THIS CHAPTER WILL focus on Kamaran quarantine station in the context of the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century international sanitary politics. Located on Kamaran Island on the southern tip of the Red Sea, this was one of the largest quarantine facilities in the world at the time of its establishment in 1882. It was built primarily for the purpose of blocking the spread of cholera, which, in the nineteenth century was believed to come from the east, in particular South Asia. Given its strategic location and the competing international interest to claim jurisdiction over it, the Kamaran quarantine offers a unique lens to study international politics of sanitation in the late nineteenth century. What was the reason for the establishment of a quarantine station on Kamaran Island? What were the characteristics of the Kamaran station? What were the British sanitary policies in the Red Sea in the nineteenth century, with respect to the Kamaran station? And what were the political and economic expectations that informed these policies? Using a wealth of archival documents, this chapter will survey the international debates and controveries behind the establishment of the quarantine, its construction, organization, and function.

Following the devastating cholera pandemic of 1865, an International Sanitary Conference was held in Istanbul in 1866, in which India was accepted as the origin of the pandemic. In the same meeting, it was decided that a quarantine station needed to be established at the entry point to the Red Sea in order to monitor Muslim pilgrims coming from the Indian Ocean. As per the decision of the conference, the Ottoman Empire was entrusted with this responsibility. Hence, the Ottoman administration sent a commission to the region to explore where the quarantine station could be built. As a result of investigations, it was decided that the island of Kamaran would be ideal for this purpose. The geographic location would make possible to monitor the movement of ships coming to the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, which connected it to the Gulf of Aden. Moreover, the terrain of the island was found to be suitable for holding quarantine procedures.