Black Death kills _% of Europe

Assuming horrible hygiene, and probably Mongol use of biological warfare, what would be the highest percentage rate of Europe's population loss caused by the Black Death, and what would be the aftermath?
 
The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.

IIRC, the eventual endpoint is a division of the world between Muslim and Chinese powers, with American tribes used at first as proxies and eventually developing into a unified power in their own right. It's been a while since I read it, though, so I could be misremembering.
 
The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.

I don't think that high a percentage is remotely possible. After you get something like 30-50% of the population dead the plague basically "burns itself out" with not enough infected left in contact with each other for the plague to continue to spread.

Which is one reason those notions of a "superbug" wiping out most of the worlds population are largely an irrational fear. To do that a disease must be both extremely deadly and spread extremely fast so people are infected and spread the disease before they die.
 
Given that bubonic plague can maintain itself in a rodent population, and has done so for over a century in the US Southwest absent any significant human disease, burnout is somewhat less of an issue here. On the other hand, because communication is so slow, if the death rate is greater than the roughly 30% it was OTL, transmission over distances will be hampered. While 90+% death rate is too high, even untreated bubonic (as opposed to pneumonic) plague does not kill 90%, a death rate of maybe 60% or so is possible. At that point you may have more deaths in the wake of the plague with severe disruption of food supply for survivors, children who do not get sick but can't fend for themselves/find new adults to care for them.

With a total death rate of maybe 2/3 of the population you have a total collapse of the civilization. Famine will go on for years, at this point in time agriculture is manpower intensive, and food storage from season to season is minimal. Any organized force that comes in to the zone of depopulation is going to take over, period. There will be armed bands in the zone of depopulation, but no organized polities that could resist an outside force. EVERYTHING changes. Western Christianity is either eliminated or marginalized. Eastern Christianity may survive depending on how bad Orthodox areas are hit by the plague. Also, groups that eventually conquered the Byzantines may go further north in to relatively empty and undefended lands.
 
The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.

IIRC, the eventual endpoint is a division of the world between Muslim and Chinese powers, with American tribes used at first as proxies and eventually developing into a unified power in their own right. It's been a while since I read it, though, so I could be misremembering.

Not really plausible. Consider the following demographic trend: in the 16c, the Americas lost between 75% and 90% of their population, depending on whether you believe low or high counters. This involved multiple virgin soil epidemics, foreign conquest, and a population whose immune system was optimized for parasites rather than epidemics. A single outbreak of smallpox alone could kill half the population in some places, e.g. the Inca empire, but the demographic collapse of the 16c involved other diseases as well.

Killing a large majority of the population on a consistent basis requires modern techniques of genocide. Before modern genocides, we see that some wars and outbreaks killed a range of population percentages, and in a few cases they were high - e.g. the Plague killed two thirds of Tuscany, and the Thirty Years' War killed three quarters of Württemberg, but in both cases the average proportion of people killed over the entire area of effect was more like one third.
 
If you get more Popes, Kings, and such to die from in the ensuing doomsday cults and succession crises could up the death toll, along with famines that would follow those and increased disease transmission from troops on the march.
 
The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.

IIRC, the eventual endpoint is a division of the world between Muslim and Chinese powers, with American tribes used at first as proxies and eventually developing into a unified power in their own right. It's been a while since I read it, though, so I could be misremembering.

rather an idiotic assumption because the lethality of the plague in china was bigger than in europe, i do recall that there were chinese cities that saw a 90% casualty rate. if the percentage is higher in europe, then it is also going to be higher in china. also stuff like this is staying in one place. if there is isn't a population left in europe, then elsewhere it will be pretty much the same
 
Not really plausible. Consider the following demographic trend: in the 16c, the Americas lost between 75% and 90% of their population, depending on whether you believe low or high counters. This involved multiple virgin soil epidemics, foreign conquest, and a population whose immune system was optimized for parasites rather than epidemics. A single outbreak of smallpox alone could kill half the population in some places, e.g. the Inca empire, but the demographic collapse of the 16c involved other diseases as well.


Killing a large majority of the population on a consistent basis requires modern techniques of genocide.
Before modern genocides, we see that some wars and outbreaks killed a range of population percentages, and in a few cases they were high - e.g. the Plague killed two thirds of Tuscany, and the Thirty Years' War killed three quarters of Württemberg, but in both cases the average proportion of people killed over the entire area of effect was more like one third.

Does it? Compared to the Conquistadors and other European conquerors in the Americas were the Mongols not as bad or worst even in some cases. I believe some or most historians attribute their actions to genocide.

What modern aspects did the European of the 16-18th century during the period of the majority of Native deaths have over the mongols in wrecking havoc to a population outside of disease?

Couldn't we have seen similar scenario of maybe 70%+ deaths in Europe had there indeed been a combination of a more virulent plague and the concurrent invasion by mongols.
 

Zek Sora

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rather an idiotic assumption because the lethality of the plague in china was bigger than in europe, i do recall that there were chinese cities that saw a 90% casualty rate. if the percentage is higher in europe, then it is also going to be higher in china. also stuff like this is staying in one place. if there is isn't a population left in europe, then elsewhere it will be pretty much the same

Well, it's not really meant to be a realistic book, considering that it follows 5 or 6 different characters through 10 or so reincarnations.
 
Couldn't we have seen similar scenario of maybe 70%+ deaths in Europe had there indeed been a combination of a more virulent plague and the concurrent invasion by mongols.

no, the plague originated in the homelands of the mongols, it lives on a kind of groundhog there. if the plague is more virulent, it will kill its host faster, thus having less time to spread, restricting spread.
thus probably the reason why the lethality was higher in china, it was still the original form, but over distance only the slightly milder versions were able to spread. i suspect that since it originated in the mongols home area, that they also had a slightly higher resistance against the plague. it was both trade and the mongols(or to be more precise, their fleas) that spread the plague.
a thing to remember plague has a 30-90% mortality and a incubation period of 3 to 7 days, and make that even more virulent?

in a certain way, the mongols did to us, what we did to the native americans, introducing a new disease the local population had no resistance against.
 
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With a total death rate of maybe 2/3 of the population you have a total collapse of the civilization.

Italy disagrees - in fact, such death rates ended up kickstarting the Renaissance, because workers were scarce enough to be paid well above what they had been paid before.
 
There is general agreement that the Black Death spelled the death knell of the feudal system. This was with a death rate of about 30% which created the labor shortage that led to the end of serfdom etc etc. When you have a death rate of 65% or more, its more than just a labor shortage. Society is much like a military unit in the sense that once a unit experiences a certain level of casualties it becomes ineffective and that is in a milieu where authority and chain of command is designed to function with significant losses. A 'civilian" society even in the Middle Ages does not have that sort of chain of command resiliency.

The debate, IMHO, is what level of death does it take for a society to lose cohesion and be able to resist a takeover/conquest by an outside and organized force. Remember that the Italy that developed the Renaissance was well after the worst of the plagues, and its neighbors were no better off in terms of societal disruption than Italy. The mountains along the north of Italy represent a barrier, making land invasion if Italy less attractive than simply heading west, and none of the potential invaders in the plague time were really maritime oriented. In any case, every society has a certain level of resiliency, for some a 30% death rate is catastrophic, for others 60% might be survivable.
 
Didn't the Black Death kill about a third of the global population? Considering India didn't get too bad while Africa and the New World avoided it totally that's a fair bit more than a third of Europe no?
 
Does it? Compared to the Conquistadors and other European conquerors in the Americas were the Mongols not as bad or worst even in some cases. I believe some or most historians attribute their actions to genocide.

My understanding is that the Song-Yuan boundary involved about 50% population loss in China, from 120 million in the mid-13c Southern Song + Jin to 60 million around 1300.

Genocide techniques improved over time, and by the Qing era, China was capable of exterminating the Dzungars. But even that was a small group in a remote region. Nothing like the industrial scale of killing 20c Germany perfected.

What modern aspects did the European of the 16-18th century during the period of the majority of Native deaths have over the mongols in wrecking havoc to a population outside of disease?

None, but they did have multiple diseases. Smallpox was the biggest killer, but was not the only one.
 
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