�FROM ANCIENT PLAGUES ��TO THE BLACK DEATH
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Eurasia imperial connections intensify over centuries
�YERSINIA PESTIS, ZOONOTIC BACTERIA “USUALLY FOUND IN RODENTS AND THEIR FLEAS” CAUSED ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL PLAGUES IN EUROPE, 800 YEARS APART. WHY 800 YEARS? AND THEN ANOTHER 200 YEARS BEFORE A THIRD OUTBREAK. WHY THESE TIMINGS? WHERE THESE THREE PLAGUES THEREFORE THE SAME?��
AGE OF MIGRATIONS CIRCA 500-700
TURKIC SPACE
This Wikipedia entry is good: “Turkic peoples.” checkout footnote citations
McCormick, Michael et al. “Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire: Reconstructing the Past from Scientific and Historical Evidence.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 43, no. 2, 2012, pp. 169–220. (online PDF).
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the climate connection
The End of Antiquity: the Pandemic of 541-750, ed. LK Little, CUP, 2006
Saint Sebastian pleads with Jesus for the life of a gravedigger afflicted by plague during the Plague of Justinian. (Josse Lieferinxe, c. 1497–1499)
Plague arrived by sea: it came Roman Egypt in 541, and spread around the Mediterranean until 544
Migration, war, disease, and post-imperial recovery
AN EXPANSIVE SPATIAL INTEGRATION IN LATE-ANTIQUITY: �BYZANTIUM AND ARAB CONQUEST MIGRATIONS� TRAVEL WITH TRADE ON OLD ROUTES FROM ANCIENT GREECE-ROME-PERSIA.
On climate: from McCormick et al
The mobility of empires aross Eurasia
Abbasids expand from the west, Sui-Tang China from the east
ABBASID – T’ANG CERAMIC SEA TRADE���AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ��AROUND THE INDIAN OCEAN
Summary
The Chinese trade ceramics found in Siraf belonged to five major groups, namely grayish celadon wares, white stonewares, iron and/or copper painted stonewares, green‐splashed whitewares, and miscellaneous low‐fired lead‐glazed earthen‐wares. It is likely that the Persian and Arab communities in Yangzhou served as middlemen, and were instrumental in the selection and purchase of ceramics for export to the Middle East. The discovery of glass on board both of the tenth‐century ships not only shows an increasing reliance on the maritime routes for the trading of Middle Eastern glass and the growing scope of glass trade around the Indian Ocean but also reaffirms the intermediary role of Southeast Asia in the China‐Abbasid trade.
The China–Abbasid Ceramics Trade during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
Chinese Ceramics Circulating in the Middle East
Book Editor(s): Finbarr Barry Flood
First published: 20 June 2017
Empire, War, Trade, and Eurasian Connections: 900-1200
Abbasid Caliphate --
Mediterranean-Indian Ocean
Fatimids --
Africa, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean
Cairo Genizah -
Mediterranean-Indian Ocean
Crusades --
Europe - Mediterranean - West Asia
Mahmud of Ghazni --
Persia, Indo-Persia
Kannauj Triangle --
Indo-Persia, Deccan, Bengal (South and East India)
As European medieval economies expand, so do cosumer demands for Asian products – and incentives for investors in supply chains that run through the Levant – and Christian Europe fights for control with Muslim dynasties
Egypt, Eastern Mediterranean, Africa, and Europe
The Cairo Genizah and Jewish Merchants
Territorial heartland. Turkic territories: conquest, absorption, and strongholds at the limits, south and west
Alternating seasons of drought and good rains promoted Mongol migrations out of Mongolia and sustained their access to good grasslands across Central and West Asia during the original age of Mongol expansion, 1200-1230
Routes of
Conquest
The great leader is the lynch-pin of empire – personal loyalty provides territorial order – based on tribal solidarity and calculating pragmatism – �with a shift from lineage descent to military supremacy as the basis of patrimonial succession �
maximum imperial space
or
limits of Mongol conquest
Routes of
Conquest
Plague outbreaks that ravaged Europe for centuries were driven by climate changes in Asia
Published: February 23, 2015 3.42pm EST
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. He was hosted in China by the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, who dispatched him on trips to help administer the realm.
The Republic of Venice was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as a very important centre of commerce (especially silk, grain, and spice) and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century.
Venitian Empire – Republic of Venice
BUBONIC PLAGUE came by land on space produced by Mongols and then by sea on routes of European merchant power��
The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. (history.com)
October 1347 – it first travels on ships from Black Sea into the Sicilian port of Messina then around Mediterranean from port to port, and then inland ….
1348 – into Christendom.
A group of religious zealots known as the Flagellants first begin to appear in Germany. These groups of anywhere from 50 to 500 hooded and half-naked men march, sing and thrash themselves with lashes until swollen and bloody. Originally the practice of 11th-century Italian monks during an epidemic, they spread out through Europe. Also known for their violent anti-Semitism, the Flagellants mysteriously disappear by 1350.
The plague hits Marseille, Paris and Normandy, and then the strain splits, with one strain moving onto the now-Belgian city of Tournai to the east and the other passing through Calais. and Avignon, where 50 percent of the population dies.
The plague also moves through Austria and Switzerland, where a fury of anti-Semitic massacres follow it along the Rhine after a rumor spreads that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning wells, as Jennifer Wright details in her book, Get Well Soon, History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. In towns throughout Germany and France, Jewish communities are completely annihilated. In response, King Casimir III of Poland offers a safe haven to the persecuted Jews, starting a mass migration to Poland and Lithuania. Marseilles is also considered a safe haven for Jews.
And more on the timeline from history.com
mask at 183 Bleecker St
Summaries on the impact of the Black Death in Europe
1. The Impact of Plague: The Plague of Justinian and the Black Death
2. THE ECONOMIC IMPACT of the Medieval Plague
3. City autonomy reduced the incidence of the Black Death
4. Trade routes and plague transmission in pre-industrial Europe
5. Navigable rivers facilitated the spread and recurrence of plague
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The economic crisis of the 14th century
The medieval economic revolution of the 12th and 13th centuries led to a boom in activity in Europe, and especially in France.
But this was cut short abruptly at the start of the 14th century due … climate change, crises in agricultural production (... the great famine of 1314-1317), the devastation … the Hundred Years' War between France and England in 1337, the various calamities suffered by the Byzantine Empire, epidemics (the Black Death from 1347 to 1351, followed by repeated outbreaks up until 1370).
As a result of these epidemics in particular, the population in some regions of Europe was more than halved. France's population only returned to its 1320 level in around 1600.
Against this backdrop, goods prices fell sharply, and there were numerous state defaults throughout Europe, as well as bankruptcies of private banks: in 1345, for example, Edward III of England defaulted on his debt, while the Florentine banks Bardi and Perruzi both went bankrupt.
The epidemics also prompted a rise in wages as the supply of labour became increasingly scarce.
More from history.com
was it Mongol bio-warfare?
Here is more research on origins and spread of Yersinia pestis, which is alive and well today
Evidence for the spread via the ancient caravan routes requires further investigation but camels are easily infected with plague from the bites of fleas and the bacillus could also have travelled in infected traders, other animals or fleas in their cargo.
It would appear that we may need to rewrite the history books and place the blame for these ancient scourges that changed the face of Europe upon the trade in exotic goods rather than the humble rat.
Part 1. The Three Great Pandemics
In Central Asian Deserts, the great gerbil is the primary host. Gerbils are social animals, living in burrows infested with several parasitic arthropods, including the fleas that act as vectors for the bacterium. Gerbil populations fluctuate and the sylvatic plague bacterium will spread in the population when it exceeds an upper threshold level. Work published in 2007 … suggested a co-dependency exists between climatic conditions, vegetation cover, synchronised increase in gerbil densities and plague transmission. Warm, moist conditions promote vegetation growth in these arid areas, giving rise to large gerbil populations and large plague epizootics. As gerbil populations crash, flea populations rise, the plague bacteria spread and infected fleas spill-over onto domestic animals and humans.