What if... the Black Death had never happened?

THE BLACK DEATH HAD NEVER HAPPENED? WHAT IF...

Professor Mark Bailey tells Nige Tassell why the world would have become a very different place had the plague outbreaks of the 14th century not triggered fundamental changes in society

lthough the Black Death

Afirst struck during the seven years between 1346 and 1353, its effects would be felt for centuries after, particularly as outbreaks continued right up until the 18th century. The catastrophic loss of life – with as much as 50 per cent of the population being wiped out in certain regions – had a seismic effect across the globe, whether economically, socially or religiously. The world would never be the same again. But what would the planet look like had the pandemic never happened?

To begin, Mark Bailey – professor of late medieval history at the University of East Anglia, and author of After the Black Death (Oxford University Press, 2021) – explores the effect that such enormous population loss had on England. “The relentless population growth in pre-plague Britain had resulted in a perilously small size of landholding, a major rise in the proportion of landless and destitute, and a society highly sensitive to the slightest calamity, such as harvest failure. Economic growth had faltered because of a lack of effective demand and low living standards.”

Had there been no pandemic, there would have been little impetus for this to change. However, the decimation of the working population created an enormous labour shortage, causing wages to rise and inequality to narrow. Without the Black Death, explains Professor Bailey, “England would have remained trapped in this desperate culde-sac of poverty, underemployment and low productivity”.

IN CONTEXT

The Black Death, also known as the Great Pestilence, profoundly reshaped Eurasian society in the middle of the 14th century. In the seven years in which it was rampant, the pandemic claimed as many as 200 million lives. Such a huge loss of life – as much as 50 per cent of the population in certain areas, a proportion that sometimes took two centuries to restore to pre-plague levels of population – obviously had enormous consequences for all aspects of society, including the economy, the class system and the power of organised religion. The plague rocked the world on its axis and diverted the course of history. A woodcut from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle depicts plague victims ‘dancing’

It wasn’t just the English economy that was profoundly recalibrated; it was the same across Eurasia and North Africa. “The loss of up to half the population meant that all economies were much smaller after the Black Death, and remained so for at least the next two centuries. Some regions – such as Mamluk Egypt – suffered declining wealth per head, whereas other regions – such as Britain – enjoyed rising wealth.”

SERFDOM AND SANITATION

Professor Bailey identifies a range of structural changes, born out of the Black Death and its reverberating aftershocks, that accelerated the economies of northwest Europe, “including increased rates of urbanisation, a decline in wealth inequality, a shift towards industrial and retail activities, greater participation of women in the labour market, and the rise of the nuclear family. It is arguable that, without the Black Death, the Industrial Revolution would never have happened, or at least would have been delayed by centuries.”

In northwest Europe, serfdom gradually disappeared. With the pandemic bringing land rates down, “ordinary people could obtain land more cheaply and easily” while enjoying “more freedom to choose where, when and if to work” as “more wealth trickled down the social scale”. Had the Black Death not occurred, the conditions for improved incomes would not have presented themselves for centuries.

Without the pandemic, certain advances in medicine and living conditions would have also advanced much more slowly. Firstly, observes Professor Bailey, attention would not have been given to hygiene and sanitation had there not been such a catastrophic physical contagion. For example, England’s Sanitary Act of 1388, which included new measures to keep the streets free from filth, would not have been on the political agenda.

Secondly, without the lessons learned from the Black Death, public health would have continued to falter.

Instead, from the 1370s onwards, the practice of quarantining and banning certain public activities became a “WITHOUT THE PANDEMIC, standard reaction to potentially equally CERTAIN ADVANCES IN MEDICINE debilitating pandemics.

Quarantining, along with a growing AND LIVING CONDITIONS WOULD provision of isolation hospitals, had an additional benefit in northern Italy, HAVE ADVANCED MORE SLOWLY” laying down the foundations of the Renaissance “by generating confidence in the ability of humans to respond effectively to divine punishment. This coincided with a resurgent intellectual interest in the philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome – that is, texts containing human ideas, not just the major religious works. This created optimism that human ideas and action, not just divine providence and wisdom, might shape future society.” Ergo, no Black Death, no Renaissance – at least not at that moment in time, or in that location.

For others, the Black Death meant heightened religious engagement, as the pandemic was “interpreted as a manifestation of divine displeasure”. As such, “the populace sought to atone for sin and to reduce the amount of time their souls spent in purgatory. This was mainly channelled through orthodox religious outlets, such as hearing masses or charitable activities.” Accordingly, the power of organised religion was emboldened by the pandemic.

STAYING AT HOME

Another consequence of the Black Death identified by Bailey involves the European arrival in what became North America. “Rising populations and the pressure to colonise new lands had contributed to the Nordic discovery and settlement of western Greenland by the 13th century,” he observes. However, the halving of population numbers, along with a severely reduced economy, meant the need, or ability, to conquer faraway lands had dissolved.

MAIN: An illustration from the chronicles of Gilles le Muisit, an abbot from Tournai, shows a mass burial in 1348 – the year the Black Death first hit much of Europe INSET: A similar scene of devastation is found in this 19th-century engraving, imagining what Florence would “It is arguable that without the Black have looked like in the Death, and with continued population same year pressure, northern Europeans would have colonised the eastern seaboard of modern Canada and the United States decades before the Portuguese discovery of the West Indies and South America.” And what a different world A CLOSE CALL Despite being a centre of commerce, Milan escaped the Black Death outbreak of 1346–53 almost entirely unscathed. Only three households are thought to have fallen victim to the plague, and according to chronicles, the disease was contained. that might have been. d LISTEN A new six-part HistoryExtra podcast series, The Black Death, examines how the pandemic shook the Middle Ages. Listen now at historyextra.podlink.to/ TheBlackDeath NEXT MONTH What if... Queen Victoria had been assassinated?