Today, in American society, many people believe that being overweight is unhealthy, but back in the 1700’s, being overweight was what every person wanted to be. In the 1700’s, having a little extra weight showed that that person had good food and was therefore more likely to survive. Before the 1700’s, many people in Europe died from starvation and disease, resulting in little population growth. During the 1700’s was when that all changed. The population increase in the 1700s to 1800s was due to a declined mortality rate caused by changes in Europe’s economy, society, and culture. The economic changes in Europe in the 1700’s led to the population increase. Before the 1700’s, most of Europe was poor. With a large influx of silver, there was …show more content…
Before the population increase, the Black Death prevailed, famines led to food deprivation, hunger led to weak immune system, and people married at older ages, decreasing the number of children born. From the 1350’s to the 1720’s, the Black Death plagued Europe. This disease attacked the people of all ages, killing almost every person it infected. The emergences of the plague throughout the 1350’s to 1720’s kept Europe’s population from increasing. Another factor was bad harvests. When famine struck, many families starved because of the inability to buy or grow food. With less food on the table, people’s immune systems became weak, making them more susceptible to diseases such as the plague. Before the 1700’s many people could not put food on the table because they did not have enough money. To have a more stable family, many men and women postponed marriage until they could be financially stable. They gained stability by working, gaining the inheritance after their father’s death, or not gaining stability at all. Waiting to gain stability, prevented men and women from marrying at a younger age and prevented them from having more …show more content…
Before the 1700’s, European culture was not a prosperous culture. The methods Europeans practiced in farming and in war led to a high mortality rate.. Before the 1700’s, peasants used a method of farming called the open field system. This system was one large field that the entire village farmed on and every other year, there would be a fallow, which was a year when nothing was planted so the field could regain it’s nutrients. When famine hit, the results were more disastrous because the entire crop, which supported the entire village, could be destroyed, leading to starvation in the village. Another aspect, which caused no population growth, was the wars that occurred before the 1700’s. Many of these wars were very harmful to the land. Soldiers destroyed good land for farming and crops, leading to more starvation. During the 1700’s, the agriculture and wars changed to create a more prosperous culture. With the 1700’s, came the agricultural revolution. This revolution brought new methods for farming such as enclosures and crop rotation. Enclosures were fenced off portions of field, breaking apart the single open field that many peasants were accustomed to. The use of enclosures along with the use of crop rotation, rotating crops that deplete nutrients and restore nutrients to eliminate the fallow, resulted in an increase in food production and also competition between farmers to
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Show MoreEurope, in the Middle Ages, began to arise with new inventions, like the printing press, that helped many people in that time period, to advance in their education and their labor work, but before all that time, there was the rise of a strong and deadly disease that infected and killed millions of people throughout the world. Before the Black Plague, there were other diseases that had spread around Europe before the Middle Ages but it wasn’t as quickly and deadly as the Black Plague. The Black Plague was found to have come from animals, like rats, but it was mostly from the fleas that were on the rats. The plague in the middle ages had an advantage in Europe due to the overpopulation and the lack of space also because the medicine that was
The Black Death struck Europe in a time of great despair. "Although a `Great Famine' struck northern Europe between 1315 and 1322, nothing prepared Europeans for the horrendous onslaught of the Black Death" (Aberth, 2). The famine had caused a massive hunger shortage from which Europe had yet to recove...
This pandemic first appeared in the city-states of Italy and spread across Europe culminating in the deaths of 25,000,000 people. It is now known that the plague originated in China and inner Asia and that one of the reasons it was so devastating was because of the famine that Europe had just started to recover from.It is also now known that the Black Death was the result of the bacteria yerinia pestis, a bacteria that can cause swelling of the lymph glands in the armpits, the groin, and the neck of people infected with the virus. No particular social class station faith or age group escaped the ravages and people became hungry for answers from the Church. This plague was so devastating Europe’s population did not reach its pre-1347 level until the 16th century.
The Great Pestilence that haunted Europe in Medieval times took out more than a third of its population. After diseased rats and fleas made their way to the ports of Messina, Sicily by ships the plague spread across Europe ever so quickly. People were falling ill and dying within days, and there was nothing anyone could do. Close friends became sick and delusional, and Europe’s people began to lose hope. Church goers lost faith in god, and others punished their selves for forgiveness. The Black Death also caused the fall of feudalism. With all of the serfs and peasants dying off, there were only few left to work fields and harvest crops. This meant higher payouts. Finally in the year 1350, the plague died off, but reappeared every few generations.
Considered one of the worst natural disasters in world history, the Black Death came through Europe in 1347 A.D. It ravaged cities and town, causing a death to the masses, and no one was considered safe. The Plague is any epidemic scourge or calamity for which remedies are difficult to find, and according to the encyclopedia, plague is a common term for a disease of rodents that occasionally cause severe human infection. Named for the black spots that appeared on the victims’ skin, the original disease originated from Oriental Rat Fleas and black rats. It first infected Mongol armies and traders in Asia, and then began moving west with them as they traveled. There was no natural immunity to the disease, and standards of public health and personal hygiene were nearly nonexistent. It is believed that if people had not fled to nearby cities in hopes of escaping the plague, it might not have ever spread like it did. In the end, it passed through Italy, France, England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland, and even up to the island of Greenland. City dwellers were hit the hardest due to the fact of crowded streets and the lack of sanitation. Up until the mid-15th century, recurrent epidemics prevented the recovery of Europe’s population to pre-plague levels. The Black Death was an important turning point for the history of Europe. This time was “the beginning of the end of the medieval period and the start of a social transformation of the continent.” The social and economic impacts of the plague were so huge, economics, politics and the European society would never be the same again.
When the Black Death had finally ran it’s course on Western Europe in 1350, the population had been diminished by a great margin. The plague has reduced the whole worlds population from an approximate 450 million to about 370 million in the 14th century. Death was something that was very normal and expected at this point in time. There were hundreds upon thousands of ...
In 1339 in Northwestern Europe, the population was beginning to outgrow the food supply and a severe economic disaster began to take place. The winters were extremely cold and the summers were dry. Due to this extreme weather, very low crops grew and those that grew were dying. Inflation became a common and as famine broke out, people began to worry. The time period between 1339 to 1346 is now known as the famine before the plague. These seven bad years of weather and famine lead to the greatest plague of all times. In 1347, endemic to Asia, The Black Death began spreading throughout Western Europe. The plague lead to one third of Europe dead. The Black Death killed more Europeans than any other endemic or war up to that time. All resulting from a tiny insect (“Black Death”).
During early modern era, from 1650 onwards, there was a sustained growth in the population of Europe. Between 1660 and 1800, the population of Europe almost doubled, increasing from a level of 100 million in 1660 to 187 million by 1800. The sources which can inform us of this population increase include censuses, parish registers, and legal documents such as wills, amongst a number of other things. Although recently historians have focussed on areas such as birth rates, marriage rates, and the age of marriage as an explanation for this substantial demographic growth, this essay will focus on the falling death rates as a driving force behind the ever increasing European population during the early modern period. At the start of the period under question, the situation for the population was dire. Life expectancy was low, with the average male and female life expectancies amongst the privileged nobility being 28 and 34 years respectively, and with one fifth of English children dying within their first year of life. Famine was also prevalent, as well as diseases such as the plague and smallpox. However, throughout the early modern period, these hinderances on population growth began to be gradually removed, thus leading to an overall decline in death rates, which in turn facilitated a natural increase in the population of Europe. These factors included agricultural improvement, new foods from recently discovered lands such as the Americas, the disappearance of the plague, and medical advances. Therefore, these changes allowed the population to become much healthier, thus causing an increase in life expectancy, allowing other factors such as marriage rates and birth rates to further contribute to the population increase.
One of the primary changes between 1700 and 1750 was the changes in population, in the English colonies, increasing from 250,000 to one million. In the seventeenth century most of the immigrants to English North America came from England. In the eighteenth century they came instead from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Germany (http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects.pdf).
Agriculture was the prevailing economic activity in England and Europe through the early modern era. The agricultural revolution laid a fundamental base for the industrial revolution. If agricultural productivity in England grew between the middle ages and the nineteenth century, then most of it occurred before the mid-eighteenth century. It all started with the “Bing-Bang”, the Black Death of 1348. Followed by new crops and techniques, increases in output and land improvement but also urban growth, agriculture became much more productive. Institutions such as enclosures and large farms are said to have increased productivity by encouraging farmers to adopt those new crops and techniques. However, there is little direct evidence for the actual impact of changes in land tenure on agricultural productivity. Indeed, the consequences of the enclosure movement on agricultural productivity has been a deeply debated topic in English economic history.
History provides the opportunity to explore the origins of a topic or problem. The information from Agriculture and rural society after the Black Death provides an overview of agricultural and rural society’s agrarian issues; during the Middle-Ages these issues were centered around depopulation and social conflict (Dodds & Britnell, 2008, pp.3-50). Problems in the economics of society in the medieval fourteenth century involved the decline of social status and labor services (Dodds & Britnell, 2008, pp.73-132). Other examples are seen in change and growth describe of that in 1870, the Great Plains only had 127,000 people; six decades later in 1930, there were 6.8 million people; 74 percent of the population lived in non-metropolitan areas; from 1930 to 1940, there was a loss of 200,000 people; 75 percent of these counties lost populations from the Great Depression and severe drought, which had caused the abandonment of farms (Kandel & Brown, 2006, p.431). To understand these past experiences, the door to hindering issues must be opened to determine how agricultural sustainability forges change.
2. Obesity dramatically increased in the 70’s due to a number of factors. After World War 2, lawmakers, big business and labor leaders, along with many ordinary Americans put mass consumption at the center of their plans for a successful post-war nation. The availability of frozen dinners and a variety and surplus of different foods skyrocketed. In 1977, the US dietary guidelines changed drastically, promoting our diets as mainly carbohydrate based. Over the years, the sizes of certain foods and our portions have blown up. Twenty years ago, an average bagel was 3 inches in diameter and only 140 calories. Today, the size of the average bagel has doubled, now 6 inches in diameter and over 350 calories. The health problems that stem from being overweight go way beyond the ones we usually hear about, like diabetes and heart disease. Being overweight can also affect a person's joints, breathing, sleep, mood, and energy levels. In the U.S. 68.5% of adults are overweight or obese, 34.9% falling under the obese category and 31.8% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese with 16.9% being obese (Overweight and Obesity in the U.S.). Figuratively and literarily, the obesity rate is a growing problem. The total economic cost of overweight and obese persons in the United States and Canada caused by medical costs, excess mortality and disability is approximately $300 billion per year. $80 billion of this portion is due to overweight, and approximately $220 billion is due to obesity. Approximately 90 percent of the total $300 billon comes from the United States. The Trust for America's Healt...
In order to learn how societies were impacted by the Black Death, it is significant to note the situation prior to the epidemic. Britain and France had been at war since 1337, by August 1347 France was devastated. Many of the French people were left without homes, food or livestock, they were about to face a harsh winter and were unsure if they had enough seeds to plant crops the following year. The climatic changes that occurred over Europe had drastic consequences for agriculture, resulting in malnutrition which pre-disposed the populaces to disease. Inflation increased and famine soon spread across Europe, resulting in many deaths. Around 1339, Europe’s population began to increase, this growth began to surpass the capacity of the land to feed its populace. Therefore a severe economic...
After the Black Death took the cities, shortly after it spread into the villages and farms. Killing the farm workers, the Black Death left crops not gathered which led to a shortage of food supplies and people to starve. Because of the mortality and the labor shortage, prices of goods dropped while the wages rose. Landowners were so desperate that they tried everything to keep the peasants to work for them. This gave the perfect opportunity for the laborers to demand higher wages how much they were valued. During the epidemic, the societies in Europe found their own ways to live through the Black Death. Some people thought that it God that created the plague, so he can punish the people because of their sins. Other people tried to enjoy as much as possible their last moments of their lives because they knew they would eventually die. Day and night people were getting drunk and move from one tavern to another and satisfying every last-minute wish they could. A social long-term consequence of the Black Death was that people lost their faith and were against God because he could not save them from the epidemic. Another consequence covers the economic change of the lower and middle-class people. During the 14th century peasants were at the very bottom but thanks to the Black Death their lives changed dramatically. After the epidemic was over, they were very
It cannot be argued that the Black Plague was detrimental to every aspect of Europe’s communities. It was a powerful epidemic that wiped out a third of the continent’s population. Out of the midst of all its terror, however, positive after effects presented themselves. Some of these effects included revolutions in the church and society, eventually leading to the separation of church and state. Feudalism was also challenged as peasants demanded wages and revolted. Along with social changes came technological innovations, new inventions, and an attention to hygiene and the beginning of modern medicine. The plague may have devastated Europe, but it also gave way to a new era.