The Four Black Deaths

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (5) ◽  
pp. 1601-1631
Author(s):  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Causative Organism ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Central Eurasia ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Big Bang

Abstract The Black Death, often called the largest pandemic in human history, is conventionally defined as the massive plague outbreak of 1346 to 1353 c.e. that struck the Black Sea and Mediterranean, extended into the Middle East, North Africa, and western Europe, and killed as much as half the total population of those regions. Yet genetic approaches to plague’s history have established that Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, suddenly diverged in Central Asia at some point before the Black Death, splitting into four new branches—a divergence geneticists have called the “Big Bang.” Drawing on a “biological archive” of genetic evidence, I trace the bacterial descendants of the Big Bang proliferation, comparing that data to historical human activities in and around the area of plague’s emergence. The Mongols, whose empire emerged in 1206, unwittingly moved plague through Central Eurasia in the thirteenth, not the fourteenth, century. Grain shipments that the Mongols brought with them to several sieges, including the siege of Baghdad, were the most likely mechanism of transmission. The fourteenth century plague outbreaks represent local spillover events out of the new plague reservoirs seeded by the military campaigns of the thirteenth century.

scholarly journals Death by the Lake: Mortality Crisis in Early Fourteenth-Century Central Asia

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Slavin
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The Big Bang

Our information about the fourteenth-century plague in Central Asia, or indeed anywhere east of the Crimea/Caspian, derives from a close analysis of the epigraphical evidence from three East Syriac (Nestorian) cemeteries not far from Issyk-Kul’ lake in northern Kyrgyzstan. The absence of palaeogenetic data to confirm it could be partially rectified by both textual and palaeoclimatological data. The ratio of mortality rates between “normal” and plague years in the Issyk-Kul’ communities is not unlike that in Europe during the plague years 1348 to 1350. A proper appreciation of the pandemic outbreak requires setting its timing in a climatic context. After two pluvial episodes in the 1310s and 1320s, precipitation levels in Issyk-Kul’ during the 1330s underwent a sharp decline, thereby depriving sylvatic rodents of sufficient grass to sustain their high population density. Hence, the plague pathogen and its vectors needed an alternative host to maintain their activity. Anthropogenic factors, including international trade and military campaigns along Central Asian trade routes, may also have contributed to the outbreak and spread of the plague. The Issyk-Kul’ mortality crisis ties into wider questions about the origins and initial spread of plague after the “big bang” of the thirteenth century, whereby four new plague branches emerged (possibly in Central Asia).

scholarly journals The Church of Georgia in War

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Mamuka Tsurtsumia
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Shed Blood ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Units ◽  
The Church

In Western Europe the Church as an institution was integrated into the military system and was obliged to serve the monarchy. Apart from performing vassal duties, the Latin clergy frequently participated in military actions. Although the Church laws forbade clergymen to shed blood, there were many examples of the violation of this rule. The attitude of the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire concerning the possible participation of the clergy in war differed significantly from that of Latin Europe. The Byzantine priesthood did not become involved in military actions. The Greek Church possessed neither military units nor vassal commitment to the Empire. Despite a very close relationship with the Byzantine Church the attitude of the Georgian Church to the issue differs from that of Byzantium and is closer to the Western practice. The feudal organization of Georgia conditioned the social structure of the Georgian Church and its obligations before the monarchy. Despite the fact that the Georgian Church enjoyed many advantages, it had to take part in military campaigns. The upper circles of Georgian Church dignitaries were accustomed to both conducting military campaigns or taking part in the combat. In regard to military activities of clergy, Georgian law was much more lenient than Byzantine, and in the case of necessity, it even modified Greek legal norms. The conflict with the Christian canons was decided in favor of military necessity, and it was reflected in the legislation.

After the Black Death

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Catastrophic Event ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
New Research ◽  
Main Effects ◽  
North Western

The Black Death of 1348–9 is the most catastrophic event in recorded history, and this study—the Ford Lectures of 2019 at Oxford University—offers a major re-evaluation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England. It draws upon recent inter-disciplinary research into climate and disease; renewed interest among econometricians in the origins of the Little Divergence, whereby economic performance in parts of north-western Europe began to move decisively ahead of the rest of the continent on the pathway to modernity; a close re-reading of case studies of fourteenth-century England; and original new research into manorial and governmental sources. The Black Death is placed within the wider contexts of extreme weather and epidemiological events, the institutional framework of markets and serfdom, and the role of the law in reducing risk and shaping behaviour. The government’s response to the crisis is re-considered to suggest an innovative re-interpretation of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. By 1400 the main effects of plague had worked through the economy and society, and their implications for England’s future precocity are analysed. This study rescues the third quarter of the fourteenth century from a little-understood paradox between plague and revolt, and elevates it to a critical period of profound and irreversible change in English and global history.

Serrata – Closing, 1291–1350

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Sea ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Golden Horn ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Do So

The fall of Acre in 1291 shocked western Europe, which had in fact done little to protect the city in its last decades. Plans to launch new expeditions abounded, and among the greatest enthusiasts was Charles II of Naples, after his release from his Catalan gaol. But this was all talk; he was far too preoccupied with trying to defeat the Aragonese to be able to launch a crusade, nor did he have the resources to do so. The Italian merchants diversified their interests to cope with the loss of access to eastern silks and spices through Acre. Venice gradually took the lead in Egypt, while the Genoese concentrated more on bulky goods from the Aegean and the Black Sea, following the establishment of a Genoese colony in Constantinople in 1261. But the Byzantine emperors were wary of the Genoese. They favoured the Venetians as well, though to a lesser degree, so that the Genoese would not assume they could do whatever they wished. Michael VIII and his son Andronikos II confined the Genoese to the high ground north of the Golden Horn, the area known as Pera, or Galata, where a massive Genoese tower still dominates the skyline of northern Istanbul, but they also granted them the right to self-government, and the Genoese colony grew so rapidly that it soon had to be extended. By the mid-fourteenth century the trade revenues of Genoese Pera dwarfed those of Greek Constantinople, by a ratio of about seven to one. These emperors effectively handed control of the Aegean and the Black Sea to the Genoese, and Michael’s navy, consisting of about eighty ships, was dismantled by his son. It was assumed that God would protect Constantinople as a reward for the rejection of all attempts at a union of the holy Orthodox Church with the unholy Catholic one. The Genoese generally tolerated a Venetian presence, for war damaged trade and ate up valuable resources. Occasionally, as in 1298, pirate attacks by one side caused a crisis, and the cities did go to war.

scholarly journals Placing the Blame for Covid-19 in and on Ultra-Orthodox Communities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander L Gilman
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Group Actions ◽  
Black Death ◽  
False Accusation

Abstract The new coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, has resurrected a number of historical and sociological problems associated with blaming collectives for the origin or transmission of infectious disease. The default example of the false accusation has been the case of the fourteenth century charge of well poisoning against the Jews of Western Europe causing the pandemic of the Black Death. Yet querying group actions in times of pandemics is not solely one of rebutting false attributions. What happens when a collective is at fault and how does the collective respond to the simultaneous burden of both false, stereotypical accusations and appropriate charges of culpability? The case study here is of Haredi communities and the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Crimean-Ottoman Factor in the Socio-Cultural System of Russia in Early Modern Times

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 115-148
Author(s):  
T. V. Chernikova
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Black Sea ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Military

Abstract: The article gives a description of the sociocultural organization of Russia and the peculiarities of its geopolitical position in the system of international relations of the early modern period. Questions were raised about the reasons for the rapid territorial expansion of the Russian state in the second half of the 15-17 centuries, as well as its high competitiveness in foreign policy both in relations with its western neighbors and in the eastern direction.For the states of Western Europe with the beginning of their modernization, modern age has come, however “Muscovy” in the 15-17 centuries remained a medieval country. At the same time, it not only did not share the fate of many eastern powers with a traditional way, which turned into the 17th-19th centuries in the colony and semi-colony, but also, on the contrary, it led a successful colonial expansion and demonstrated externally the almost synchronous trends in state building that were inherent in the Western European countries.The author believes that the patrimonial structure of the sociocultural system of the Russian state in the 15-17 centuries contributed to the mobilization of internal material and human resources, coupled with an early superficial “Europeanization” (regular borrowing the military, technical, and cultural experience of modernizing Western Europe), ensured Russia's competitiveness in the world. Since the emergence of the united Moscow state, Russia has developed as a land empire.However, the strategic national task of Russia was not to preserve the medieval patrimony, but to create the prerequisites for its modernization. Amid the socio-economic development, which is characteristic of all countries with a patrimonial structure, that could have started only by transferring the center of Russian extensive agriculture to the southern fertile lands. This would free part of the population of the non-chernozem center for trade and industrial activities. But the transfer of the agrarian center to the south was restrained by the constant military danger from the Wild Field, which was part of the Horde, and then the Crimean Khanate, backed until the end of the 18 century by the Ottoman Empire, perceiving the Black Sea with its “inland lake”. As a result, the struggle for the Black Sea and Crimea to become a part of Russia, as well as the overcoming the patrimonial order, becomes a matter of civilizational success or failure of Russia in the context of world history.

Introduction: the development of astronomy in Europe

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-169
Author(s):  
PAUL MURDIN
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
New Science ◽  
Unknown Form ◽  
Large Telescopes ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
The Universe ◽  
North Western ◽  
Origin Of The Universe

The tradition of astronomy in Europe has been unbroken from the Neolithic and Bronze Age menhir monuments of north-western Europe to its large telescopes and space-probes. While astronomy still retains practical features, in most part it now concentrates on discovering new science. Recent advances include the discovery of previously unsuspected properties of neutrinos, confirmation of the theory of general relativity near black holes and the successful development of a coherent theory of the origin of the Universe in the Big Bang. These discoveries suggest that 19/20ths of the density of the Universe is of unknown form. There is more to do!

A view of the universe before the big bang

2006 ◽  
Vol 190 ◽  
pp. 15-15
Author(s):  
D CASTELVECCHI
Keyword(s):  
Big Bang ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
The Universe
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