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The Black Death of 1348-9 is the most catastrophic event and worst pandemic in recorded history. After the Black Death offers a major reinterpretation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England.
After the Black Death reassesses the established scholarship on the impact of plague on fourteenth-century England and draws upon original research into primary sources to offer a major re-interpretation of the subject. It studies how the government reacted to the crisis, and how communities adapted in its wake. It places the pandemic within the wider context of extreme weather and epidemiological events, the institutional framework of markets and serfdom, and the role of law in reducing risks and conditioning behaviour. The government's response to the Black Death is reconsidered in order to cast new light on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
By 1400, the effects of plague had resulted in major changes to the structure of society and the economy, creating the pre-conditions for England's role in the Little Divergence (whereby economic performance in parts of north western Europe began to move decisively ahead of the rest of the continent). After the Black Death explores in detail how a major pandemic transformed society, and, in doing so, elevates the third quarter of the fourteenth century from a little-understood paradox to a critical period of profound and irreversible change in English and global history.
List of contents
- Preface
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Old Problems, New Approaches
- 3: Reaction and Regulation, 1349 to 1380
- 4: A Mystery Within an Enigma: The Economy, 1355 to 1375
- 5: Injustice and Revolt
- 6: A New Equilibrium? Economy and Society, 1375 to 1400
- 7: The Decline of Serfdom and the Origins of the 'Little Divergence'
- 8: Conclusion
About the author
Mark Bailey is a Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. He was previously a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge, a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a James Ford Lecturer in British History at the University of Oxford, 2019. He is the co-author of Modelling the Middle-Ages (Oxford University Press, 2001) and The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England (Boydell and Brewer, 2014).
Summary
The Black Death was the worst pandemic in recorded history. This book presents a major reevaluation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England.
Report
One might be forgiven for doubting whether a genuinely fresh take on such a well-trodden topic was possible. Yet Bailey meets this challenge with astonishing aplomb, demolishing a series of orthodox views on the period via re-readings of the huge secondary literature combined with a wealth of new primary evidence. Chris Briggs, University of Cambridge, English Historical Review
