Black death
Black deathBlack Death
A Outside Essay
What were the principal economic and social consequences of the Black Death?
"The most striking and immediate effect of the mortality was to bring about nothing less than a complete social revolution,"4
"It seemed as if the agriculture of the country was completely ruined."5
"The Black Death was not the sole cause of what was a major crisis in western civilization, for evidence of the changes can been seen well before 1347. But the Plague exacerbated problems and added new ones,"1
Origins of the Plague
The Black Death erupted in the Gobi Desert in the late 1320s. No one really knows why. The plague bacillus was alive and active long before that; indeed Europe itself had suffered an epidemic in the 6th century. But the disease had lain relatively dormant in the succeeding centuries. We know that the climate of Earth began to cool in the 14th century, and perhaps this so-called little Ice Age had something to do with it.
Whatever the reason, we know that the outbreak began there and spread outward. While it did go west, it spread in every direction, and the Asian nations suffered as cruelly as anywhere. tn China, tbr example, the population dropped from around 125 million to 90 million over the course of the 14thc.1
The Arrival in the West
It reached Cyprus late in summer 1347. In Oct. 1347, a Genoese fleet landed at Messina, Sicily. By winter it was in Italy.
January 1348, the plague was in Marseilles. It reached Paris in the spring 1348 and England in September 1348.
Moving along the Rhine trade routes, the plague reached Germany in 1348, and the Low Countries the same year. 1348 was the worst of the plague years.
It took longer to reach the periphery of Europe. Norway was hit in May 1349. The eastern European countries were not reached until 1350, and Russia not until 1351.
Because the disease tended to follow trade routes, and to concentrate in cities, it followed a circuitous route: the Near East, the western Mediterranean, then into northern Europe and finally back into Russia. The progress of the plague very neatly describes the geography of medieval trade.1
About the Disease
What was this disease? Bubonic plague is the medical term. It is a bacillus, an organism, most usually carried by rodents. Fleas infest the animal (rats, but other rodents as well), and these fleas move freely over to human hosts.
The flea then regurgitates the blood from the rat into the human, infecting the human. The rat dies. The human dies. The flea lives a long and happy life. Nature has a morbid sense of humor.
Symptoms include high fevers and aching limbs and vomiting of blood. Most characteristic is a swelling of the lymph nodes. These glands can be found in the neck, armpits and groin. The swelling protrudes and is easily visible; its blackish coloring gives...
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