Nowhere to Run To, Nowhere to Hide?: State, Society, and Epidemic Disease in the Ottoman Balkans In the early part of the nineteenth century outbreaks of bubonic plague and cholera devastated peasant populations in the Ottoman Balkans. For many Ottoman subjects in the Balkans flight (for safety and to escape social ostracism) was the natural response to the appearance and contraction of epidemic disease. This displacement disrupted the collection of taxes, hampered the recruitment of soldiers, and contributed to lawlessness and a breakdown in public order in the Ottoman Empire’s Balkan provinces. My paper will explore the nexus between epidemic disease, human mobility, and the centralizing initiatives of the Ottoman state in the Ottoman Balkans in the early part of the nineteenth century. Drawing upon Ottoman and Bulgarian archival sources and Bulgarian and European travel accounts, it will analyze how plague-induced displacements resulted in the formation of new population settlements and significant alterations to the human geography of nineteenth-century Ottoman Rumelia. In the early 1830s, following an extended period of warfare and decentralization in Ottoman Rumelia, the Ottoman state viewed the implementation of anti-disease measures and the expansion of quarantine construction as a means to reassert central state control over rural populations. As part of Ottoman quarantine and anti-disease legislation, quarantine officials were required to compile information on all individuals and families entering and exiting Ottoman quarantine stations. These types of information-gathering initiatives indicate an increased interest by the Ottoman state in managing population movements and “knowing” which subjects were on the move within and without the Ottoman Balkans in the 1830s and 1840s. Underscoring the role of quarantines as all-purpose border and internal checkpoints, Ottoman quarantine officials in the Balkan provinces were authorized to issue travel and health-related documents to individuals entering and exiting Ottoman quarantines. The texts of these documents indicated the completion of all required quarantine obligations and granted the holder permission to travel within the Ottoman Empire. The provision by quarantine officials of travel and health-related travel documents to individuals moving within and without the Ottoman Empire highlights the general linkage of disease suppression, migration management, and social control in the Ottoman Balkans in the first half of the nineteenth century.