Kanyanat Lerviriyaphan 5961124 Section 1005

The Black Death

The Black Death is a widespread and incurable disease that spread across Europe
in the 14th century. The plague swept out one-third of the population in Europe and killed
millions of people there. As the Black Death had a great impact on many aspects of
people's lives, this essay will be explaining how the black death arrived in Europe and how
people responded to the disease.
The Black Death was originated from Central Asia and then travelled along the silk
road. The plague was first introduced to Europe while the Mongol army, led by Janibeg,
was attacking the trading port of Kaffa in Crimea. They threw the dead bodies of plague-
infected soldiers into the city in order to destroy their enemies.The ships then carried the
infected people who were escaping to other Mediterranean ports, firstly Sicily. After that,
the plague spread throughout Europe by the merchant ships and spread from place to
place by the rodents with the plague-carrying fleas.
When the plague reached Europe, people began to move around from village to
village and also to the countryside hoping that they will survive the plague. But they didn't
realise that they were carrying the disease to the non-infected areas. In addition, since the
Jewish laws promoted sanitary practices and their community was less affected comparing
to other areas, so people blamed the Jews for the spread of the black death. As a result,
the Jews were persecuted and excluded from the society thus contributed to the racism
towards Jewish people.
People's daily life also relied on the church. As the church played an important role
on people, when the plague came, people was seeking help from the church. But since the
church couldn't give the solution and couldn't even give them the explanation for the
disease, therefore the church lost its power. The bad priests also ran away and didn't
perform the funerals for the people because they were afraid of contracting the disease,
resulting in a lack of priests and a decline of the church's power and influence.
Another big effect of the black death was on the economy. As the population
decreased, there was not enough workforce in which it caused a big problem for the
landowners. So those peasants demanded higher wages and also independence and the
landowners had no choices, this led to the collapse of the feudal system. Furthermore,
there were less trading between countries because it was risky to spread the disease.
People tried to stop the spread of the disease by the use of quarantine in which the
persons with the disease were isolated from unaffected persons. The suspected people
who were believed to have the disease were quarantined together and left to die. Besides,
people also practised proper hygiene such as washing, boiling water and burning the dead
bodies instead of burying. It is believed that people also migrated to the Middle East.
The black death is believed to be a terrible nightmare for people in the medieval
time. It destroyed everything and changed the society in many aspects as mentioned
above. It changed the way people live and also left with many long-term effects.The series
of economic, social and religious changes can be seen until now. It took a lot of time for
Europe to recover and regain the prosperity, however, the black death had made a
massive destruction in the human history.