edu

education

The European economy of the Black Death

2020-08-06 16:32:15 | 日記
下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- The European economy of the Black Death,文章讲述就像瘟疫造成的死亡人数一样,它的社会经济影响也抵制了严格的衡量标准。黑死病的时机使得它很容易被贴上标签,成为几乎不可避免的欧洲经济史上的分水岭。它到达了一个兴高采烈的中世纪晚期(大约1000到1300年),城市生活重新焕发,长距离商业复兴,商业和制造业创新,庄园农业成熟,人口迅速增长,翻倍或翻了三倍。黑死病同时预示了中世纪后期(约1300年至1500年)经济停滞,萧条。但是,即使接受这种对中世纪经济的简单化和某种误导性描述,将黑死病的经济影响与各种因素隔离开来也是一个艰巨的挑战。

The European economy of the Black Death
Like the plague’s death toll, its socioeconomic impact resists categorical measurement. The Black Death’s timing made a facile labeling of it as a watershed in European economic history nearly inevitable. It arrived near the close of an ebullient high Middle Ages (c. 1000 to c. 1300) in which urban life reemerged, long—distance commerce revived, business and manufacturing innovated, manorial agriculture matured, and population burgeoned, doubling or tripling. The Black Death simultaneously portended an economically stagnant, depressed late Middle Ages (c. 1300 to c. 1500). However, even if this simplistic and somewhat misleading portrait of the medieval economy is accepted, isolating the Black Death’s economic impact from manifold factors at play is a daunting challenge.
Cognizant of a qualitative difference between the high and late Middle Ages, students of medieval economy have offered varied explanations, some mutually exclusive, others not, some favoring the less dramatic, less visible, yet inexorable factor as an agent of change rather than a catastrophic demographic shift. For some, a cooling climate undercut agricultural productivity, a downturn that rippled throughout the predominantly agrarian economy. For others, exploitative political, social, and economic institutions enriched an idle elite and deprived working society of wherewithal and incentive to be innovative and productive. Yet others associate monetary factors with the fourteenth— and fifteenth—century economic doldrums.
The particular concerns of the twentieth century unsurprisingly induced some scholars to view the medieval economy through a Malthusian lens. In this reconstruction of the Middle Ages, population growth pressed against the society’s ability to feed itself by the mid—thirteenth century. Rising impoverishment and contracting holdings compelled the peasant to cultivate inferior, low—fertility land and to convert pasture to arable production and thereby inevitably reduce numbers of livestock and make manure for fertilizer scarcer. Boosting gross productivity in the immediate term yet driving yields of grain downward in the longer term exacerbated the imbalance between population and food supply; redressing the imbalance became inevitable. This idea’s adherents see signs of demographic correction from the mid—thirteenth century onward, possibly arising in part from marriage practices that reduced fertility. A more potent correction came with subsistence crises. Miserable weather in 1315 destroyed crops and the ensuing Great Famine (1315—22) reduced northern Europe’s population by perhaps ten to fifteen percent. Poor harvests, moreover, bedeviled England and Italy to the eve of the Black Death.
These factors — climate, imperfect institutions, monetary imbalances, overpopulation — diminish the Black Death’s role as a transformative socioeconomic event. In other words, socioeconomic changes already driven by other causes would have occurred anyway, merely more slowly, had the plague never struck Europe. This conviction fosters receptiveness to lower estimates of the Black Death’s deadliness. Recent scrutiny of the Malthusian analysis, especially studies of agriculture in source—rich eastern England, has, however, rehabilitated the Black Death as an agent of socioeconomic change. Growing awareness of the use of “progressive” agricultural techniques and of alternative, non—grain economies less susceptible to a Malthusian population—versus—resources dynamic has undercut the notion of an absolutely overpopulated Europe and has encouraged acceptance of higher rates of mortality from the plague (Campbell, 1983; Bailey, 1989).
51due留学教育原创版权郑重声明:原创优秀代写范文源自编辑创作,未经官方许可,网站谢绝转载。对于侵权行为,未经同意的情况下,51Due有权追究法律责任。主要业务有essay代写、assignment代写、paper代写、作业代写服务。
51due为留学生提供最好的作业代写服务,亲们可以进入主页了解和获取更多代写范文提供作业代写服务,详情可以咨询我们的客服QQ:800020041。


最新の画像もっと見る

コメントを投稿