Remembering the Black Death
I’ve been reading a book entitled “Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction”. The most dramatic event of this period was the arrival in England in 1348 of what later historians called the Black Death (at the time, it was known as “the great mortality”). At a stroke, the Black Death reduced the population of England by about a third.
According to the account on Wikipedia:
“The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75 million people, approximately 25–50 million of which occurred in Europe The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population. It may have reduced the world’s population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400.”
It remains the greatest pandemic in world history, but to this day, we’re not sure where it originated and what it was.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:16 am
That book looks very interesting. I find medieval Britain fascinating. I think the Plague death toll was actually somewhat higher in Britain than elsewhere in Europe, wasn’t it?
January 15th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
You could be right, Dana. The Wikipedia essay states:
“In Northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the heavy plough and the three-field system were not as effective in clearing new fields for harvest as they were in the Mediterranean because the north had poor, clay-like, soil. Food shortages and skyrocketing prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay, and consequently livestock, were all in short supply, and their scarcity resulted in hunger and malnutrition. The result was a mounting human vulnerability to disease, due to weakened immune systems.
The European economy entered a vicious circle in which hunger and chronic, low-level debilitating disease reduced the productivity of labourers, and so the grain output was reduced, causing grain prices to increase. This situation was worsened when landowners and monarchs such as Edward III of England (r. 1327–1377) and Philip VI of France (r. 1328–1350), out of a fear that their comparatively high standard of living would decline, raised the fines and rents of their tenants. Standards of living then fell drastically, diets grew more limited, and Europeans as a whole experienced more health problems.”