WI no Black Plague in Europe

The opposite of the usual "black plague kills more people"

What if the Black Plague never came to Europe at all?
Or how about it killed 60-75% of Asia's population?
 
The opposite of the usual "black plague kills more people"

What if the Black Plague never came to Europe at all?
Or how about it killed 60-75% of Asia's population?

Disease does not work that way.

Seriously, if it works its way through Asia, its going to make it to Europe. And I'm pretty sure the disease had varying mortality rates. I've been told (but don't quote me on this) that it killed upwards of 80% of some areas in Asia.

Your better of asking if the Black Death never occurs in the Old World at all. Not in Europe, not in the middle east, not in China.
 
Disease does not work that way.

Seriously, if it works its way through Asia, its going to make it to Europe. And I'm pretty sure the disease had varying mortality rates. I've been told (but don't quote me on this) that it killed upwards of 80% of some areas in Asia.

Your better of asking if the Black Death never occurs in the Old World at all. Not in Europe, not in the middle east, not in China.

Right well I meant that in the first question, what if it never existed.
I guess secondly what if it affected Asia worse than it did Europe?

Two separate questions. I'm more interested in if it never existed.
 
Disease does not work that way.

Seriously, if it works its way through Asia, its going to make it to Europe. And I'm pretty sure the disease had varying mortality rates. I've been told (but don't quote me on this) that it killed upwards of 80% of some areas in Asia.

Your better of asking if the Black Death never occurs in the Old World at all. Not in Europe, not in the middle east, not in China.

yes, i recall reading the same, some chinese cities had a a deathrate of 90%.
whereas in europe there were patches where the plague stayed away.


Personally iget the feeling the plague was something like the the disease plagues in the americas. the mongol hordes orginate from the area where the plague originated, so probably had more resistance, and took the disease with them. so stopping the mongols from starting their conquering should likely limit the spread of the plague too.
 
With no black plague in Europe, feudalism would stay as a tenable system for much longer with the larger population.
 
Here are a few key posts from the discussion of a few months ago in the thread, What If No Black Death?:


There is evidence to suggest a large famine would likely have occurred as Europe was overpopulated. Royal lines would be notably changed, and maybe we get personal unions and geopolitical changes we'd never have seen otherwise.

Europe was reaching carrying capacity anyway, without the black death there would have been a famine at some point that caused pretty severe casualties.

There might not have been a Scientific or later Industrial Revolution. A good example of a slice of Europe without the Black Death (because any infection on board a ship would kill the crew off before the ship could get there) was Greenland. The Greenlanders had a social structure that kept them attempting to farm and fish and starve and avoiding the heathen Innuit when the Innuit had the key to their adaptation to a hunting life under new conditions. The social structure kept them playing by the rules even after that became counterproductive.
So maybe something like the Black Death (which laid the Muslims low too). prevented the Little Ice Age from causing the kind of ecological collapse in Europe that had doomed previous Central European civilizations such as the Middle European Celts when the climate turned too cold to support the population. Because of the Black Death's repeated hammer blows, not only were Europeans brought into a condition of labor shortage that stressed feudalism and increased the value of the individual, the repeated trauma of the Black Death engendered skepticism about the Catholic and Orthodox world view, particularly the Great Chain of Being, but also including any religious explanation for phenonena. Too many people were too traumatized from losing loved ones for survivors of the pestilence to believe in the Church the same way that they did before. So, as Ioan Couliano said, Science could evolve out of the magical tradition the same way a wingless fly can evolve living beneath a waterfall where flight is impossible.
Moreover, the Death affected everyone and kept nations from having surpluses of fighting men. One of the reasons for the Crusades was that there were so many knights that knights were killing each other over trivialities, without a war to make "wall fodder" of some of them. What the Death did was basically freeze most nationalities in place. With the singular exception of Ottoman Turkey, no one West of Russia was successfully doing any conquering during the 15th Century. The Death prevented desperate Scandinavian states from launching attacks southward against Germany and France but it also restrained the Almohads from pressing advantages against Christian Castille OTTL. Had the Death not happened, we might have seen another Wanderenvogel as Northern Europeans attempted to migrate southwards. But we also would not see the Almohads and Ottomans moving more aggressively into Europe and Islamiciszing European nations weakened by famine--something we would be living with today. :(

Well, given the abysmal sanitary conditions of Middle Age Europe, constant increase of the population and the development of cities and villages a pandemic was just waiting on its wings...if Bubonic Plague couldn't reach Western Europe, other thing would hit hard soon...maybe influenza, smallpox or even cholera if a pandemic could be averted until the 16 - 17th century....

Let me add that I concur w/the general thrust of these assessments.
 
With no black plague in Europe, feudalism would stay as a tenable system for much longer with the larger population.

Agreed. It was the low population that created a greater demand for labor in England. That in turn gave more leverage to the peasants when it came to making deals with lords. One lord not working out for you? That's okay because his neighbor has a better deal.

I'd also like to add that a larger base population may delay industrialization in Europe. What's the point in labor-saving devices when laborers are a plenty? Aside from costs...
 
bigger population will increase the pressure for emigration, and maybe the americas are (re)discovered earlier
 
bigger population will increase the pressure for emigration, and maybe the americas are (re)discovered earlier
That seems unlikely to me. Europeans desperate for less populated lands would not sail into the Atlantic hoping they might stumble upon land somewhere. Columbus was looking for a sea route to the East Indies for the purposes of trade not settlement. Colonization of Africa seems more probable though it's quite possible that increased traffic to Africa accidentally leads to someone stumbling upon Brazil.
 
Let me add my support to jabberwoky's thesis about the shift to post-feudal models of tenancy and labor. The one thing to remember though is that there are places in Europe where feudalism lasted much longer than others, so rather than this being a general effect it's going to be one specific to those societies where you're seeing the evolution to a free peasantry during this period.

In more specific terms, I've read numerous academic arguments that the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 was partly attributable to the economic changes brought about by the Plague. I don't know the period well enough to say that one could turn that into some kind of "Richard II survives" point of departure, but it might be interesting to work with.

It's also interesting to think about a European culture more in continuity with the "gothic" pre-plague world, although in the end the critical elements that created the Renaissance, such as restored contacts with the east and the rediscovery of classical manuscripts in the monastic libraries (has anyone here read Stephen Greenblatt's "The Swerve"?) would likely still have happened.
 

NothingNow

Banned
The opposite of the usual "black plague kills more people"

What if the Black Plague never came to Europe at all?
Or how about it killed 60-75% of Asia's population?

Some other disease crops up, and has a pretty spectacular run. Europe at the time was perfectly primed for a massive epidemic, given that malnutrition was still exceedingly common, considering that you had the Great Famine running from 1315 to 1317 (or 1322 depending on how you look at things,) something (probably Anthrax) killing off livestock en masse in 1318, the Little Ice Age kicking off, Typhus in the cities, and in general attempts by various monarchs to maintain their own standard of living exacerbated the issue, and pretty much, by the eve of the black death, malnourishment and related disease were extremely common.
 
That seems unlikely to me. Europeans desperate for less populated lands would not sail into the Atlantic hoping they might stumble upon land somewhere. Columbus was looking for a sea route to the East Indies for the purposes of trade not settlement. Colonization of Africa seems more probable though it's quite possible that increased traffic to Africa accidentally leads to someone stumbling upon Brazil.

Right. Long distance trade (which in this period could garner 100 percent profits) could justify the investment. Permitting poor people to stay alive doesn't, at least on a purely economic basis. They sure can't pay for their own transoceanic migrations, unless a state or religious body steps in to do this for them, probably with their own rationale.
 
north america t this time was already visited by the vikings, and fishermen were already aware of the fishing possibilities of the grand banks.

It was pretty much a matter of time that they would give it another try.


and of course a higher population in scandinavia will mean that more settler will give greenland etc a try.
 
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