Crisis of the late Middle Ages
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Around the start of the 14th century a series of events began that brought centuries of European prosperity and growth to a halt. Three major crises would lead to radical changes in all areas of society - they were demographic collapse, political instabilities and lastly religious upheavals.
A series of famines and plagues, beginning with the Great Famine of 1315-1317 and especially the Black Death of 1348, reduced the population perhaps by half or more as the Medieval Warm Period came to a close and the 1st century of the Little Ice Age began. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare. Soil exhaustion, overpopulation, wars, and epidemic diseases helped cause hundreds of famines in Europe during the Middle Ages, including 95 in Britain and 75 in France.[1][2] In France, the Hundred Years' War, crop failures and epidemics reduced the population by two-thirds.[3]
Popular revolts in late medieval Europe and civil wars between nobles within countries such as the Wars of the Roses were common, and there were international conflicts between kings such as France and England in the Hundred Years' War. The unity of the Roman Catholic Church was shattered by the Great Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was also in decline, in the aftermath of the Interregnum (1247-1273), the Empire lost cohesion and politically the separate dynasties of the various German states became more important than their common empire.
Demography
Some scholars contend that at the beginning of the 14th century Europe had become overpopulated.[4][5] By the 14th century frontiers had ceased to expand and internal colonization was coming to an end, but population levels remained high. Then, during the period a number of calamities struck. Starting with the Great Famine in 1315, and then the Black Death of 1348-1350, the population of Europe plummeted.
The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. In Germany, about 40% of the named inhabitants disappeared. The population of Provence was reduced by 50% and in some regions in Tuscany 70% were lost during this period.
Popular revolt
Before the 14th century, popular uprisings were not unknown, for example, uprisings at a manor house against an unpleasant overlord, but they were local in scope. This changed in the 14th and 15th centuries when new downward pressures on the poor resulted in mass movements and popular uprisings across Europe. To indicate how common and widespread these movements became, in Germany between 1336 and 1525 there were no less than sixty phases of militant peasant unrest[6].
Civil wars
International wars
References
- ^ Poor studies will always be with us
- ^ The facts on malnutrition & famine
- ^ Don O'Reilly. "Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans". TheHistoryNet.com.
- ^ Perry Anderson (1974 [2006]). Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. Verso. p. 186, 199. ISBN 1859841074.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|year=(help)CS1 maint: year (link) - ^ Jonathan Maunder (2009-04-07). "Feudalism and the growth of the market". Socialist Worker Online. Retrieved 2009-12-22.
- ^ Peter Blickle, Unruhen in der ständischen Gesellschaft 1300-1800, 1988
See also
- Renaissance of the 12th century
- Renaissance of the 15th century
- Late Middle Ages
- History of science in the Middle Ages