. D. Dickson to Sir P. Currie, Constantinople, 13 May 1894, London, NA,
Government Offices Correspondence. Cholera: Dresden Sanitary Convention (1893 to 1896); Paris
Sanitary Convention (1894 to 1897), MH/19/238.
65 Conf0rence sanitaire internationale de Paris, 7 fvrier-3 avril 1894 (Paris, 1894), Annexe au Procis-verbal
de la seance du 13 fevrier 1894. Memoire sur la propagation et la marche du cholera, p. 62.
66 See Report on the Quarantine Station at Camaran for the Pilgrim Season of 1893, London, NA,
Correspondence respecting the Paris Cholera Conference and the Question of Sanitary Reforms in
the East (1894), FO/412/58.

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 470 VALESKA HUBER

vessels from one to two square metres

block the proposal: 'The Netherlands,
2 metres, but the action of India will p
could, owing to the smaller space allow
monopolize traffic.'67 This objection p
Mecca pilgrims was a trade from which
Another category of border-crossers
the transmission of cholera, were tran
through Western Europe on their way
delegates of the United States pointed
pilgrim traffic and the emigration m
delegate Shakespeare declared that his g
the conference in the hope that the pro
would be debated. He promoted measur
of departure. In default of such measu
have to maintain quarantine restrictio
merce.

The three conferences of the 1890s illustrate the stand

nationalist arena. Anne Rasmussen has observed that 'a codification of the in-
ternational procedure progressively developed that found its accomplished form
at the turn of the century'.69 Over the course of the conferences, the ways in
which the conflicts outlined above - between scientists and diplomats, between
the delegations of the different European nations, and between Europeans and
'Orientals' - were held became more and more formalized. The development of
rules which created a usable but increasingly rigidified apparatus of inter-
nationalism made agreements possible despite more pronounced and clearly de-
fined conflicts: 'Growing international uniformity went alongside growing
conflict between closely defined nation-states. 7o The conferences were spaces
where distinctions and boundaries between professional and national cultures
were defined and European feelings of superiority were cultivated.
Codification also meant the dilution of meaning, reduction of content, and
decrease of freedom of the delegates to express their opinions. In contrast to the
earlier conferences, the preparatory period of the conferences of 1892, 1893, and
1894 saw the circulation of questionnaires, meetings of the representatives of

67 Memorandum by Sir H. Bergne, London, NA, Government Offices Correspondence. Cholera:

Dresden Sanitary Convention (1893 to 1896); Paris Sanitary Convention (1894 to 1897), MH/19/238.
68 Cf. Alan M. Kraut, Silent travellers: germs, genes, and the 'immigrant menace' (Baltimore and London,
1994); Markel, Quarantine! The danger attached to this group of border-crossers was referred to several
times at the conferences in passing: see for example Paris 1859, Protocol N' 31, 26July 1859, p. 7; the
British delegates to the Dresden Sanitary Conference to the earl of Rosebery, Dresden, 18 Apr. 1893,
London, NA, MH/I9/238.
69 Anne Rasmussen, 'Jalons pour une histoire des congres internationaux au XIXe siicle: regu-
lation scientifique et propagande intellectuelle', Relations Internationales, 62 (1990), pp. 115-33, at p. 120.
7o Bayly, Birth of the modern world, p. 239.

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 47I

different offices well before the conference, th

alliances, and the issuing of very tight instructio
modern technology not only allowed cholera
quickly, it also made it possible for the ministerial o
the delegations and the proceedings of the confe
conferences thus became more outcome-oriented a
as the reduction of the speaking allowance als
Language too became more standardized, French
guage, and there were fewer and fewer debates a
terms. The ceremonial part and the signing and d
follow a specific choreography. The protocols
professionalized and shorter.
Britain accepted the conventions of the 189os on
nificant exceptions. This led obviously to the redu
conventions at the level of implementation. Howe
summary of the issues that emerged gradually ove
shows, the debates illuminate some central them
nineteenth century.

III

At the International Sanitary Conferences, the delegates were

with solutions to a very concrete problem: How could a conta
prevented from entering their countries without resorting to
riers such as quarantines and cordons sanitaires? Or to come ba
Roy Ladurie's formulation of the unification of the globe by
the globe be unified not by but despite disease? What emerged
the conferences were new conceptualizations of borders
membranes' which could be open for some interactions and clo
For this purpose, the delegates proposed specific administrat
and scientific techniques, the categorization of border crosse
and non-dangerous groups and new concepts of borders.72
Increasingly, many delegates had trust in the reform of adm
tures in order to make cholera detectable and manageable. Th
ing the danger of cholera through efficient administrative b
was connected with the ascent of the modern state: 'By the la
tury, most regimes throughout the world were attempting to
fined territories by means of uniform administrative, legal,

71 For my use of semipermeable membranes, see Laura Otis, Membranes: m

nineteenth-century literature, science, and politics (Princeton and Oxford, 2000).
72 The techniques described here differ in part from those that Baldwin su
neoquarantinism' (cf. Baldwin, Contagion and the state, pp. 141-66). Also, I dec
because many of the measures proposed at the conference do not represent
quarantinism.

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472 VALESKA HUBER

structures. "' The idea of controlling t

to the state trying to expand its powe
its subjects in far-off empires. Reliab
European, in contrast to 'Oriental b
was used to assert control in all part
modern state, including the unificatio
of the population, and institutions m
also, broadly speaking, introduced dur
Europe.'74 As an attempt to replace co
uniformity it also compared with the
interlinked with the faith in regulati
codification of the conferences. In th
proposals contained the reform of th
Empire which was a central concern a
linked to the increasingly antagonist
Ottoman Empire over influence in E
an efficient sanitary administration
connected with the idea that a wel
would provide security against cholera
stopping it on its way from India to E
Besides the creation of various board
perfection of measures of identificat
passports, verification cards, permits,
ing of where, when, and by whom bo
itineraries of travellers and vehicles.
broader attempts to identify individ
claims of the modern state. Jane Cap
have described the standardization of
passport systems and of the growth of
nineteenth century.75
The debate about passports and o
International Sanitary Conference
attributed to the acquisition of trustw
order rapidly to detect zones of leak
from cholera and was exemplified in

73 Bayly, Birth of the modern world, p. 247.

74 Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A
also Robert Hunter, 'State-society relations in
1848-1879', Middle Eastern Studies, 36 (2000), pp
75 See Andreas Fahrmeir, 'Passports and th
Mechanics of internationalism, pp. 93-I9; Jane C
identity: the development ofstate practices in the mod
the passport: surveillance, citizenship, and the state (C

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 473

Sanitary Agency of Notification at the 1885 conferen

information in the proposals of the conferences of th
In addition to the use of bureaucratic means and in
modern (i. e. European) science began to play an incr
the century unfolded and gained authority in connec
revolution and a clearer understanding of the causatio
the presence of doctors in the Middle East as harbing
guarantors of security and information, disinfectio
central concern at the debates.

If some aspects of the techniques fashioned as modern were not really new - for
example the isolation of travellers - the crucial point was that they should not
be applied evenly to all but only to specific groups of border-crossers. The cat-
egorization effort was part of the modern state's project to identify and classify
individuals through passport systems, censuses, surveys, and statistics. In con-
nection with the identification apparatus mentioned above, different groups were
branded as disease carriers while other cross-border enterprises were regarded as
cholera-free. This was a crucial move in the creation of a protective membrane,
which gave passage to some and excluded others. As we have seen above, the
suspicious border-crosser par excellence was the Muslim pilgrim. In a Times of India
article of 1892, the author stated:

The actual danger for Europe lies in the international Mahomedan places of pilgrimage
Mecca, Medina, Kerbalah, Damascus, Jerusalem, the different places in Persia and
the large places of rendezvous of the processions of pilgrims ... Oriental squalor and the
absence of any, or any serious sanitary police at the great places of pilgrimage encourage
the disease whose germ finds a fertile soil in the bodies of the pilgrims, weakened by all
kinds of deprivations.76

Mecca was the foremost theatre of war where cholera had to be fought. The
menace had increased since the use of steamships had reduced the transit
time between India and Mecca significantly. To quote the British doctor
W.J. Simpson: 'Mecca, I hold, is the place of danger for Europe - a perpetual
menace to the Western world."' The 1892 and 1894 conferences prescribed strict
measures of disinfection and detention to the pilgrims while generally advocating
that quarantines were anachronistic.
The regulation of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, which played such a
prominent role at the conferences despite its limited role in bringing cholera

76 Times of India (no date), enclosure to a letter of the Imperial German Consulate in Bombay to
Chancellor Caprivi, 8 Aug. 1892, Berlin, Bundesarchiv, betreffend: die internationale Sanitaits-
Konferenz in Paris, R/9oi/2126I.
77 W.J. Simpson, 'Maritime quarantine and sanitation in relation to cholera', The Practitioner: A
Journal of Therapeutics and Public Health, 48 (1892), pp. 148-60o, at p. 153. For background information on
Simpson, see Mary Preston Sutphen, 'Imperial hygiene in Calcutta, Cape Town, and Hong Kong:
the early career of Sir William John Ritchie Simpson (1855-I931)' (Ph.D. thesis, Yale, 1995), and
eadem, 'Not what, but where: bubonic plague and the reception of germ theories in Hong Kong and
Calcutta, 1894-1897', Journal of the History of Medicine, 52 (1997), pp. 81-1i13, at pp. o103-ii.

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 474 VALESKA HUBER

into Europe, was to a large extent an

group, which was already suspicious
nineteenth century, the pilgrimage t
and concern to non-European powers
threats.78 This illustrates the sense of
proclaimed European mastery of larg
colonial powers, the regulation of the
heart of the delicate stability of imp
1857-8, the British aimed at collabora
to upset the Muslim populations."s
As developed above, other groups suc
people became increasingly targeted
were in line with the modern states'
itinerant lifestyles both in Europe and
the distinction between different ty
some types of mobility - connected
came a marker of modernity, other ty
and its lack of civilization.

This categorization of border-crossers thus served to fashion some cross-

border enterprises as cholera-free linked with trade but also with the movement
of troops (see the 1859 conference). The singling out of the pilgrims as the
main vector of cholera justified the lowering of the restraints on other groups
of travellers. The main aim was of course to create borders which were
permeable to European colonial and commercial enterprises, but impermeable to
others.

Besides the techniques of border control and the categorization of border-

crossers, alternative concepts of space and geography came to the fore in con
nection with the perception of a shrinking world. In the course of the conferences
the Indian origin of cholera came more and more into the limelight. Cholera
was therefore not only attributed to certain categories of people, it also becam
localized spatially - as a specifically Indian disease. If cholera had a clearly de-
fined point of departure, this was an argument for European intervention abroa
The idea that Europeans had to act there to be safe here was most vividly illustrate
by the colonial administrator Sir W. W. Hunter: 'The squalid army ofJagganath
with its rags and hair and skin freighted with infection may any year sl
thousands of the most talented and beautiful of our age in Vienna, London, o
Washington. 's81

78 Roff, 'Sanitation and security', p. 143.

79 See Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies ofthe Raj (Cambridge, 1994), ch. 5: 'Coping with contradictio
so See Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972); Harrison, 'Quarantine,
pilgrimage, and colonial trade'; Roff, 'Sanitation and security'.

s8 W. W. Hunter, Orissa, I (London, 1872), pp. 166-67, quoted in Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, p. i75.

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 CONFERENCES ON CHOLERA 475

If cholera had a distinct point of origin, the route

became crucial - if they could be barred, Europe wa
origin of cholera thus had implications for the conc
Europe's outer borders could be rigorously protected,
Europe could be abolished. The 1874 conference saw a
'Fortress Europe' idea. This gave the borderlands of
enabled states at the periphery of Europe such as
Russia to fashion themselves as crucial partners in t
richer nations. The idea of creating a rampart aroun
dition of the cordon sanitaire against the plague. Howeve
strict protection of a linear border - had become in
There was thus a need to develop new models of how
way through the Eurasian landmasses into Western E
delegates of Europe's borderlands replaced the conce
the idea of buffer zones, where cholera would peter o
science before it could reach Western Europe.
Besides the idea of a buffer zone the linear border w
single, controllable gate between India and Europe -
at the i894 conference stated:
It is not in Europe that one has to await cholera to combat i
usually follows, where it matters to block its passage. The S
of which its influence extends immensely due to the consid
Mediterranean.82

The Suez Canal was in many ways Mecca's counterp

while the first represented the triumph of technology
latter was connected with 'Oriental' backwardness and disease - and the same
was true for those frequenting the two places. To quote again W.J. Simpson:

The merchant ships passing the Suez Canal bringing tea, jute, wheat, and other Indian
produce to the European markets have not upon them crowds of Hindus and Mussulmans,
poor or rich, from infected districts, but a few better-class Europeans belonging either to
the commercial, military, or official class.83

The building of the Suez Canal was a potent exemplification for the increasing
interconnectedness of the world most famously illustrated by Jules Verne's novel
Around the world in eighty days. However, this development went hand in hand with
the need for clearer definitions of differences and boundaries. On the level of the
emerging international organizations exemplified by the International Sanitary
Conferences, this meant a clearer separation of the professional cultures of
science and politics. Despite this separation and owing to its professionalization,
science became a more potent political tool: as an instrument of nationalist

82 Paris, 1894, Protocol NM I, 7 Feb. 1894, p. 29.

s3 Simpson, 'Maritime quarantine and sanitation', p. I51.

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 476 VALESKA HUBER
competition on the one hand, and as a device of
dangers (such as diseases) on the other. Also, wh
emerging, the mutual relations of the Europea
Finally, while the delegates at the conferences st
the world were moving closer and closer togethe
between 'civilized Europe' and the 'Orient' was e
On the global level, the experience of a new kin
by the development of new models of borders a
from the concepts of quarantines and cordons sa
a borderless world nor a world of total bord
membranes which should serve to protect Euro
expansion. Their concepts drew heavily on practi
such as the new form of sociability provided b
technology, modern science, and the identifying
modern administrative apparatus.
As prototypes of internationalism, the Sanita
to some fundamental weaknesses of internation
their idealistic aims often serve as platforms for t
more, the preventive strategies devised at the
which they were expressed have striking similar
time. The attempt to categorize different types o
about the protection of the new eastern border
where globalization is a buzzword to be heard fro
between the freedom of movement and the pr
as it did in the nineteenth century when the u
the cholera epidemics highlighted boundaries b
continents.

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