The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World

Description

In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a major new study of this 'Great Transition', Bruce Campbell assesses the contributions of commercial recession, war, climate change, and eruption of the Black Death to a far-reaching reversal of fortunes from which no part of Eurasia was spared. The book synthesises a wealth of new historical, palaeo-ecological and biological evidence, including estimates of national income, reconstructions of past climates, and genetic analysis of DNA extracted from the teeth of plague victims, to provide a fresh account of the creation, collapse and realignment of Western Europe's late medieval commercial economy. List of figures ix List of tables xv Preface and acknowledgements xvi Abbreviations xxv 1. Interactions between nature and society in the late-medieval world 1 1.01. The Great Transition: an outline chronology 3 1.02. The Great Transition and the Great Divergence 19 1.03. Critical transitions in nature and society 20 1.04. Tracking the Great Transition: issues of scale, focus and evidence 24 2. Efflorescence: the enabling environment and the rise of Latin Christendom 30 2.01. Latin Christendom's take-off to sustained growth 34 2.02. The Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) 36 2.03. The growth of Old World populations 58 2.04. The institutional underpinnings of Latin Christendom's commercial expansion 65 2.05. Latin Christendom's commercial revolution 85 2.06. The enabling environment and Latin Christendom's high-medieval efflorescence 130 3. A precarious balance: mounting economic vulnerability in an era of increasing climatic instability and re-emergent pathogens 134 3.01. From efflorescence to recession 135 3.02. Increasing climatic instability 198 3.03. Re-emergent pathogens 209 3.04. A precarious balance 253 Appendix 3.1. The landed incomes of English households in 1290 261 4. Tipping point: war, climate change and plague shift the balance 267 4.01. Escalating warfare and deepening commercial recession 267 4.02. Old World climates on the cusp of change 277 4.03. Eruption of the Black Death in Europe 289 4.04. The Black Death's lasting epidemiological legacy 313 4.05. The Black Death: an enigma resolved? 319 4.06. Three in one: the perfect storm 328 Appendix 4.1. Outbreak of the Justinianic Plague and the weather 329 5. Recession: the inhibiting environment and Latin Christendom’s late-medieval demographic and economic contraction 332 5.01. From a tipping point to a turning point 332 5.02. Advance of the Little Ice Age (LIA) 335 5.03. A golden age of bacteria? 349 5.04. Economic and commercial contraction 355 5.05. Prosperity amidst adversity? 373 5.06. The end of the Great Transition: from an eastward to a westward enterprise 386 Epilogue: theory, contingency, conjuncture and the Great Transition 395 References 402 Index 448