Introduction

At the time of the Black Death, the state of Switzerland was only in the making. The core territory of the present-day state of Switzerland had quite recently emerged as a loose confederation of a few areas, called cantons. The territory and composition of the cantons that constitute Switzerland today are the results of a long historical process. For instance, at the time of the Black Death the westernmost areas of the canton of Valais belonged to the County of Savoy, some of the eastern cantons belonged to the Austrian Habsburgian dynasty, and St Gallen to the east was an episcopal fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and these cantons were therefore organized and run according to feudal principles.

Little is known about the history of the Black Death in the small cluster of cantons that on the eve of the Black Death constituted the Swiss confederation. Arguably, the Black Death’s history in those areas that have joined Switzerland later ought to be discussed in relation to the countries to which they belonged at the time. For some important reasons, this is also an unsatisfactory approach. First, the modern people of Switzerland would like to consider this dramatic event in the history of the present-day territory of their country in its national perspective, and this is the way Swiss historians approach the issue. Secondly, the emergence and development of the state of Switzerland is not a fortuitous historical process but reflects the fact that these territories/cantons were drawn into the same political sphere because they interacted in ways that made political unification advantageous for significant economic and political reasons. In short, they constituted an economically and socially comprehensively integrated territory while many of the present-day constituent parts belonged to other states. In epidemiological terms, this is the overriding argument because it means that the dissemination of the contagion within this territory would tend to be a strong function of interaction by people living within it. As will be seen below, the pattern of the Black Death’s spread confirms the comprehensive territorial integration of the cantons that today constitute the state of Switzerland.

The present-day territory of Switzerland covers about 41,000 km2, but the medieval population is not known, and thus no estimate of population density at the time can be performed.