Rather than a reckoning, the image of postboom Europe that comes to mind is that of a man standing up to his neck in water. Drowning may not be inevitable, but the man’s position is so fraught, even a very slight rise in the next tide could kill him. As Dr. Herlihy asserts, a crowded Europe may well have been able to hang on for “the indefinite future,” but, like the man in the water, after the land gave out and the economy collapsed, the continent had no margin for error. Just to continue keeping its head above water, everything else had to go right, and in the early fourteenth century, a
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