Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Maps
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface to the First Edition
- Author’s Note on the New and Revised Edition
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Part I What Was the Black Death?
- Part II The Origin of Bubonic Plague and the History of Plague before the Black Death
- Part III The Outbreak and Spread of the Black Death
- Part IV Mortality in the Black Death
- Part V A Turning Point in History?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Subject Index
- Index of Geographical Names and People
- Name Index
43 - How Many People Died in the Black Death?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Maps
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface to the First Edition
- Author’s Note on the New and Revised Edition
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Part I What Was the Black Death?
- Part II The Origin of Bubonic Plague and the History of Plague before the Black Death
- Part III The Outbreak and Spread of the Black Death
- Part IV Mortality in the Black Death
- Part V A Turning Point in History?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Subject Index
- Index of Geographical Names and People
- Name Index
Summary
Introduction
Up to now, scholars have generally assumed, at best on quite flimsy grounds, that one-fourth or one-third of Europe’s population perished in the Black Death – if these assumptions are based on anything at all. These declarations are regularly presented without references to evidence on mortality and have a clear character of being taken out of thin air. The large number of new local studies published in the last four decades of the previous century have provided, together with a trickle of previous data, a completely new opportunity for assessing the demographic effects of the Black Death by regular synthesis of mortality data obtained by application of historical demography. As the first scholar to do so, the present author took on the task of gathering together and demographically examining and developing all these mortality data. It turned out to be about 190 demographic studies in total, all from Europe. This work produced remarkable and even startling results, as unexpected to this author as to others, which were presented in the first edition of this book.
In the twenty years since the manuscript to the first edition was written, much new evidence on mortality rates caused by the Black Death has been published or found in peripheral local studies, which has expanded the evidence for synthesis considerably. The present author had also had the opportunity to contribute. The number of demographic studies has now expanded to about 300. All these new studies have considerably strengthened the empirical basis for synthesis and, as it has turned out, have strengthened the tenability and realism of the estimates in the first edition while also confirming the view that the estimate of a general mortality rate in the Black Death of 60% was cautious and on the low side.
However, these mortality data are also characterized by comprehensive limitations. Only in the case of England has it been possible to establish an approximate national mortality rate on a demographically sound basis, albeit for rural England where, after all, the huge majority of the English population lived.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Complete History of the Black Death , pp. 869 - 876Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021