La contagion des rumeurs Information consulaire, santé et rivalité commerciale des ports francs (Livourne, Marseille et Gênes, 1670-1690)

Focusing on the correspondence of the French consul in Livorno, this contribution examines the way in which consuls dealt with and diffused information about health and hygiene in the Mediterranean. It distinguishes two types of dispatches used to warn about risks of plagues (precaution and precision) and shows how instrumentalising rumours about public health could play an important part in the economic competition between the so-called “free-ports” of Marseille, Gênes, and Livorno at the end of the seventeenth century.