How Did The Decrease In Population Change Caused By The Bubonic Plague

The Black Death had a massive impact on the economy as states were unable to collect taxes from the peasants as the population was more scatter after the Black Death. Additionally there was no produce to sell many as ports were closed to trade. The mass death of the labourers and peasants led to a shift in power as there was a depleted labour pool. Labourers and peasants were able demanded higher wages and better living conditions. In contrast the economic impact of the Black death was felt by the Noblemen as they were forced to raise the wages to encourage people to stay on their land. Not only did the Noblemen need their tax; peasant were also a

The Black Death caused a better economy. Laborers caught the plague and lost their job because they weren’t able to work, or they died because of the plague. It says on Source Text One, that “As a result, wages and prices rose, but the overwhelming shortage of laborers meant that wages continued to rise.”

One of the many Economic benefits the Black Plague brought, was a new power for peasants. This meant they were granted higher pay, better working conditions and sometimes more land out in the fields. Prior to the initial outbreak of the Black Death, the people of Europe followed a social hierarchy system called the ‘feudal system’. Under its reign, there were only two main social categories; the rich, wealthy nobles and the poor, powerless peasants. Most of these peasants earned very little, if any pay, for their hard work. Following the Black Death, there were two ways these peasants could become prosperous, either by gaining more vacant land, or demanding higher wages. The Black Death is thought to have wiped out around one-third of Europe’s population of the time, and therefore many blocks of land were left unattended. It didn’t take long

With labor shortages apparent, people began to starve due to a lack of farming because people had abandoned their farms and villages. The *Serfs at the time were the main laborers, and due to the inevitable plague they were no longer tied to their masters of land. Due to the economic strain at the time, Serfs who survived were able to demand higher wages and better working conditions from their new landlords (Utah State University). Therefore, worker’s wages had skyrocketed. It was known that “a reaper was not to be hired for less than eightpence [a day, 50-75% up], plus his meals,” (The Economist). This eventually led to the end of Serfdom and the start of workers rights in Europe. This in turn socially changed the way people felt about the different socioeconomic classes due to the Peasant's Revolt (Utah State University). The need for better working conditions and situations for Serfs forever changed Europe.

The death rate kept climbing at an alarming rate, and it ravished the economic and social structures of Europe as they knew it. The lack of peasants and laborers sent wages skyrocketing while the value of land plummeted tremendously. The wages for needed workers increased enormously and created an incredible amount of demand for those workers in the designated fields. With the value of land dropping, the “playing field” for trade among the wealthy and peasants became more even. Bargaining power for peasants rose and provided them with a new found sense of growth and empowerment (The Effects of the Black Death on the Economic and Social Life of Europe). No longer were peasants’ livelihoods dictated by their greedy landlords; they became a valuable resource to those in power, and they knew this gave them a much better position from which to barter. Another huge outcome within this was the increased given rights that women obtained from this whole mess. When peasants were granted more rights and abilities for trade and property ownership, women were also granted these same rights. They were able to take on more responsibility and ownership of property. This included land ownership, trading, and political positons when times had gotten rough. Although it is sad that it took extreme travesty such as wiping out a vast majority of the

The peasants in Germany were “aggrieved by the appropriation by individuals of meadows and fields which at one time belonged to a community” (1) because what was shared land was now taken exclusively by the landholders to grow cash crops and to prevent the peasants from supplementing themselves in a time of shortages. The Little Ice age had made crops more unreliable, and although it was a natural event that caused this dearth of food, the landholders required the peasants to toil much harder. This increase in already strenuous labor caused disease, death, and overworked peasants, which lead to decreases in production and population. The infectious and fatal Black Death also caused people to be more susceptible to disease and inevitably death. The peasants in Bohemia worked laboriously because Eastern Europe was heavily dependent on agriculture sales to Western Europe. The productivity on farms was imperative for economic balance in Europe, due to the current increase in urbanization. Document 4 does show that the government was interested in investigating these severe conditions, although they were unaware that the nobles did not “have the best intentions” (4) for the peasants. Originally, the government agreed to this serfdom, because it was returned with loyalty for the ruler, but the labors have gotten much worse.

Due to the high rate of death, these lords and nobles were forced to provide better pay for peasants and skilled workers to maintain their lands and livelihoods and this improved the economy. Previously, the peasants and skilled workers were exploited and paid unfairly, but with the Black Death the survivors were able to take advantage of the situation. The people realized that they had a new independence that they previously never had. Even though they were being paid more, there were not enough workers to maintain all the farmlands, so eventually some land shriveled up and the animals on those farms died. Having villages close by meant that farmers could share animals. Even though this seems like it would help the farmers, it actually spread the disease further and lead to multiple farms falling victim to the plague. Whole families would die, and the farm animals would die of starvation. Such loses lead to a decline in food production, which meant there would not be enough food for the cities, towns and villages, which meant starvation occurred

The Black Death decimated about twenty five to fifty percent of europe’s population thus curtailing the amount of available labor and skyrocketing the price of items, the shortage of labor allowed peasants to climb up the social ladder. This dramatic change decreased aristocratic incomes and threatened the power of lords and as a result lords issued the statute of laborers, which attempted to limit wages to pre plague levels and forbid the mobility of peasants as well. The decline in population and the improved lives of the peasants also led to the change from labor service to rent thus weakening manorialism and freeing peasants from duties of servile labor. Frightened lords exercised their power to oppress the rising peasants by issuing taxes and allowing mercenaries to live off peasants land. The peasantry responded maliciously with revolts involving killing, burning houses down and other deadly violence acts.

The black death ultimately caused the middle ages to end. As a result, it caused the dominant in the serf and noble relationship to switch. The serf and lord relationship precedently the Black Death gave the nobles the upper hand. The nobles were warriors so it was beneath them to do farm work. The serfs and nobles would do a small exchange where if the serfs harvest and do the farm work the nobles will give them a small portion of their land to live on. They would “ [ receive] day-work from their tenants throughout the year”( doc 1) however had to do many more activities like carry manure to and from and even in order to live on the land the lord got to pick out the serf’s daughter’s husband as a way to show dominance and to remind the serf

.In a place called Kaffa, a tartar army threw the infected corpses of their own over

While the Black Death had many adverse effects, there were good ones too. Since there were fewer peasants to work, they could demand higher wages, they could even move up classes. The serf system was collapsing from all the deaths. Nobody could stop serfs from up and leaving. As independence spread, so did law breaking. People would enter the dead’s homes and steal or stay in the house. Criminals would rape, steal, and kill on the streets and nobody would stop them. These felons would justify their actions by claiming it was the end of the world or that nobody cared.

This problem greatly affected the peasant class and led to more changes in their life. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, after the Black Death, the jobs that the lower class usually worked were in high demand. This was because so many people died from the plague and employers lost many farm hands. To try to get the help they needed, some landowners started to offer higher wages for peasants (The Finer Times). The peasants knew that employers needed their help, so they were able to make different demands like higher wages.

The Bubonic plague was a plague that swept through medieval world, killing millions. It spread through infected fleas on rats and poor cleanliness helped spread it through people. The plague started in Asia in the 1200s, and spread through the silk road in the early 1300s. It reached Europe in 1346 and started spreading rapidly, devastating the communities it happened to pass through. The plague would infect everyone, no matter what social class or amount of wealth. The fact that the plague targeted everyone changed the way medieval Europe was, and it helped the downfall of feudalism. The Bubonic plague changed behavior in medieval communities by inflicting such fear into them that they would abandon their family and avoid everyone who was

The revival of commerce and the widespread use of money changed the relations between feudal lord and serf. Some lords began to rent out their lands to tenant farmers. Using those lands, serfs engaged themselves into trade, which allowed them to substitute a money payment for their feudal obligations and become tenant farmers. In the 14th century, the labor shortage caused by the Black Death led to a rise of bargaining power of serfs; many serfs’ wages raised and became able to purchase their freedom while feudal lords lost their power by the end of the Medieval Europe. At third, as stability and security in Europe gradually came back, the existence of a feudal knight’s military service became unnecessary. What monarchs were more willing to do is assemble large mercenary armies at relatively low cost. Based on all of the factors above, feudalism was replaced by a system of government that brought the birth of modern capitalism.

The English Peasant Uprising was motivated by a growing contempt with the government and clergy following the Black Death which was finally set off by a series of immediate social and economic causes. A shortage of workers followed the Black Death with an estimated forty-five per cent of the population dying in England . As entire towns were either deserted or left devoid of life, rural peasants increased their mobility into major cities. This shortage of rural workers led to famine as fields were left to go fallow, placing further economic pressure on the peasant classes who survived as the price of food increased. Due to the lack of labourers, the labourers who survived demanded greater wages as they now had increased leverage over