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| 2nd Millennium AD |
2nd millennium AD(1st millennium – 2nd millennium – 3rd millennium – other millennia)
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Events
- European crusades in Middle East
- Mongol Empires in Asia
- The Black Death
- The Renaissance in Europe
- The Protestant Reformation
- The agricultural and industrial revolutions
- The rise of nationalism and the nation state
- European discovery of the Americas and Australia and their colonization
- European colonization and decolonization in Africa and Asia
- Population explosion
- World-spanning wars (Seven Years' War, French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II)
- Ideological disputes, Capitalism and Communism
Significant persons
- Bhaskara (1114 - 1185), Indian mathematician, founder of differential calculus.
- Genghis Khan, (c. 1155/1162/1167 – 1227), Mongolian conqueror
- Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274), Italian theologian
- Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), Italian poet
- John Wycliffe (c. 1320 - 1384), English theologian and early proponent of reform in the Roman Catholic Church.
- Timur (1336 - 1405), founder of Timurid Empire
- Madhava of Sangamagrama (1350 - 1425), Indian mathematician, father of mathematical analysis.
- Yongle Emperor of China (1360 - 1424), considered among the greatest Chinese emperors.
- Jan Hus (1369 - 1415), Bohemian religious thinker and reformer.
- Zheng He (1371 - 1435), Chinese explorer.
- Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398 – 1468), Inventor of movable type
- Joan of Arc (1412 - 1431), female commander of the French army.
- Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506), Spanish explorer
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519), Italian Artist, Philosopher and Scientist
- Nicholas Copernicus (1473 – 1543), Polish astronomer and mathematician
- Ferdinand Magellan (1480 - 1521), Portoguese explorer.
- Martin Luther (1483 – 1546), German religious reformer.
- Babur (1483 – 1530), founder of India's Mughal Empire, descendant of Timur.
- Jyeshtadeva (1500 – 1575), Indian mathematician and astronomer, writer of the world's first calculus text.
- Akbar (1542 – 1605), considered the greatest of the Mughal emperors
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616), Spanish playwright and novelist
- Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), Italian scientist
- William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), British playwright and poet
- Jahangir (1569 – 1627), one of the greatest Mughal emperors
- Shah Jahan (1592 – 1666), one of the greatest Mughal emperors, builder of the Taj Mahal
- René Descartes (1596 – 1650), French philosopher and mathematician
- Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), British scientist
- Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), American founding father and scientist
- George Washington (1732 – 1799), First American president
- Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), American founding father and president
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), Austrian Composer
- Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794) French Revolutionary Leader
- Napoleon I of France (1769 – 1821), French conqueror and emperor
- Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867), British scientist and inventor
- Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865), American president
- Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), British natural scientist
- Otto von Bismarck (1815 – 1898), German chancellor
- Karl Marx (1818 – 1883), German political philosopher
- Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901), Queen of the United Kingdom
- Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) , French microbiologist and chemist.
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), German philosopher
- Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931), Inventor
- Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939), Austrian psychoanalyst
- Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943), Inventor
- Mangal Pandey (d. 1857), considered to be responsible for the Indian Mutiny
- Henry Ford (1863 – 1947), Industrialist
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948), Indian civil rights leader
- Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924), Soviet leader
- Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965), British prime minister
- Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), German physicist
- Joseph Stalin (1879 – 1953), Soviet leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945), American president
- Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945), German dictator
- Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), Chinese revolutionary
- Walt Disney (1901 – 1966), American film producer and animator
- Bhagat Singh (1907 – 1931), one of the most famous martyrs of the Indian freedom struggle
- John Paul II (1920 – 2005), Pope of the Roman Catholic Church
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968), American civil rights leader
Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions
- The Printing press
- Gunpowder
- The Steam engine
- The discovery of the scientific method
- Theory of evolution
- The discovery of genetics and DNA
- Calculus
- Human Flight
- Nuclear Power
- The transistor and electronics
- Space travel and mankind's first flight to the moon
- The internal combustion engine
- Capitalism and socialism
- The computer and the Internet
- Universal suffrage
- Quantum Physics
Centuries and Decades
Category:2nd millennium
ja:2千年紀
1st millennium(1st millennium BC – 1st millennium – 2nd millennium – other millennia)
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Events
- Beginning of Christianity (30s)
- London founded by Romans as Londinium
- Diaspora of the Jews (1st century)
- The Olympic Games observed until 393
- The Library of Alexandria, largest library in the world, burned
- High point, and fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century)
- Rise of the Byzantine Empire
- Germanic kingdoms established in Northern and Western Europe (Migration Period, Dark Ages)
- Beginning of Islam (7th century)
- Maya civilization at its height
- Three kingdoms in China
- The height of Hindu culture in India under the Gupta Dynasty
- Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa
- Viking raids common in northern Europe (Viking Age, from the 8th century)
- Beginning of the Middle Ages in Europe
Significant persons
- Caesar Augustus, Roman emperor (63 BC- AD 14)
- Jesus, central figure in Christianity (d. c. AD 29–33)
- Paul of Tarsus (d. 67), central apostle of Christianity to the gentiles
- Cai Lun (d.121), Chinese inventor of paper
- Plutarch (d. c. 127), Greek historian
- Zhang Heng (d. 139), Chinese astronomer and mathematician
- Ptolemy (d. 178), Greek astronomer and mathematician
- Chandragupta (280–319), founder of the Indian Gupta Empire
- Constantine I (d. 337), Roman emperor
- Augustine of Hippo (354-430), theologian and Father of the Church
- Attila (d. 453), Hunnic king and warlord
- Theodoric the Great (454-526), king of the Goths and of Italy
- Aryabhata (b. 476), Indian astronomer and mathematician
- Muhammad (570-632), prophet and founder of Islam
- Saint Isidore of Seville (d. 636), archbishop and encyclopedist
- Brahmagupta (d. 668), Indian mathematician and astronomer
- Abi Ishaq (d. 735) Arab grammarian
- Charles Martel (d. 741), defeated the Arabs at Toulouse, 721
- Charlemagne (d. 814), Frankish conqueror and founder of the Holy Roman Empire
- al-Khwarizmi (d. 845), Arab mathematician
- Alfred the Great (d. 899)
- Al Battani (850-923), Arab astronomer and mathematician
- Otto the Great (912-973)
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
- Paper invented in China
- Algebra developed in the Middle East
- Various horse-riding improvements including the horseshoe and the stirrup
- Hop (plant) added to beer for the first time
- Ptolemaic system used to describe the motion of the planets
- Chess developed, gaining widespread use
- Magnetic compass invented
- Steel first used in India
Cultural landmarks
Centuries and decades
Category:1st millennium
ja:1千年紀
CenturiesThese pages contain the trends of millennia and centuries. The individual century pages contain lists of decades and years. See history for different organizations of historical events. See calendar and list of calendars for other groupings of years.
For earlier time periods, see cosmological timeline, geologic timescale, evolutionary timeline, pleistocene, and logarithmic timeline.
- Paleolithic
- 10th millennium BC | 9th millennium BC | 8th millennium BC
- 7th millennium BC | 6th millennium BC | 5th millennium BC
- 5th millennium | 6th millennium | 7th millennium
- 8th millennium | 9th millennium | 10th millennium
- 11th millennium and beyond
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ja:年表
th:คริสต์ศตวรรษ
simple:Centuries
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire (1206–1368) was the largest contiguous land empire in world history ruling 35 million km² (13.8 million miles²) and more than 100 million people (the British Empire was larger in absolute area, but it was non-contiguous). Founded by Genghis Khan in 1206, it encompassed the majority of the territories from southeast Asia to central Europe. During its existence, the Mongol Empire facilitated cultural exchange and trade between the East, West, and the Middle East in the period of the 13th and 14th centuries.
Overview
The Mongol Empire was tremendously destructive. Historian R. J. Rummel estimated that 30 million people were killed during the reign of the Mongol Empire, and the population of China fell by half in fifty years of Mongol rule. One of the more successful tactics employed by the Mongols was to ruthlessly exterminate urban populations that had refused to surrender. In addition to such fear-inducing slaughters, the rapid expansion of the Empire was facilitated by sheer military hardiness (especially during bitterly cold winters), military skill, meritocracy, and discipline.
The Mongol Empire had a lasting impact, unifying large regions, some of which (such as eastern and western Russia and the western parts of China) remain unified today. The Mongols themselves were assimilated into local populations after the fall of the empire, and many of these descendants adopted local religions - for example, the eastern Khanates adopted Islam, largely under Sufi influence. The influence of the Mongol Empire may prove to be even more direct—a recent highly controversial genetic survey indicates that as many as one out of every 200 males in Eurasia may be descended from Genghis Khan.
At the time of Genghis Khan's death in 1227, the empire was divided among his four sons, with his third son as the supreme Khan, but by the 1350s, the khanates were in a state of fracture and had lost the order brought to them by Genghis Khan. Eventually the separate khanates drifted away from each other, becoming the Ilkhanate Dynasty in Persia, the Chagatai Khanate in central Asia, the Yuan Dynasty in China, and what would become the Golden Horde in present-day Russia.
Formation
Genghis Khan, through political manipulation and military might, united the Mongol tribes under his rule by 1206. He quickly came into conflict with the Jin empire of the Jurchen and the Western Xia in northern China. Under the provocation of the Khwarezmid Empire, he moved into Central Asia as well, devastating Transoxiana and eastern Persia, then raiding into southern Russia and the Caucasus. While engaged in a final war against the Western Xia, Genghis fell ill and died. Before dying, Genghis Khan divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, but as custom made clear, it remained the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class.
Major events in the Early Mongol Empire
- By 1206 Temujin from the Orkhon Valley dominated Mongolia and received the title Genghis Khan, thought to mean Oceanic Ruler or Firm, Resolute Ruler
- 1207, the Mongols began operations against the Western Xia, which comprised much of northwestern China and parts of Tibet. This campaign lasted until 1210 with the Western Xia ruler submitting to Genghis Khan. During this period, the Uighurs also submitted peacefully to the Mongols and became valued administrators throughout the empire.
- 1211, after a great quriltai or meeting, Genghis Khan led his armies against the Jin Dynasty that ruled northern China.
- 1219–1222 While the campaign above was still in progress, the Mongols waged a war in central Asia and destroyed the Khwarazmian Empire, killing around 1.5 million of its inhabitants. One notable feature was that the campaign was launched from several directions.
- 1226, Invasion of the Western Xia, being the second battle with the Western Xia.
Organization
Military setup
Main article: Military advances of Genghis Khan
The Mongol military organization was simple, but effective. The organization was based on an old tradition of the steppe, which was like today’s decimal system: the army was built upon a squad of ten, called an "arban"; ten "arbans" constituted a company of a hundred, called a "jaghun". Ten "jaghuns" made a regiment of a thousand – "mingghan". Ten "mingghans" would then constitute a regiment of ten thousand ("tumen"), which is the equivalent of a modern division.
The army's discipline distinguished Mongol soldiers from their peers. The forces under the command of the Mongol Empire were generally tailored for mobility and speed. To ensure mobility, Mongol soldiers were relatively lightly armored compared to many of the armies they faced. In addition, soldiers of the Mongol army functioned independently of supply lines, considerably speeding up army movement. Discipline was inculcated in traditional hunts or nerge as reported
by Juvayni.
All military campaigns were preceded by careful planning, reconnaissance and gathering of sensitive information relating to the enemy territories and forces. The success, organization and mobility of the Mongol armies let them fight on several fronts at once. All males who were aged from 15 to 60 and were capable of undergoing rigorous training were eligible for conscription into the army.
Unlike other mobile fighters such as the Huns or the Vikings, the Mongols were very comfortable in the art of the siege. They were very careful to recruit artisans from the cities they plundered, and along with a group of experienced Chinese engineers, they were expert in building the trebuchet and other siege machines. These were mostly built on the spot using nearby trees.
Another advantage of the Mongols was their ability to traverse large distances even in debilitatingly cold winters; in particular, frozen rivers led them like highways to large urban conurbations on their banks. In addition to siege engineering, the Mongols were also adept at river-work, crossing the river Sajo in spring flood conditions with thirty thousand cavalry during one night during the battle of Mohi (April, 1241), defeating the Hungarian king Bela IV. Similarly, in the attack against the Khwarezmshah, a flotilla of barges were used to prevent escape on the river.
Law and governance
The Mongol Empire was governed by a code of law devised by Genghis, called Yassa, meaning "order" or "decree". A particular canon of this code was that the nobility shared much of the same hardship as the common man. It also made for very stiff penalties, e.g. the death penalty was decreed if the mounted soldier following another did not pick up something dropped from the mount in front. At the same time, meritocracy prevailed, and Subutai, one of the most successful Mongol generals, started life as a blacksmith's son. On the whole, the tight discipline made the Mongol Empire extremely safe and well-run; European travelers were amazed by the organization and strict discipline of the people within the Mongol Empire.
Under Yassa, chiefs and generals were selected based on merit, religious tolerance was guaranteed, and thievery and vandalization of civilian property was strictly forbidden. According to legend, a woman carrying a sack of gold could travel safely from one end of the Empire to another.
The empire was governed by a non-democratic parliamentary-style central administration called Kurultai in which the Mongol chiefs met with the Great Khan to discuss domestic and foreign policies.
Genghis also demonstrated a rather liberal and tolerant attitude to the beliefs of others, and never persecuted people on religious grounds. This proved to be good military strategy, as when he was at war with Sultan Muhammad of Khwarezm, other Islamic leaders did not join the fight against Genghis - it was instead seen as a non-holy war between two individuals.
Throughout the empire, trade routes and an extensive postal system ("yam") were created. Many merchants, messengers and travelers from China, the Middle East and Europe used the system. Genghis Khan also created a national seal, encouraged the use of a written alphabet in Mongolia, and exempted teachers, lawyers, and artists from taxes, although taxes were heavy on all other subjects of the empire.
At the same time, any resistance to Mongol rule was met with massive collective punishment. Cities were destroyed and their inhabitants slaughtered if they defied Mongol orders.
See also: Organization of state under Genghis Khan
Trade networks
Mongols prized their commercial and trade relationships with neighboring economies and this policy they continued during the process of their conquests and during the expansion of their empire. All merchants and ambassadors, having proper documentation and authorization, traveling through their realms were protected. This greatly increased overland trade.
During the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, European merchants, numbering hundreds, perhaps thousands, made their way from Europe to the distant land of China – Marco Polo is only one of the best known of these. Well-traveled and relatively well-maintained roads linked lands from the Mediterranean basin to China. The Mongol Empire had negligible influence on seaborne trade, which was much larger, both in value and volume than the overland trade that passed through the territories under the control of the Mongol empire.
After Genghis Khan
The empire's expansion continued for a generation or more after Genghis's death in 1227 — indeed, it was under Genghis's successor Ögedei Khan that the speed of expansion reached its peak. Mongol armies pushed into Persia, finished off the Xia and the remnants of the Khwarezmids, and came into conflict with the Song Dynasty of China, starting a war that would last until 1279 and that would conclude with the Mongols' successful conquest of China.
Then, in the late 1230s, the Mongols under Batu Khan invaded Russia and Volga Bulgaria, reducing most of its principalities to vassalage, and pressed on into Eastern Europe. In 1241 the Mongols may have been ready to invade western Europe as well, having defeated the last Polish-German and Hungarian armies at the Battle of Legnica and the Battle of Mohi. However, at this point, news of Ögedei's death led to first the partial suspension of the invasion and then to its effective conclusion as Batu's attention switched to the election of the next Great Khan.
During the 1250s, Genghis's grandson Hulegu Khan, operating from the Mongol base in Persia, destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and destroyed the cult of the Assassins, moving into Palestine towards Egypt. The Great Khan Möngke having died, however, he hastened to return for the election, and the force that remained in Palestine was destroyed by the Mamluks under Baibars in 1261 at Ayn Jalut.
Disintegration
Ayn Jalut
When Genghis Khan died, a major potential weakness of the system he had set up manifested itself. It took many months to summon the kurultai, as many of its most important members were leading military campaigns thousands of miles from the Mongol heartland. And then it took months more for the kurultai to come to the decision that had been almost inevitable from the start — that Genghis's choice as successor, his third son Ögedei, should indeed become Great Khan. Ögedei was a rather passive ruler and personally self-indulgent, but he was intelligent, charming and a good decision-maker whose authority was respected throughout his reign by apparently stronger-willed relatives and generals whom he had inherited from Genghis.
On Ögedei's death in 1241, however, the system started falling apart. Pending a kurultai to elect Ögedei's successor, his widow Toregene Khatun assumed power and proceeded to ensure the election of her son Guyuk by the kurultai. Batu was unwilling to accept Guyuk as Great Khan, but did not possess the power in the kurultai to procure his own election. Therefore, while moving no further west, he simultaneously insisted that the situation in Europe was too precarious for him to come east and that he could not accept the result of any kurultai held in his absence. The resulting stalemate lasted four years. In 1246 Batu eventually agreed to send a representative to the kurultai but never acknowledged the resulting election of Guyuk as Great Khan.
Guyuk died in 1248, only two years after his election, on his way west apparently to force Batu to acknowledge his authority, and his widow Oghul Ghaymish assumed power pending the meeting of the kurultai; unfortunately for her, she could not keep the power. Batu again remained in the west but this time gave his support to his and Guyuk's cousin, Möngke, who was duly elected Great Khan in 1251.
It was Möngke Khan who unwittingly provided his brother Kublai with a chance to become Khan in 1260. Möngke assigned Kublai to a province in North China. Kublai expanded the Mongol empire and became a favorite of Möngke. Kublai's conquest of China is estimated by Holworth, based on census figures, to have killed over 18 million people. [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP3.HTM]
Later, though, when Kublai began to adopt many Chinese laws and customs, his brother was persuaded by his advisors that Kublai was becoming too Chinese and would become treasonous. Möngke kept a closer watch on Kublai from then on until his death campaigning in the west. After his older brother's death, Kublai placed himself in the running for a new khan against his younger brother, and, although his younger brother won the election, Kublai defeated him in battle, and Kublai became Kublai Khan.
He proved to be a strong warrior, but his critics still accused him of being too closely tied to Chinese culture. When he moved his headquarters to Peking, there was an uprising in the old capital that he barely staunched. He focused mostly on foreign alliances, and opened trade routes. He dined with a large court every day, and met with many ambassadors, foreign merchants, and even offered to convert to Christianity if this religion was proved to be correct by 100 priests.
By the reign of Kublai Khan, the empire was already in the process of splitting into a number of smaller khanates. After Kublai died in 1294, his heirs failed to maintain the Pax Mongolica and the Silk Road closed. Inter-family rivalry (compounded by the complicated politics of succession, which twice paralyzed military operations as far off as Hungary and the borders of Egypt (crippling their chances of success), and the tendencies of some of the khans to drink themselves to death fairly young (causing the aforementioned succession crises), hastened the disintegration of the empire.
Another factor which contributed to the disintegration was the decline of morale when the capital was moved from Karakorum to modern day Beijing by Kublai Khan, because Kublai Khan associated more with Chinese culture. Kublai concentrated on the war with the Song, assuming the mantle of ruler of China, while the more western khanates gradually drifted away.
The four descendant empires were the Mongol-founded Yuan Dynasty in China, the Chagatai Khanate, the Golden Horde that controlled Central Asia and Russia, and the Ilkhans who ruled Persia from 1256 to 1353. Of the latter, their ruler Ilkhan Ghazan was converted to Islam in 1295 and actively supported the expansion of this religion in his empire.
Silk Road
1295, c.1280.]]The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1215 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-establish the Silk Road vis-à-vis Karakorum. With rare exceptions such as Marco Polo or Christian ambassadors such as William of Rubruck, few Europeans traveled the entire length of the silk road. Instead traders moved products much like a bucket brigade, with luxury goods being traded from one middleman to another, from China to the West, and resulting in extravagant prices for the trade goods.
The disintegration of the Mongol Empire led to the collapse of the Silk Road's political unity. Also falling victim were the cultural and economic aspects of its unity. Turkmeni tribes seized the western end of the Silk Road from the decaying Byzantine Empire, and sowed the seeds of a Turkic culture that would later crystalize into the Ottoman Empire under the Sunni faith. Turkmen and Mongol military bands in Iran, after some years of chaos were united under the Saffavid tribe, under whom the modern Iranian nation took shape under the Shiite faith. Meanwhile Mongol princes in Central Asia were content with Sunni orthodoxy with decentralized princedoms of the Chagatay, Timurid and Uzbek houses. In the Kypchak-Tatar zone, Mongol khanates all but crumbled under the assaults of the Black Death and the rising power of Moscovite. In the east end, the Chinese Ming Dynasty overthrew the Mongol yoke and pursued a policy of economic isolationism. Yet another force, the Kalmyk-Oyrats pushed out of the Baikal area in central Siberia, but failed to deliver much impact beyond Turkestan. Some Kalmyk tribes did manage to migrate into the Volga-North Caucasus region, but their impact was limited.
After the Mongol Empire, the great political powers along the Silk Road became economically and culturally separated. Accompanying the crystallization of regional states was the decline of nomad power, partly due to the devastation of the Black Death and partly due to the encroachment of sedentary civilizations equipped with gunpowder.
Ironically, as a footnote, the effect of gun power and early modernity on Europe was the integration of territorial states and increasing mercantilism. Whereas along the Silk Road, it was quite the opposite: failure to maintain the level of integration of the Mongol Empire and decline in trade, partly due to European maritime trade. The Silk Road stopped serving as a shipping route for silk around 1400.
Legacy
The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in human history. The 12th and 13th century, when the empire came to power, is often called the "Age of the Mongols". The Mongol armies during that time were extremely well organized. The death toll (by battle, massacre, flooding, and famine) of the Mongol wars of conquest is placed at about 40 million according to some [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#Mongol sources].
Non-military achievements of the Mongol Empire include the introduction of a writing system, based on the Uighur script, and the same is still used in Inner Mongolia. The Empire caused the unification of all the tribes of Mongolia, which made possible the emergence of a Mongol nation and culture. Modern Mongolians are proud of the empire and the sense of identity that it gave to them.
Some of the long-term implications of the Mongol Empire include:
- The Mongol empire has always been given credit for reuniting China and expanding its frontiers.
- The Mongol empire (Western) was also responsible for unifying much of the Central Asian republics that formed part of the erstwhile USSR. Today, in a number of Central Asian nations, Tamerlane and other Mongol figures are viewed important symbols of national identity rather than mere "feudal oppressors".
- Russia rose to prominence during this time because Russian rulers were accorded the status of tax collectors for Mongols. In fact, the Russian ruler Ivan the Terrible overthrew the Mongols to form the Russian empire.
- Persia became Iran with almost the same boundaries as the modern Iran. The Persian language gained ascendancy over Arabic in Iran.
- The language Chagatai, widely spoken among a group of Turks, is named after a son of Genghis Khan. It was once widely spoken, and had a literature, but was ruthlessly eliminated in Russia.
- Some historians attribute the origins of the Emirate of Osman, the nucleus of the later Ottoman Empire, to the Mongol empire.
- Europe’s knowledge of the known world was immensely expanded by the information brought back by ambassadors and merchants. When Columbus sailed in 1492, his mission was to reach Cathay, the land of the Genghis Khan. Some research studies indicate that the Black Death, which devastated Europe in the late 1340s, may have reached from China to Europe along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire.
- The Mongol Empire set an example of religious tolerance. A number of principles by which the empire was ruled continue to be emulated in modern times, and form the basis of several principles of modern democratic states.
See also
- List of Mongol Khans
- Mongols
- Tamerlane
- 13th Century
- Yuan Dynasty
- Mongol Invasions of Japan
- Mongols before Genghis Khan
- Military advances of Genghis Khan
References
- Howorth, Henry H. History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century: Part I: The Mongols Proper and the Kalmuks. New York: Burt Frankin, 1965 (reprint of London edition, 1876).
Sources
- [http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h11mon.htm Genghis Khan and the Mongols]
- [http://www.allempires.com/empires/mongol/mongol1.htm The Mongol Empire]
- [http://www.accd.edu/sac/history/keller/Mongols/intro.html Mongols]
- [http://www.leader-values.com/Content/detail.asp?ContentDetailID=799 Genghis Khan Biography]
Category:History of Mongolia
Category:Former monarchies
Category:Mongol peoples
Mongo
ko:몽골 제국
ja:モンゴル帝国
th:จักรวรรดิมองโกล
Black Death:This article concerns the worldwide pandemic starting in the mid-14th century, with a focus on material available from European records and accounts. For detailed information on the most commonly accepted cause of the epidemic, see bubonic plague.
bubonic plague).]]
The Black Death was a devastating pandemic that first struck Europe in the mid-14th century (1347–50), killing about a third of Europe's population, an estimated 34 million people. A series of plague epidemics also occurred in large portions of Asia and the Middle East during the same period, indicating that the European outbreak was actually part of a worldwide pandemic. The same disease is thought to have returned to Europe every generation with varying degrees of intensity and fatality until the 1700s. Notable late outbreaks include the Italian Plague of 1629-1631, the Great Plague of London (1665–66), and the Great Plague of Vienna (1679).
The result of the plague was not just a massive decline in population. It irrevocably changed Europe's social structure, was a disastrous blow to Europe's predominant religious institution, the Roman Catholic Church, caused widespread persecutions of minorities like Jews and lepers, and created a general mood of morbidity that influenced people to live for the moment, unsure of their daily survival.
The initial 14th-century European event was called the "Great Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the "Black Death" because of a striking symptom of the disease, called acral necrosis, in which sufferers' skin would blacken due to subdermal hemorrhages. Historical records attribute the Black Death to an outbreak of bubonic plague, an epidemic of the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas with the help of animals like the black rat (Rattus rattus), although today's experts debate both the microbiological culprit and mode of transmission.
Pattern of the pandemic
The bubonic plague was endemic in populations of infected ground rodents in central Asia, and was a known cause of death among migrant and established populations in that region. However, it is not entirely clear where the 14th-century pandemic started. The most popular theory places the first cases in the steppes of central Asia, though some speculate that it originated around northern India. From there, it was carried east and west by traders and Mongol armies along the Silk Road.
Whether or not this theory is accurate, it is clear that several preexisting conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death. A devastating civil war in China between the established Chinese population and the Mongol houses raged between 1205 and 1353. This war disrupted farming and trading patterns, and led to episodes of widespread famine. A so-called "Little Ice Age" had begun at the end of the thirteenth century. The disastrous weather reached a peak in the first half of the fourteenth century with devastating results worldwide.
In the years 1315 to 1322 a catastrophic famine, known as the Great Famine, struck all of Northern Europe. Food shortages and skyrocketing prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock were all in short supply and their scarcity resulted in hunger and malnutrition. The result was a mounting human vulnerability to disease due to weakened immunity. The European economy entered a vicious cycle in which hunger and small scale disease reduced the productivity of laborers, and so the grain output suffered, causing the grain prices to increase. The famine was self-perpetuating, devastating places like Flanders and Burgundy as much as the Black Death was to devastate all of Europe.
A typhoid epidemic was to be a predictor of the coming disaster. Many thousands died in populated urban centers, most significantly Ypres. In 1318 a pestilence of unknown origin, sometimes identified as anthrax, hit the animals of Europe. The disease targeted sheep and cattle, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry and putting another strain on the economy. The increasingly international nature of the European economies meant that the depression was felt across Europe. Due to pestilence, the failure of England's wool exports led to the destruction of the Flemish weaving industry. Unemployment bred crime and poverty.
Asian outbreak
The central Asian scenario agrees with the first reports of outbreaks in China in the early 1330s. The plague struck the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334. During 1353–54, more widespread disaster occurred. Chinese accounts of this wave of the disease record a spread to eight distinct areas: Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan and Suiyuan (a historical Chinese province that now forms part of Hubei and Nei Mongul provinces), throughout the Mongol/Chinese empires. Historian William McNeill noted that voluminous Chinese records on disease and social disruption survive from this period, but that modern scholars in neither the East nor the West have studied in depth these sources.
It appears that movement by the Mongols and merchant caravans inadvertently brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The plague was reported in the trading cities of Constantinople and Trebizond in 1347. In that same year the Genoese possession of Kaffa, a cathedral city and seaport on the Crimean peninsula in modern day Ukraine, came under siege by an army of Crimean Tatar warriors, backed by Venetian forces. Their objective was disruption of a trading empire Genoa had established in Kaffa. In 1347, a terrible sickness began to strike the besieging army. According to accounts, so many died that the survivors had little time to bury them and bodies were stacked like cords of firewood against the city walls. Although the Tatar/Venetian alliance broke off the siege, the disease had already spread to the city.
European outbreak
Venetian
In October 1347, a fleet of Genovese trading ships fleeing Kaffa reached the port of Messina. By the time the fleet reached Messina, all the crew members were either infected or dead. It is presumed that the ships also carried infected rats and/or fleas. Some ships were found grounded on shorelines, with no one aboard remaining alive. Looting of these lost ships also helped spread the disease. From there, the plague spread to Genoa and Venice by the turn of 1347/1348.
From Italy the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350, and finally to north-western Russia in 1351. The plague largely spared some parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland and parts of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Middle Eastern outbreak
The plague struck various countries in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. The disease first entered the region from southern Russia. In AD 1347, Muslim leader Malik Asraf, of the Jalayird dynasty, returned with his troops to Baghdad from a military action in Tabriz (near modern Azerbaijan) where the plague was raging. This same military troop promptly placed the town of Hasan Buzurg, near Baghdad, under siege but had to abort when plague struck the army and spread to Baghdad itself.
By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople and ports on the Black Sea. During 1348, the disease traveled eastward to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Syria and Palestine, including Asqalan, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348–49, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, most of them dying during the journey, but the infection had been spread to the people of Asia Minor.
Mecca became infected in 1349. The people of Mecca blamed the disease on non-believers entering the city, but it is more likely to have arrived with Muslim pilgrims from surrounding infected areas. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease. In 1351, Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague. This coincided with the return of King Mujahid of Yemen from imprisonment in Cairo. His party may have brought the disease with them from Egypt.
Recurrence
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries, and although the bubonic plague still exists with isolated cases today, the Great Plague of London in 1665-1666 is generally recognized as one of the last major outbreaks. The Great Fire of London in 1666, may have killed off any remaining plague bearing rats and fleas, which led to a decline in the plague. The destruction of rats in the Great Fire may also have contributed to the ascendancy of brown rats in England. According to the bubonic plague theory, one possible explanation for the disappearance of plague from Europe may be that the black rat (Rattus rattus) infection reservoir and its disease vector was subsequently displaced and succeeded by the bigger Norwegian, or brown, rat (Rattus norvegicus), which is not as prone to transmit the germ-bearing fleas to humans in large rat die-offs (see Appleby and Slack references below).
Late outbreaks in central Europe include the Italian Plague of 1629-1631, which is associated with troop movements during the Thirty Years' War, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679, which may have been due to a reintroduction of the plague from eastern trading ports.
Causes
Bubonic plague theory
Great Plague of Vienna
Forms of the plague
The plague consisted of three forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. The bubonic and septicemic plague are transmitted by direct contact with fleas. The bacteria multiplies inside a flea, blocking its stomach and causing it to become very hungry. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed because it is unable to satisfy its hunger. During the feeding process, infected blood carrying the plague bacteria flows into the wound. The plague bacteria then has a new host, and the flea eventually dies from starvation.
The pneumonic plague has a different form of transmission. It is transmitted through infected droplets of saliva coughed up by bubonic or septicemic infected humans. The airborne bacteria enters the lungs through the windpipe and starts attacking the lungs and throat.
Signs and symptoms
The three forms of plague brought an array of signs and symptoms to those infected. Bubonic plague refers to the painful lymph node swellings called buboes. The septicemic plague is called "Blood poisoning", and pneumonic plague is an airborne plague that forms a first attack on the lungs. The classic sign of bubonic plague was the appearance of buboes in the groin and armpits, which ooze pus and blood. Victims underwent damage to the skin and underlying tissue until they were covered in dark blotches. This symptom, called acral necrosis, led to the disease being called the "Black" plague. Most victims died within four to seven days after infection. When plague reached Europe, it first struck port cities and then followed the trade routes, both by sea and land.
The bubonic plague was the most commonly seen form of the Black Death, with a mortality rate of thirty to seventy-five percent and symptoms including fever of 38 to 41 °C (101-105 °F), headaches, aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. The pneumonic plague was the second most commonly seen form of the Black Death, with a mortality rate of ninety to ninety-five percent. Symptoms included slimy sputum tinted with blood. As the disease progressed, sputum became free flowing and bright red. Septicemic plague was the most rare of the three forms, with mortality close to 100 percent. Symptoms were high fevers and skin turning deep shades of purple due to DIC (Disseminated intravascular coagulation).
Alternative explanations
An interesting hypothesis about the appearance, spread and especially disappearance of plague from Europe is that the rodent infection reservoir, with its flea disease vector, was eventually succeeded by another species. The black rat (Rattus rattus) was originally introduced from Asia to Europe by trade but was displaced and succeeded throughout Europe by the bigger Norwegian or brown rat (Rattus norvegicus). The brown rat was not as prone to transmit the germ-bearing fleas to humans in large die-offs due to a different rat ecology (see Appleby and Slack, secondary references below). The dynamic complexities of rat ecology, herd immunity in that reservoir, interaction with human ecology, secondary transmission routes between humans with or without fleas, human herd immunity and changes in each might explain the eruption, dissemination, and re-eruptions of bubonic plague that continued for centuries until its (even more) unexplained disappearance.
However, recent scientific and historical investigations have led researchers to doubt the long-held belief Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague. For example, in 2000, Gunnar Karlsson (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time. Rats were accidentally introduced in the 19th century, and have never spread beyond a small number of urban areas attached to seaports. In the 14th century there were no urban settlements in Iceland. Iceland was unaffected by the later plagues which are known to have been spread by rats.
In 1984, Graham Twigg published The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal, where he argued that the climate and ecology of Europe and particularly England made it nearly impossible for rats and fleas to have transmitted bubonic plague. Combining information on the biology of R. rattus, R. norvegicus, and the common fleas X. cheopis and P. irritans with modern studies of plague epidemiology, particularly in India, where the R. rattus is a native species and conditions are nearly ideal for plague to be spread, Twigg concludes that it would have been nearly impossible for Y. pestis to have been the causative agent of the beginning of the plague, let alone its explosive spread across all of Europe and England. Twigg also shows that the common theory of entirely pneumonic spread does not hold up. He proposes, based on a reexamination of the evidence and symptoms, that the Black Death may actually have been an epidemic of pulmonary anthrax caused by B. anthracis.
In 2001, epidemiologists Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan from Liverpool University proposed the theory that the Black Death might have been caused by an Ebola-like virus, not a bacterium. Their rationale was that this plague spread much faster and the incubation period was much longer than other confirmed Yersinia pestis plagues. A longer period of incubation will allow carriers of the infection to travel farther and infect more people than a shorter one. When the primary vector is humans, as opposed to birds, this is of great importance. Studies of English church records indicate an unusually long incubation period in excess of 30 days, which could account for the rapid spread, topping at 5 km/day. The plague also appeared in areas of Europe where rats were uncommon like Iceland. Epidemiological studies suggest the disease was transferred between humans (which happens rarely with Yersinia pestis)(very rarely for Bacillus anthracis), and some genes that determine immunity to Ebola-like viruses are much more widespread in Europe than in other parts of the world. Their research and findings are thoroughly documented in Return of the Black Death: The World's Greatest Serial Killer.
In a similar vein, historian Norman F. Cantor, in his 2001 book In the Wake of the Plague, suggests the Black Death might have been a combination of pandemics including a form of anthrax, a cattle murrain. He cites many forms of evidence including: reported disease symptoms not in keeping with the known effects of either bubonic or pneumonic plague, the discovery of anthrax spores in a plague pit in Scotland, and the fact that meat from infected cattle was known to have been sold in many rural English areas prior to the onset of the plague. It is notable that the means of infection varied widely, from human-to-human contact as in Iceland (rare for plague)(very rare for Bacillus anthracis) to infection in the absence of living or recently-dead humans, as in Sicily (which speaks against a virus or, in this specific case, anthrax). Also, diseases with similar symptoms were generally not distinguished between in that period (see murrain above), at least not in the Christian world; Chinese and Muslim medical records can be expected to yield better information which however only pertains to the specific disease(s) which affected these areas. See ISBN 0060014342
Counterarguments
There is still a thriving majority of historians that support the bubonic plague as cause, and so counterarguments have been drawn in defense of the bubonic plague theory.
The uncharacteristically rapid spread of the plague could be due to low levels of immunity in that period's European population. Historical examples of pandemics of other diseases in populations without previous exposure, such as smallpox and tuberculosis amongst American Indians, show that the low levels of inherited adaptation to the disease cause the first epidemic to spread faster and to be far more virulent than later epidemics among the descendants of survivors. Also, the plague returned again and again and was regarded as the same disease through succeeding centuries into modern times when the Yersinia bacterium was identified.
In addition, it was previously argued that tooth pulp tissue from a 14th-century plague cemetery in Montpellier tested positive for Y. pestis DNA. However, such a finding was never confirmed in any other cemetery. In September 2003, a team of researchers from Oxford University tested 121 teeth from 66 skeletons found in 14th-century mass graves. The remains showed no genetic trace of Yersinia pestis, and the researchers suspect that the Montpellier study was flawed.
Consequences
Depopulation
See also: Medieval demography.
Information about the death toll varies widely by area and from source to source. Approximately 25 million deaths occurred in Europe alone, with many others occurring in northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Estimates of the demographic impact of plague in Asia are based on both population figures during this time and estimates of the disease's toll on population centers. The initial outbreak of plague in the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334 claimed up to 90 percent of the population, an estimated five million people. During 1353–54, outbreaks in eight distinct areas throughout the Mongol/Chinese empires may have caused the death of two-thirds of China's population, often yielding an estimate of 25 million deaths.
It is estimated that between one-third and one-half of the European population died from the outbreak between 1348 and 1350. As many as 25% of all villages were depopulated, mostly the smaller communities, as the few survivors fled to larger towns and cities. The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard. Some rural areas, for example, Eastern Poland and Lithuania, had such low populations and were so isolated that the plague made little progress. Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas and rats, and subject to diseases related to malnutrition and poor hygiene. According to historian John Kelly, "(w)oefully inadequate sanitation made medieval urban Europe so disease-ridden, no city of any size could maintain its population without a constant influx of immigrants from the countryside." (p. 68) The influx of new citizens facilitated the movement of the plague between communities, and contributed to the longevity of the plague within larger communities.
The precise demographic impact of the disease in the Middle East is impossible to calculate. Mortality was particularly high in rural areas, including significant areas of Palestine and Syria. Many surviving rural people fled, leaving their fields and crops, and entire rural provinces are recorded as being totally depopulated. Surviving records in some cities reveal a devastating number of deaths. The 1348 outbreak in Gaza left an estimated 10,000 people dead, while Aleppo recorded a death rate of 500 a day during the same year. In Damascus, at the disease's peak in September and October 1348, a thousand deaths were recorded every day, with overall mortality estimated at between 25 and 38 percent. Syria lost a total of 400,000 people by the time the epidemic subsided in March 1349. In contrast to some higher mortality estimates in Asia and Europe, scholars believe the mortality rate in the Middle East was less than one-third of the total population, with higher rates in selected areas.
Socio-economic effects
The governments of Europe had no effective response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. Most monarchs instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black market speculators, set price controls on grain, and outlawed large-scale fishing. At best, they proved mostly unenforceable, and at worse they contributed to a continent-wide downward spiral. The hardest hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad, from France because of the prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labor. Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black market. Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, using up much of their treasury and exacerbating inflation. In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War. This, another of the crises of the fourteenth century, would deplete the treasuries, manpower, and infrastructure of both kingdoms throughout and beyond the worst of the plague. Malnutrition, poverty, disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation and other economic concerns made Europe in the mid-fourteenth century ripe for tragedy.
The plague did more than just devastate the medieval population; it caused a substantial change in economy and society in all areas of the world. Economic historians like Fernand Braudel have concluded that Black Death began during a recession in the European economy that had been under way since the beginning of the century, and only served to worsen it. As a consequence, it greatly accelerated social and economic change during the 14th and 15th centuries. First, the church's power was weakened, and in some cases, the social roles it had played were replaced by secular ones. It also led to peasant uprisings in many parts of Europe, such as France (the Jacquerie rebellion), Italy (the Ciompi rebellion, which swept the city of Florence), and in England (the English Peasant Revolt).
The Black Death should have opened the way to increased peasant prosperity. Europe had been overpopulated before the plague, and a reduction of 30% to 50% of the population should have meant less competition for resources: more available land and food, and higher wages. However, for reasons that are still debated, population levels in fact continued to decline until around 1420 and did not begin to rise again until 1470, so the initial Black Death event on its own does not entirely provide a satisfactory explanation to this extended period of decline in prosperity. See Medieval demography for a more complete treatment of this issue and current theories on why improvements in living standards took longer to evolve.
The great population loss brought economic changes based on increased social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings. In Western Europe, the sudden scarcity of cheap labor provided an incentive for landlords to compete for peasants with wages and freedoms, an innovation that, some argue, represents the roots of capitalism, and the resulting social upheaval caused the Renaissance and even Reformation. In many ways the Black Death improved the situation of surviving peasants. In Western Europe, because of the shortage of labor they were in more demand and had more power, and because of the reduced population, there was more fertile land available; however, the benefits would not be fully realized until 1470, nearly 120 years later, when overall population levels finally began to rise again.
In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the remaining peasant population more tightly to the land than ever before through serfdom. Sparsely populated Eastern Europe was less affected by the Black Death and so peasant revolts were less common in the 14th and 15th centuries, not occurring in the east until the 16th through 19th centuries. Since it is believed to have in part caused the social upheavals of 14th- and 15th-century Western Europe, some see the Black Death as a factor in the Renaissance and even the Reformation in Western Europe. Therefore, historians have cited the smaller impact of the plague as a contributing factor in Eastern Europe's failure to experience either of these movements on a similar scale. Extrapolating from this, the Black Death may be seen as partly responsible for Eastern Europe's considerable lag in scientific and philosophical advances as well as in the move to liberalise government by restricting the power of the monarch and aristocracy. A common example is that England is seen to have effectively ended serfdom by 1550 while moving towards more representative government; meanwhile, Russia did not abolish serfdom until an autocratic tsar decreed so in 1861.
On top of all this, the plague's great population reduction brought cheaper land prices, more food for the average peasant, and a relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry, if not immediately, in the coming century. However, the upper class often attempted to stop these changes, initially in Western Europe, and more forcefully and successfully in Eastern Europe, by instituting laws which barred the peasantry from certain actions or material goods. A good example of this is the sumptuary laws which were passed throughout Europe which regulated what people (particularly of the peasant class) could wear, so that nobles could ensure that peasants did not begin to dress and act as a higher class member with their increased wealth. Another tactic was to fix prices and wages so that peasants could not demand more with increasing value. This was met with varying success depending on the amount of rebellion it inspired; such a law was one of the causes of England's 1381 Peasants' Revolt.
Persecutions
As with other natural and man-made social disasters, renewed religious fervor and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of Black Death. In many parts of Europe, rumors circulated that Jews caused the plague by deliberately poisoning wells. Fierce pogroms frequently resulted in the death or banishment of most of the Jews in a town or city. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been exterminated, and more than 350 separate massacres had occurred. This persecution was often done, not solely out of religious hatred, but as a way of attacking the Kings or Church who normally protected the Jews; indeed, Jews were often called the King's property. It was a way of lashing out at the institutions who had failed them. Because fewer Jews died from the Black Death, in part due to rabbinical law which called for a lifestyle that was, in general, cleaner than that of a medieval villager, and Jewish ghettos which kept them more separate from the general population, inevitably Jews looked suspicious. An important legacy of the Black Death was to cause the eastward movement of what was left of north European Jewry to Poland and Russia, where it remained until the 20th century.
Lepers were also singled out and persecuted, indeed exterminated throughout Europe. Anyone with a skin disease such as acne or psoriasis was thought to be a leper, and leprosy was believed to be an outward sign of an inner defect of the soul. Both Jews and lepers were persecuted because they became scapegoats for the disasters of society.
Religion
scapegoat
The Black Death led to cynicism toward religious officials who could not keep their frequent promises of curing plague victims and banishing the disease. No one, the Church included, was able to cure or even explain the plague. In fact, most thought it spread somehow through air, calling it miasma. This increased doubting of the clergy. Pope Clement VI reigned during the plague years in Europe during a time when the papacy was based in Avignon, France. This period in papal history, known as the Babylonian Captivity to its detractors, was a concurrent cause of the people's lack of faith in the Catholic Church. The Avignon popes were seen as having subordinated themselves to the French monarchy, and their ineffectiveness regarding the Black Death only compounded the common man's disillusionment. Extreme alienation with the church culminated in either support for different religious groups such as the flagellants, which grew tremendously during the opening years of the Black Death (angering church and political officials greatly), or to an increase in interest for more secular alternatives to problems facing European society and an increase of secular politicians.
The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their close quarters and their kindness in helping the sick, so that there was a severe shortage of clergy after the epidemic cycle. This resulted in a mass influx of new clergy members, most of whom did not share the life-long convictions and experiences of the veterans they replaced. This resulted in abuses by the clergy in years afterwards and a further deterioration of the position of the Church in the eyes of the people.
Other social effects
flagellant
After 1350 European culture in general turned very morbid. The general mood was one of pessimism, and the art turned dark with representations of death. The Dies Irae was created in this period as was the popular poem La Danse Macabre and the instructive and popular Ars moriendi ("the art of dying"). See also The Decameron.
The science of alchemy was affected by the plague. As a specialty and method of treatment, it was considered the norm for most scientists and doctors prior and during the Black Death. However, after the plague had taken its toll, the practice of alchemy slowly began to wane. The citizenry began to realize that, in most cases, it did not affect the progress of the epidemic and that some of the potions and "cures" used by many doctors throughout Christendom and the Islamic world only helped to worsen the condition of the sick. Liquor (distilled alcohol), originally made by alchemists, was commonly applied as a remedy for the Black Death, and as a result the popularity and consumption of liquor in Europe rose dramatically after the plague.
Black Death in literature
Contemporary
The specter of the Black Death dominated art and literature thoughout the generation that experienced it. Much of the most useful manifestations of the Black Death in literature, to historians, comes from the accounts of its chroniclers, often the only real way to get a sense of the horror of living through a disaster on such a scale. A few were famous writers, philosophers and rulers (like Boccaccio and Petrarch), but most were quite ordinary people who happened to work in a job requiring literacy, a rare talent. For example, Agnolo di Tura the Fat, of Siena, records his experience:
Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices ... great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night... And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug ... And I, Agnolo di Tura, called the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands. And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city. There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death. And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world. This situation continued [from May] until September.
The scene Di Tura describes is repeated over and over again all across Europe. In Sicily, Gabriele de'Mussi, a notary, tells of the early spread from the Crimea:
Alas! our ships enter the port, but of a thousand sailors hardly ten are spared. We reach our homes; our kindred…come from all parts to visit us. Woe to us for we cast at them the darts of death! …Going back to their homes, they in turn soon infected their whole families, who in three days succumbed, and were buried in one common grave. Priests and doctors visiting…from their duties ill, and soon were…dead. O death! cruel, bitter, impious death! …Lamenting our misery, we feared to fly, yet we dared not remain.
Henry Knighton tells of the plague’s coming to England:
Then the grievous plague came to the seacoasts from Southampton, and came to Bristol, and it was as if all the strength of the town had died, as if they had been hit with sudden death, for there were few who stayed in their beds more than three days, or two days, or even one half a day.
In addition to these personal accounts, many presentations of the Black Death have entered the general consciousness as great literature. For example, the major works of Boccaccio (The Decameron), Petrarch, Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), and William Langland (Piers Plowman), which all discuss the Black Death, are generally recognized as some of the best works of their era.
La Danse Macabre, or the Dance of death, is an allegory on the universality of death, expressing the common wisdom of the time that no matter ones station in life, the dance of death united all. It consists of the personified Death leading a row of dancing figures from all walks of life to the grave—typically with an emperor, king, pope, monk, youngster, beautiful girl, all in skeleton-state. They were produced under the impact of the Black Death, reminding people of how fragile their lives were and how vain the glories of earthly life were. The earliest artistic example is from the frescoed cemetery of the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris (1424). There are also works by Konrad Witz in Basel (1440), Bernt Notke in Lübeck (1463) and woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger (1538). Israil Bercovici claims that the Danse Macabre originated among Sephardic Jews in 14th century Spain (Bercovici, 1992, p. 27).
Additionally see Aleksander Pushkin's verse play, "Feast in the Time of the Plague."
Modern
Because of its resounding recurrence throughout modern history, and its symbolism and connotation, the subject of or setting during the Black Death has also become commonplace in modern literature. The relatively new medium of film has given writers and producers an innovative venue to portray the plague with | | |
