In Medieval Europe, a Pandemic Changed Work Forever. Can It Happen Again?

Max Löffler
OPINION : GUEST ESSAY
THE NEW YORK TIMES: In the wake of a devastating pandemic, millions of people are dead and many more have had their lives upended. Many of those who survive, worn down by a sense of futility in their work and by the impassable gap between the wealthy and everyone else, refuse to return to their old jobs or quit en masse. Tired of being overworked and underpaid, they feel they deserve a better life.

This could be a story about today, but it is also the pattern that emerged across Europe in the aftermath of one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history, the Black Death.

The struggles over wages and the value of labor that defined the post-plague years were in some ways as dramatic as the pandemic itself. Eventually, Europe erupted into violence. Given where we are right now, it’s worth paying attention to the chain of events that led, link by link, from pandemic to panic to bloody uprising.

The Black Death, as we now call it, burned its way across the Eurasian continent from 1347 to 1351. Arab historian Ibn Khaldun recalled with horror, “Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out.’’ » | M.T. Anderson * | Wednesday, February 16, 2022

* Mr. Anderson is the author of “Feed” and “Landscape With Invisible Hand.”

Dark Ages Redux? Bubonic Plague Death Sparks Fears in Asia

The Central Asian country of Kazakhstan has toughened border controls at the crossings with its southern neighbour Kyrgyzstan. But it's not about politics, or economic sanctions, or a military build-up, it's the Black Death.

Related »

Boy Dies of Plague in Kyrgyzstan

BBC: A 15-year-old herder has died in Kyrgyzstan of bubonic plague - the first case in the country in 30 years - officials say.

The teenager appears to have been bitten by an infected flea.

The authorities have sought to calm fears of an epidemic and have quarantined more than 100 people.

Bubonic plague, known as the Black Death when it killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, is now rare.

The teenager, named as Temir Issakunov, came from a mountain village in the north-east of the country, close to the border with Kazakhstan.

"We suspect that the patient was infected with the plague through the bite of a flea," health ministry official Tolo Isakov said.

He said teams had been sent to the area to get rid of rodents, which host the fleas that can carry the deadly bacterium. » | Monday, August 26, 2013

The Plague is Re-emerging Worldwide
YAHOO NEWS: LONDON (Reuters) - Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday.

While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool and colleagues said.

A bacterium known as Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, known in medieval times as the Black Death when it was spread by infected fleas, and the more dangerous pneumonic plague, spread from one person to another through coughing or sneezing.

"Although the number of human cases of plague is relatively low, it would be a mistake to overlook its threat to humanity, because of the disease's inherent communicability, rapid spread, rapid clinical course, and high mortality if left untreated," they wrote in the journal Public Library of Science journal PloS Medicine.

Rodents carry plague, which is virtually impossible to wipe out and moves through the animal world as a constant threat to humans, Begon said. Both forms can kill within days if not treated with antibiotics.

"You can't realistically get rid of all the rodents in the world," he said in a telephone interview. "Plague appears to be on the increase, and for the first time there have been major outbreaks in Africa." Plague a growing but overlooked threat: study >>> By Michael Kahn

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