The crisis of the fourteenth century

Detail

The end of the long expansion

• From roughly the 11th to the 13th century Europe grew — more land ploughed, more people, more towns. In the fourteenth century this growth stopped and reversed.
• Three blows did it: climate change, shortage of silver, and the Black Death. They hit one after another, so Europe had no time to recover in between.

Blow 1 — Climate and soil exhaustion

• By the late 13th century the warm summers ended. Summers turned bitterly cold.
• Growing season became about a month shorter. A shorter season means crops get less time to ripen, so harvests are smaller.
• Higher ground could no longer be farmed. Land on hills and uplands became too cold to give a crop.
• Storms and sea floods destroyed farmsteads along the coasts. Whole farms and the tax income from them were simply washed away.
• Soil was worn out. Peasants had reclaimed too much land and ploughed it hard.
• Even the three-field rotation (fields split into three — two sown, one left resting each year) could not put back what heavy ploughing took out.
• Less land was left as pasture (grass land for grazing). So cattle numbers fell.

• Fewer cattle meant less manure, and less manure meant still weaker soil. A downward loop.

• Population had grown past what the land could feed. Result: the great famine of 1315–17, then massive cattle deaths in the 1320s (a cattle plague on top of the human hunger).

• Modern climate study of the Great Famine of 1315–17 points to torrential rainfall, waterlogged land, crop failure and long flooding as key causes — it is called the first catastrophic event of the century [3].
• The famine struck unevenly by class: it hit mainly peasants and the urban poor; in some towns about 10% of people died, and the cold winters and wet or dry summers ran on to 1322 [3].

Blow 2 — The silver shortage

• Europe's silver came mostly from mines in Austria and Serbia. By the fourteenth century these mines were running short.
• Silver was the metal of coins. Less silver meant fewer coins for a growing trade.
• Governments debased the currency — debasement means mixing cheaper metals into the coin while calling it the same value.
• Traders lost trust in the coin. Trade suffered. This matters because by now much of Europe ran on money payments, not just on service and produce.

Blow 3 — The Black Death, 1347–50

• Trade ships carried rats with plague-bearing fleas into European ports. Western Europe had been fairly cut off before, so its people had little resistance.
• The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas [2].
• Spread, year by year [2]:
• 1347 — Sicily.
• 1348 — North Africa, mainland Italy, Spain, England, France.
• 1349 — Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, the Low Countries.

• 1350 — Scandinavia and the Baltic lands.

• Death toll: about 20% of all Europe died, and up to 40% in some places.

• Who suffered worst: crowded cities, and enclosed monasteries where monks lived shut in together and could not escape each other.
• Further waves came in the 1360s and 1370s, so the population could not bounce back.
• Population fall: 73 million (1300) → 45 million (1400).
• The writer Boccaccio described the dead as 'heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches'. This matches what diggers found at the Royal Mint, East Smithfield, London, where more than 2,000 plague victims were buried in 1348 and 1349; bones from that cemetery gave the genetic proof of Yersinia pestis [2].

Note: Britannica gives about 25 million dead in Europe for 1347–51 and mentions other estimates of 30–50% of the population [2]. The NCERT figure of 20% of Europe, up to 40% in places, is the version to use in the exam.

Consequence 1 — Labour shortage and the wage jump

• So many died that there were too few workers for the land.
• The balance between farming and manufacture broke. Farm goods were plenty for the few survivors, while craft goods and workers were scarce.
• Agricultural prices fell — fewer mouths meant less demand for grain.
• Wages in England rose as much as 250%. A surviving farm worker could demand double wages and simply walk away if refused.
• Lords were squeezed from both sides: their grain sold cheap, their labour cost dear.

Consequence 2 — Lords try to turn the clock back

• Income-squeezed lords tried to scrap money-contracts (fixed cash rents) and revive labour-services — that is, force peasants to work the lord's land for free again, as in earlier centuries.
• Peasants refused. They had won these freedoms over two centuries and would not hand them back.

Consequence 3 — The peasant revolts

• Flanders 1323 · France 1358 · England 1381.
• Where they were fiercest is the key point: the revolts were most intense exactly in the areas that had prospered most. Peasants there had the most to lose, so they fought hardest to defend gains already made. Revolt came from rising expectations, not from pure misery.
• The English rising of 1381 is also called Wat Tyler's Rebellion and was the first great popular rebellion in English history [4]. Its immediate trigger was the unpopular poll tax of 1380 (a flat tax on every head, rich or poor), which brought long-growing anger to a boil [4].
• All the revolts were ruthlessly crushed — the rebels lost on the battlefield.
• But the lords still lost the war: old feudal privileges could not be put back. The money economy had gone too far to be reversed.

The war in the background

• The Hundred Years War between England and France ran across the same century (Class 11, Ch 4 "The Three Orders" table: 1338–1461; Class 11, Ch 3 "Changing Traditions" timeline: 1337–1453).
• It was an on-and-off struggle over several disputes, including who had the lawful right to the French crown [5].
• War meant heavy taxes on peasants at the exact moment plague and famine had cut their numbers — one more push towards revolt.

Chapter timeline anchors

• 1066 Norman Conquest · from 1100 cathedrals built · 1315–17 great famine · 1337/1338–1453/1461 Hundred Years War · 1347–50 Black Death · 1381 peasants' revolt in England.

Prelims Hooks

• Great famine of Europe: 1315–17; massive cattle deaths in the 1320s.
• Silver shortage came from mines in Austria and Serbia; governments answered by debasing the currency.
• Black Death struck western Europe in 1347–50; it reached Sicily first, in 1347, and Scandinavia and the Baltic last, in 1350 [2].
• Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, spread by fleas on rodents [2].
• Europe's population fell from 73 million (1300) to 45 million (1400); roughly 20% died, up to 40% in some places.
• Boccaccio wrote of the dead 'heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches'.
• Wages in England rose as much as 250% after the plague, while agricultural prices fell.
• Peasant revolts: Flanders 1323, France 1358, England 1381.
• The English revolt of 1381 is also called Wat Tyler's Rebellion, triggered by the poll tax of 1380 [4].
• Hundred Years War: England v. France — Class 11, Ch 4 "The Three Orders": 1338–1461; Class 11, Ch 3 "Changing Traditions": 1337–1453; fought partly over the succession to the French crown [5].

Mains Points

• The crisis was not one event but a chain. Climate cooling and worn-out soil cut food output; the silver shortage and debasement choked trade; the plague then removed a fifth of the people. Use this to argue that medieval Europe's expansion had already hit an ecological ceiling before the plague arrived — the plague finished a crisis that hunger had started.
• Population collapse changed the bargaining power of labour. With workers scarce, wages rose up to 250% and grain prices fell — the classic land-labour ratio argument. This flipped the balance between the three orders: those who prayed and those who fought lost income, while those who worked gained.
• The revolts failed militarily but succeeded historically. Every rising was crushed, yet no lord could restore labour-services. Good line for an answer on why force alone cannot reverse an economic change: once rents were paid in cash and labour could move, feudal bonds had no base to stand on. This is the bridge from feudalism to the money economy of the sixteenth century.
• Linkage with the Hundred Years War (1337/38–1453/61) [5]: war taxation plus plague plus famine is a useful three-way pressure model — compare with other pre-modern peasant revolts (e.g. discontent under heavy revenue demand in Indian history) when a question asks for cross-regional comparison.