W if no bubonic plague

W if no bubonic plague




My question is what if the plague never occured, could this butterfly away Islam.

Also could it allow the ERE to keep it's conquests..... How would this event not occuring change history...




Im working on a TL but not sure what effects will this have on European history.
 
the feudal system would never break down, it mostly fell apart because of a combonation of the lack of viking invasions that the peasants needed protection from and the black plauge killing so many people there was't enough labor to keep the system running.
 
Islam rose 700 years before the black plague swept through europe in the 1300s, and viking raids ended 300 years before.

there would be a larger European population, certainly.
 
Islam rose 700 years before the black plague swept through europe in the 1300s, and viking raids ended 300 years before.

While "Black Death" is typically used to describe the 14th century pandemic, it was not the first (or last) outbreak of Plague in history. If we're talking about eliminating plague (Yersinia pestis) from history, then Gustavus Adolphus is right to be talking about the Byzantines and the rise of Islam. The first recorded outbreak of plague was the Justinianic Plague of the 540s. It recurred periodically until about 800, and probably wound up being considerably more destructive than its later manifestation. The death toll attributed to the 14th century Black Death is about 33% of Europe's population. The Justinianic Plague and its two and half centuries of aftershocks is usually said to have reduced Europe's population to about 50%.

In either case, though, we're talking about wiping out a formative event of modern Western civilization. The butterflies are going to be massive, and very likely immediate. No Justinianic Plague and I don't think there's any question that there's no Islam, at least not in any form we'd recognize. The rise of OTL Islam depending, essentially, on both Rome (Byzantium) and Persia being unable to exert any effective power or influence over Arabia during the first few decades of the 7th century. Of course, part of this vacuum was due to the two empires being more concerned with smacking each other around, but both realms were quite used to fighting off enemies from multiple sides. It was most likely the catastrophic decline in manpower that made this time so different.

That said, I'm not sure I'm convinced that Constantinople would have been able to hold on to its European reconquests anyway. Ultimately, the problem would have been the same one that affected so many late Roman leaders, where imperial stability tended to depend heavily on the competency of whoever was wearing the purple at the time. Justinian was an almost preternaturally capable leader, with a list of military and civic accomplishments that almost no other Roman emperor can match. And, in OTL, he was able to accomplish so much with so much stacked against him: the public and much of the nobility apparently hated him, and the plague nearly destroyed both his army and his tax base. But he's not going to reign forever, and after he dies we're likely to see a reversion to mean. Feckless and ineffective emperors were de rigeur for the era, and an incompetent ruler only needs a year or two to undo the accomplishments of his competent predecessor.

On the other hand, no plague means that Italy, in particular, isn't likely to be as badly ravaged by war, and the Byzantines might be able to rely upon a stronger local power base. But I'm not sure that this means they're likely to stay part of the empire for much longer. For the sake of argument, let's say that, absent the plague, Italy is much more peacefully reabsorbed into the empire, and the Lombards aren't able to wrest control of the region as they did OTL. But a more successful Italy is not likely to be satisfied as a distinct province of a Constantinopolitan empire. I suspect that you either have an Italian leader declaring himself emperor, or another splitting of the empire into eastern and western halves. And any emergency western Roman empire is going to have to face down the same barbarian pressures that did in the previous iteration.

If we were just talking about butterflying the 14th century Black Death away, I'd agree that the feudal system wouldn't crumble quite as fast as it did (if it fell apart at all). But without the Justinianic Plague, I'm not sure we're going to see feudalism take off in the first place. Manorialism was already in place by the early sixth century, to be sure, but it was mostly confined to the less profitable rural regions of Europe: the real money in the late classical economy was in trade, especially in the Mediterranean. The combination of epidemic disease and the rise of Islam broke down that system and forced a ruralization of the European economy. The result of this was to shift the balance of power towards western Europe for the first time in centuries, and is probably the key factor in the transition from the classical to the medieval world. Western Europe is still going to be feudal (more or less), but it's going to remain overshadowed by the non-feudal economy of eastern Europe, the middle east, and north Africa. Which means that, even if Justinian's heirs aren't able to hold onto Italy politically, they're likely to remain the economic and cultural hegemons of Europe.

Long story short (too late!), no plague means no definitive transition from the classical world to the medieval world. Europe in 800 is going to look a lot more like Europe in 500 than it did in OTL.
 
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The Plague had a Serious effect on civilization as many have pointed out: The Fuedal system remains, which is a bad thing.

If you have slaves to do your labor, why do you need any serious machines? The Plague left a void that was filled by machines, most famously by Gutenburg's Printer, which helped lead to the Reformation. The Reformation lead to many conflicts ultimately producing a more diverse and tolerant Western World.

Unless a different disease comes along with a death toll similar, then You have An ever continuing Dark Age. Gastrointestinal diseases kill babies in the thousands, and a host of other diseases remain in circulation in a burgeoning population. Minorities are persecuted much more seriously.

While diseases like Measles and Leprosy will go extinct, other diseases like Typhus and Gonnorhea would ravage populations.

Whatever Empire rises in The Middle East would easily become the beacon of Science, even there it is limited by theological beliefs.

China would succumb to a different Rodent disease, unfortunately because that is the rat's native home. Possibly something like Hantavirus.

The New World Population could see 40 million people, which would be begging for a disease to ravage them. Likely Influenza, West Nile Virus, or in an extreme case, R. Seeberi would be the first diseases to seriously affect the New World.
By 2000, you'd see many different strains of those select diseases that came to America.
 
Vastly higher population! Maybe half the population of Europe died because of it!

True in the short term, but not necessarily in the longer term. Demographic collapses (and both the Justinianic Plague and the Black Death can easily be qualified as such) have the obvious immediate impact of decreasing the population of the afflicted area. But the long term effects are trickier, IMO.

European population eventually rebounded after both outbreaks (although much faster after the 14th century than after the 6th century). But in the interim you have a power vacuum that forces the surviving population to either innovate or surrender things that they took for granted in a pre-outbreak world (as WienerBlut points out with Gutenberg's press). In some cases, these things are luxury goods, and aren't strictly necessary for society to continue functioning in some capacity. But other things aren't so disposable, and the survivors have the choice of either finding alternatives through innovation or perishing.

This was likely the case with Europe in the aftermath of the Justinianic Plague. The food supply of the Roman world relied a great deal on trade. For example, Egypt had served as the breadbasket of much of Europe for centuries, with grain grown on the shores of the Nile feeding Roman provincials throughout the empire. Those trade routes had taken a bit of a beating as the empire went through successive shocks due to civil war and barbarian invasion in the fifth century, but nothing like what happened due the plague. Egypt (which is likely where the plague was launched into Europe in the first place) had fewer people, and could therefore produce less grain, and there were fewer sailors and merchants to transport the grain that was put on the market.

The fact that Europe didn't starve to death owes a lot to the fact that the formally marginal regions of the old Roman empire were able to adapt to the plague-changed environment. Just as the printing press served as a replacement for the monks and scribes that were no longer in abundance after the Black Death, the introduction of three-field crop rotation and the widespread adoption of the moldboard plow allowed Europe to feed itself absent previous volumes of trade. But remember, these innovations didn't go away once populations had climbed back up to pre-plague levels. Agricultural methods introduced during the waves of plague from 540 through 800 allowed more land to be cultivated than before, and allowed the land that was previously under cultivation to be made more efficient. The end result was that more food could be produced, which allowed population to increase more rapidly than it could have otherwise done.

After a sufficient period of time, I suspect that the population growth of OTL's post-plague Europe will have caused it to surpass ATL's plague-free Europe in total population. That being said, the prolonged impact of the Justinianic Plague and its aftershocks means that ATL Europe and the Mediterranean world is going to remain a much more populous place than it was OTL until, at the very earliest, the middle of the ninth century.

One of the interesting social effects of eliminating the plague, I think, would be a vastly different attitude towards medicine. I've heard it argued that the inability of doctors to do much of anything to stem the devastation of the Justinianic Plague led to the entire medical profession being, to some degree, discredited in the medieval world. Without a similar "humbling" of the field, I think the profession would remain much more highly respected. The same caveats as before, however, still apply: just because late classical medicine remains better regarded doesn't necessarily mean that its going to be as effective over the long run.
 
The cultural continuity will be much greater. In the long run, I wonder if the result of this POD is that Rome pulls a China--the Roman Empire and classical civilization becomes the default condition of the West, with the occasional 100-300 year period of warring states and barbarian invasions.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
If this POD mean no Black Death, Europe would look a lot different, but at the same time surprisingly similar. German migration to the east would continue without the stop we saw after the Black Death. Scandinavia will likely not unite in the Kalmar Union but stay much stronger on their own. The deforestation of north westen Europe will push for a greater use of coal, so we may very well see the industrial revolution a century and a half earlier. All in all a quite different Europe. A interesting aspect are that urban populations are more likely to suffer from loss from such plagues. So we may very well see more Greeks in the Balkans and Anatolia, while Armenian and other Christians may do better in the Middle East. Jews may also make up a even bigger part of the Polish-Lithuanian population, through they may be pushed out of their niche by German migrants.
 
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