“An Egyptian Infection”: War, Plague and the Quarantines of the English East India Company at Madras and Bombay, 1802

By the end of the eighteenth century, the English East India Company (EEIC) had established political and economic control over extensive tracts of land in South Asia and had emerged as the dominant regional power. The growing numbers of the EEICa€ s mercenary army were often utilized by the British government in military conflicts across the world. At the end of the eighteenth century, as several powers battled over control of Egypt, the EEIC’s army was also called in to assist the Royal forces. But all foreign armies in Egypt were soon confronted by the spectre of plague epidemics. This paper explores how exactly the British handled the threat of plague in Egypt and as the EEIC armies returned to Madras and Bombay. This transnational account of plague and quarantine policy highlights the controversies and tensions over the policy of quarantine within medicine in England and explores how these conflicts played out in the quarantines established in India by the EEIC’s nascent Empire.