How crisis and trade carried plague through medieval Europe

The Black Death was a plague pandemic in Europe from 1346 to 1353, killing up to 50 million people and causing far-reaching population, economic, and cultural effects. What can you understand about how crisis and trade carried plague through medieval Europe? The lessons connect the movement of goods and people with the wider consequences of crisis.

2 articles, 1 book · about 1 hr 5 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   the impact of the black plague on medieval europe · Wikipedia · 60+ min read

   The Black Plague was reportedly introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347. The Black Plague brought many attacks against Jewish communities; in the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered. The Black Plague's impact included the word "quarantine," whose roots lie in this period, though isolating people to prevent disease spread is older. In Ragusa, a thirty-day isolation period for new arrivals from plague-affected areas was implemented in 1377, later extended to forty days and named "quarantino," from the Italian word for "forty".

2. Read
   

   A Volcanic Eruption in 1345 May Have Triggered a Chain of Events That Brought the Black Death to Europe · Smithsonian Magazine · 3 min read

   Some Italian cities imported grain from the Black Sea region, northeast of the Mediterranean, which may have brought fleas with the plague-causing bacterium, Yersinia pestis. Historian of medieval climate and epidemiology Martin Bauch says, "Once these hosts have died from the disease, the fleas turn to alternative mammals, including humans."

3. Book
   

   Year of Wonders · Bookshop.org

   Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is a 2001 international bestselling historical fiction novel by Geraldine Brooks. It was chosen as both a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book.

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