New Light On The Black Death

Exploring new ideas behind the emergence of the bubonic plague

This study of the Black Death considers the nature of the disease, its origin, spread, mortality and its impact on history.

A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused untold suffering, but it also brought about a cultural and economic renewal on a scale never before witnessed. The World the Plague Made is a panoramic history of how the bubonic plague revolutionized labour, trade, and technology and set the stage for Europe’s global expansion. James Belich takes readers across centuries and continents to shed new light on one of history’s greatest paradoxes. Why did Europe’s dramatic rise begin in the wake of the Black Death? Belich shows how plague doubled the per capita endowment of everything even as it decimated the population. Many more people had disposable incomes. Demand grew for silks, sugar, spices, furs, gold, and slaves. Europe expanded to satisfy that demand—and plague provided the means. Labour scarcity drove more use of waterpower, wind power, and gunpowder. Technologies like water-powered blast furnaces, heavily gunned galleons, and musketry were fast-tracked by plague. A new “crew culture” of “disposable males” emerged to man the guns and galleons. Setting the rise of Western Europe in global context, Belich demonstrates how the mighty empires of the Middle East and Russia also flourished after the plague, and how European expansion was deeply entangled with the Chinese and other peoples throughout the world.

Completely revised and updated for this new edition, Benedictow's acclaimed study remains the definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on history. The first edition of The Black Death collected and analysed the many local studies on the disease published in a variety of languages and examined a range of scholarly papers. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of spread revealed through close scrutiny of these studies exactly reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings made it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought. In the light of those findings, the discussion in the last part of the book showing the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance. OLE J. BENEDICTOW is Professor of History at the University of Oslo.

The Black Death of 1348-9 is the most catastrophic event and worst pandemic in recorded history. After the Black Death offers a major reinterpretation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England. After the Black Death reassesses the established scholarship on the impact of plague on fourteenth-century England and draws upon original research into primary sources to offer a major re-interpretation of the subject. It studies how the government reacted to the crisis, and how communities adapted in its wake. It places the pandemic within the wider context of extreme weather and epidemiological events, the institutional framework of markets and serfdom, and the role of law in reducing risks and conditioning behaviour. The government's response to the Black Death is reconsidered in order to cast new light on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. By 1400, the effects of plague had resulted in major changes to the structure of society and the economy, creating the pre-conditions for England's role in the Little Divergence (whereby economic performance in parts of north western Europe began to move decisively ahead of the rest of the continent). After the Black Death explores in detail how a major pandemic transformed society, and, in doing so, elevates the third quarter of the fourteenth century from a little-understood paradox to a critical period of profound and irreversible change in English and global history.

The bull thought I was dead. He looked up from the shattered mess he made of my bow and arrows and stared directly into my eyes. His empty gaze pierced through me while he prepared to mount his final charge. I knew my life was over. This was the day I was going to die. Only a miracle could change that. As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. This is a true story. Not your typical outdoor exploits set in the wilderness pitting good guys against bad but rather a metamorphosis that would question virtually everything I knew about my life,—who I was, what I needed to change, and how I was supposed to live. It’s a story about redemption and working out my salvation, a story about how I seemingly had it all—a successful string of businesses, a long-term marriage, four loving children, and more friends than I could count. The only part of the equation missing was me,—my true purpose for being on this planet and a deeper relationship with God.

A series of natural disasters in the Orient during the fourteenth century brought about the most devastating period of death and destruction in European history. The epidemic killed one-third of Europe's people over a period of three years, and the resulting social and economic upheaval was on a scale unparalleled in all of recorded history. Synthesizing the records of contemporary chroniclers and the work of later historians, Philip Ziegler offers a critically acclaimed overview of this crucial epoch in a single masterly volume. The Black Death vividly and comprehensively brings to light the full horror of this uniquely catastrophic event that hastened the disintegration of an age.

The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporter Marilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonic plague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller that resonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of the city’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects on public health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how one city triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of all scourges.

In this small book David Herlihy makes subtle and subversive inquiries that challenge historical thinking about the Black Death. Looking beyond the view of the plague as unmitigated catastrophe, Herlihy finds evidence for its role in the advent of new population controls, the establishment of universities, the spread of Christianity, the dissemination of vernacular cultures, and even the rise of nationalism. This book, which displays a distinguished scholar's masterly synthesis of diverse materials, reveals that the Black Death can be considered the cornerstone of the transformation of Europe.

A spine-chilling saga of virulent racism, human folly, and the ultimate triumph of scientific progress. For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn’t noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin—a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong’s tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide. To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable—or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk. In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and contain its spread—the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.