The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

by John Kelly

Between 1250 and 1270 the long medieval boom sputtered to an end. One of the great ironies of the Black Death is that it occurred just as the medieval global economy, the vehicle of Y. pestis’s liberation, was nearing collapse. However, in Europe, it was the implosion of the vastly larger domestic economy, particularly the agricultural economy, that people felt most keenly. The implosion was continentwide, but in England, a nation of meticulous record keepers, it was documented with great diligence. Around 1300 the acreage under plow decreased, while the land still in use either declined in productivity or stagnated. After centuries of heady advancement, the medieval peasant’s mistakes had caught up with him. Some of the good land brought into service during the Great Clearances of the twelfth century had been overfarmed, and some of the more marginal land, which never should have been cleared in the first place, was giving out entirely.