Energy figures are measured in BTU, with 1 BTU equal to 1.055 kJ and 1 quadrillion BTU (1 quad) equal to 1.055 EJ. Because BTU is a unit of heat, sources that generate electricity directly are multiplied by a conversion factor to equate them with sources that use a heat engine.
The United States was the second-largest energy producer and consumer in 2021 after China. The country had a per capita energy consumption of 295 million BTU (311 GJ), ranking it tenth in the world behind Canada, Norway, and several Arabian nations.
Consumption in 2023 was mostly for industry (33%) and transportation
(30%), with use in homes (20%) and commercial buildings (17%) making up
the remainder.
The United States' portion of the electrical grid in North America had a nameplate capacity of 1,280 GW and produced 4,029 TWh in 2023, using 34% of primary energy to do so. The country is the second-largest producer and consumer of electricity, behind China.
Natural gas overtook coal as the dominant source for electric
generation in 2016. Coal was overtaken by nuclear for the first time in
2020 and by renewables in 2023.
History
Per capita energy use by sourceThe percentage of energy use by source
From its founding until the late 19th century, population and energy
use in the United States both increased by about 3% per year, resulting in a relatively constant per capita energy use of 100 million BTU. Wood made up the majority of this until near the end of the 1800s, meaning the average American burned eight tons of wood each year.
The Industrial Revolution in the United States saw an increased use of coal.
By the late 1800s, it surpassed wood as the major source of energy, as
it was cheaper for those living in cities. Lighting, heating and
transportation could all be fueled by coal. Between 1925 and 1975, coal use was more stagnant, although it dominated the growing electricity sector. Petroleum and natural gas took its place, as car ownership doubled in the two decades after the war, and as the number of pipelines rose dramatically.
During the first half of the 20th century, per capita energy use
doubled to 200 million BTU, and reached 300 million BTU by the late 60s.
After a peak of 360 million BTU in 1979, per capita consumption
generally declined, and dipped below 300 million BTU in 2020. In comparison, the world average increased from 68 to 74 million BTU (72 to 78 GJ) per person between 1980 and 2020.
Domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and did not recover for 40 years. However, oil imports allowed consumption to double. Oil represented the vast majority of net imports during this time. Increased reliance on imported oil coincided with the 1973 oil crisis.
Total imports peaked in 2005, when they represented 30% of total
consumption. A consistent decline occurred over the next 15 years, as
oil production doubled and domestic use receded. This allowed the United
States to be a net exporter of energy for the first time in 70 years.
As of 2021, the US net exports 3.9% of energy production.
Around 2010, many other trends began to reverse. By 2020, improvements in fracking had allowed natural gas production to increase by more than half, while coal decreased by half.
Renewables in the 20th century consisted mainly of hydro
and wood. Hydro power had been relatively constant since 1970, while
wood saw a bump in 1980. Between 2000 and 2020, wind, solar and biofuels
increased by a factor of ten. By 2020, wind had surpassed hydro, and
biofuels had surpassed wood.
Summary
US energy consumption by source (2021)
Source
% of source
Nuclear 8%
100% Electricity
Renewable 12%
6.9% Residential 2.6% Commercial 19.6% Industrial 12.3% Transport 58.6% Electricity
Natural gas 32%
15.4% Residential 10.8% Commercial 33.4% Industrial 3.9% Transport 36.5% Electricity
Coal 11%
0.1% Commercial 9.8% Industrial 90.0% Electricity
Petroleum 36%
2.6% Residential 2.4% Commercial 25.0% Industrial 69.3% Transport 0.6% Electricity
5.5% Renewable 4.5% Natural gas 89.8% Petroleum 0.2% Electricity
Primary energy production
US energy production in 2023
The United States is the world's second-largest producer of energy.
It produces 16% of the world's energy, about three-fourths as much as
China.
Since 2019, the country has been a net exporter of energy. In 2023,
102.8 quads were produced and net exports were 7.6% of production.
Fossil fuels
Fossil fuels have long produced most energy in the US, accounting for 84% of total production and 60% of electric generation as of 2023. Although costs for some fossil fuels are declining, renewables are becoming cheaper faster. Despite this, use of fossil fuels has remained near 80% for the past 30 years.
The vast majority of carbon emissions in the US came from fossil fuels. The largest sources for carbon pollution from energy were petroleum (46%), natural gas (35%) and coal (19%),
and of petroleum, motor gasoline (21%) and diesel (12%) were the
largest contributors. As gas has been replacing coal, emissions from the
two combined have declined from a peak in 2008, down 25% as of 2021.
During the same time frame, petroleum declined by only 17%.
Coal made up 11% of production in 2021, 90% of which went to producing electricity. Coal electrified
rapidly throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s and half of annual electricity
was from coal until the 2010s. Coal peaked in 2006, when it represented a
third of total energy production. During the 2010s it underwent a
steady decline, mostly being replaced by natural gas. In contrast, net
exports have remained near 2 quads in the same time period, but this now
amounts to 17% of total production.
The decline of coal has many factors, including the
aforementioned rise of natural gas, the closing of old plants, and
environmental regulations. Coal supply has not become an issue, as the US has the largest coal reserve in the world, 40% larger than Russia.
US natural gas production, imports, and exportsNatural gas production by field
Dry natural gas was 36% of production in 2021, making it the largest source of energy in the US. It is also the largest electricity source, making up 38% of generation.
Natural gas surpassed coal for production in 2011 and for generation in
2016. Between 2006 and 2022, the US has gone from net importing 4 quads
of natural gas to exporting 4 quads.
The United States has been the world's largest producer of natural gas since 2011, when it surpassed Russia. However, the US ranks 7th in proven reserves. Differences in supply explain why gas is cheaper in the US than it is in Europe.
Natural gas liquids
are liquid hydrocarbons obtained from natural gas fields. Production
has tripled from 2000 to 2022, now making up 9% of fossil fuels. The US leads the world in NGL production, ahead of Saudi Arabia.
During the 2023-24 winter heating season in the United States,
natural gas inventories ended at 2,290 billion cubic feet (Bcf), 39%
above the five-year average, due to mild weather resulting in reduced
consumption. Withdrawals from storage were approximately 1,500 Bcf,
lower than the usual 2,000 Bcf. By March 2024, the Henry Hub
spot price had decreased to $1.50 per million British thermal units
(MMBtu), significantly below the forecasted $3.10/MMBtu, with
expectations of prices staying below $2.00/MMBtu until the second half
of 2024, averaging $2.20/MMBtu for the year.
Crude oil made up 24% of production in 2021.
Oil has more than doubled from a slump in the early 2000s, even
surpassing its previous peak in 1970. Imports have declined during the
same time period, but the US still net imports 20% of consumption.
The US has been the largest producer of crude oil since 2018, ahead of Saudi Arabia. Texas produces far more oil than any other state.
The US generated 772 TWh of nuclear power in 2022, surpassing China (395 TWh) and France
(282 TWh). However, nuclear power constitutes a much smaller percentage
of total power generation (18%) when compared to France (63%).
Nuclear had significant growth from the 70s through the 90s, but has stagnated since. A cessation of new nuclear plant construction coincided with the accident at Three Mile Island. Future growth may come from smaller reactors.
Renewable energy in the United States accounted for 12.5% of the total production in 2021, and 20.7% of electric generation.
The category has seen rapid growth, doubling in total output between
2000 and 2020. They have exceeded nuclear since 2011 and surpassed coal
in 2020 for the first time since wood fuel fell out of use.
Biomass made up 5% of total production and 38% of renewables in 2022. About 49% of this was biofuels, 43% was wood, and 8% was waste and other biomass.
Ethanol made up the majority of biofuels in 2022, while biodiesel
and renewable diesel made up about 16%. For ethanol, about 40% of the
available energy is lost or diverted to co-products during the
manufacturing process, and the equivalent of 20% is used to power and run the equipment. About 45% of domestic corn output goes toward producing ethanol. The US led the world in ethanol production in 2021, producing more than half of the total. The US is a net exporter of biofuels.
Use of biofuels increased by a factor of 10 between 2000 and 2020, eventually exceeding wood. The desire for ethanol originated from the need to replace methyl tert-butyl ether, which was contaminating groundwater. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated an increased use of ethanol. Most gasoline sold in the US contains up to 10% ethanol.
Industry uses two-thirds of the wood fuel in the US, while the residential sector uses about a quarter. Wood and paper factories use wood waste on-site to reduce their energy costs. About 9% of homes used firewood in 2020.
Wood made up the majority of energy consumption until near the
end of the 1800s, after which it declined in total use for several
decades, to about half its peak. The 80s saw the first significant increase in over a century, of about 65%, before declining again by the 2010s.
Two-thirds of the geothermal energy in the US in 2021 was electric, with the remainder being direct use and heat pumps. Geothermal power made up 2% of renewable generation, 70% of which came from California. The Geysers is the largest complex of geothermal energy production in the world. The US ranks first in geothermal capacity, ahead of Indonesia and the Philippines.
Hydro made up 6% of electric generation and 29% of renewable generation in 2021. Three states made up over half of the total: Washington (29%), New York (12%) and Oregon (11%). Overall 246 TWh were generated across 1,449 conventional plants and 40 pumped storage plants.
As of 2021, the US was fourth in the world in total hydroelectric
generation behind Canada and Brazil, each generating over 350 TWh. China
produced the most, with an estimated 1,300 TWh.
Hydro has been used in the US since 1880 when it powered the Wolverine Chair factory in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By 1950, 29% of total electricity production came from hydro, as it produced 96 TWh.
Hydro generation had tripled by the 70s, but has not consistently grown
since. Hydro has had large flucuations from year to year: for example
in 2010, generation jumped from 253 to 311 TWh the next year, before
dropping to 269 TWh the year after that. While hydro has maintained
generation in the 200 to 350 TWh range for the past few decades, its
share of the total has declined as other sources have risen. Since 2019,
wind power has exceeded hydro as the largest renewable electricity
source.
At 132 years old, the plant in Whiting, Wisconsin is the oldest power plant still running in the US. The Grand Coulee Dam is the largest plant for hydro and in general in the US, and the fifth-largest hydro plant in the world. Built in Washington in 1942, it continues to operate with a capacity of 6,765 MW. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station is the second-largest such facility in the world, with a capacity of 3,003 MW.
Solar
made up 4% of electric generation and 19% of renewable generation in
2021. Of the 164 TWh generated, 70% was by utilities and an estimated
30% was small-scale such as rooftop solar. Three states made up over half of total grid generation: California (30%), Texas (13%) and North Carolina (9%). In 2021, the US grid produced the second most solar power in the world, behind China's 328 GWh.
Wind made up 9% of electric generation and 44% of renewable generation in 2021. Four states made up over half of the total: Texas (26%), Iowa (10%), California (9%) and Kansas (7%). The US grid produces significantly more wind power than Germany or India, but less than half of China.
An example of each consumption sector: a refinery, a house, a car and an office
Industry has long been the country's largest energy sector.
It used 33% of total energy in 2021, most of which was divided evenly
between natural gas, electricity and petroleum. A survey from 2018
estimated that the largest energy users were the chemical industry (30%), petroleum and coal processing (18%), mining (9%) and paper (9%).
The most energy-intensive industry was by far petroleum and coal,
at over 30 billion BTU per employee. The paper industry was second at
6.5 billion BTU per employee. Each of these handles energy sources as
part of their raw materials (fossil fuels and wood).
The same survey found that half of the electric use was to drive
machines and about 10% each for heating, cooling and electro-chemical
processes. Most of the remainder was for factory lighting and HVAC. About half of the natural gas was for process heating, and most of the rest was for boilers.
Transportation
used 28% of energy, almost all of which was petroleum and other fuels.
Half of the combustible fuels that make up the transportation sector
were gasoline, and half of the vehicle usage was for cars and small trucks. Diesel and heavier trucks each made up about a quarter of their respective categories; jet fuel and aircraft were about a tenth each. Biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel made up 5%, while natural gas was 4%. Electricity from mass transit
was 0.2%; electricity for light passenger vehicles is counted in other
sectors, but figures from the US Department of Energy estimate that 2.1
million electric vehicles used 6.1 TWh to travel 19 billion miles,
indicating an average fuel efficiency of 3.1 miles per kWh.
Over two-thirds of the energy used by homes, offices, and other commercial businesses is electric, including electric losses. Most of the energy used in homes was for space heating (34%) and water heating (19%), much more than the amount used for space cooling (16%) and refrigeration (7%). Businesses use similar percentages for space cooling and refrigeration. They use less for space and water heating but more for lighting and cooking.
Most homes in the US are single-family detached, which on average use almost triple the energy of apartments in larger buildings.
However, single family households have 50% more persons and triple the
floor space. Usage per square foot of living space is roughly equal for
most housing types except small apartment buildings and mobile homes. Small apartments are more likely to be older than other housing types, while mobile homes tend to have poor insulation.
Regional variation
The state with the lowest per capita energy use is Rhode Island, at 161 million BTU per year, and the highest is Louisiana, at 908 million BTU per year. Energy use and prices often have an inverse relationship; Hawaii uses some of the least energy per capita but pays the highest price on average, while Louisiana pays the least on average.
Residential prices follow a similar trend, but the differences
between states are usually less drastic. The exception is Hawaii, which
pays 84 cents per million BTU, more than double the next largest state
of Florida, which pays 33 cents.
Household energy use varies by home type and by region. Although single-family detached homes are less common in the Northeast, the average house there uses 60% more energy than one in the West.
Some of the regional differences can be explained by climate, as
two-thirds of northeastern homes are in cold regions, while less than a
third of western homes are.
Overall use per capita
Home use per capita
Overall price per million BTU
Home price per million BTU
The land-use decisions of cities and towns also explain some of the regional differences in energy use. Townhouses
are more energy efficient than single-family homes because less heat,
for example, is used per person. Similarly, areas with more homes in a
compact neighborhood encourage walking, biking and transit, thereby
reducing transportation energy use. A 2011 U.S. EPA study found that
multi-family homes in urban neighborhoods, with well-insulated buildings
and fuel-efficient cars, use less than two-thirds of the energy used by
conventionally built single-family houses in suburban areas (with
standard cars).
United States power stations by type and nameplate capacityGeneration by source
The United States is the world's second-largest producer and consumer
of electricity. It generates 15% of the world's electricity supply,
about half as much as China.
The United States produced 3,988 TWh in 2021. Total generation
has been flat since 2010. Net electricity imports were 39 TWh, or about
1% of sales. Historically, net imports have been between just under 0%
to just over 1.5%.
Fossil fuels
made up the majority of generation, with natural gas providing 38% and
coal 23%. Petroleum provided less than 1%. Natural gas as a proportion
of fossil fuels has been increasing since the 90's, with coal peaking
around 2008 and natural gas becoming the top fossil fuel in 2016.
Nuclear provided 20%, a level consistent since about 1990.
Nuclear surpassed coal in 2020 for the first time, as coal dipped to its
lowest proportion in over 70 years.
Among renewables, wind and solar continued to expand, with wind
exceeding hydro since 2019. Renewable use has doubled from 2010 to 2020,
reaching 21% of total generation.
The United States had a nameplate generation capacity of 1,213 GW in 2021.
The following table summarizes the electrical energy generated by fuel
source for the United States grid in 2021. Figures account for
generation losses, but not transmission losses. Fission had the highest capacity factor, while petroleum had the lowest.
The US grid first connected East and West in 1967. There are over 7,300 power plants and almost 160,000 miles of high voltage lines.
US electric grid capacity and generation in 2021
Source
Capacity (GW)
Generation (TWh)
Capacity factor
Total
1,213
3,988
37%
Natural gas
559.3
1480.1
30%
Coal
228.0
892.3
45%
Nuclear
100.0
778.2
89%
Wind
133.5
377.9
32%
Hydro
80.0
245.3
35%
Solar
61.9
114.5
21%
Petroleum
32.5
18.3
6%
Biomass
14.1
26.7
22%
Geothermal
3.9
15.5
45%
Generation by state
Generation by state and source
The following figures offer detail into the sources of generation used in each state.
Most often, natural gas is the largest source in a given state, with 22
states using it more than any other. Among renewable sources, 18 states
use wind power more than any other.
Though not always the most prominent source, each state will use
at least one source at a rate above the national average. Twelve states
use nuclear power more than average, and California and Hawaii each use
more solar and petroleum, respectively.
Texas contributes more to the grid than any other state, followed
by Florida, Pennsylvania and California. On net, Pennsylvania exports
the most power, while California imports the most.
Largest generation source
Largest renewable generation source
Most over-represented source
Net electricity imports/exports
Electric consumption
Home electrification
Electric grid consumption
in the US was 3,806 TWh in 2021. Since 2010, total consumption has
remained within 2% of this figure. Per capita consumption was 11.5 MWh
in 2021, down 8% from its peak in 2007.
Residential customers used 39% of total electricity. Each month, the average customer used 886 kWh and paid $121 at an average rate of 13.7 cents/kWh. The commercial sector used 35% and industrial used 26%. Transportation used less than half of one percent.
System loss within the grid includes use in the generation
process and transmission losses, as well as unaccounted loads. For 2021,
this amounted to 203 TWh, or 5.3% of grid generation. Electricity used
directly at the commercial or industrial level added 139 TWh, so total
consumption was 3,945 TWh.
The northeastern US has long paid the highest electricity prices, while simultaneously using it the least per capita. California
is an outlier in the west region; its neighbors tend to pay some of the
lowest rates in the country, while California is second only to Hawaii and Alaska.
The Black Death was a bubonic plaguepandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. The disease is caused by the bacteriumYersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air.
One of the most significant events in European history, the Black Death
had far-reaching population, economic, and cultural impacts. It was the
beginning of the second plague pandemic. The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.
The origin of the Black Death is disputed. Genetic analysis suggests Yersinia pestis bacteria evolved approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic, with flea-mediated strains emerging around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age. The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remain unclear, with some evidence pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and Europe.The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, West Asia, and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula. There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread from person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague.
In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in
what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when
combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may
have been unrelated to the 14th century Mongol conquests previously postulated as the cause.
The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317)
and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population,
as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East. There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, also due to other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its 14th century level until the 16th century. Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century.
Names
European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia, 'pestilence'; epidemia, 'epidemic'; mortalitas, 'mortality'.
In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the
"pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death".Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn" (first murrain)
or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century
phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague.
The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as
"black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the
expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease
beforehand.
"Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English
until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated
Danish: den sorte død, lit. 'the black death'.
This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized
by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries,
and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as
a calque: Icelandic: svarti dauði, German: der schwarze Tod, and French: la mort noire. Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin: magna mortalitas, lit. 'Great Death'.
The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old. Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths "full of black Death" (Ancient Greek: πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο, romanized: pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio).Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', (Latin: mors atra) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease. The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" (febris pestilentialis) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium). The phrase mors nigra,
'black death', was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a
Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast
of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague
pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease.
The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant).
Yersinia pestis (200 × magnification), the bacterium that causes plague
Research from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age. Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the "Neolithic decline" around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly.This Y. pestis
may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague
transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara.
The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in a fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan, six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I. In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–549 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y. pestis.This is known as the first plague pandemic. In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang
described a "malignant bubo" "coming in abruptly with high fever
together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue." The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a "malignant bubo" and plague that was common in Lingnan (Guangzhou).
Ole Jørgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it was an offshoot
of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese
territory by around 600.
A report by the Medical Faculty of Paris stated that a conjunction of planets had caused "a great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory).
Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a "martyrdom and
mercy" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise. For
non-believers, it was a punishment.ome Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a
disease sent by God. Others adopted preventive measures and treatments
for plague used by Europeans. These Muslim doctors also depended on the
writings of the ancient Greeks.
Predominant modern theory
The Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) engorged with blood. This species of flea is the primary vector for the transmission of Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for spreading bubonic plague in most plague epidemics. Both male and female fleas feed on blood and can transmit the infection.
Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) infected with the Yersinia pestisbacterium which appears as a dark mass in the gut. The foregut (proventriculus) of this flea is blocked by a Y. pestisbiofilm; when the flea feeds on an uninfected hostY. pestis is regurgitated into the wound, causing infection.
Y. pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague
in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacterium was present in
rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission. The mechanism by which Y. pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage starves the fleas, drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour, and causes them to try to clear the blockage via regurgitation,
resulting in thousands of plague bacteria flushing into the feeding
site and infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also
dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease,
which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic,
and a second that lacks resistance. When the second population dies,
the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a
human epidemic.
DNA evidence
Skeletons in a mass grave from 1720 to 1721 in Martigues, near Marseille in southern France, yielded molecular evidence of the orientalis strain of Yersinia pestis,
the organism responsible for bubonic plague. The second pandemic of
bubonic plague was active in Europe from 1347, the beginning of the
Black Death, until 1750.
Definitive confirmation of the role of Y. pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al.They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets
in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern
Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and
subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research,
together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends
the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously
demonstrates that Y. pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages". In 2011 these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield
burial site in England. Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the
Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist".
Later in 2011, Bos et al. reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y. pestis
from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and
indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to
most modern strains of Y. pestis.
Later genomic papers have further confirmed the phylogenetic placement of the Y. pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics—including the third plague pandemic—and the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian. In addition, plague genomes from prehistory have been recovered.
DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th-century London showed that plague is a strain of Y. pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013. Further DNA evidence also proves the role of Y. pestis and traces the source to the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.
Alternative explanations
Researchers are hampered by a lack of reliable statistics from this
period. Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England,
where estimates of overall population at the start of the plague vary
by over 100%, as no census was undertaken in England between the time of
publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax of the year 1377. Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy.
Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission. In 2018 researchers suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people".
The second model claims to better fit the trends of the plague's death
toll, as the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but
very high spike in deaths, contradicting historical death data.
Lars Walløe
argued that these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection
model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the
spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread". Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague.
Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient
evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological
record of the medieval waterfront in London, and that the disease spread
too quickly to support the thesis that Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person. This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic.
Summary
Academic debate continues, but no single alternative explanation for the plague's spread has achieved widespread acceptance. Many scholars arguing for Y. pestis
as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms
can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other
diseases, including typhus, smallpox, and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemic and pneumonic
forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout
the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional
recorded symptoms. In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis. Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y. pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp, no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations.
The importance of hygiene was not recognized until the 19th century and the germ theory of disease. Until then streets were usually unhygienic, with live animals and human parasites facilitating the spread of transmissible disease.
By the early 14th century, so much filth had collected inside
urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after
human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by
merde, the French word for "shit". There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet,
rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere—as well as a rue du
Pipi. Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris.
Medieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts,
including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were careless.
William E. Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon
Without, received a complaint alleging that "men could not pass [by his
house] for the stink [of] . . . horse dung and horse piss." One irate
Londoner complained that the runoff from the local slaughterhouse had
made his garden "stinking and putrid", while another charged that the
blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, "making a
foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near." In much of
medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance
requiring homeowners to shout, "Look out below!" three times before
dumping a full chamber pot into the street.
Early Christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted." St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing.
Territorial origins
According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman, Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China" over 2,600 years ago. Later research by a team led by Galina Eroshenko placed its origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China.
However more recent research notes that the previous sampling contained
East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of Y. pestis in the Caucasus region previously thought to be restricted to China.
There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of the Black
Death in 14th century China. As a result, China's place in the sequence
of the plague's spread is still debated to this day.
According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th-century
China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of
epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years. The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until the 1640s.
Nestorian gravesites dating from 1338 to 1339 near Issyk-Kul have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic; this is supported by recent direct findings of Y. pestis DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to "pestilence" as the cause of death. Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during the fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347.
The evidence does not suggest, at
least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague.
Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak
as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the
early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical
about such an interpretation. Nonetheless, the remarkably high mortality
rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting
the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different
parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the
pandemic mortality of the Black Death. What we lack is any indication of
a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and
later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia.
— Philip Slavin
According to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates a small
sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans
with no wide-scale impact. According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road, and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak.
Additionally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before
the spread of the Black Death; Western and Middle Eastern traders found
it difficult to trade on the Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340,
making its role in the spread of plague less likely. There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346.
Others still favor an origin in China. The theory of Chinese origin implicates the Silk Road, the disease possibly spreading alongside Mongol armies and traders, or possibly arriving via ship—however, this theory is still contested. It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia, India, and Africa.
Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan dynasty
shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India
and no specific evidence of plague in 14th-century China, suggesting
that the Black Death may not have reached these regions. Ole Benedictow argues that since the first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa, the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea.
Demographic historians estimate
that China's population fell by at least 15 per cent, and perhaps as
much as a third, between 1340 and 1370. This population loss coincided
with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of the Islamic world
in 1347–52. However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for
pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time.
War and famine – and the diseases that typically accompanied them –
probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of
Mongol rule.
— Richard von Glahn
Monica Green suggests that other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of the Black Death, because there were actually four strains of Yersinia pestis
that became predominant in different parts of the world. Mongol records
of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black
Death.
Another theory is that the plague originated near Europe and cycled
through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its
way to China.
Other historians, such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw, believe the
plague likely originated in Europe or the Middle East, and never reached
China. Norris specifically argues for an origin in Kurdistan rather than Central Asia.
European outbreak
The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.
... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford
and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the
people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.
Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. During a protracted siege of the city in 1345–1346, the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg—whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease—catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is also likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347.
The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, who wrote a description of the disease modelled on Thucydides's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens, noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities. Nicephorus Gregoras, while writing to Demetrios Kydones, described the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens. The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400.
Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347;
the disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa
reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa
a few weeks later that was the entry point into northern Italy. Towards
the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles.
From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal, and England by June 1348, then spreading east and north through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen). Finally, it spread to northern Russia in 1352 and reached Moscow in 1353. Plague was less common in parts of Europe with less-established trade relations, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated Alpine villages throughout the continent.
According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavorable weather
decimated plague-infected rodent populations, forcing their fleas onto
alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean and during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region.
Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, pre-existing
malnutrition weakened the immune response, contributing to an immense
decline in European population.
West Asian and North African outbreak
The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures.
By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople via a single merchant ship carrying slaves. By late summer 1348, it reached Cairo, capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, cultural center of the Islamic world, and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died. The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th-century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex. The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites; plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over the following one and a half centuries.
During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus, and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo. That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine, the cities of Ascalon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, and Homs were all infected. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey. Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa.
The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis
was infected by ship from Sicily. Tunis was then under attack by an
army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion
with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from the
Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus.
Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj. In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen, al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home. During 1349, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease.
Signs and symptoms
A hand showing how acralgangrene of the fingers due to bubonic plague causes the skin and flesh to die and turn blackAn inguinal bubo on the upper thigh of a person infected with bubonic plague. Swollen lymph nodes (buboes) often occur in the neck, armpit and groin (inguinal) regions of plague victims.
Bubonic plague
Symptoms of the plague include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated, 80% of victims die within eight days.
Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio's description:
In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours
in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple,
others as an egg ... From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady
began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many
cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now
minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an
infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on
whomsoever they showed themselves.
This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most people died two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes, which may have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of plague.
Pneumonic plague
Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master Cardinal Giovanni Colonna died of plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease, pneumonic plague, that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems. Symptoms include fever, cough and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red. Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90–95%.
Septicemic plague
Septicemic plague
is the least common of the three forms, with an untreated mortality
rate near 100%. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation).
In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicemic plague, the progress
of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the
development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.
Inspired by the Black Death, The Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre, an allegory on the universality of death, was a common painting motif in the late medieval period.
There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely
by locality. Urban centers with higher populations suffered longer
periods of abnormal mortality. Some estimate that it may have killed between 75,000,000 and 200,000,000 people in Eurasia. A study published in 2022 of pollen samples across Europe from 1250 to
1450 was used to estimate changes in agricultural output before and
after the Black Death. The authors found great variability in different
regions, with evidence for high mortality in areas of Scandinavia,
France, western Germany, Greece, and central Italy, but uninterrupted
agricultural growth in central and eastern Europe, Iberia, and Ireland.
The authors concluded that "the pandemic was immensely destructive in
some areas, but in others it had a far lighter touch ... [the study
methodology] invalidates histories of the Black Death that assume Y.
pestis was uniformly prevalent, or nearly so, across Europe and that the
pandemic had a devastating demographic impact everywhere."
The Black Death killed, by various estimations, from 25 to 60% of
Europe's population. Robert Gottfried writes that as early as 1351,
"agents for Pope Clement VI
calculated the number of dead in Christian Europe at 23,840,000. With a
preplague population of about 75 million, Clement's figure accounts for
mortality of 31%-a rate about midway between the 50% mortality
estimated for East Anglia, Tuscany, and parts of Scandinavia, and the
less-than-15% morbidity for Bohemia and Galicia. And it is unerringly
close to Froissart's claim that "a third of the world died," a
measurement probably drawn from St. John's figure of mortality from
plague in the Book of Revelation, a favorite medieval source of information." Ole J. Benedictow
proposes 60% mortality rate for Europe as a whole based on available
data, with up to 80% based on poor nutritional conditions in the 14th
century.According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45–50% of the European population died of plague.
The overwhelming number of deaths in Europe sometimes made mass
burials necessary, and some sites had hundreds or thousands of bodies.
The mass burial sites that have been excavated have allowed
archaeologists to continue interpreting and defining the biological,
sociological, historical, and anthropological implications of the Black
Death. The mortality rate of the Black Death in the 14th century was far greater than the worst 20th-century outbreaks of Y. pestis plague, which occurred in India and killed as much as 3% of the population of certain cities.
In 1348, the disease spread so rapidly that nearly a third of the
European population perished before any physicians or government
authorities had time to reflect upon its origins. In crowded cities, it
was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die. Half of Paris' population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 and 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, leaving a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353. Florence's tax records suggest that 80% of the city's population died within four months in 1348. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to contagion. Plague did not appear in Flanders until the turn of the 15th century, and the impact was less severe on the populations of Hainaut, Finland, northern Germany, and areas of Poland. Monks, nuns, and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for people ill with the plague.
The level of mortality in the rest of Eastern Europe was likely similar
to that of Western Europe in the first outbreak, with descriptions
suggesting a similar effect on Russian towns, and the cycles of plague
in Russia being roughly equivalent.
In 1382, the physician to the Avignon Papacy, Raimundo Chalmel de Vinario (Latin: Magister Raimundus, lit. 'Master
Raymond'), observed the decreasing mortality rate of successive
outbreaks of plague in 1347–1348, 1362, 1371 and 1382 in his treatise On Epidemics (De epidemica).
In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the
illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became
ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many
survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were
sickened and most of them survived. By the 1380s in Europe, the plague predominantly affected children. Chalmel de Vinario recognised that bloodletting was ineffective (though he continued to prescribe bleeding for members of the Roman Curia, whom he disliked), and said that all true cases of plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable; he was never able to effect a cure.
The populations of some Italian cities, notably Florence, did not regain their pre-14th century size until the 19th century. Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where plague arrived in May 1348:
Father abandoned child, wife
husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through
the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury
the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their
dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine
offices ... great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of
dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night ... And as soon
as those ditches were filled more were dug ... And I, Agnolo di Tura ...
buried my five children with my own hands. And there were also those
who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth
and devoured many bodies throughout the city. There was no one who wept
for any death, for all awaited death. And so many died that all
believed it was the end of the world.
The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including
Iraq, Iran, and Syria, during this time, is for a death toll of about a
third of the population. The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population.
In Cairo, with a population numbering as many as 600,000, and possibly
the largest city west of China, between one third and 40% of the
inhabitants died within eight months. By the 18th century, the population of Cairo was halved from its numbers in 1347.
Economic
It has been suggested that the Black Death, like other outbreaks
through history, disproportionately affected the poorest people and
those already in worse physical condition than the wealthier citizens.
But along with population decline from the pandemic, wages soared in response to a subsequent labour shortage. In some places rents collapsed (e.g., lettings "used to bring in £5, and now but £1.")
However, many labourers, artisans, and craftsmen—those living
from money-wages alone—suffered a reduction in real incomes owing to
rampant inflation. Landowners were also pushed to substitute monetary rents for labour services in an effort to keep tenants.
Taxes and tithes became difficult to collect, with living poor refusing
to cover the share of the rich deceased, because many properties were
empty and unfarmed, and because tax-collectors, where they could be
employed, refused to go to plague spots.
The trade disruptions in the Mongol Empire caused by the Black Death was one of the reasons for its collapse.
Environmental
A study performed by Thomas Van Hoof of the Utrecht University
suggests that the innumerable deaths brought on by the pandemic cooled
the climate by freeing up land and triggering reforestation. This may have led to the Little Ice Age.
Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism increased in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers,and Romani, blaming them for the crisis. Lepers, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were killed throughout Europe.
Because 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks. Many believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins, and could be relieved by winning God's forgiveness.
There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered. In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a welcome from King Casimir the Great.
Pieter Bruegel's The Triumph of Death reflects the social upheaval and terror that followed the plague, which devastated medieval Europe.
One theory that has been advanced is that the Black Death's devastation of Florence, between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy that ultimately led to the Renaissance.
Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic, and the resulting
familiarity with death may have caused thinkers to dwell more on their
lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife. It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.
This does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred in Italy
in the 14th century; the Renaissance's emergence was most likely the
result of the complex interaction of the above factors, in combination with an influx of Greek scholars after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
As a result of the drastic reduction in the populace the value of the
working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To
answer the increased need for labour, workers travelled in search of the
most favorable position economically.
Prior to the emergence of the Black Death, the continent was considered a feudalistic society, composed of fiefs and city-states frequently managed by the Catholic Church.
The pandemic completely restructured both religion and political
forces; survivors began to turn to other forms of spirituality and the
power dynamics of the fiefs and city-states crumbled.
The survivors of the pandemic found not only that the prices of food
were lower but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them
inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably
contributed to the destabilization of feudalism.
The word "quarantine"
has its roots in this period, though the practice of isolating people
to prevent the spread of disease is older. In the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik,
Croatia), a thirty-day isolation period was implemented in 1377 for new
arrivals to the city from plague-affected areas. The isolation period
was later extended to forty days, and given the name "quarantino" from
the Italian word for "forty".
All institutions were affected. Smaller monasteries and convents
became unviable and closed. Up to half parish churches lost their
priest, apart from the parishioners. Religious sensibilities changed:
"[...]looking back into the past,
the history of the Church during the Middle Ages in England appears one
continuous and stately progress. It is much nearer to the truth to say
that in 1351 the whole ecclesiastical system was wholly disorganised,
or, indeed, more than half ruined, and that everything had to be built
up anew.[...] To secure the most necessary public ministrations of the
rites of religion the most inadequately-prepared subjects had to be
accepted, and even these could be obtained only in insufficient
numbers.[...]The immediate effect on the people was a religious
paralysis. Instead of turning men to God the scourge turned them to
despair[...] In time the religious sense and feeling revived, but in
many respects it took a new tone, and its manifestations ran in new
channels[...]characterised by a devotional and more self-reflective cast
than previously.[...] The new religious spirit found outward
expression in the multitude of guilds which sprang into existence at
this time, in the remarkable and almost, as it may seem to some,
extravagant development of certain pious practices, in the singular
spread of a more personal devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, to the
Blessed Virgin, to the Five Wounds, to the Holy Name, and other such
manifestations of a more tender or more familiar piety.[...]At the close
of the fourteenth century and during the course of the fifteenth the
supply of ornaments, furniture, plate, statues painted or in highly
decked "coats," with which the churches were literally encumbered as
time went on, proved a striking contrast to the comparative simplicity
which characterised former days, as witnessed by a comparison of
inventories.[...] In fact, the fifteenth century witnessed the
beginnings of a great middle-class movement, which can be distinctly
traced to the effect of the great pestilence[...]
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.
According to Jean-Noël Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in
Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671 (although some researchers
have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data).
The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years:
1360–1363; 1374; 1400; 1438–1439; 1456–1457; 1464–1466; 1481–1485;
1500–1503; 1518–1531; 1544–1548; 1563–1566; 1573–1588; 1596–1599;
1602–1611; 1623–1640; 1644–1654; and 1664–1667. Subsequent outbreaks,
though severe, marked the plague's retreat from most of Europe
(18th century) and North Africa (19th century).
Historian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 20th century. However, other sources suggest that the second pandemic did indeed reach sub-Saharan Africa.
According to historian Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31." In the first half of the 17th century, a plague killed some 1.7 million people in Italy. More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.
The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.
Plague could be found in the Islamic world almost every year between
1500 and 1850. Sometimes the outbreaks affected small areas, while other
outbreaks affected multiple regions. Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–1621, and again in 1654–1657, 1665, 1691, and 1740–1742.
Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from
the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second
pandemic there in the 1840s. Plague remained a major event in Ottoman
society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and
1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800. Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population died.
Worldwide distribution of plague-infected animals, 1998
The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the
mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10
million people in India alone.
The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague
was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among
whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, for whom the pathogen was named.
Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925
resulted in over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the
establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some
leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans
via the bacillus Yersinia pestis.
Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995. Another outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014. In October 2017, the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands.
An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern plague, after the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.
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