Quarantine institutions of the Crimean Peninsula in the second half of the 19th century (based on the materials from the Archives of the city of Sevastopol)

Abstract

Issues of protecting the population from epidemics, organizing anti-epidemiological measures are always relevant and arouse wide public interest. In our country, significant experience has been accumulated in that sphere since the creation of the state quarantine service in 1800. The Crimean Peninsula, which became part of the Russian Empire in 1783, was an important logistics point for the development of domestic and foreign trade, where quarantine institutions played a significant role in preventing the outbreaks of infectious diseases and impeding their spread. The article deals with the study of the Crimean quarantines after the end of the Eastern War of 1853– 1856, in which Sevastopol turned out to become the main theater of combat. The documents stored in the Archives of the city of Sevastopol served as the main source complex. The goal was to characterize the materials deposited in the fund of the Sevastopol Quarantine Agency, revealing the challenges in the functioning of that institution in the second half of the 19th century. Along with the introduction of the previously unused archival data into scientific circulation, the possibility of studying the most important areas of activity for the quarantine service of the Sevastopol city administration has become one of the important research components, and its scientific novelty is driven by that possibility. Conclusions are drawn about the representativeness of the source complex and the prospects for further exploration of the history of regional quarantine authorities.