The Black Death that hit Western Eurasia in the fourteenth century was the deadliest pandemic in recorded history with the region losing about half its population. It is rightly viewed as an incredible disaster. However, as Jonathan Kennedy points out in his book Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues, the evolution of human history has often been altered by such a catastrophe. Here we discuss his claim that this particular plague and its massive casualties provided the impetus to move societies from the stagnant economic construct of feudalism and push them in the direction of capitalism, and eventually to the Industrial Revolution. This latter development would lead to conditions so conducive to the spread of deadly diseases that one is allowed to refer to an “industrial plague” which dramatically lowered life expectancies for the participating workers. This encounter with industrialization taught societies the need for strong interventionist governments.
Kennedy provides this perspective.
“The standard of living for most people in Europe had barely changed since the days of the Roman Empire. The American historian Robert Brenner points out that the feudal system leads to economic stagnation because it isn’t in the interests of either feudal serfs or their lords to maximize profits.”
In the era of feudalism, a King might gain the allegiance of a series of lords who would benefit from a continuance of his reign. The income of a fiefdom came from the serfs who worked the land and provided craft persons. The serfs were not slaves in the sense that they could be bought or sold, but they were effectively owned by the lord. If they increased their production beyond a share that would suffice their families, the excess would go to the lord. The lord’s goal was to increase his power by strengthening allegiances and fortifying his fiefdom against any potential opposing lords. The system was designed to maintain the status quo.
“Serfs were the lord’s main source of income. Lords would sell surplus crops and spend the proceeds on strengthening their military capacity—for example, building castles, employing soldiers and buying weapons. This was their only rational strategy because they needed to keep the serfs in line and defend their own fief from would be plunderers and conquerors. Lords would also spend their excess income on luxury goods that showed off their status and could be used to reward supporters and expand their following. It would have been incredibly risky to instead invest in technology that improved agricultural productivity. In a feudal society where other lords spent their money on armies and castles, a prosperous but poorly armed fief would have been a very tempting target indeed.”
With a lowering of the population overall by half, and by even more among the lower classes, the relationship between the lords and the serfs changed dramatically. Suddenly, the demand for produce diminished, and the amount of land per serf was greatly increased. The serfs realized they had some degree of leverage in negotiating with the lords. The ensuing outcomes would vary from region to region. A comparison between England and France is enlightening.
England was in a position to be more easily shunted away from classical feudalism than other countries. It had a system of common law that, in principle, treated all freemen equally. It also had a centralized government with a parliament that could more efficiently respond to changing conditions. The feudal lords strived to maintain their power over the serfs leading to violent confrontations, but the forces driving change were too great.
“In the end the Peasants’ Revolt was brutally suppressed by the feudal lords, but land was now so plentiful and agricultural labor so scarce that it was impossible to hold back the tides of social and economic change. Desperate, the lords eventually stopped cooperating with one another and instead began competing for peasants. Serfs streamed away from the manors they were legally bound to and settled wherever they were offered the best conditions. By the mid-fifteenth century, most English peasants were not just paying much lower feudal dues but had also won their freedom…The enfranchisement of England’s serfs was irreversible because the peasants were now freemen who could go to the king’s court to have their new terms of tenancy enforced.”
The next phase came when the lords decided their best deal was to begin leasing their land out to tenants who would provide the highest rent, essentially instituting a market for agricultural land. It also led to competition among the former serfs to maximize output/profit and gain control of the most land, resulting in larger landholdings as weaker producers were eliminated.
“The average farming plot increased from 20 acres at the time of the Black Death to 60 acres by 1600 as inefficient producers were crowded out. Much bigger land holdings were common, however, and farms of more than 100 acres covered 70 percent of England’s cultivated surface.”
France would respond to the Black Death by maintaining its feudal system. The comparison between the two nations was startling.
“The impact of these changes can be clearly seen when we compare England to France, which remained a feudal society. In the former, agricultural productivity increased by 50 percent between 1500 and 1750. In France, productivity declined in the same period, as the rising population was forced to eke out a living on ever smaller plots of land.”
“The emergence of agricultural capitalism finally allowed English society to escape the Malthusian cycle of demographic boom and bust for the first time since the neolithic revolution. The increase in food production was so marked that the countryside was able to feed the rapidly urbanizing population. The proportion of people in England living in towns almost quadrupled to 23 percent between 1500 and 1750, while in France the figures barely changed.”
The consequences of these changes would evolve slowly by modern standards. Increased agricultural productivity meant lower food prices and more money to spend on other products. Fewer laborers were needed to produce greater amounts of food sending a flux of rural people heading to urban areas looking for work. The profit motive inherent in capitalism would inevitably take advantage of this growing workforce and begin producing other goods more efficiently in what would become the industrial revolution. These developments would occur with drastic health consequences.
“The crowded and unsanitary conditions in working-class urban districts created new habitats in which previously uncommon pathogens thrived. Infectious diseases weren’t receding here. In fact, in the middle of the nineteenth century they accounted for about 40 percent of the deaths in England and Wales, with figures much higher in urban areas. In London they were responsible for 55 percent of deaths, and in parts of Liverpool and Manchester the figure was about 60 percent. In The Conditions of the Working Class in England (1845) Engels calculated that the risk of dying from infectious disease was four times higher in large industrial cities such as Manchester and Liverpool than in the surrounding countryside.”
“…according to British historian Richard Evans, cholera was the ‘classic epidemic disease of Europe in the age of industrialization’…the speed and violence with which it struck made it as feared as plague had been in previous centuries.”
These increases in infectious deaths produced dramatic drops in life expectancies.
“The numbers are skewed by very high infant mortality rates, with one in five babies dying before their first birthday. In the central areas of Manchester and Liverpool you could expect to live for about 25 years—a shorter life span than at any time since the Black Death. The figures are even worse when we focus just on the poor. Life expectancy for factory workers was seventeen in Manchester and fifteen in Liverpool. Death rates were so high among the urban working classes that the population was only able to sustain itself because of the continual inflow of people from the surrounding countryside…this is clear evidence that economic growth and increasing real wages did not automatically lead to improvements in health by the invisible hand of the market. Instead, the rapidly growing urban population in the late nineteenth century was experiencing what Simon Szreter terms the ‘4Ds’: disruption, deprivation, disease and death.”
For the British industrial revolution to be sustainable, a healthier environment for the working classes must be provided in order to limit the mortality rate. The correct response to cholera was to limit infections by providing clean water sources. This would require massive investments over an extended period. There was no market force capable of generating this type of effort. It would require political will manifested as government intervention. This situation is an illustration of the never-ending need for capitalism and government to work together.
“In almost every country that industrialized in the nineteenth century, including most of Europe, the U.S. and Japan, the urban working classes experienced a generation-long decline in health and life expectancy. Eventually, the state intervened to mitigate the deprivation and ensured that growth was converted into improved wellbeing and health. The one notable exception to this was Sweden where the government passed comprehensive public health legislation in the 1870s in anticipation of the disruption that was to come. As a result, when Sweden went through its Industrial revolution in the last decade of the nineteenth century, it largely managed to avoid the death and disease part of the four Ds.”
Historians write about history when they believe they have a story to tell. Storytellers can select the facts and figures to use in making their tale compelling. Jonathan Kennedy has produced an engaging and enlightening exposition supporting his claim that microbes have played an important role in the development of human history. His might not be the whole story, but it has certainly been an interesting story.
An appropriate assignment for his readers would be to
detail the changes the recent Covid pandemic has initiated in our
societies. There are certainly
significant short-term effects, but it will take longer to see how things play
out and if other consequences will emerge.
No comments:
Post a Comment