The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population, reducing the world’s population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400. This has been seen as creating a series of religious, social and economic upheavals which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover. The plague returned at various times, resulting in a larger number of deaths, until it left Europe in the 19th century. [emphasis added]
Effects like what? (Fall in population level is not a result, it’s like saying “Great Depression caused GDP decline”).
Compared to killing half of world population, the effects were ridiculously close to zero. There’s no discontinuity in history before and after late 1340s. No major country fell, let alone entire civilization. Social structures were what they used to be. No major region changed its religion. Society stayed as it was. Nearly nothing happened.
An increase in wages, and a trend toward the legal emancipation of serfs in England. Without emancipated serfs (i.e. peasants) it’s much harder to start an Industrial Revolution, because the surplus food you need for factory workers isn’t grown by serfs who have no incentive to increase their productivity, and the surplus labor you need to go move to the cities are legally forbidden to move around.
Because “killing half of world population” happened over 300 years in an era with high mortality rates, you wouldn’t expect much more serious consequences than that. Even if a village could lose 50% of its population in 4 days, that sort of thing also happened as a result of wars from time to time—the plague acted like an increase in the frequency of war.
This is a particularly bad example of post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc thinking—everything that happened between 1000 BCE and 1800 CE somewhere near Britain has a few just-so stories how it caused Industrial Revolution.
But Industrial Revolution happened so far later that it doesn’t make any sense; and it didn’t look anything like what you’re suggesting—major increase in agricultural productivity only happened in 1700s—far far after Black Death; and agriculture had local surpluses capable of sustaining large urban populations since pretty much Neolithic—a single farmer given enough good land and decent level of capital can easily produce far more than he needs. By taxes, rents, forced labour or some other measure you generate as high food surplus as you desire. So essentially every major urban center in history imported massive amount of food from rural regions. To avoid looking far Athens and Rome are two example of huge well-known ancient grain importers for which such imports were a very important part of foreign politics. Serfdom or lack of it has nothing to do with capability of creating food surpluses.
Also—England was one of the countries least affected by Black Death, so if Black Death caused something in England, it would have had similar effect in most countries which were as badly affected—and that’s very definitely not true. On the other hand some other countries least affected by Black Death of Eastern Europe moved towards greater serfdom (and contrary to what you imply—these serf-based economies were major food exporters feeding centers of Industrial Revolution in Western Europe), so there’s no correlation here either.
tl;dr—serfdom and food surpluses are uncorrelated; increases in food surpluses happened many centuries too late; you cannot claim Black Death caused something in less affected country like England while mysteriously it didn’t in far more affected countries
No, Byzantine Empire was broken by battle of Manzikert in 1071, and then by Fourth Crusade in 1204. After that it was hardly an “Empire” any more—it was a minor country surrounded by much bigger powers.
And the plague story doesn’t work at all—Byzantium fell over a century after the plague.
Back up—the very Wikipedia page you link says:
Effects like what? (Fall in population level is not a result, it’s like saying “Great Depression caused GDP decline”).
Compared to killing half of world population, the effects were ridiculously close to zero. There’s no discontinuity in history before and after late 1340s. No major country fell, let alone entire civilization. Social structures were what they used to be. No major region changed its religion. Society stayed as it was. Nearly nothing happened.
An increase in wages, and a trend toward the legal emancipation of serfs in England. Without emancipated serfs (i.e. peasants) it’s much harder to start an Industrial Revolution, because the surplus food you need for factory workers isn’t grown by serfs who have no incentive to increase their productivity, and the surplus labor you need to go move to the cities are legally forbidden to move around.
Because “killing half of world population” happened over 300 years in an era with high mortality rates, you wouldn’t expect much more serious consequences than that. Even if a village could lose 50% of its population in 4 days, that sort of thing also happened as a result of wars from time to time—the plague acted like an increase in the frequency of war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_in_England#Economic.2C_social_and_political_consequences
This is a particularly bad example of post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc thinking—everything that happened between 1000 BCE and 1800 CE somewhere near Britain has a few just-so stories how it caused Industrial Revolution.
But Industrial Revolution happened so far later that it doesn’t make any sense; and it didn’t look anything like what you’re suggesting—major increase in agricultural productivity only happened in 1700s—far far after Black Death; and agriculture had local surpluses capable of sustaining large urban populations since pretty much Neolithic—a single farmer given enough good land and decent level of capital can easily produce far more than he needs. By taxes, rents, forced labour or some other measure you generate as high food surplus as you desire. So essentially every major urban center in history imported massive amount of food from rural regions. To avoid looking far Athens and Rome are two example of huge well-known ancient grain importers for which such imports were a very important part of foreign politics. Serfdom or lack of it has nothing to do with capability of creating food surpluses.
Also—England was one of the countries least affected by Black Death, so if Black Death caused something in England, it would have had similar effect in most countries which were as badly affected—and that’s very definitely not true. On the other hand some other countries least affected by Black Death of Eastern Europe moved towards greater serfdom (and contrary to what you imply—these serf-based economies were major food exporters feeding centers of Industrial Revolution in Western Europe), so there’s no correlation here either.
tl;dr—serfdom and food surpluses are uncorrelated; increases in food surpluses happened many centuries too late; you cannot claim Black Death caused something in less affected country like England while mysteriously it didn’t in far more affected countries
I believe the fall of the Byzantine Empire was partially caused by black plague.
No, Byzantine Empire was broken by battle of Manzikert in 1071, and then by Fourth Crusade in 1204. After that it was hardly an “Empire” any more—it was a minor country surrounded by much bigger powers.
And the plague story doesn’t work at all—Byzantium fell over a century after the plague.
Meh, maybe.