"Black Death". The pandemic that changed the world
Introduction
Between 1347 and 1351, the first plague pandemic swept the trade routes of the Silk Road to China, the Middle East and Europe, killing millions. It returned periodically on a smaller scale until the 18th century.
This disease had many strains. The most famous of these was the bubonic plague, so called because of the round black buboes formed by the swelling of the victim's lymph nodes. As a result, up to 60% of those infected with the plague died. This strain can still be found in parts of China to this day.
Even more deadly was pneumonic plague, which was transmitted through the air from person to person and was fatal in at least 95% of cases.
This is common knowledge.
What is not so well known is that the arrival of the plague in the 14th century was actually the second time that plague has visited Europe. The first pandemic struck the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century when Emperor Justinian tried to retake the West.
It is interesting to note how closely the emergence of both pandemics coincides with two of the greatest turning points in Europe. stories: the first is associated with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and the second - with the decline of feudalism.
In this article we will look at the "second coming" of the plague and its impact on history.
However, first of all it is necessary to understand how society was organized in the 14th century; and how the huge external shock of the pandemic affected its internal dynamics.
Society in 1347
The first thing to keep in mind when looking at European society in 1347 is that it was organized on a completely different basis than modern capitalist society. The vast majority of the population (up to 90% in the same England) lived and worked in rural areas. The basic unit of society could not be found in a factory or in a city - although increasingly prosperous medieval cities certainly existed - but in a feudal estate.
The estate was, in fact, a village in which the peasants rented land from the "owner of the estate" in exchange for part of their produce. This form of exploitation, called serfdom, formed the basis of the entire feudal system.
Under feudalism, the most powerful class in society was not the bankers and industrialists who rule society today. At this stage, the industrial bourgeoisie did not really exist. The closest to her were the artisans of the guilds who lived and worked in the cities. Banking existed only in a very primitive form. Merchants were the most powerful and influential layer of the bourgeoisie. But the dashing Golden Age of the merchant capitalist has not yet arrived.
The ruling class consisted of the military feudal nobility and the church: "those who fight" and "those who pray." But apart from prayers and battles, the nobility also owned almost all of the land, with the exception of common lands such as forests, etc.
As owners of the most important means of production at the time - the land - the priests and nobles naturally had a monopoly over the political, intellectual, and spiritual institutions of society.
There was no working class as we know it today.
Instead of a struggle between wage laborers and their superiors over wages, working hours, and working conditions, the class struggle in the feudal countryside was waged mainly by serfs who sought freedom from forced labor and lower rents.
This system, as outdated as it may seem today, nevertheless played a progressive role in the withdrawal of Europe from the Dark Ages. Between the 10th and 13th centuries, Europe's population roughly tripled to around 80 million, the highest in nearly 1000 years.
Almost disappearing in the Dark Ages, internal trade within Europe began to revive along with medieval cities and an emerging bourgeoisie. Foreign trade with Africa and Asia began to flourish. In a bitter irony of fate, it was this expansion of trade that caused the plague to spread so rapidly across the European continent.
The limits of feudalism
However, no social system is capable of continuous development of society. At a certain stage, economic relations that served as a stimulus for progress and development turn into fetters for further development. Feudal society reached this point even before the plague struck.
By the early 14th century, the feudal system had reached its limits. The expansion of agriculture on virgin lands, which in the previous period stimulated the growth of production and population, has come to an end. Thus, the food surplus began to decline in relation to the population. Labor productivity could not keep up, constrained by the limited production of the estate and the insatiable consumption of the lords.
The peasant majority became poorer and poorer, while the lords pressed more and more. A terrible pan-European famine, considered the worst in European history, struck in 1307, killing 10-25% of the population.
The plague is coming
It is believed that the plague first appeared in the Gobi Desert in the 1320s. Dispersed throughout Eurasia by Mongol traders and horsemen, it arrived in China in the 1330s and killed about a quarter of the population.
It then spread westward, and one chronicler stated:
“India was depopulated; Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with corpses; the Kurds fled to the mountains in vain. "
As with today's COVID-19 pandemic, Italy was the first European country to be hit by the virus. Genoese merchants who traded along the Black Sea coast unwittingly caught the plague and carried it home and to the rest of the Mediterranean. From here, it quickly spread throughout Europe.
At the time, Cairo was one of the largest cities in the world, and it was particularly hard hit. At the peak of the pandemic, the daily death toll in Cairo reached 7000.
The famous scholar and historian Ibn Khaldun, who lost both of his parents to the plague, wrote at the time:
“The civilization in both the East and the West was visited by a devastating plague that devastated the peoples and led to the disappearance of the population. She absorbed many benefits of civilization and wiped them off the face of the earth ... "
By the end of the pandemic, 200 people had died from the plague in Cairo alone - more than the total population of nearly every Christian city at the time. The scale of the destruction was so great that, both in the West and in the East, many cities were unable to restore their population, which existed before the plague, until the 000th century.
Despair
It is not difficult to imagine the horror and despair that gripped society when such apocalyptic scenes appeared that seemed to descend on humanity out of nowhere. None of the usual practices of preventing and treating disease provided any protection against the plague. Medicine proved to be completely powerless against the spread of the disease.
The plague also served to expose the institutions of the church, whose spiritual protection proved to be utterly ineffective against the calamity, which many perceived as a clear sign of "God's wrath."
There were many cases when local priests fled to escape the plague. This has created widespread mistrust and doubt in the church - though not Christianity or religion in general - and has spawned many new religious movements.
One such movement was the flagellant sect, which spread throughout Europe and was particularly strong in the German-speaking and Dutch-speaking world.
Flagellants wandered from city to city in groups of 50 to 300 for 33 and a half days, symbolizing the time of Christ on earth. During this time, they were forbidden to talk, wash, or sleep in soft beds. And upon arrival in a city, they knelt down and beat themselves with whips as punishment for the sins of mankind in the hope that this would put an end to the plague.
In the early stages of this movement, the arrival of a group of flagellants was often greeted with joy by the residents, who saw in them a genuine spiritual protection against the plague - in contrast to the official church, which was widely discredited. However, over time, the movement began to split along class lines.
Influenced by the poor masses who joined its ranks, the movement began to take the form of a kind of revolutionary sect. Many flagellants believed that the old Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa would be resurrected, expel the clergy and force the rich to marry the poor, after which Christ himself would return to Earth.
These ideas repelled first the nobles, then the more respectable bourgeois, and in the end even the more wealthy peasants. Over time, the movement dwindled to the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of society.
Another result of the despair that arose during the plague was a wave of pogroms against Jews throughout Europe, which during this period took on appalling proportions. In many places, especially in cities, Jews were accused of deliberately spreading the plague or poisoning wells. As a result, thousands of Jews were killed.
The church and the feudal authorities actually took small steps to protect the Jews, denying the accusations against them. But this did little to stem the tide of bloodshed. In the end, this provoked a massive migration of Jews fleeing persecution to the East and, in particular, to Poland, where they were invited to settle by King Casimir III.
Economic crisis
In addition to the deep psychological and moral crisis caused by the plague, the feudal economy was literally brought to a standstill. This caused an intense and prolonged crisis for the ruling class with important historical consequences.
A good indicator of the scale of the crisis can be considered England, where the plague first came in September 1348. On the estate of Cuxham, near Oxford, owned by the prestigious Merton College, the college lands have been out of work due to a sharp decline in population. This caused a widespread drop in rents, which hit the estate's income. At the same time, hired workers had to be recruited to work on the land for high wages.
This double blow - in the context of falling demand and prices for staple food crops such as wheat - permanently cut the estate's “profit”. They fell from an average of £ 40 a year before 1349 to less than £ 11 in 1354-1355.
Overall, it is estimated that the incomes of the feudal aristocracy across England fell by more than 20% between 1347 and 1353. Along with the collapse of the manorial system, the high mortality rate also led to the fact that many noble families lost their heirs, which meant that many previously great families simply became nothing.
This could not but affect the position of the exploited population. In 1349, wages doubled on many estates. At the Cuxham estate, a plowman was paid 10 shillings 6 pence in 1350 for work that would have earned him only 2 shillings in 1347.
Also, the wide availability of land and low rents meant that peasants were more mobile than they possibly ever were. Serfdom in this context was both impossible and absurd.
Reaction and revolution
Unsurprisingly, the ruling class acted quickly to try to revert to the old order. In 1349, Edward III introduced the Labor Law, which intended to set wages at the pre-1348 level, but to no avail.
The church also joined the landowners' crusade to return to the old conditions.
Such an obvious and transparent clash of interests between the gentlemen and the common peasant masses inevitably should have caused a huge negative reaction. The peasants realized more and more that the lords were nothing more than parasites that existed only to consume their labor. They had no intention of giving up the achievements they had achieved during the plague years.
On the other hand, the ruling class could not put up with this state of affairs. Not only did rising wages and falling rents leave them without a livelihood, but the removal of many restrictions and forced labor services from the shoulders of the peasantry threatened not only their estate accounts - it threatened to overturn the entire social order at the top of which they were.
For decades, the ruling nobility has furiously tried to reclaim their profits. In England, the king introduced the Poll Tax in 1377, which was imposed on every adult in the kingdom.
This tax was doubled in 1378 and 1381, placing such a heavy burden on peasant families that many accused the king of trying to restore serfdom. Radical preacher John Wycliffe condemned the tax, stating:
"Thus, the lords eat and drink the flesh and blood of the poor."
In 1381, the peasants in Essex refused to pay the tax, which sparked a peasant revolt. A wealthy peasant named Wat Tyler led an army into London, announcing:
"Kill all the king's lawyers and servants."
Another leader of the uprising, an unemployed priest named John Ball, urged:
"... all to be common, and so that we can all unite together, and so that the lords are not greater masters than we are."
When the rebels reached the Thames at Southwark, the London masses lowered the bridge and helped them take the city. It was an early example of the alliance between the bourgeoisie, urban masses and the peasantry that played such a vital role in the English and French revolutions. Having captured the Tower of London, the rebels beheaded the hated Archbishop of Canterbury.
The rebels then proceeded to plunder the luxurious residences and palaces of the nobility along Fleet Street. But they stole almost nothing from the enormous wealth of their enemies, declaring themselves "zealots of truth and justice, not thieves and robbers". Instead, the furniture and jewelry of the ruling class was thrown into the river or burned to the ground.
Young King Richard II was forced to give in to the demands of the rebels, promising to end serfdom, cheap land and free trade. But as soon as the rebels were satisfied and went home, he ordered them to be interrupted.
Although the uprising itself was ultimately suppressed, serfdom never returned to England.
The end of feudalism
The end of serfdom actually meant the end of feudalism. The old order was dying, but the new order was not yet born. It was a transitional period, "time of monsters"As Gramsci put it. And there have been few things in history as monstrous as the plague.
Events that were amplified and accelerated by the plague continued to transform society throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. The later Middle Ages became the era of the well-to-do independent peasant. Meanwhile, the decrepit feudal nobility continued to exhaust itself in wars.
Gradually, the old feudal dynasties were replaced by a new class of landowners - often merchants who bought their way into the nobility, who were much more focused on making money than on the farcical chivalry of their predecessors.
At the state level, various bureaucratic and clerical functions, which were mainly carried out by priests before the plague, were increasingly taken over by a growing class of educated bourgeois, lawyers, etc.
This new relationship between the feudal monarchy and the urban bourgeoisie only grew stronger as the monarchy became more centralized and depended on the funds of wealthy merchants.
These changes, which took place gradually, eventually gave rise to the absolutist monarchy, which played an important role in the development of capitalism.
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