The Black Death was a devastating epidemic that swept across the European continent between 1346 and 1353 killing more than one-third of its population. The disease was transferred to humans through fleas from dying rodents. Before arriving in Europe, it depopulated vast areas of Tartary, India, Mesopotamia, and Syria. The book The Black Death by Philip Ziegler attempts to provide an account of the events followed by the arrival of the plague. It also gives a commentary on the contemporary view of the conditions of medieval Europe and makes an effort to provide an assessment of the large body of primary and secondary sources on the Black Death.
Ziegler explicitly illustrates how various historians come to erroneous conclusions about the nature of the epidemic, its origins, and mortality rates. It is extremely difficult to arrive at reliable numbers on mortality rates and population levels of fourteenth-century Europe. Historians have to rely on clergy lists and manor rolls to extrapolate the approximate death toll of the plague. However, statistical conclusions, especially those drawn from clergy vacancies, are far from precise.
The medieval doctors, encountering an unknown disease that inexplicably took the lives of great numbers of people, we’re unable to agree on its causes. Some believed that “corrupted air” or “putrid fumes” infected Europe. Others asserted that the movements of the planets were responsible for the disease. Ziegler masterfully accounts for the impact of the Black Death on medieval society. The panic and flight that led to the disappearance of some villages along with the rise of religious guilds were the common responses to the epidemic across Europe. Ziegler’s depiction of two imaginary villages offers a beautiful historical perspective on the plague’s effect on the life of medieval society.
The Mongol Origins of Muscovite Political Institutions
Ostrowski’s argument about the origins of the fourteenth-century Muscovite political and administrative institutions is mainly supported by other historians he refers to in his book. Although George Vernadsky claims that the major impact of Mongol political institutions on the Muscovite government took place only after Russia’s emancipation, he nevertheless observes the “influence through delayed action.” Karl Wittfogel also holds a similar view and contends that institutional influence occurred only in the sixteen century. Alexander Yanov, on the other hand, argues that similarities between the two systems appeared much later and claims that the idea of institutional borrowing is a farfetched one. A historian Jaroslaw Pelenski believes that Muscovite governmental and societal models were under the influence of the Golden Horde. Charles Halperin shares the view of Vernadsky and Wittfogel and sees the similarity between fifteenth-century Russia and the thirteenth-century Mongol Empire. He argues that Muscovites leaders had a great need in the Mongol model of governance for the unification of the Rus’.
The expansion of the Mongol Empire had both direct and indirect influences on European societies. The total warfare style of the Mongol invasion resulted in devastation and complete depopulation of some of the most affluent areas of the continent. However, it was the main reason behind the unification of Russia. Various disparate city-states that populated the region at that time had no other recourse but to coordinate their powers in order to free themselves from the Mongol yoke. Another devastating effect of the Mongol invasion was the spread of the Bubonic plague or Black Death. Invaders inadvertently transferred the disease from Central Asia to Eastern Europe. In the years that followed, the epidemic claimed the lives of a third of the European continent.