WHI-Chap22-Obj3
What were the social and economic effects of the Black Death?
The bubonic plague arose mostly from trade interactions between Europe, Asia, and Africa and moved across “the trade routes from Western China to Central Asia, southwest Asia, North Africa, and Europe” (Bentley 566). The plague caused labor shortages and caused social disturbance. In Western Europe, the workers inside of the cities wanted higher wages, and they often left their homes behind to find better working conditions. The peasants out at the farms moved to locations were the landlords would have better terms for their land. In response the landlords restricted the freedom of these peasants and made it much more difficult for them to move while levying work requirements. The lords were returning back to the conditions of being serfs. Workers and peasants would launch revolts that greatly affected all of Western Europe (Bentley 578). The plague caused epidemics for 300 hundred years more (Bentley 566), and by the seventeenth century, the plague began dying down (Bentley 578).
Sources
Bentley, Jerry H, and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008.
By Taylor Gutierrez
