HIST 2B Lecture 6: History 2B 6
Document Summary
Recurrent plague cycles destabilized social norms, shrank the labor force and contributed to political crises. Reduced population- attempts to control labor power; peasant, worker resentment of social control, heavy taxation. End of the medieval optimal- period of warmth c. 900-1300. Shorter, unreliable growing season: agriculture becomes more difficult, population increase contributes to famine. Great famine, europe 1315-17: strikes almost all of europe. Famines in china 1330s-40s: heavy populated. Malnourishment- enhances danger of plague, other diseases: peasants eat rice or bread. Bubonic plague: yersinia pestis: endemic in ground rodents, transmitted via fleas, lice, forms of plague: bubonic, pneumonic, septicemic, medieval cities had little sanitation, overcrowded, disease originated from mongol empire linked to trade routes. Trading city on the black sea in italy. Disease breaks out from golden horde"s siege. Plague in golden horde"s camp, bodies flung over walls. Decameron: novellas (short stories) told by plague refugees.
