The Black Death was the deadliest pandemic to ever hit mankind- killing more than 75 million people every day. This pandemic came with many devastating after-effects causing the world to rebuild itself, this horrific plague killed a third of Europe. The effects of the Black Death have short-term and long-term effects on the human population across the world, the short-term effects include a series of trade difficulties, large shortages of agricultural laborers, and extreme poverty for peasants. The long-term effects included the decrease in the population, the confidence in the churches, and the vicious attack on Jews. These are all of the topics that I will cover in this assignment.
When the trade increased it had brought many positive changes in particular when the larger trading routes were established. Which then had a large impact on trade with the west. When the trade grew, towns and cities started popping all over Europe, when the trade started to grow so did the population. The cities and towns started becoming very fertile places because they all lived very closely together and with fleas and rats, this all started when the population started to increase. This then started to expand the disease even more and increased the potential damage to the world. According to BBC UK published on February 11, 2017, they wrote that” rats and fleas carried the Black Death across Asia and Europe which was helped by man’s trading routes.”. In the end, the trading difficulties largely influenced the spread of the Black Death.
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When the worker population decreased, the land and the farms didn’t improve as much as they needed to. When most of the workers and their animals died, the remaining laborers had more tools and land to work. They became more productive and produced more goods and services, when the workers were more productive the employers were more willing to pay higher wages. Many workers were needed to gather grains, so the employers decided to care for sheep. Looking after sheep needed a smaller amount of workers, When their wages began to rise the workers were able to shop for more vegetables, fruit, and clothing. The workers became able to move away from their employer's land and buy their own land to live on. An article called the Economist published on October 21 2013 they had said that “ the Black Death was literally swamped by the post-Plague inflation, so that real wages fell, which then led to an abrupt rise in real wages, for both agricultural laborers and peasants”. The decrease of population caused by the plague boosted the wages of the workers, therefore the workers began to appreciate an outstanding living and more freedom.
The Black Death killed more than sixty percent of Europe’s population. Once occupied towns the remaining people were left to live there in ruins after the Black Death. Elderly people were most likely to contract the disease, but the plague killed healthy and young people as well. The world population lessened dramatically by about sixty to seventy-five million people. The population of Western Europe didn’t reach its 1348 level until the start of the 16th century. Forbes published that “Dr. Weite examined the skeletal remains of 464 pre-Black Death Londoners who died in the 11th to 13th Centuries. She also examined the remains of 133 post-Black Death Londoners who died between 1350 and the mid-16th Century. Given the better standard of living following the Black Death, Dr. DeWitte reasoned that the post-Black Death population should have lived longer. And that's exactly what she found.“ At the end of 1350, the survivors of the Black Death realized that their nightmare was finally ending.
Local churches were largely involved in medieval times because religion was a very major feature of Christian’s daily life. The reason why people lost confidence in churches was that they thought that God was displeased with them since some people had lost faith in the church, so the church had weakened its position in society. When the plague hit Europe, church’s began to feel the strain and started to attempt to fix the consequences of the plague but their reputation suffered as a consequence. According to Wikipedia, they had said that “ Eventually the losses were replaced by hastily trained and inexperienced clergy members, many of whom knew little of the rigors of their predecessors. New colleges were opened at established universities, and the training process sped up”. The Black Death had a huge impact on the church’s and the churches were largely affected.
Jews were commonly blamed for the Black Death, during the period of the Black Death more than 200 hundred Jewish communities were abolished. They were wiped out because people thought that they were the main reason why all this is happening, Jews were accused of poisoning food and water sources. Because of that accusation, all of the men, women, and babies were massacred, the accusations and the massacres only took place in 1348 and 1351. Thousands of Jewish communists were ruined by violence in the Black Death Massacres, this was a form of genocide. According to MPRA( Munich personal reps archive), they published that “this evidence is highly consistent with the claim that contested political authority made Jewish community’s more vulnerable in the medieval times”. To conclude this paragraph the Jews were wrongly accused and in my opinion, it was not fair how they were treated.
Before the speedy spread of the Black Death, Europe was overpopulated and had many land shortages, in conclusion, the Black Death had many positive impacts on the population.
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