No one was exempt as it swept in off the shores and into the countryside laying its
burden of death and pestilence. Europe had prospered readily for about 300 years prior to
the beginning of the 1300s, but a series of natural disasters occurred. Poor harvests and
famine were common and as the prosperous years came to a close, economies were in
recession at the onset of the Black Death. Europe, on a whole, would take a step
There have been plagues throughout recorded history, but none were of the
magnitude nor had the far reaching effects that the Black Plague had. Its namesake came
from symptomatic hemorrhages that turned black. Though most people associate the
Black Death with the middle ages, forms of the Bubonic Plague have been known in China
as early as 224 BC. The Black Death embarked on a journey as an epidemic in the Gobi
Desert in the 1320s. By 1400, China's population of 125 million had been reduced to 90
million. Southwest Asia and Europe followed suite with strikingly similar losses in their
population base. In 1347, the Kipchaks who were nomads from the Euro-Asian Steppe,
were thought to deliberately infect a European city with the disease. The Kipchaks had
laid siege to a Genoese trading post in Crimea. Hoping to weaken the defenders, they
used a catapult to lob infected corpses into the compound. Trading vessels from Crimea
subsequently brought cargo infested with the disease burdened rodents and crew west.
Starting in Sicily in 1347, it began a four year reign of terror traveling as far as
Greenland. During this four year period it is believed Europe lost one full third of its
The effects the Plague had on the economy and the laws governing the state were
severe. England is a perfect example. By 1349, the population had been so severely
decreased that the commoner had the upper-hand on the land-lords. This was significant
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