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.
James Belich is the Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford and cofounder of the Oxford Centre for Global History. His books include Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939.
"[A] sweeping revisionist history. . . . Rich in erudition and startling new insights, this fresh look at the impact of the Black Death upon world history is a must for history lovers and plague aficionados alike."—Library Journal
"A provocative and impressive history of an earth-shattering event."—Publishers Weekly
"[A] bold, tremendously researched work."—Jordan Michael Smith, Undark
“A truly major piece of historical writing and revisionism.”—Linda Colley, author of The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World
“A work of magisterial ambition, magisterially fulfilled.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind
“The great plague of the fourteenth century reshaped human existence. Drawing on a wealth of sources, James Belich shows brilliantly that the globe was reshaped by the effects of the terrible disease, from economic relations to the rise of Europe to hegemony. This is global history at its most serious and thrilling.”—Rana Mitter, University of Oxford
“In this learned and lucid book, Belich turns his remarkable powers of synthesis and insight to the long shadow of the Black Death. He traces its rippling effects in every direction, finding impacts on developments as disparate as naval warfare and printing, all in support of a provocative central thesis linking the plague disaster to the rise of modern Europe.”—J. R. McNeill, coauthor of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945
