10 Trade and travel in the time of
epidemics
1
Joachim Voth
Zurich University and CEPR
The ship, Grand Saint Antoine, had already come to the attention of the port authority
of Livorno. A cargo ship from Lebanon loaded with expensive textiles, it reached the
port of Marseille in 1720. The Health Commission had its doubts – the plague was
widespread in the eastern Mediterranean. Like all ships from affected regions, the
Grand Saint Antoine was placed in quarantine. Normally, the crew and the property
would have had to stay on board for 40 days to rule out the possibility of an infectious
disease. But a textile fair near Marseille, where the importing merchants hoped for rich
business, would soon begin. Under pressure from the rich traders, the health agency
changed its mind. The ship could be unloaded, the crew went to town.
After only a few days it was clear that changing the initial decision had been a mistake.
The ship had carried the plague. Now the disease spread like a forest fire in the dry
bush. The city authorities in Marseille could not cope with the number of deaths, with
corpses piling up in the streets.
The great plague of the late Middle Ages, in the years 1346-51, had also come to Europe
via ports in the Mediterranean. As then, people tried to feel the danger of disease in
Marseille. In contrast to the situation in the Middle Ages, they did not get very far. At
the behest of the French king and the pope, a plague wall (Mur de Peste) was built in
Provence. Tourists can still see parts of it today. The wall was over two meters high and
the watchtowers were manned by soldiers. Those who wanted to climb over it were
prevented from doing so by force. Although some individuals managed to escape, the
last major outbreak of black death in Europe was largely confined to Marseille. While
probably 100,000 people – about a third of the population – died in Marseille, the rest
of Europe was spared the repeated catastrophe of 1350 when millions of people lost
their lives. No medical miracle cure had saved Europe, but the effective intervention of
a functioning state.
1 This chapter first appeared in German in the Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft (reproduced with permission).