How the Black Death made the rich richer

[Judi Lynn]

COVID-19

By Eleanor Russell, University of Cambridge and Martin Parker, University of Bristol
1st July 2020
Read more from The Conversation
The Conversation

When a third of Europe’s population was lost, wealth concentrated into tiny groups. Could Covid-19 trigger something similar?

This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

In June 1348, people in England began reporting mysterious symptoms. They started off as mild and vague: headaches, aches, and nausea. This was followed by painful black lumps, or buboes, growing in the armpits and groin, which gave the disease its name: bubonic plague. The last stage was a high fever, and then death.

Originating in Central Asia, soldiers and caravans had brought bubonic plague – Yersina pestis, a bacterium carried on fleas that lived on rats – to ports on the Black Sea. The highly commercialised world of the Mediterranean ensured the plague’s swift transfer on merchant ships to Italy, and then across Europe. The Black Death killed between a third and a half of the population of Europe and the Near East.

This huge number of deaths was accompanied by general economic devastation. With a third of the workforce dead, the crops could not be harvested and communities fell apart. One in ten villages in England (and in Tuscany and other regions) were lost and never re-founded. Houses fell into the ground and were covered by grass and earth, leaving only the church behind. If you ever see a church or chapel all alone in a field, you are probably looking at the last remains of one of Europe’s lost villages.

The traumatic experience of the Black Death, which killed perhaps 80% of those who caught it, drove many people to write in an attempt to make sense of what they had lived through. In Aberdeen, John of Fordun, a Scottish chronicler, recorded that:

This sickness befell people everywhere, but especially the middling and lower classes, rarely the great. It generated such horror that children did not dare to visit their dying parents, nor parents their children, but fled for fear of contagion as if from leprosy or a serpent.

These lines could almost have been written today.

More:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-death-make-the-rich-richer

[appalachiablue]

1. K/R Excellent article, esp. the extent of devastation

in terms of ruined crops, destroyed villages and houses. In addition to millions of poor souls. Thanks for posting.

[empedocles]

2. Vital, powerful piece. Implications are huge.

[Great find. Thank you JL]

[dalton99a]

3. "COVID-19 is just a prequel to something much worse"

But we should be cautious of easy historical lessons. History never really repeats itself. The circumstances of each time are unique, and it simply isn’t wise to treat the “lesson” of history as if it were a series of experiments that prove certain general laws. And COVID-19 will not kill a third of any population, so though its effects are profound, they will not result in the same shortage of working people. If anything, it has actually strengthened the power of employers.

The most profound difference is that the virus comes in the middle of another crisis, that of climate change. There is a real danger that the policy of bouncing back to a growth economy will simply overwhelm the necessity of reducing carbon emissions. This is the nightmare scenario, one in which COVID-19 is just a prequel to something much worse.

But the huge mobilisations of people and money which governments and corporations have deployed also shows that big organisations can reshape themselves and the world extraordinarily rapidly if they wish. This gives real grounds for optimism concerning our collective capacity to re-engineer energy production, transport, food systems and much else – the green new deal which many policy makers have been sponsoring.

The Black Death and COVID-19 seem to have both caused concentration and centralisation of business and state power. That is interesting to note. But the biggest question is whether these potent forces can be aimed at the crisis to come.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. It also ended feudalism in western Europe.

There was a huge labor shortage, and peasants could now demand higher wages. I'm also under the impression that it kicked off what amounts to technological innovations of various kinds.

[hydrolastic]

5. No doubt there is a new age coming, but in this time the savings of the middle class are being

Drained because as jobs are going away and labor is idle because of Corona 19. When Trump appointed all of the stockbrokers and bankers to his cabinet they see this pandemic as a opportunity for everybody to accrue debt. It didn't have to be this way the banks could have been told to freeze mortgages and landlords freeze rent all that would have happened is the banks would not have made profit for a few months. This is a economic/moral disaster happening right in front of our eyes. It is imperative we win this election. Hydro

[amcgrath]

6. Convenient idea for a parable,

But it fits no version of history that I’ve ever encountered.

Like any pandemic, the worst stuck were those with the 'pre-existing condition' of poverty. Poor diet, adverse living conditions etc.

There were no stock markets, or real banking. And an 'estate' depended on its peasants to keep it solvent or even make a little money.

The Black Death killed off at least a third of the population. Estates and duchys were short staffed. As a result wages went up considerably, working conditions improved and laws like 'squatters rights' were introduced, allowing the homeless to simply take an empty house as their own.

Look to more modern events where large numbers of citizens have been lost. Americans came home from WWII to the GI Bill. In the UK, where loss of life had been greater, they came home to see a national health service and all sorts of other goodies laid out for them.

It is only after periods where a large portion of the 'peasants' have died, that the ruling classes are forced to concede some rights and improvements to the workers.

Now that there are stocks and shares, of course there will be terrible profiteering and consolidation of wealth, but this does not necessarily mean worse conditions for the public