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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Hatty wrote: | | Historians take the view that medieval chroniclers exaggerated the death rates |
Are you certain it's the death rates to which they object? Or the absolute numbers?
Perhaps the numbers make little sense in light of the population estimates. Increase the number of people alive and the rate at which they are dying decreases, even accepting the massive numbers reported.
Remember too that the ancients keep telling us their armies were massive. Historicans don't believe it. Why? Because armies of such numbers require populations of a scale not much different than we know today.
Perhaps the human population of Earth has always hovered around six billion.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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I can't believe that the so-called "Black Death" ended serfdom. Otherwise, serfdom would return once the plague was over.
And we have had other plagues (so they say). Why did these not end serfdom?
The Indians supposedly suffered plagues too. Didn't do much to improve their social circumstances.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Don't know if anyone is familiar with the Black Death, but it was actually three strands of "plague" at the same time. It started out as Bubonic, but then mutated into Pneumonic and Septasaemic. (or however that's spelt.)
That's a clear indication that it wasn't Bubonic or indeed any other type of "plague" that we are familiar with. |
I've never heard of the Black Death being equated with bubonic or the other plagues before. As far as I can tell, no-one has been able to identify it which is why no cures were found; the only successful 'treatment' was a 40 day quarantine, still the standard quarantine period, already practised in the fourteenth century.
There were recurring outbreaks of plague for the next three centuries, one theory about its disappearance is that the Great Fire in 1666 destroyed the rats, the carriers of the disease, which doesn't take into account the effect of the Black Death on the country as a whole.
Maybe the Black Death and an unrelated outbreak of bubonic plague occurred concurrently, the latter being carried by rats; however, if it was a completely unknown disease, it might have been mistakenly assumed to be a variant of bubonic plague, and symptoms likened to the plague they were familiar with by contemporary sources.
Iceland suffered outbreaks of plague, the first in 1402-4, but apparently there were no rats in Iceland before the eighteenth century which probably makes Iceland unique... if it's true (there are rats in the Arctic so they can survive the cold)
| Further support for the view that rats were unknown in Iceland in the Middle Ages derives from the fact that no rat bones have been unearthed on archaeological sites of the period; and old Icelandic writings never mention rats in Iceland. The words which were later used in Iceland for the rat, rotta and valska, do not occur in old Icelandic writings. |
Do archaeologists unearth rat bones in digs anywhere?
| I can't believe that the so-called "Black Death" ended serfdom. Otherwise, serfdom would return once the plague was over. |
The Black Death per se didn't "end" serfdom and of course serfdom wouldn't be reinstated after 300+ years of recurring outbreaks.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Hatty wrote: | | The Black Death per se didn't "end" serfdom and of course serfdom wouldn't be reinstated after 300+ years of recurring outbreaks. |
Hmm...very interesting. Then I suggest that it was land reform that ended the outbreaks. Rather obvious I think.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It's so obvious it needs explaining.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | It's so obvious it needs explaining. |
So I've just learned that, for 300 years, there were recurrent episodes of "Black Death." And for the entire 300 years, the serf system was in operation. Both the recurrent plagues and the serf system end at the same time.
Now the thing is, this 300 year figure is misleading because, for the period we are discussing, 300 years is as good as saying "since the beginning of time," because any sort of records from any earlier than that are awfully sketchy (and dodgy). So it would seem that, so long as we have record of both the serf system and of plagues, the two coincided.
But they end at the same time (so I've been told).
Now it seems to me that modes of living (including exposure to toxins, population density, access to health care and -- especially -- nutrition) are the one thing we can be certain will impact a population's susceptibility to disease.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I know we're not supposed to rubbish a new idea but in this case (since I know it won't put you off) I have to point out that this recurrent 300-years of plague doesn't coincide with the end of serfdom.
An argument can be made that the original Black Death hastened (or indeed caused) the end of serfdom since serfdom in England really did come to an end in the fourteenth century. But there was no serfs in England when the plague returned in, say, 1665.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Ishmael wrote: | So it would seem that, so long as we have record of both the serf system and of plagues, the two coincided. |
Serfdom in England came to an end by about 1500. The population figures, which Tel brought up initially and which make him so understandably uneasy, point to a 'high' of roughly 6 million in 1300, and a steep decline thereafter. The 1300 figure doesn't appear to have been matched till about 1650. Which might point to increased agricultural production c.1600 leading to improved nutrition and living standards?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | An argument can be made that the original Black Death hastened (or indeed caused) the end of serfdom since serfdom in England really did come to an end in the fourteenth century. But there was no serfs in England when the plague returned in, say, 1665. |
Ok. No problem. I was just working with the info I'd been given.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Which might point to increased agricultural production c.1600 leading to improved nutrition and living standards? |
The sixteenth century saw the first major change in English agricultural methods since...er....since neolithic times. The first great enclosure movement took place when large tracts of the English countryside had their open field systems removed and the present day pattern of small fields and capitalist farming was introduced.
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TelMiles
In: London
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Apparently, Black Death attacks occur over a longer period than 300 years. Like I mentioned earlier, the last outbreak could be said to have occurred in England in the early 20th century. Well, so Philip Ziegler maintains.
I think medieval people were totally unprepared for the Black Death, but I do think they tried their best, at least to chronicle what was happening and the symptoms. They knew that the disease (or a certain strain of it) was spread by inhalation. They also document vastly different illness periods, ranging from 3-4 days until death to just a few hours. They noted that the inhalation-spread strain killed people the quickest and that its kill rate was virtually 100%.
_________________
Against all Gods.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Which might point to increased agricultural production c.1600 leading to improved nutrition and living standards? |
By population we really mean population density, right?
And isn't it generally observable that high population densities go along with poor nutrition and living standards?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Now that I like. So the enclosures chuck zillions off the land and they end up so poor and dislocated all they can manage by way of amusement is to have kids. Ditto the eighteenth/nineteenth century Agrarian Revolution. A new twist on Malthus since though poor, they are British poor ie rather rich by world standards, and therefore not likely to actually starve to death.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Has anyone ever heard of any whole population anywhere at any time that died out entirely, due to famine?
It's one thing to acknowledge that there must be hard determinants on the number of people a given amount of food can support, but we can survive across such a huge range (say, 100 to 10,000 calories per day) that we rarely come close to them.
There must be a level at which everyone dies because none has enough to live on... but in reality, some will get none and die while others get some and live. Population fluctuation means individuals dying (or not). And a "given" food supply is never "given" but is produced on a continual basis and can itself fluctuate due to natural variation and the intervention of individuals.
There's too much wittering on about populations linked to available resources [People invent resources.] as though it's formulaic, as though statistics apply at all levels.
Per Jacobs, I reckon food production is a job and we need to reckon it as such.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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The Time Team Roman Roads thread is heading in the direction of "agriculture first" and I have no interest in following. Cities first - agriculture last would be too much for the forum to bear.
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