Human consequences
Entire villages vanish. Jewish communities, accused of poisoning wells, suffer pogroms across Europe.
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PandemicThe Black Death
25MDeaths
Not quantifiedDisplaced / homeless
Not quantifiedEstimated cost
- Europe alone: 25 to 50 million deaths, or 30 to 50% of the population. The worldwide toll may have exceeded 75 million.
Carried from Central Asia along trade routes, bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) reaches the Genoese trading post of Caffa, from where ships spread it across the Mediterranean in the autumn of 1347. Within four years it sweeps across the whole of Europe.
Consequences
Environmental consequences
The mass abandonment of farmland lets forests return in many regions.
Economic consequences
Labour shortages push wages up and hasten the decline of serfdom in Western Europe.
Political consequences
Social revolts (the Jacquerie in 1358, the English Peasants’ Revolt in 1381) and the first organised quarantines, in Ragusa from 1377.
Spread
- Constantinople · 1347
- Messina · October 1347
- Marseille · November 1347
- Paris · 1348
- London · 1348
- Bergen · 1349
Further reading
Similar disasters
- Plague of JustinianPandemic · Byzantine Empire541 – 549
- Great Plague of MarseillePandemic · France1720 – 1722
- “Spanish” fluPandemic · Worldwide1918 – 1920
- COVID-19 pandemicPandemic · Worldwide2019 – 2023
In the rankings : The deadliest disasters in history No. 3The deadliest pandemics in history No. 2
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