Empire of plague: Epidemic disease and the early modern Ottoman state

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Gellner
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 5:30pm to 7:15pm

Exploring the interplay between disease and empire in the historical example of the early modern Ottoman Empire, my research aims to demonstrate that the histories of the two phenomena are intertwined. By tracing the territorial growth of the empire through conquests and the subsequent establishment of networks of trade and communication between the newly conquered territories, and the growth of new urban centers, we will see that plague epidemics attained new trajectories through which they could spread to a more extensive area and expanded in new directions. More specifically, I shall analyze the outbreaks of plague in this era in three distinct phases on the basis of their spread patterns, area of diffusion, and frequency of recurrence. The first phase (1453-1517) is characterized by the emergence of an east-west axis in the Mediterranean. The second phase (1517-1570) witnessed the rise of multiple networks of plague-spread. And the last phase (1570-1600) marks the emergence of Istanbul as the plague-hub of the empire. In this lecture, we shall also discuss the multifaceted changes in popular and scholarly perception of plagues, as well as the various ways in which early modern Ottoman society responded to them. These social and administrative responses, alongside with the medical and legal rationale used for their justification, simultaneously represented new powers of government in a process of early modern state-formation.

Nükhet Varlık is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University and specializes in the early modern history of medicine and health systems in the Mediterranean world. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2008. Professor Varlık is currently on research leave in Istanbul, Turkey for the preparation of her monograph entitled Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600 (contracted by Cambridge University Press). Her research is supported by an NEH Fellowship offered by the American Research Institute in Turkey, a Senior Fellowship offered by Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship offered by the Turkish Cultural Foundation. She is also organizing and editing a collection of articles entitled Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean.