Image above: the bacterium Yersinia pestis

You may have noticed that your art and architecture projects stopped at 1300. That wasn't a random round number: the fourteenth century saw some massive exogenous shocks that transformed societies and economies acrossed the world. The most prominent of these was the plague that swept through Asia, Europe, and possibly parts of Africa in the 1340s. The result of the plague was not simply a world with fewer people in it: there were profound social and economic ramifications. However, the plague did not have the same impacts everywhere.

(Note: 14th-century events cannot provide perfect parallels for our current situation: but questions about quarantines, disease control, and plagues' socio-economic implications are particularly worth pondering.)

Objectives

You will consider how exogenous shocks' impacts can be shaped by pre-existing social conditions.
You will evaluate the extent to which plagues transformed socio-economic structures across Europe and the Mediterranean.