Quarantines and sanitary conventions of Russia with the northern sea powers (first third of the XIX century)

Based on the quarantine regulations published in The Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, as well as documents from the archives of the Medical Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the quarantine collection of the Russian Empire’s Foreign Policy Archive and the records of the Latvian Historical Archive, this article reconstructs the sanitary system of the northern sea powers in which Russia participated. Until the 1830s maritime quarantines and sanitary agreements between the countries proceeded from the assumption that military and merchant ships are carriers of infectious diseases from one territory to another. Accordingly, the protection of «one’s own» or «common» areas implied the destruction or disinfection of these carriers of infection. The specificity of the northern sanitary system was that it did not protect the participating countries from the «plague East», but from the continental southern and western Europe, which was infected as a result of colonial wars and global trade.

epidemics, sanitary agreements, port quarantines, quarantine outposts, international agreements on the law of the sea in the XIX century