Rats carried it off European trading ships in 1347. Within three years, one in every five Europeans was dead.
This article covers the fourteenth-century crisis: famine, the Black Death, and the peasant revolts that followed.
🏛️ Must Know
Three Factors Behind the Crisis
- SlowdownEurope’s economic expansion slowed sharply by the early fourteenth century.
- Three CausesThree factors combined to cause this: a worsening climate, a shortage of metal money, and the arrival of plague.
Colder Summers and the Great Famine
- Climate ShiftBy the end of the thirteenth century, northern Europe’s long warm summers had given way to bitterly cold ones.
- Shorter SeasonsGrowing seasons shrank by a month, and it became hard to farm on higher ground at all.
- Exhausted SoilCenturies of intensive ploughing, without proper soil conservation, had already exhausted the land.
- The FaminePopulation growth outstripped resources, and severe famine struck Europe between 1315 and 1317, followed by mass cattle deaths in the 1320s.
The Silver Shortage
- Mines FalterTrade was also hit by a severe shortage of metal money, caused by falling silver output from mines in Austria and Serbia.
- Debased CoinsGovernments responded by cutting the silver content of coins, mixing in cheaper metals instead.
The Black Death Arrives
- The CarriersAs trade expanded, ships from distant ports brought rats carrying the deadly bubonic plague, known as the “Black Death.”
- 1347-1350Western Europe, which had largely escaped earlier epidemics, was struck between 1347 and 1350.
- Death TollModern estimates suggest 20 percent of all Europeans died, with some places losing as much as 40 percent of their population.
- Hardest HitEnclosed communities like monasteries suffered near-total mortality, and the plague struck infants, the young, and the elderly hardest.
Population Collapse and Its Economics
- The NumbersEurope’s population, 73 million in 1300, had fallen to 45 million by 1400, after further minor plague outbreaks in the 1360s and 1370s.
- Labour ShortageThe huge population loss caused a severe labour shortage, imbalancing agriculture and manufacturing.
- Falling PricesAgricultural prices fell because there were fewer buyers left to purchase goods.
- Rising WagesWages rose sharply instead, since demand for scarce labour increased. In England, agricultural wages rose by up to 250 percent.
📘 Good to Know
Peasant Revolts: Flanders, France, England
- Lords SqueezedLords’ incomes fell badly as prices dropped and wages rose, so many tried reviving old labour-services in place of cash rent.
- Violent ResponsePeasants, especially the better-educated and more prosperous ones, violently opposed this reversal.
- Three RevoltsPeasants revolted in Flanders in 1323, in France in 1358, and in England in 1381.
- Crushed, But Not ErasedThough the revolts were ruthlessly crushed, the advanced money economy meant old feudal relations could never be fully reimposed.
- Where It Hit HardestThese revolts hit hardest in the regions that had prospered most during earlier economic expansion, showing peasants defending real past gains.
🌟 Great to Know
Boccaccio’s Eyewitness Account
- BoccaccioThe Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) left a vivid, first-hand account of the plague’s horror.
- Mass DeathHe wrote of people breakfasting with family, only to “sup with their ancestors in the next world” that same night.
- Mass BurialBoccaccio described bodies heaped by the hundreds into vast trenches, since churchyards could not hold so many dead.
Exam Point of View
Exam Wisdom: Reading Black Death Numbers
- WhyNo previous-year question on the Black Death or the fourteenth-century crisis has appeared in the papers indexed on this site yet. This card offers general exam wisdom instead of a specific citation.
- Watch ForNumeric traps are common on this topic: the population fell from 73 million to 45 million, and mortality is usually cited as around 20 percent, not a flat “half of Europe.”
- Cause and EffectRemember the sequence: climate and famine came first, weakening the population, and the Black Death then struck an already-strained Europe, not a healthy one.
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