Population decline

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

A population decline (or depopulation) in humans is a reduction in a human population caused by events such as long-term demographic trends, as in sub-replacement fertility, emigration, for example as a result of economic recession, urban decay, rural flight, food resource decline or high death rates due to violence, disease, or other catastrophes. Depopulation in humans can be largely beneficial for a region, allocating more resources with less or no competition for the new population. In addition to exempting the disadvantages of overpopulation, such as increased traffic, pollution, real estate prices, environmental destruction, and fossil fuel usage, etc. Per-capita wealth may increase in depopulation scenarios, in addition to improvement of environmental quality-of-life indicators such as improved air and water quality, reforestation, return of native species such as coral reefs and mangroves, reduction of carbon emissions, etc. The accompanying benefits of depopulation have been termed shrink and prosper, with benefits being similar to the post-Civil War Gilded Age, post-World War I economic boom, and the post-World War II economic boom.

Causes

A reduction over time in a region's population can be caused by several factors including sub-replacement fertility (along with limited immigration), heavy emigration, disease, famine, and war. History is replete with examples of large-scale depopulations. Many wars, for example, have been accompanied by significant depopulations. Before the 20th century, population decline was mostly due to disease, starvation, epidemic or emigration. The Black Death in Europe, the arrival of Old World diseases to the Americas, the tsetse fly invasion of the Waterberg Massif in South Africa, and the Great Irish Famine all caused sizable population declines. In modern times, the AIDS epidemic caused declines in the population of some African countries. Less frequently, population declines are caused by genocide or mass execution; for example, in the 1970s, the population of Cambodia declined because of wide-scale executions by the Khmer Rouge.

Underpopulation

Sometimes the term underpopulation is applied to a specific economic system does not refer to carrying capacity, and is not a term in opposition to overpopulation, which deals with the total possible population can be sustained by available food, water, sanitation and other infrastructure. "Underpopulation" is usually defined as a state in which a country's population has declined too much to support its current economic system. Thus the term has nothing to do with the biological aspects of carrying capacity, but is an economic employed to imply that the transfer payment schemes of some developed countries might fail once the population declines to a certain point. An example would be if retirees were supported through a social security system which does not invest savings, and then a large emigration movement occurred. In this case, the younger generation may not be able to support the older generations.

Positive effects of a population decline

A long-term decline in birth rates has a positive effect on the labour market due a decreasing number of job applicants. A phenomenon of a declining youth unemployment was observed in Germany in 2010 and 2011. From population decline the competition for resources within the population is reduced. Population decline also can rise the income per capita. Additionally, the life quality increases due to lower motorised traffic, less environmental destruction, reduced carbon and nitrogen emissions, reduced pollution, reforestation and better air and water quality due to industries operating for fewer hours and increased carbon sinks. 

The human carrying capacity of the Earth is estimated to 500 million according to the National Strategy for a Sustainable America, other authors estimate 1 to 12 billion. According to these studies, the human carrying capacity is already exceeded or would be exceeded by 2100, therefore a global population decline would counteract the negative effects of human overpopulation.

Changing historic trends in world population growth

From pre-history (cir 10,000 BC) to the beginning of the Early Modern Period (generally 1500 – 1800), world population grew very slowly, around 0.04% per year.  During that period, population growth was governed by conditions now labeled the “Malthusian Trap”.

After 1700, driven by increases in human productivity produced by the Industrial Revolution, population growth accelerated to around 0.6% per year, a rate that was over ten times the rate of population growth of the previous 12,000 years. This rapid increase in global population caused Malthus and others to raise the first concerns about “overpopulation”.

After World War I birth rates in the United States and many European countries fell below replacement level.  This prompted concern about population decline. The recovery of the birth rate in most western countries around 1940 that produced the “baby boom”, with growth rates in the 1.0 – 1.5% range, and which peaked in 1962 at 2.1% per year, temporarily dispelled prior concerns about population decline, and the world [DJS - HOW CAN THE WORLD HAVE FEELINGS?] was once again fearful of overpopulation.

But, after 1962 the global population growth rate started a long decline and today (the period 2015-2020) is estimated to be about 1.1%, half of its peak in 1962. Although still growing, global population is predicted to level out around the end of the 21^st century, and some sources predict the start of a decline before then.  The principle cause of this phenomenon is the abrupt decline in the global total fertility rate, from 5.0 in 1960 to 2.5 in 2016. The decline in the total fertility rate has occurred in every region of the world and has brought renewed concern for population decline.

The era of rapid global population increase, and concomitant concern about a population explosion, has been a relative short one compared with the span of human history.  It began roughly at the beginning of the industrial revolution and appears to be now drawing to a close in the Western world.

Interpretation of statistical data

Statistical data, especially those comparing only two sets of figures, can be misleading and may require careful interpretation. For instance a nation's population could have been increasing, but a one-off event could have resulted in a short-term decline; or vice versa. Nations can acquire territory or lose territory, and groups of people can acquire or lose citizenship, e.g. stateless persons, indigenous people, and illegal immigrants or long-stay foreign residents. Political instability can make it difficult to conduct a census in certain regions. Further, a country's population could rise in summer and decline in winter as deaths increase in winter in cold regions; a long census interval could show a rise in population when the population has already tipped into decline.

White nationalists use evidence of a declining birth rate in support of their extremist views and calls to violence. Lower fertility rates are generally associated with dramatic increases in population health and longevity. Increasing populations are not necessary to maintain economic growth and social vitality because of advances in automation and workers living healthy lives much longer into old age. Declining populations require fewer scarce resources and pollute less. Fewer dependents mean that families, regions, and societies can achieve more productive uses of available resources and increase their quality of life. While there were in the past advantages to high fertility rates, that "demographic dividend" has now largely disappeared.

Contemporary decline by country

The table below shows that a number of countries are declining in population, in particular Puerto Rico, Latvia, Lithuania and Venezuela. 

The term population used here is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship, except for refugees not permanently settled in the country of asylum, who are generally considered part of the population of the country of origin. This means that population growth in this table includes net changes from immigration and emigration. For a table of natural population changes, see list of countries by natural increase.

Population decline by country

Country	Population estimate (1 July 2020)	Avg annual rate of population change (%) 2015–2020	Notes
Albania	2,877,797	−0.09	low birth rate, emigration
Belarus	9,449,323	+0.02	low birth rate, emigration, population increased in 2014 due to positive net migration rate following war in Ukraine due to refugee flow
Bosnia and Herzegovina	3,280,819	−0.89	low birth rate, emigration, Bosnian War
Bulgaria	6,948,445	−0.71	low birth rate, high death rate, high rate of abortions, population is old, emigration, a relatively high level of emigration of young people and a low level of immigration and lack of good policies encouraging parents
Croatia	4,105,267	−0.61	low birth rate, population is old, emigration, War in Croatia, difference in statistical methods
Estonia	1,326,535	+0.17	low birth rate, emigration
Germany	83,783,942	+0.48	low birth rate, population is old, population increased since 2013 due to positive net migration rate following civil war in Syria due to refugee flow
Georgia	3,989,167	−0.18	(figure includes Abkhazia and South Ossetia) high death rate, declining births, high rate of abortions, emigration and a low level of immigration
Greece	10,423,054	−0.45	low birth rate, economic crisis, emigration, population is old
Hungary	9,660,351	−0.24	low birth rate, emigration
Italy	60,461,826	−0.04	low birth rate, economic crisis, population is old, population increased in 2012, 2013, and 2014 due to positive net migration rate
Japan	126,476,461	−0.24	low birth rate, population is old and a low level of immigration
Latvia	1,886,198	−1.15	low birth rate, emigration
Lithuania	2,722,289	−1.48	high death rate, low birth rate, emigration
Moldova	4,033,963	−0.18	(includes the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic) low birth rate, emigration
Poland	37,846,611	−0.10	low birth rate, emigration
Portugal	10,196,709	−0.33	low birth rate, population is old, economic crisis, emigration
Puerto Rico	2,860,853	−3.34	low birth rate, population is old, economic crisis, emigration to the U.S. mainland, effects of Hurricane Maria
Romania	19,237,691	−0.70	low birth rate, high death rate, high rate of abortion, emigration, population is old
Russia	145,934,462	+0.13	high death rate, low birth rate, high rate of abortions, emigration and a low level of immigration until recently Population increased slightly since 2014 due to positive natural change and positive net migration rate
Serbia	6,963,764	−0.32	low birth rate, emigration
Spain	46,754,778	+0.04	low birth rate, population is old, economic crisis
Syria	17,500,658	−0.56	Syrian Civil War prompting mass emigration from the country
Ukraine	43,733,762	−0.54	high death rate, declining births, high rate of abortions, population is old, war in Donbass, emigration and a low level of immigration
Venezuela	28,435,940	−1.13	emigration due to profound socio economic and political crisis, deterioration of healthcare system leading to rapidly increasing infant mortality rate, declining births

Long-term future trends

A long-term population decline is typically caused by sub-replacement fertility, coupled with a net immigration rate that fails to compensate the excess of deaths over births. A long-term decline is accompanied by population aging and creates an increase in the ratio of retirees to workers and children. When a sub-replacement fertility rate remains constant, population decline accelerates over the long term.

Because of the global decline in the fertility rate, projections of future global population show a marked slowing of population growth and the possibility of long-term decline.

The table below summarizes the United Nations' predictions of future population growth. The UN divides the world into six regions. Their forecast shows that during the period 2045-2050 Europe's population will be in decline and all other regions will experience significant reductions in growth. Furthermore, the UN predicts that by the end of the 21st century (the period 2095-2100) three of these regions will be showing population decline and global population growth will be zero.

Annual Percent Change of Population for Three Periods in the Future

Region	2020-25	2045-50	2095-2100
Africa	2.4%	1.7%	0.6%
Asia	0.8	0.1	-0.4
Europe	0.0	-0.3	-0.1
Latin America & the Caribbean	0.8	0.2	-0.5
Oceania	1.2	0.8	0.4
The World	1.0	0.5	0.0

The table shows that the UN predicts long-term decline of population growth rates in every region; however, short-term baby booms and healthcare improvements, among other factors, can cause reversals of trends. Population declines in Russia (1995-2010), Germany (1975-1985), and Ireland (1950-1960) have seen long-term reversals. The UK, having seen almost zero growth during the period 1975-1985, is now (2015-2020) growing at 0.6% per year.

United States

Despite ever increasing population in the United States, some American municipalities have shrunk due to urban decay in large cities and rural flight in smaller towns. Detroit is the most notable of a number of cities with population smaller than in 1950 and whose population shrinkage has been the most dramatic; Detroit's population was almost 1.85 million as of the 1950 census but has plummeted to 677,000 as of 2015, with the most rapid decline occurring between 2000 and 2010.

Other American cities whose populations have shrunk substantially since the 1950s—although some have begun to grow again—include New Orleans; St. Louis; Buffalo; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Chicago; Cleveland; Pittsburgh; and Wilmington (Delaware).

Japan

Though Japan's population has been predicted to decline for years, and its monthly and even annual estimates have shown a decline in the past, the 2010 census result figure was slightly higher, at just above 128 million, than the 2005 census. Factors implicated in the higher figures were more Japanese returnees than expected as well as changes to the methodology of data collection. The official count put the population as of October 1, 2015, at 127.1 million, down by 947,000 or 0.7% from the previous census in 2010. The gender ratio is increasingly skewed; some 106 women per 100 men live in Japan. The total population is still 52% above 1950 levels. In 2013, Japan's population fell by a record-breaking 244,000. The Tōhoku region in Japan now has fewer people than in 1950.

Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics

Population is falling due to health factors and low replacement, as well as emigration of ethnic Russians to Russia. Exceptions to this rule are in those ex-Soviet states that have a Muslim majority (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan), where high birth rates are traditional. Much of Eastern Europe has lost population due to migration to Western Europe. In Eastern Europe and Russia, natality fell abruptly after the end of the Soviet Union, and death rates generally rose. Together these nations occupy over 21 million km² (8 million sq mi) and are home to over 400 million people (less than six percent of the world population), but if current trends continue, more of the developed world and some of the developing world could join this trend.

Albania

Albania's population in 1989 recorded 3,182,417 people, the largest for any census. Since then, its population declined to an estimated 2,893,005 in January 2015. This represents a decrease of 10% in total population since the peak census figure.

Armenia

Armenia's population peaked at 3,604,000 in 1991 and declined to 3,010,600 in the January 2015 state statistical estimate. This represents a 19.7% decrease in total population since the peak census figure.

Belarus

Belarus's population peaked at 10,151,806 in 1989 Census, and declined to 9,480,868 as of 2015 as estimated by the state statistical service. This represents a 7.1% decline since the peak census figure.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina's population is thought to have peaked at 4,377,033 in 1991 Census, shortly before splitting from Yugoslavia before the ensuing war. The latest census of 2013 reported 3,791,622 people. This represents a 15.4% decline since the peak census figure.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria's population declined from a peak of 9,009,018 in 1989 and since 2001, has lost yet another 600,000 people, according to 2011 census preliminary figures to no more than 7.3 million, further down to 7,245,000. This represents a 24.3% decrease in total population since the peak, and a -0.82% annual rate in the last 10 years.

Croatia

Croatia's population declined from 4,784,265 in 1991 to 4,456,096 (by old statistical method) of which 4,284,889 are permanent residents (by new statistical method), in 2011, a decline of 8% (11.5% by the new definition of permanent residency in 2011 census). The main reasons for the decline since 1991 are: low birth rates, emigration and war in Croatia. From 2001 and 2011 main reason for the drop in population is due to a difference in definition of permanent residency used in censuses till 2001 (censuses of 1948, 1953, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001) and the one used in 2011.

Estonia

In the last Soviet census of 1989, it had a population of 1,565,662, which was close to its peak population. The state statistics reported an estimate of 1,314,370 for 2016. This represents a 19.2% decline since the peak census figure.

Georgia

In the last Soviet census of 1989, it had a population of 5,400,841, which was close to its peak population. The state statistics reported an estimate of 4,010,000 for 2014 Census, which includes estimated numbers for quasi-independent Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This represents a 25.7% decline since the peak census figure, but nevertheless somewhat higher than the 1950 population.

Latvia

When Latvia split from the Soviet Union, it had a population of 2,666,567, which was very close to its peak population. The latest census recorded a population of 2,067,887 in 2011, while the state statistics reported an estimate of 1,986,086 for 2015. This represents a 25.5% decline since the peak census figure, only one of two nations worldwide falling below 1950 levels. The decline is caused by both a negative natural population growth (more deaths than births) and a negative net migration rate.

Lithuania

When Lithuania split from the Soviet Union, it had a population of 3.7 million, which was close to its peak population. The latest census recorded a population of 3.05 million in 2011, down from 3.4 million in 2001, further falling to 2,988,000 in September 1, 2012. This represents a 23.8% decline since the peak census figure, and some 13.7% since 2001.

Ukraine

Ukraine census in 1989 resulted in 51,452,034 people. Ukraine's own estimates show a peak of 52,244,000 people in 1993; however, this number has plummeted to 45,439,822 as of December 1, 2013. Having lost Crimean territory and experienced war, the population has plunged to 42,981,850 as of August 2014. This represents a 19.7% decrease in total population since the peak figure, but 16.8% above the 1950 population even without Crimea. Its absolute total decline (9,263,000) since its peak population is the highest of all nations; this includes loss of territory and heavy net emigration. Eastern Ukraine may yet lose many Russian-speaking citizens due to new Russian citizenship law.

Hungary

Hungary's population peaked in 1980, at 10,709,000, and has continued its decline to under 10 million as of August 2010. This represents a decline of 7.1% since its peak; however, compared to neighbors situated to the East, Hungary peaked almost a decade earlier yet the rate has been far more modest, averaging -0.23% a year over the period.

Romania

Romania's 1991 census showed 23,185,084 people, and the October 2011 census recorded 20,121,641 people, while the state statistical estimate for 2014 is 19,947,311. This represents a decrease of 16.2% since the historical peak in 1991.

Serbia

Serbia recorded a peak census population of 7,576,837 in 1991, falling to 7,186,862 in the 2011 census. That represents a decline of 5.1% since its peak census figure.

Halted declines

Russia

The decline in Russia's total population is among the largest in numbers, but not in percentage. After having peaked at 148,689,000 in 1991, the population then decreased, falling to 142,737,196 by 2008. This represents a 4.0% decrease in total population since the peak census figure. However, since then the Russian population has risen to 146,870,000 in 2018. This recent trend can be attributed to a lower death rate, higher birth rate, the annexation of Crimea and continued immigration, mostly from Ukraine and Armenia. It is some 40% above the 1950 population.

Germany

In Germany a decades-long tendency to population decline has been offset by waves of immigration. The 2011 national census recorded a population of 80.2 million people. At the end of 2012 it had risen to 82 million according to federal estimates. This represents about 14% increase over 1950.

Ireland

In the current area of the Republic of Ireland, the population has fluctuated dramatically. The population of Ireland was 8 million in 1841, but it dropped due to the Irish famine and later emigration. The population of the Republic of Ireland hit bottom at 2.8 million in the 1961 census, but it then rose and in 2011 it was 4.58 million. As of 2020 it is estimated to be just under 5 million according to the country's Central Statistics Office 

Declines within race or ethnicity

Such is the case in California, where the segment of the population considered Non-Hispanic Whites declined from 15.8 million to 14.95 million, while the total population increased from 33 million to over 37 million between 2000 and 2010 mostly thanks to immigration from Mexico and Asian countries. 

Singapore has one of the world's lowest birthrates. The ratio of native Singaporeans (whatever their ethnicity) towards immigrants and migrants continues to erode, with natives decreasing in absolute figures, despite the country planning to increase the population by over 20% in coming years.

Economic consequences

The effects of a declining population can be adverse or beneficial for an economy. Possible negative consequences are:

1. Permanent recession
2. A rise in the dependency ratio
3. A crisis in end of life care for the elderly
4. Difficulties in funding entitlement programs
5. A decline in military strength
6. A decline in innovation
7. A strain on mental health
8. Deflation

Possible benefits include:

• Higher wages due to more demand for fewer workers.
• More labor-saving technologies to make up for the shortfall in workers
• More money available for investment in human capital
• Lower rents and commodity prices, which benefits lower-class consumers

Conversely, the effects of a declining population can be positive. The single best gauge of economic success is the growth of GDP per person, not total GDP. GDP per person (also known as GDP per capita or per capita GDP) is a rough proxy for average living standards. A country can both increase its average living standard and grow total GDP even though its population growth is low or even negative. The economies of both Japan and Germany went into recovery around the time their populations began to decline (2003–2006). In other words, both the total and per capita GDP in both countries grew more rapidly after 2005 than before. Russia's economy also began to grow rapidly from 1999 onward, even though its population had been shrinking since 1992–93. Many Eastern European countries have been experiencing similar effects to Russia. Such renewed growth calls into question the conventional wisdom that economic growth requires population growth, or that economic growth is impossible during a population decline. 

More recently (2009–2017) Japan has experienced a higher growth of GDP per capita than the United States, even though its population declined over that period. In the United States, the relationship between population growth and growth of GDP per capita has been found to be empirically insignificant. All of this is further proof that individual prosperity can grow during periods of population decline.

Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.

In an attempt to better understand the economic impact of these pluses and minuses, Lee et al. analyzed data from 40 countries. They found that fertility well above replacement and population growth would typically be most beneficial for government budgets. However, fertility near replacement and population stability would be most beneficial for standards of living when the analysis includes the effects of age structure on families as well as governments. And fertility moderately below replacement and population decline would maximize standards of living when the cost of providing capital for a growing labor force is taken into account.

A smaller national population can also have geo-strategic effects, but the correlation between population and power is a tenuous one. Technology and resources often play more significant roles. Since WWII the “static” theory saw a population's absolute size as being one of the components of a country’s national power. More recently, the "human capital" theory has emerged. This view holds that the quality and skill level of a labor force and the technology and resources available to it are more important than simply a nation's population size.

National efforts to reverse declining populations

Many European countries, including France, Italy, Germany and Poland, have offered some combination of bonuses and monthly payments to families.

Paid maternity and paternity leave policies can also be used as an incentive. Sweden built up an extensive welfare state from the 1930s and onward, partly as a consequence of the debate following Crisis in the Population Question, published in 1934. Today, Sweden has extensive parental leave where parents are entitled to share 16 months' paid leave per child, the cost divided between both employer and State.

Many nations that are currently witnessing depopulation with fertility rates below sub-placement (like the west) are recommending quantitative easing to combat deflation, while other economists, such as Paul Krugman, believe governments should prioritize fiscal policy, such as bringing back Keynesian policies.

Alternative concept relative to skills

Sometimes the concept of population decline is applied where there has been considerable emigration of skilled professionals. In such a case, the government may have ceased to reward or value certain skills (e.g. science, medicine and engineering), and sectors of the economy such as health care and technology may go into decline. Such characterizations have been made of Italy, Bulgaria and Russia in the period starting about 1990.

Crisis of the Late Middle Ages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Late_Middle_Ages

 

Citizens of Tournai (Belgium) bury plague victims

 

Ruins of Beckov Castle in Slovakia

The crisis of the Late Middle Ages was a series of events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that brought centuries of European stability to a halt. Three major crises led to radical changes in all areas of society: demographic collapse, political instabilities and religious upheavals.

A series of disasters, beginning with the Great Famine of 1315–17 and especially the Black Death of 1347-1351, reduced the population perhaps by half or more as the Medieval Warm Period came to a close and the first century of the Little Ice Age began. It took 150 years for the European population to regain the levels of 1300.

Popular revolts in late-medieval Europe and civil wars between nobles within countries such as the Wars of the Roses were common—with France fighting internally nine times—and there were international conflicts between kings such as France and England in the Hundred Years' War. The unity of the Roman Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was also in decline; in the aftermath of the Great Interregnum (1247–1273), the Empire lost cohesion and politically the separate dynasties of the various German states became more important than their common empire.

Historiography

The expression "Crisis of the Late Middle Ages" is used commonly in western historiography, especially in English and German, and somewhat less among other western European scholarship to refer individually or collectively to different crises besetting Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. The expression often carries a modifier to refer more specifically to one or another aspect of Late Middle Age crisis, such as the Urban  Crisis of the Late Middle Ages, or the Cultural, Monastic, Religious, Social, Economic, Intellectual, or Agrarian crisis of the Late Middle Ages, or a national or regional modifier, e.g. Catalan or French crisis. 

By 1929, French historian Marc Bloch was already writing about the effects of the crisis of the Late Middle Ages, and by mid-century there were academic debates being held about it. In his 1981 article Late Middle Age Agrarian Crisis or Crisis of Feudalism?, Peter Kriedte reprises some of the early works in the field from historians writing in the 1930s, including Marc Bloch, Henri Pirenne, Wilhelm Abel, and Michael Postan. Referred to in Italian as the "Crisis of the 14th Century", Giovanni Cherubini alluded to the debate that already by 1974 had been going on "for several decades" in French, British, American, and German historiography.

Arno Borst (1992) says that it "is a given that fourteenth century Latin Christianity was in a crisis", and goes on to say that the intellectual aspects and how universities were affected by the crisis is underrepresented in the scholarship hitherto: "When we discuss the crisis of the Late Middle Ages, we consider intellectual movements beside religious, social, and economic ones", and gives some examples.

Some question whether "crisis" is the right expression for the period at the end of the Middle Ages and the transition to Modernity. In his 1981 article The End of the Middle Ages: Decline, Crisis or Transformation? Donald Sullivan addresses this question, claiming that scholarship has neglected the period and viewed it largely as a precursor to subsequent climactic events such as the Renaissance and Reformation.

In his "Introduction to the History of the Middle Ages in Europe", Mitre Fernández wrote in 2004 that "[t]o talk about a general crisis of the Late Middle Ages is already a commonplace in the study of medieval history." 

Heribert Müller, in his 2012 book on the religious crisis of the late Middle Ages, discussed whether the term itself was in crisis, saying,

No doubt the thesis of the crisis of the late Middle Ages has itself been in crisis for some time now, and hardly anyone considered an expert in the field would still profess it without some ifs and buts, and especially so in the case of German Medieval historians.

In his 2014 historiographical article about the crisis in the Middle Ages, Peter Schuster quotes historian Léopold Genicot's 1971 article "Crisis: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times" where Genicot wrote, "Crisis is the word which comes immediately to the historian's mind when he thinks of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries."

Demography

Some scholars contend that at the beginning of the 14th century, Europe had become overpopulated. By the 14th century frontiers had ceased to expand and internal colonization was coming to an end, but population levels remained high.

The Medieval Warm Period ended sometime towards the end of the 13th century, bringing the "Little Ice Age" and harsher winters with reduced harvests. In Northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the heavy plough and the three-field system were not as effective in clearing new fields for harvest as they were in the Mediterranean because the north had poor, clay-like soil. Food shortages and rapidly inflating prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock, were all in short supply.

Their scarcity resulted in malnutrition, which increases susceptibility to infections due to weakened immune systems. In the autumn of 1314, heavy rains began to fall, which were the start of several years of cold and wet winters. The already weak harvests of the north suffered and the seven-year famine ensued. In the years 1315 to 1317 a catastrophic famine, known as the Great Famine, struck much of North West Europe. It was arguably the worst in European history, perhaps reducing the population by more than 10%.

Genoese (red) and Venetian (green) maritime trade routes in the Mediterranean and Black Sea

Most governments instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black market speculators, set price controls on grain and outlawed large-scale fishing. At best, they proved mostly unenforceable and at worst they contributed to a continent-wide downward spiral. The hardest hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad: from France because of the prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labour. Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black market.

Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, using up much of their treasury and exacerbating inflation. In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what became known as the Hundred Years' War. This situation was worsened when landowners and monarchs such as Edward III of England (r. 1327–1377) and Philip VI of France (r. 1328–1350), raised the fines and rents of their tenants out of a fear that their comparatively high standard of living would decline.

The European economy entered a vicious circle in which hunger and chronic, low-level debilitating disease reduced the productivity of labourers, and so the grain output was reduced, causing grain prices to increase. Standards of living fell drastically, diets grew more limited, and Europeans as a whole experienced more health problems.

When a typhoid epidemic emerged, many thousands died in populated urban centres, most significantly Ypres (now in Belgium). In 1318 a pestilence of unknown origin, sometimes identified as anthrax, targeted the animals of Europe, notably sheep and cattle, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry.

Climate change and the Great Famine

As Europe moved out of the Medieval Warm Period and into the Little Ice Age, a decrease in temperature and a great number of devastating floods disrupted harvests and caused mass famine. The cold and the rain proved to be particularly disastrous from 1315 to 1317 in which poor weather interrupted the maturation of many grains and beans and flooding turned fields rocky and barren. Scarcity of grain caused price inflation, as described in one account of grain prices in Europe in which the price of wheat doubled from twenty shillings per quarter in 1315 to forty shillings per quarter by June of the following year. Grape harvests also suffered, which reduced wine production throughout Europe. The wine production from the vineyards surrounding the Abbey of Saint-Arnould in France decreased as much as eighty percent by 1317. During this climatic change and subsequent famine, Europe's cattle were struck with Bovine Pestilence, a pathogen of unknown identity. The pathogen began spreading throughout Europe from Eastern Asia in 1315 and reached the British Isles by 1319. Manorial accounts of cattle populations in the year between 1319 and 1320, places a sixty-two percent loss in England and Wales alone. In these countries, some correlation can be found between the places where poor weather reduced crop harvests and places where the bovine population was particularly negatively affected. It is hypothesized that both low temperatures and lack of nutrition lowered the cattle populations' immune systems and made them vulnerable to disease. The mass death and illness of cattle drastically affected dairy production, and the output did not return to its pre-pestilence amount until 1331. Much of the medieval peasants' protein was obtained from dairy, and milk shortages likely caused nutritional deficiency in the European population. Famine and pestilence, exacerbated with the prevalence of war during this time, led to the death of an estimated ten to fifteen percent of Europe's population.

Climate change and plague epidemic correlation

The Black Death was a particularly devastating epidemic in Europe during this time, and is notable due to the number of people who succumbed to the disease within the few years the disease was active. It was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present. While there is some question of whether it was a particularly deadly strain of Yersinia pestis that caused the Black Death, research indicates no significant difference in bacterial phenotype. Thus environmental stressors are considered when hypothesizing the deadliness of the Black Plague, such as crop failures due to changes in weather, the subsequent famine, and an influx of host rats into Europe from China. The Black Death was so devastating that a comparable plague in terms of virulence had not been seen since the Justinian plague, before the Medieval warm period. This gap in plague activity during the Medieval Warm Period contributes to the hypothesis that climate conditions would have affected Europe's susceptibility to disease when the climate began to cool during the arrival of the Little Ice Age in the 13th century.

Popular revolt

Richard II of England meets the rebels of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

Before the 14th century, popular uprisings were not unknown, for example, uprisings at a manor house against an unpleasant overlord, but they were local in scope. This changed in the 14th and 15th centuries when new downward pressures on the poor resulted in mass movements and popular uprisings across Europe. To indicate how common and widespread these movements became, in Germany between 1336 and 1525 there were no less than sixty phases of militant peasant unrest.

Political and religious factors

The Battle of Aljubarrota between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile, 1385

Almost constant warfare caused taxes to rise to crippling levels. The unity of the Roman Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was also in decline in the aftermath of the Great Interregnum (1247–1273); the Empire lost cohesion, and politically the separate dynasties of the various German states became more important than their common empire.

Civil wars

• Wars of the Roses

International wars

• Hundred Years' War
• Polish–Teutonic Wars
• 1383–85 Crisis
• Mongol raids against Russia
• Burgundian Wars
• Byzantine–Ottoman Wars
• Ottoman wars in Europe

Malthusian hypothesis

Scholars such as David Herlihy and Michael Postan use the term Malthusian limit to express and explain some tragedies as resulting from overpopulation. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus asserted that eventually humans would reproduce so greatly that they would go beyond the limits of necessary resources; once they reach this point, catastrophe becomes inevitable. In his book, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, professor David Herlihy explores this idea of plague as an inevitable crisis imposed on humanity to control the population and human resources. In the book The Black Death; A Turning Point in History? (ed. William M. Bowsky) he "implies that the Black Death's pivotal role in late medieval society ... was now being challenged. Arguing on the basis of a neo-Malthusian economics, revisionist historians recast the Black Death as a necessary and long overdue corrective to an overpopulated Europe."

Herlihy also examined the arguments against the Malthusian crisis, stating "if the Black Death was a response to excessive human numbers it should have arrived several decades earlier" in consequence of the population growth of years before the outbreak of the Black Death. Herlihy also brings up other, biological factors that argue against the plague as a "reckoning" by arguing "the role of famines in affecting population movements is also problematic. The many famines preceding the Black Death, even the 'great hunger' of 1315 to 1317, did not result in any appreciable reduction in population levels". Herlihy concludes the matter stating, "the medieval experience shows us not a Malthusian crisis but a stalemate, in the sense that the community was maintaining at stable levels very large numbers over a lengthy period" and states that the phenomenon should be referred to as more of a deadlock, rather than a crisis, to describe Europe before the epidemics.

Consequences of the Black Death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death 

 

Citizens of Tournai bury plague victims. Detail of a miniature from "The Chronicles of Gilles Li Muisis" (1472–1552). Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 13076-77, f. 24v.

The consequences of the Black Death have short and long-term effects on human population across the world. They include a series of biological, social, economic, political and religious upheavals which had profound effects on the course of world history, especially the History of Europe. Often referred to as simply "The Plague", the Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 with an estimated one-third of the continent's population ultimately succumbing to the disease. Historians estimate that it reduced the total world population from 475 million to between 350 and 375 million. In most parts of Europe, it took nearly 80 years for population sizes to recover, and in some areas more than 150 years.

From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favorable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labor was suddenly in higher demand. R. H. Hilton has argued that those English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved. For many Europeans, the 15th century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities. The land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared. A century later, as population growth resumed, the lower classes again faced deprivation and famine.

The spread of the "Black Death" through Europe from 1347 to 1351

Death toll

Figures for the death toll vary widely by area and from source to source, and estimates are frequently revised as historical research brings new discoveries to light. Most scholars estimate that the Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people in the 14th century, at a time when the entire world population was still less than 500 million. Even where the historical record is considered reliable, only rough estimates of the total number of deaths from the plague are possible.

Europe

Europe suffered an especially significant death toll from the plague. Modern estimates range between roughly one-third and one-half of the total European population in the five-year period of 1347 to 1351, during which the most severely affected areas may have lost up to 80 percent of the population. Contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart, incidentally, estimated the toll to be one-third, which modern scholars consider less an accurate assessment than an allusion to the Book of Revelation meant to suggest the scope of the plague. Deaths were not evenly distributed across Europe, with some areas affected very little while others were all but entirely depopulated.

The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard, although rural areas (where most of the population lived at the time) were also significantly affected. Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas, and rats, and subject to diseases caused by malnutrition and poor hygiene. Florence's population was reduced from 110,000–120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. Between 60 and 70 percent of Hamburg's and Bremen's populations died. In Provence, Dauphiné, and Normandy, historians observe a decrease of 60 percent of fiscal hearths. In some regions, two-thirds of the population was annihilated. In the town of Givry, in the Bourgogne region of France, the local friar, who used to note 28 to 29 funerals a year, recorded 649 deaths in 1348, half of them in September. About half of Perpignan's population died over the course of several months (only two of the eight physicians survived the plague). Over 60 percent of Norway's population died between 1348 and 1350. London may have lost two-thirds of its population during the 1348–49 outbreak; England as a whole may have lost 70 percent of its population, which declined from 7 million before the plague to 2 million in 1400.

Some places, including Kingdom of Poland, parts of Hungary, the Brabant region, Hainaut, and Limbourg (in modern Belgium), as well as Santiago de Compostela, were unaffected for unknown reasons. Some historians have assumed that the presence of resistant blood groups in the local population helped them resist infection, although these regions were touched by the second plague outbreak in 1360–63 (the "little mortality") and later during the numerous resurgences of the plague (in 1366–69, 1374–75, 1400, 1407, etc.). Other areas which escaped the plague were isolated in mountainous regions (e.g. the Pyrenees). 

All social classes were affected, although the lower classes, living together in unhealthy places, were most vulnerable. Alfonso XI of Castile and Joan of Navarre (daughter of Louis X le Hutin and Margaret of Burgundy) were the only European monarch to die of the plague, but Peter IV of Aragon lost his wife, his daughter, and a niece in six months. Joan of England, daughter of Edward III, died in Bordeaux on her way to Castile to marry Alfonso's son, Pedro. The Byzantine Emperor lost his son, while in the Kingdom of France, Bonne of Luxembourg, the wife of the future John II of France, died of the plague.

Asia

Estimates of the demographic effect of the plague in Asia are based on population figures during this time and estimates of the disease's toll on population centers. The most severe outbreak of plague, in the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334, claimed up to 80 percent of the population. China had several epidemics and famines from 1200 to the 1350s and its population decreased from an estimated 125 million to 65 million in the late 14th century. 

 

The precise demographic effect of the disease in the Middle East is very difficult to calculate. Mortality was particularly high in rural areas, including significant areas of Gaza and Syria. Many rural people fled, leaving their fields and crops, and entire rural provinces are recorded as being totally depopulated. Surviving records in some cities reveal a devastating number of deaths. The 1348 outbreak in Gaza left an estimated 10,000 people dead, while Aleppo recorded a death rate of 500 per day during the same year. In Damascus, at the disease's peak in September and October 1348, a thousand deaths were recorded every day, with overall mortality estimated at between 25 and 38 percent. Syria lost a total of 400,000 people by the time the epidemic subsided in March 1349. In contrast to some higher mortality estimates in Asia and Europe, scholars such as John Fields of Trinity College in Dublin believe the mortality rate in the Middle East was less than one-third of the total population, with higher rates in selected areas.

Social, environmental, and economic effects

Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause of the Black Death, many Europeans ascribed supernatural forces, earthquakes and malicious conspiracies, among other things, as possible reasons for the plague's emergence. No one in the 14th century considered rat control a way to ward off the plague, and people began to believe only God's anger could produce such horrific displays of suffering and death. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet of the era, questioned whether it was sent by God for their correction, or that it came through the influence of the heavenly bodies. Christians accused Jews of poisoning public water supplies in an effort to ruin European civilization. The spreading of this rumor led to complete destruction of entire Jewish towns, and was simply caused by suspicion on part of the Christians, who noticed that the Jews had lost fewer lives to the plague due to their hygienic practices. In February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg. In August of the same year, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated.

Where government authorities were concerned, most monarchs instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black market speculators, set price controls on grain, and outlawed large-scale fishing. At best, they proved mostly unenforceable. At worst, they contributed to a continent-wide downward spiral. The hardest hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad from France because of the prohibition and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labour. Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black market. Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, using up much of their treasury and exacerbating inflation. In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War. Malnutrition, poverty, disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation and other economic concerns made Europe in the mid-14th century ripe for tragedy.

Europe had been overpopulated before the plague, and a reduction of 30 to 50 percent of the population could have resulted in higher wages and more available land and food for peasants because of less competition for resources. Historian Walter Scheidel contends that waves of plague following the initial outbreak of the Black Death had a leveling effect that changed the ratio of land to labour, reducing the value of the former while boosting that of the latter, which lowered economic inequality by making landowners and employers less well off while improving the lot of the workers. He states that "the observed improvement in living standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations." This leveling effect was reversed by a "demographic recovery that resulted in renewed population pressure." In 1357, a third of property in London was unused due to a severe outbreak in 1348–49. However, for reasons that are still debated, population levels declined after the Black Death's first outbreak until around 1420 and did not begin to rise again until 1470, so the initial Black Death event on its own does not entirely provide a satisfactory explanation to this extended period of decline in prosperity. See Medieval demography for a more complete treatment of this issue and current theories on why improvements in living standards took longer to evolve.

Effect on the peasantry

The great population loss brought favourable results to the surviving peasants in England and Western Europe. There was increased social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings. Seigneurialism never recovered. Land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared. It was possible to move about and rise higher in life. Younger sons and women especially benefited. As population growth resumed, however, the peasants again faced deprivation and famine.

In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the remaining peasant population more tightly to the land than ever before through serfdom. Sparsely populated Eastern Europe was less affected by the Black Death and so peasant revolts were less common in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, not occurring in the east until the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.

Furthermore, the plague's great population reduction brought cheaper land prices, more food for the average peasant, and a relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry, if not immediately, in the coming century. Since the plague left vast areas of farmland untended, they were made available for pasture and put more meat on the market; the consumption of meat and dairy products went up, as did the export of beef and butter from the Low Countries, Scandinavia and northern Germany. However, the upper class often attempted to stop these changes, initially in Western Europe, and more forcefully and successfully in Eastern Europe, by instituting sumptuary laws. These regulated what people (particularly of the peasant class) could wear, so that nobles could ensure that peasants did not begin to dress and act as a higher class member with their increased wealth. Another tactic was to fix prices and wages so that peasants could not demand more with increasing value. In England, the Statute of Labourers 1351 was enforced, meaning no peasant could ask for more wages than in 1346. This was met with varying success depending on the amount of rebellion it inspired; such a law was one of the causes of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England.

The rapid development of the use was probably one of the consequences of the Black Death, during which many landowning nobility died, leaving their realty to their widows and minor orphans.

Effect on urban workers

In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers. Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls. These governmental controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death. Within England, for example, the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1351, restricted both wage increases and the relocation of workers. If workers attempted to leave their current post, employers were given the right to have them imprisoned. The Statute was poorly enforced in most areas, and farm wages in England on average doubled between 1350 and 1450, although they were static thereafter until the end of the 19th century.

Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that these laws were not primarily designed to freeze wages. Instead, he says the energetic local and royal measures to control labor and artisans' prices was a response to elite fears of the greed and possible new powers of lesser classes that had gained new freedom. Cohn says the laws reflect the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction, and from elite anxiety about manifestations such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans (in Sicily), and beggars.

Labour-saving innovation

By 1200, virtually all of the Mediterranean basin and most of northern Germany had been deforested and cultivated. Indigenous flora and fauna were replaced by domestic grasses and animals and domestic woodlands were lost. With depopulation, this process was reversed. Much of the primeval vegetation returned, and abandoned fields and pastures were reforested.

The Black Death encouraged innovation of labour-saving technologies, leading to higher productivity. There was a shift from grain farming to animal husbandry. Grain farming was very labor-intensive, but animal husbandry needed only a shepherd and a few dogs and pastureland.

Plague brought an eventual end of Serfdom in Western Europe. The manorial system was already in trouble, but the Black Death assured its demise throughout much of western and central Europe by 1500. Severe depopulation and migration of the village to cities caused an acute shortage of agricultural labourers. Many villages were abandoned. In England, more than 1300 villages were deserted between 1350 and 1500. Wages of labourers were high, but the rise in nominal wages following the Black Death was swamped by post-Plague inflation, so that real wages fell.

Labor was in such a short supply that Lords were forced to give better terms of tenure. This resulted in much lower rents in western Europe. By 1500, a new form of tenure called copyhold became prevalent in Europe. In copyhold, both a Lord and peasant made their best business deal, whereby the peasant got use of the land and the Lord got a fixed annual payment and both possessed a copy of the tenure agreement. Serfdom did not end everywhere. It lingered in parts of Western Europe and was introduced to Eastern Europe after the Black Death.

There was change in the inheritance law. Before the plague, only sons and especially the elder son inherited the ancestral property. Post plague all sons as well as daughters started inheriting property.

Persecutions

Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism came in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers and Romani, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis. 

Differences in cultural and lifestyle practices also led to persecution. As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats, in part because better hygiene among Jewish communities and isolation in the ghettos meant that Jews were less affected. Accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. European mobs attacked Jewish settlements across Europe; by 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, and more than 350 separate massacres had occurred. 

According to Joseph P. Byrne, women also faced persecution during the Black Death. Muslim women in Cairo became scapegoats when the plague struck. Byrne writes that in 1438, the sultan of Cairo was informed by his religious lawyers that the arrival of the plague was Allah's punishment for the sin of fornication and that in accordance with this theory, a law was set in place stating that women were not allowed to make public appearances as they may tempt men into sin. Byrne describes that this law was only lifted when "the wealthy complained that their female servants could not shop for food."

Religion

The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their proximity with the sick who sought refuge there. This left a severe shortage of clergy after the epidemic cycle. Eventually the losses were replaced by hastily trained and inexperienced clergy members, many of whom knew little of the rigors of their predecessors. New colleges were opened at established universities, and the training process sped up. The shortage of priests opened new opportunities for laywomen to assume more extensive and more important service roles in the local parish.

Woodcut of flagellants (Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493)

Flagellants practiced self-flogging (whipping of oneself) to atone for sins. The movement became popular after the Black Death. It may be that the flagellants' later involvement in hedonism was an effort to accelerate or absorb God's wrath, to shorten the time with which others suffered. More likely, the focus of attention and popularity of their cause contributed to a sense that the world itself was ending and that their individual actions were of no consequence.

Reformers rarely pointed to failures on the part of the Church in dealing with the catastrophe.

Cultural effect

The Triumph of Death (1446)

The Black Death had a profound effect on art and literature. After 1350, European culture in general turned very morbid. The general mood was one of pessimism, and contemporary art turned dark with representations of death. The widespread image of the "dance of death" showed death (a skeleton) choosing victims at random. Many of the most graphic depictions come from writers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch. Peire Lunel de Montech, writing about 1348 in the lyric style long out of fashion, composed the following sorrowful sirventes "Meravilhar no·s devo pas las gens" during the height of the plague in Toulouse:

They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in ... ditches and covered with earth. 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 so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.

Boccaccio wrote:

How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ship's hold and covered with a little earth.

Danse Macabre from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).

Medicine

Although the Black Death highlighted the shortcomings of medical science in the medieval era, it also led to positive changes in the field of medicine. As described by David Herlihy in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, more emphasis was placed on “anatomical investigations” following the Black Death. How individuals studied the human body notably changed, becoming a process that dealt more directly with the human body in varied states of sickness and health. Further, at this time, the importance of surgeons became more evident.

A theory put forth by Stephen O'Brien says the Black Death is likely responsible, through natural selection, for the high frequency of the CCR5-Δ32 genetic defect in people of European descent. The gene affects T cell function and provides protection against HIV, smallpox, and possibly plague, though for the last, no explanation as to how it would do that exists. This, however, is now challenged, given that the CCR5-Δ32 gene has been found to be just as common in Bronze Age tissue samples.

Architecture

The Black Death also inspired European architecture to move in two different directions: (1) a revival of Greco-Roman styles, and (2) a further elaboration of the Gothic style. Late medieval churches had impressive structures centred on verticality, where one's eye is drawn up towards the high ceiling. The basic Gothic style was revamped with elaborate decoration in the late medieval period. Sculptors in Italian city-states emulated the work of their Roman forefathers while sculptors in northern Europe, no doubt inspired by the devastation they had witnessed, gave way to a heightened expression of emotion and an emphasis on individual differences. A tough realism came forth in architecture as in literature. Images of intense sorrow, decaying corpses, and individuals with faults as well as virtues emerged. North of the Alps, painting reached a pinnacle of precise realism with Early Dutch painting by artists such as Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–by 1441). The natural world was reproduced in these works with meticulous detail whose realism was not unlike photography.