The Effect Of The Black Plague On The Economic Situation Of England

The Black Death was devastating and was one of the most significant events in Medieval Britain. The Black Death was also known the plague and bubonic plague it describes the spread of disease that caused mass deaths throughout Britain. The disease itself was carried by fleas and spread across Europe between 1346-1353 leaving towns and city such as Siena Italy with 85% of the population wiped out. This was seen all over Europe including Britain and it can be argued economic factors was the most significant consequences of the Black Death. However there are many factors such as political, social factors and Mortality rates that were also results of the Black Death and perhaps social factors may be more significant.

During the late 1340’s a plague fostered in Europe and began to take effect onto the feudal system in place. This plague was known as the Black

Politics in Europe changed dramatically; Serfs began got higher pay, and feudalism weakened. In 14th century Europe, the government was run by feudalism.

Analyze the influence of the Black Plague on the economic activity in Europe from 1350-1400.

This was influenced by the manor system, “ The manor was the economic side of feudalism” (Doc 2). This meaning that your ranking in the feudalism was your job in the manor system. If you were a serf you worked, and farmed for the King, Knights,and Nobles and you had one day a week to farm to feed yourself and your family. If that isn't hard enough they also had to pay high rents to the lords for using his land to farm. The Knights and Nobles had to fight and serve the King for exchange of land,and they had to pay taxes. This showing that life in the Middle Ages was hard for many

These peasants were called Jacquerie meaning uprising or revolt in french since most of the attacks were at France. A speech by John Ball a priest who protested against on how the wealthy treated the poor, inspired many peasants in 1381 that the way the rich were poor were and this made them feel as if they were being used and started to revolt against the rich later that year at the end of May. A paragraph from Jean Froissart chronicles was about how the nobles destroyed destroyed a peasants village or a jacquerie village (what they called peasants at the time) were slaughtered and tortured including the women and children making the villagers enrage fought harder towards the wealthy lords and nobles has revenge for slaughtering one of their

Without compensation, they refused to work any longer. This caused the nobility to finally realize that with such a high demand for these workers, they had to pay them. In addition to their newfound freedom and pay, peasants could now purchase their own land (47). This was a major change in the system of feudalism. The world of the nobility was forever upturned (47).

In the 1300s’ the black plague struck parts of Asia, Europe and parts of northern Africa. Many people believed that this was an act of God, and it disrupted the growth of the people of Europe. This was big on the Church because priests left their duties, and the Church was on the decline. Although there were many ways the church was on the decline, the black plague is the main reason. The priests abandoned their duties, many people suffered, and the church became richer. Therefore, I believe the black plague played a key role on the churches decline.

Britain could not recover its former societal structure, so British society was forced to change its structure for its preservation in the future. (Tom James) This is shown in primary source one: The Ordinance of Laborers, as the result of a paucity of working people in the region of Kent, the lords and clergy were forced treat their servants with more dignity. They also had to value the hard work of the laborers and servants in the form of bestowing them with more power and higher wages. The higher classes did not enjoy lowering themselves by competing for the few healthy laborers, but they had to raise the standards for laborers to keep their position at the top of British society. This source also details the transferring of agricultural lands to lower class laborers from the large estates of the manorial system. Which, is also very important as British society was being transformed and revolutionized into a society which has the structure and operations to colonize and settle new lands in the future. The Black Plague emboldened the British peasantry as they gained substantial power over the functionings of British society going forward into the subsequent peasant revolts. The aristocracy was at the will of the peasants for the peasants could destroy the aristocracy's elevated position in society because

The Black Death or more commonly known as Bubonic Plague, decimated European society in the mid 14 century to the extent that it has not been seen since in human history. It not only killed fifty to sixty percent of the population, but it also brought huge changes to the people of Europe. The impact of the plague caused effects on the economy, society, family structure, public policy, health science, religion, philosophy and literature. Its’ effects would last until the eighteenth century and beyond. The population would not be replenished to levels before the plague until well into twentieth century.

King Edward III. Ordinance of Laborers. N.p.: n.p., 1349. Internet History Sourcebooks Project. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. King Edward III created the Ordinance of Laborers, aiming to discontinue paying wages to the laborers. This indicates labor shortages due to the Black Death. Also, it shows how societal roles and economy shifted during that period.

The Great Plague was the worst outbreak outbreak in England since the black death in 1348. The plague caused swellings in the lymph nodes, headaches, vomiting, and fevers. There was a thirty percent chance of dying within two weeks. Treatments and prevention did not work at the time.

In the many years since the Black Plague we've seen many scary diseases; one that is very similar to the plague is HIV/AIDS. Some similar symptoms are fever, swelling of the lymph glands, body fatigue, and vomiting/diarrhea. Not only do these illesses have similar symptons but they were also treated very similarly. HIV/AIDS was even at one point caled "the Gay Plague", and people thought you could get it from just being around an infected peron; like the plague. New illnesses will always scare peple and get bad reputations.

To gain perspective on the level of economic change in England, it is important to note and understand the population trends, as it had a directly impacted all aspects of change in regards to the economic effects of the Black Plague. In simple terms, the number of people had a direct impact on the most basic categories of the economy: production and consumption. An expanding population is only possible if it has the economic resources to support it. It seems the Black Death’s impact on population levels actually created a silver lining based on the “Malthusian Theory” where English scholar Thomas Malthus claims, “[t]hat the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.” As England was experiencing overpopulation, there was not enough agricultural production to support the masses, but as the force of the Black Death swept in and decimated the population, it left England with abundance of land and less people to support, resulting in a balance between agricultural productivity and consumption. Although the Black Plague created shock, panic and fear for a few years, this alteration in population left survivors with an optimistic outlook

The economic system of this era is termed feudalism. Feudalism is defined by conditioned holding of land by lords on some kind of service-tenure to the monarch. The lords were a noble class who supplied military service and council to the monarch. The lords' social status was determined by their land holdings. The lords' estates were farmed by compulsory labor, known as serfs. The lords maintained a great deal of control over the serfs. They dictated what, where and when to plant. They also operated as a judiciary force over the serfs (Hilton, pp. 34-36).