ABSTRACT
The global spread of COVID-19 beginning in Spring 2020 demonstrated that the arrival of a previously unknown virus poses an enormous challenge for societies and governments, and that an effective containment strategy is connected with the need for coordinated governmental action as well as targeted measures to protect vulnerable groups from deadly infections. During the eighteenth century, managing epidemics became an important field of duty for early modern states. As they recognized that their populations were a valuable economic commodity (a view encouraged by mercantilism), they sought more effective ways to protect them. The spread of the disease within the Ottoman Empire has often been portrayed as something encouraged by the prevailing perception within the Muslim empire of illness as divine purpose, coupled with an official neglect of precautions in the case of bubonic plague.
