Introduction

The infection of the Black Death was spread simultaneously in many directions in many countries and regions, employing, as it were, various tactics and strategies relevant to specific environments, available means of transport and local cultures. The simultaneity and complexity of the movements of the Black Death’s triumphant ‘armies’ of bacteria, rats and fleas are difficult to grasp and present. The best approach, everything considered, is to give a fully integrated account of its history in individual large countries like France and Italy or within the framework of two or more countries that form natural territorial entities in an epidemiological perspective, like the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal and the Muslim Kingdom of Granada), and the British Isles. This approach lends itself to systematic study of the patterns of spread in time and space in various areas and regions that in some important respects were integrated by political, economic and communication systems. Such systems always contain specific patterns of interaction within national territories and their regional and administrative subdivisions that affect the spread of epidemic diseases in crucial ways, including the Black Death. Countries bound together by special ties, such as, for instance, Spain and Portugal and England and Ireland, will also tend to develop economic and social relationships that will be suited to the exchange and spread of contagion; they will, in other words, tend to function as epidemiologically integrated territories.

This Part Three on the spread of the Black Death is followed in Part Four by a section on mortality presented according to the same territorial principle. This should make it fairly easy to piece together three central dimensions and defining features of bubonic plague, in this case as presented by the Black Death: (1) the territorial pattern and pace of spread; (2) the dynamic basis of transmission and dissemination that can engender these distinguishing features; (3) the demographic impact of the Black Death in various national and territorial contexts, and the overall demographic effects. The ambitious objective is that this approach will provide national readerships of today with a satisfactory overview of this most dramatic event in their country’s history.

As the history of the Black Death moves northwards and eastwards in Europe, with the exception of England, the sources become progressively fewer and less informative and consist increasingly of notes in chronicles of generally deteriorating quality. It becomes increasingly difficult to outline its pattern of spread and its demographic, economic and social impact.