When was the Black Death?

The first major outbreak of the “Black Death” or plague occurred in the fourteenth century, beginning in China and then spreading over the trade routes to Europe and the Middle East. Nobody knows exactly why the plague suddenly appeared in China in 1331, but the most likely explanation is that the Mongols unintentionally facilitated the spread of the disease through their support of overland trade routes and their use of long-distance postal systems across the Eurasian steppe. The rodents who lived on the steppe were carriers of the plague, which was able to survive the winter cold in the warmth of their underground burrows. With far more people traveling through the steppe under Mongol rule, the plague jumped over to the human population and then started to spread rapidly both east and west.

Beginning in 1331, the plague killed up to nine-tenths of the population in what is now Hebei Province in China and then spread across the rest of the empire over the next few decades. Disease and famine caused social order to break down throughout China, leading to the fall of the Yuan Dynasty.

The Arab historian Ibn Al-Wardi, writing around 1348, described the destruction the plague brought to the Muslim world, stating that the plague killed a thousand people a day in Damascus alone. The Italian writer Gabriele De’Mussis, writing around the same time as Al-Wardi, blames the spread of the plague directly on the “Tartars” or Mongols. According to De’Mussis, the plague began as a divine punishment against the Mongols besieging Caffa in the Crimea in 1346.

The plague killed many of the besiegers, but the Mongols used the plague-infested bodies as catapult ammunition in a deliberate attempt to spread the disease to the defenders of the city. The Christian inhabitants of the city knew that rotting corpses could spread disease and ruin the water supply, so they tried to gather up the bodies and dispose of them. This would clearly have put them in direct contact with the bacteria, but they did not understand this. The plague devastated the city, then began to spread throughout Europe and the Middle East.

The plague reached Italy in 1346, then spread north into France and Germany. In some crowded cities such as Bremen, most of the population died. As in China, society nearly collapsed and many people joined extreme religious movements such as the Flagellants and the Beghards while others joined bands of marauding bandits and mercenaries. Over the next few decades, the plague killed approximately a third to two-thirds of the people in Europe. The death rate started to slow by 1353, but the plague continued to recur for centuries. The Great Plague of London lasted from 1665-1666 and killed between 60,000 and 100,000 people. There are still smaller outbreaks from time to time.

Sources:

Al-Wardi, Ibn. “Risalah al-naba’ ‘an al-waba,” In Exchanges: A Global History Reader, vol. 1., to 1500, edited by Trevor R. Getz, Richard J. Hoffman, and Jarbel Rodriguez, 222-224. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.

De’Mussis, Gabriele. “Historia de Morbo.” In Exchanges: A Global History Reader, vol. 1., to 1500, edited by Trevor R. Getz, Richard J. Hoffman, and Jarbel Rodriguez, 222-224. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.

McNeill, William H. “Plagues and Peoples.” In Exchanges: A Global History Reader, vol. 1., to 1500, edited by Trevor R. Getz, Richard J. Hoffman, and Jarbel Rodriguez, 222-224. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.

Tignor, Robert, et. al. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, vol. 1: Beginnings Through the Fifteenth Century., 4th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.) E-book edition. Chap. 11.

The National Archives. “Great Plague of 1665-1666.” http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/great-plague/

The Black Death, or the plague, as it's sometimes known, arrived in Europe from Asia in the mid-fourteenth-century. The first recorded cases of what became a deadly pandemic date from 1346. Once established on the European mainland, the bubonic plague soon spread quickly, transmitted by the many rats who lived close to humans onboard ship and in the towns and cities. Medical knowledge at the time was primitive to say the least, with no understanding of germs or how they were transmitted. Towns and cities were mired in filth, without proper sewerage or sanitation systems. This created ideal conditions for the plague to breed unchecked.
The Black Death finally subsided in 1353. But it had left appalling devastation in its wake, wiping out around 50 million people; that was roughly 60% of Europe's population. In this deeply religious age, it was widely believed that the plague was divine punishment for the sins of humankind. To many, it genuinely seemed that the end of the world was at hand.