Preliminary Programme

European communities experienced regular visitations of plagues and warfare throughout the early modern period. The associated losses of human lives and the disruptions of social and economic patters seem evident. Often, plague and warfare seemed to occur simultaneously, thus further increasing the weight of the disaster on local economic and social life. However, current empirical knowledge on the occurrences and consequences of plagues and warfare is fragmentary due to a limitations of sources. In particular, these source limitations have so far prevented systematic analyses of the consequences – and especially variations thereof – and long term effects of plagues and warfare, and even more so, prevented research into the joint occurrence of war and plague. In this paper we attempt to address these empirical questions by exploiting a new dataset of mortality rates from a large number of localities scattered throughout the Low Countries. The dataset spans the entire seventeenth century, and thus covers the numerous episodes of warfare and plague epidemics in that period. In the paper, we reconstruct geographical patterns of mortality, which we then link to the geographical reach of war and to known years of plague outbreaks. Doing so, we shed new light on the empirical questions about the social and economic consequences of plagues and warfare. (Show less)

In the County of Hainaut, situated in the Southern Netherlands, a large proportion of the population owed a death fee to the count, called mortmain. It was usually paid in the form of the best movable possession of the deceased which was impounded by a local bailiff and sold at local auctions, afterwards the money was transferred to the treasury of the count and recorded in the so-called mortmain accounts. These documents provide a wealth of information, not only about the people who died, but also about the goods that were impounded, their value and even the identity of the buyers. Using the mortmain accounts a database was constructed of around 35,000 individuals that died in the period 1349-1500. This database makes it possible to reconstruct the functioning of a very specific subset of market transactions during times of plague. Although it is widely accepted that plague caused demographic carnage during the late medieval period, a true death-blow, it could also function as a window of opportunity for those who survived. Survivors were able to accumulate the possessions of the dead, whether movable or immovable, and therefore prosper financially during times of crisis. This is reflected in a very direct way through the mortmain-auctions in which the most priced movable possessions, such as livestock, of the deceased were sold. In ‘normal’ years there was a fairly large group of buyers, often including family members of the deceased, who bought up goods at auction. As a result, the goods were redistributed more or less equally among the buyers. However, in times of crises, more specifically during plague-years, there are examples in certain districts of specific individuals outcompeting most other buyers, buying up a large amount of goods. In all likelihood, they were speculating on a reprisal of normal affairs once the plague outbreak had subsided. This paper aims to, not only explore the mechanism behind this form of market speculation but also its consequences for demographic recovery. The county of Hainaut provides an excellent test case for demographic trends after late medieval plague outbreaks because it provides hearth counts from as early as 1365 onwards. Because not all regions showed the same demographic trends after the Black Death, the north of Hainaut recovered much quicker than the south for instance, it is possible to test if differences in the accumulation of auctioned goods played a role in these diverging trends. By applying this double approach, the question of whether plague was a death-blow to all or a window of opportunity to some can be answered. (Show less)

Among the numerous studies on the Black Death and its economic consequences, the Middle East as a broad and complex world region remains a relatively understudied part of the world. Existing plague studies concentrate on small parts of Mamluk Egypt and some core areas of the Ottoman Empire. The inaccessibility of the source material provides parts of the explanation. This notwithstanding, the lack of attention is evidently surprising, because the regions general prosperity and its political importance during the High and Late Middle Ages. It is all the more surprising given the remarkable change of course in economic development throughout the Middle East during the same, broadly defined period. The importance of the Black Death, and plague outbreaks in a wider sense, is therefore difficult to assess. In a new attempt to address the effects of the Black Death in the Middle East, this puts together mortality estimates for most of the region. We provide estimates for the largest cities, including Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Gaza, Mecca and Samarkand and, furthermore, address the fortunes of these cities in comparison to their rural hinterlands. Doing so, we provide an empirical foundation for assessing the economic consequences of the Black Death in the Middle East (Show less)

The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century wrought havoc in the Ottoman Empire, just as it did in so many world regions. Lacking the sources, it is hard to reconstruct or provide sharp estimations of the death toll. The political consequences of the Black Death and recurrent plague outbreaks are not evident either. The Ottoman Empire emerged out of the late Middle Ages as one of the dominant polities in the Mediterranean. At the same time, however, several regions within the Empire saw an upsurge in rebellions and civil conflict. It can be surmised that the established political control of the Sultans was shaken through the demographic and social shocks induced by the recurrent plagues. Ottomanists have generally looked at these rebellions in terms of the political and religious ideas that motivated them. Consequently, the role of the recurrent plagues and major demographic transformations in the 14th and 15th centuries are thus neglected as a major driving force as a result. In this paper I attempt to put these rebellions into the context of large population losses and crumbling political control of the Ottoman Empire. Specifically, I study the rebellions that took place in Anatolia and the Balkans, with particular attention to geographical patterns and differences between rural and urban environments. (Show less)