Fighting Pandemics from Below. Global North-South Public Health Cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792-1942
[COOPERATION, ERC-2023-COG, 101125306]
ERC COOPERATION project recaptures the lost archives and historical knowledge of international public health cooperation between the so-called ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ by analysis of its first and longest-lasting instances: the sanitary councils in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Established in Tangier, Alexandria, Tunis, Istanbul and Tehran, these unprecedented institutions fought against waves of epidemics and pandemics between the 1790s and the 1940s. Their European, American and native co-founders invented new models for fighting pandemics from below and stopping the diseases in their tracks. All along, they strove to overcome the familiar barriers to cooperation posed by inter-imperial competition in a multipolar world, economic inequities, protests against quarantine restrictions, and racial and Orientalist biases, among others.
Our team examines the entangled and transimperial histories of public health cooperation, shifting the narrative from West-centric, top-down approaches to a more nuanced view of bottom-up processes. We explore the preconditions for (effective) international public health cooperation in MENA uncovering how north-south collaboration relied not only on Great Power dominance or covert imperialism but also on reciprocal actions on the ground. Our project will disclose that the agency of local actors and smaller and middle European powers in accrediting public health cooperation was more central than has been documented to this date and measure the councils’ success/failure by assessing their endurance, legitimacy and performance and consulting previously untapped archival sources in Europe, MENA, North America and Russia.
News
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The new edited volume, Securing Empire, co-edited by Ozan Ozavci (together with Beatrice de Graaf and Erik de Lange) is out now.
This collection brings together contributions that explore the many lives of ‘security’ in the nineteenth century. The contributors examine how the quest for security shaped imperial cooperation and competition, while also being used as a pretext for colonial expansion, violence, and genocide—patterns that persist in various forms today. Crucially, the pursuit of security created new…
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Enthralling book presentation and seminar by Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky
On 12 March Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky gave an enthralling book presentation. The event appropriately took place in the room named after the late Alex Brenninkmeijer, ardent defender of civil rights. Attendants gathered in anticipation to hear Vladimir speak about the overlooked humanitarian crisis that took place in the 19th Century, when Circassians were forced into exile….
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Seminar Jan Eijking
On 6 February, Dr. Jan Eijking from Oxford University presented his draft article on the history of international sanitary conferences and the concept of ‘technocratic capture.’ The ERC COOPERATION team reviewed his article and provided feedback, which we hope he found helpful. We wish him success with his article and his fascinating research.
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Save the date! 12 March: book presentation ‘Empire of Refugees’.
On 12 March dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky (University of California) will give a talk on his latest book ‘Empire of Refugees’ (2024), published by Stanford University Press. No registration required.
Agenda
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Book presentation ‘Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State’ by author Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky.
Between the 1850s and World War I, the Ottoman Empire welcomed about a million Muslim refugees from Russia. In his new book, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State, Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky examines how Circassian, Chechen, Dagestani, and other refugees transformed the late Ottoman Empire and how the Ottoman government managed…
