Chapter 5 concerns the practices of Dutch, French, and English consuls in the Mediterranean and illustrates jurisdictional collaboration and conflict between sovereigns, merchants, trading companies, and regional institutions. It discusses the range of consuls' jurisdictional functions, the policies and strategies developed, such as the restrictive regulations increasingly put in place for the French service and its unique model of salaried and commissioned consuls, as well as the different practices found in Christian and non-Christian parts of the Mediterranean. Through a selection of archive material regarding events in the French embassy in Constantinople from the 1660s to 1680s, the analysis reveals a more interdependent relation between ambassadors and consuls in shaping extraterritorial and jurisdictional spaces. Focusing on class differences and social origins emphasises the role of consular diplomacy, its connection to the aristocratisation of ambassadorial diplomacy, and the development of different forms of early modern mercantilism. French consular practices are better categorised as transplants of authority, in contrast to the less jurisdictionally autonomous role of English and Dutch consular attempts to transport their sovereign’s authority.

This chapter makes a case for the existence of a cohesive “British Mediterranean world” that encompassed not only Britain’s Mediterranean colonies (in this period, Malta, Gibraltar, and the Ionian Islands) but also the intrigue and influence the Mediterranean exerted in Britain itself. We consider the diverse ensemble of British personnel driven to the Middle Sea by the obligations of military service, by the needs of diplomacy, or by personal inclination. The chapter demonstrates that it was primarily attention to and interest in Mediterranean dynamics that shaped the course of Britain’s attitude toward quarantine. Finally, in considering the “Doctor’s Mediterranean,” it concludes with a study of the ways in which medical expertise developed in the Mediterranean region impinged in an outsized manner on British debates of the validity of quarantine.