The population of the European parts affected by the plaque reduced drastically, leading to a severe shortage of labour for the farms. This substantially affected trade ties between villages and communities in the medieval European society.Īfter the occurrence of the Black Death, other impacts of the plague started affecting the community. Although people were not aware that it was the infectiousness of the plaque that was making it to kill more people, they were afraid to travel to plagued areas for fear of coming into contact with rats, which they believed was the source of the disease. The first economic activity to suffer substantially from the plaque was trade. Immediately after the occurrence of the Black Death, all economic activities were paralysed. This was a social crisis that has remained in the books of history as a remarkable impact of the bubonic plague. This made it virtually impossible for the living to take care of the ailing, or even for the living to bury the deceased. As people lost their partners to the plague, the marriage market grew, fuelling more sexual immorality (Carol, 1996).Īlso among the immediate social impacts is the fact that at one point, the number of people who were dying from the bubonic plague was seemingly more than the number of the living. People did not care about having virtues anymore because they knew that death was approaching fast. This led to immoral behaviour that saw societal codes like the sexual codes broken. They regarded themselves as the next victims of the bubonic plague. The people who were spared by the plague lived full lives. This also led to a significant reduction in the population (Bryrne, 2011). After the plaque, a large number of the overpopulated peasants became victims of the plaque, and thus the lords lacked labourers in their farms. This fuelled overpopulation, which was a catalyst for the mortality of the plaque. This had extensive effects on all aspects of life, including the social and political structure of the affected areas.īefore the plague, feudalism, the European social structure in medieval times, had created a society in which inequality was rife, with many poor peasants, and rich lords. An obvious social impact of the plague is the fact that the Black Death led to a significant reduction in the human population of the affected areas. The Black Death had far reaching social impacts on the people who lived during the fourteenth century. This paper is an in-depth analysis of the impacts of the Black Death. To this day, the Black Death is remembered as the worst demographic disaster to be ever experienced in European history (Robin, 2011). The plague affected the demographic composition of the society, and thus it had far-reaching effects on the social, economic, political and even cultural realms of the medieval society. As more and more people died from the Black Death, the impacts of the plague became more profound. They actually believed that the plague was caused by the rats themselves. The worst part of it is the fact that the medieval peasants did not know that the plaque was caused by the pleas hosted by the rats. The presence of rats in the cities and towns was due to the fact that the towns were littered, and they were poorly managed. The bubonic plaque was caused by fleas that were hosted by rats, a common phenomenon in the cities and towns. So terrifying was the Black Death that peasants were blaming themselves for its occurrence, and thus some of them resulted to punishing themselves as a way of seeking God’s forgiveness. The plaque began in the year 1348, and by the year 1359, it had killed an approximate 1.5 million people, out of an estimated total population of about 4 million people. The name is given to the bubonic plaque that occurred in the fourteenth century in Europe killing millions of people. The Black Death was, no doubt, the greatest population disaster that has ever occurred in the history of Europe.
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