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The world the plague made : the Black Death and the rise of Europe / James Belich.

by Belich, James, 1956- author.

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Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2022]

Europe -- History -- 476-1492.

9780691215662 (hardcover) :

0691215669 (hardcover)

ix, 622 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Introduction: Plague paradoxes -- Prologue: Globalising Europe (Rethinking globalisation and divergence ; The equine revolution ; Super-crops, super-crafts ; Re-setting Europe)

Part one: A plague of mysteries (1. The Black Death and the plague era [The Black Death ; Bringing in the dead ; Where was the Black Death? ; The plague era] ; 2. The origins and dynamics of the Black Death [Plague prehistory ; Mongols and marmots versus gerbils and camels ; Rats on trial ; Immunity and resistance ; Plague's endings])

Part two: Plague and expansionism in western Europe (3. A golden age? Economy and society in the early plague era [A plague economy ; A golden age for whom? ; Mass consumption?] ; 4. Expansive trades [The northern hunt trades ; Southern trades: sugar, spice, silk -- and slaves] ; 5. Plague revolutions? [A late medieval industrial revolution? ; The print revolution and the scribal transition ; A gunpowder revolution?] ; 6. Expansive labour: castas, race mothers and disposable males [Race and reproduction ; Race mothers and the settler divergence ; Disposable males: European "crew culture"] ; 7. States, interstates, and the European expansion kit [Warfare states ; Transnationalisms, networks and shape-shifters ; The western European expansion kit])

Part three: Western Europe or West Eurasia? (8. Plague's impact in the Muslim south [The Mamluk empire and the Maghreb ; Ottoman heartlands: the Balkans and Anatolia ; Greater Persia ; Shared revolutions?] ; 9. Early modern Ming-Muslim globalisation [Early modern Muslim mercantile expansion ; Chinese outreach ; Joint ventures in southeast Asia] ; 10. Entwined empires: the Genoese paradox and Iberian expansion [Genoese imperialisms ; Genoese plague responses: the origin of modern capitalism? ; Iberian entanglements: Portugal ; Iberian entanglements: Spain] ; 11. The Ottomans and the Great Diversion [The recovery state ; Ottoman urban colonisation and slavery ; The Ottomans and expansion beyond west Eurasia] ; 12. The Dutch puzzle and the mobilisation of eastern Europe [Plague and empire in eastern Europe ; Plague, institutions, and the rise of Holland ; Dutch expansion ; Amsterdam's empires] ; 13. Muslim colonial empires [The Moroccan colonial empire ; The Omani colonial empire ; The Mughals: a west Eurasian colonial empire?] ; 14. Plague and Russian expansionism [Novgorod: 'Rome of the waterways' ; Muscovite expansion to 1500 ; Hybridity and empire on the steppes ; Trade, settlement and hunting in Siberia, 1390-1800 ; Russia, China and global hunting])

Part four: Expansion, industry and empire (15. Empire? What empire? European expansion to 1800 [Africans ; The Americas ; India ; China's world ; Entwined empires] ; 16. Plaguing Britain [England's plague era ; Peculiar institutions? ; London's empires ; Peripheral peripheries? ; Transposing Lancashire and Bengal]) -- Conclusion.

In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused untold suffering, but it also brought about a cultural and economic renewal on a scale never before witnessed. The World the Plague Made is a panoramic history of how the bubonic plague revolutionized labour, trade, and technology and set the stage for Europe's global expansion. James Belich takes readers across centuries and continents to shed new light on one of history's greatest paradoxes. Why did Europe's dramatic rise begin in the wake of the Black Death? Belich shows how plague doubled the per capita endowment of everything even as it decimated the population. Many more people had disposable incomes. Demand grew for silks, sugar, spices, furs, gold, and slaves. Europe expanded to satisfy that demand-and plague provided the means. Labour scarcity drove more use of waterpower, wind power, and gunpowder. Technologies like water-powered blast furnaces, heavily gunned galleons, and musketry were fast-tracked by plague. A new "crew culture" of "disposable males" emerged to man the guns and galleons. Setting the rise of Western Europe in global context, Belich demonstrates how the mighty empires of the Middle East and Russia also flourished after the plague, and how European expansion was deeply entangled with the Chinese and other peoples throughout the world.

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