As a maritime trading nation, the issue of quarantine was one of constant concern to Britain. Whilst naturally keen to promote international trade, there was a constant fear of importing potentially devastating diseases into British territories. In this groundbreaking study, John Booker examines the methods by which British authorities sought to keep their territories free from contagious diseases, and the reactions to, and practical consequences of, these policies. Drawing upon a wealth of documentary sources, Dr Booker paints a vivid picture of this controversial episode of British political and mercantile history, concluding that quarantine was a peculiarly British disaster, doomed to inefficiency by the royal prerogative and concerns for trade and individual liberty. Whilst it may not have fatally hindered the economic development of Britain, it certainly irritated the City and the mercantile elites and remained a source of constant political friction for many years. As such, an understanding of British maritime quarantine provides a fuller picture of attitudes to trade, culture, politics and medicine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Over five centuries, a global archipelago of quarantine stations came to connect the world's oceans from the Mediterranean to the South Pacific, from Atlantic coasts to the Red Sea. In the process, great new carceral structures materialised, many surviving into the present as magnificent ruins or as 5 star hotels with a dark tourism edge. This book offers new histories and geographies of quarantine islands and isolation hospitals across the world, bringing their local and global pasts and present into view. An international cast of leading experts examine the enduring historical problems of migration and mobility, segregation, prevention and protection by states with different interests in freedoms, health and commerce. With case studies from as far afield as the Red Sea, Hong Kong and New Zealand, and from the early modern period forward, this book provides an invaluable insight into the history of quarantine.