How Did The Black Death Shaped European Society

Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries, Europe did not have many deadly diseases and hence its population increased by 300% (Fritze and Robison, 2002). This caused shortages in agricultural land and inflation of food and land prices. European society was characterized by too many laborers, low wages, exhausted soil and declining productivity in agriculture (Fritze and Robison, 2002). Black Death is the name given to the outbreak of plague that hit Europe in the 1340s. It originated in southern Italy in October 1347 and spread to southern England by autumn of the next year. The Black Death wiped out 25-50% of Europe's population and totally reshaped European society in its aftermath (Fritze and Robison, 2002). The plague first of all

They also developed techniques of long distance trade and navigation to facilitate the import of grain from the thinly populated planes of Eastern Europe (Huppert, 1998). On the medical front, people learned to enforce ruthless quarantines and in time developed vaccines (Huppert, 1998). European society quickly learned new methods to protect themselves from famine and diseases. They expanded urban areas and transformed political systems. Before the plague the nobility had held most of the royal offices. However by 1400, the royal bureaucracy passed on to the hands of the gentry (Fritze and Robison, 2002). The Europeans invented “guns, clocks, printed books, new kinds of ships, new forms of art and of religion, new philosophies and new sciences” (Huppert, 1998, p. x). They also discovered new continents and settled in them (Huppert,

This proved to be detrimental to them when the wages soared after the plague. The peasants who survived the plague were able to improve their status. Wages went up and landlords found it difficult to get workers to farm their land. Leases went down due to the increased availability of land, and marginal land was no longer farmed. Women became empowered when they were brought into the workforce and allowed to earn wages for their labor. In general, serfdom declined and ultimately disappeared in European society after the Black Death. Landlords had to either pay high wages to farm their land or sell off their lands to the peasant population who were now earning high wages. The governments tried to control the rising power of the laborers by passing laws. The English Crown and Parliament passed a series of ordinances between 1349 to 1381 including the Statute of Laborers (1351). Frustrated peasants in some places opposed these laws by violent protests (Thackeray and Findling,