Quarantines, Infrastructure, and Territorial Sovereignty in the Danubian Region in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries

• In Event: Steamers, Quarantines, and Dams: Building Infrastructure on the Lower Danube and in the Black Sea: Late 18th and 19th Centuries

Abstract

Against the background of Ottoman-Russian relations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, my paper will focus on the construction of quarantines and quarantine lines along the Ottoman-Russian Trans-Danubian frontier in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Quarantines are primarily constructed in an effort to combat the spread of disease and, from a historiographical standpoint, are generally discussed within this context. However, as will be argued in this paper, quarantines rapidly evolved into all-purpose border posts where trade goods were inspected, customs collected, currency exchanged, criminals and fugitives surveilled, intelligence gathered, and migrants and refugees registered and provided with travel documents. As part of this analysis of the transformation of quarantines into a form of border infrastructure, this paper will explore the connections between quarantine lines and territorial sovereignty along the hardening border between the Ottoman and Russian empires in the transition from the early modern to modern periods.
Drawing upon Russian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman archival sources, case studies of Bulgarian, Nekrasovite, Cossack, and Russian Old Believer migratory communities in the Danubian zone will be developed to engage in a comparative analysis of Ottoman and Russian border control regimes in the Danubian region during the period in question. Here the connection between infrastructure (or lack thereof) and mobility will be addressed as will the impact emergent border infrastructure had on migration routes and population settlement in the Trans-Danubian region. As will be shown, despite the best efforts of Russian state servitors and border guards, Bulgarians on the move during the period in question were aware of, and sought out, the easiest points of entry into the Danubian Principalities. Variance in quarantine regulations along the Danube River resulted in shifts in Bulgarian migratory patterns. These shifts in migratory patterns – as a counter to recently-enacted Russian border security measures – typified the fluidity of the Ottoman-Russian Trans-Danubian frontier in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Author

• Andrew Richard Robarts, Rhode Island School of Design