The Black Death
A Global History of Humanity's Most Devastating Pandemic
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A magisterial history” (The Guardian) of humanity’s greatest natural disaster—the Black Death—that reveals the true global impact and terrible human cost of this calamity, from the renowned author of The Crusades and The Greatest Knight.
“Terrific—and truly terrifying. Thomas Asbridge puts a human face—or rather multiple faces—on the Black Death.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.
In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. The Black Death was unquestionably one of history’s defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia.
Tracing the pandemic’s course across the medieval globe, The Black Death contrasts the experiences of different peoples, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, charting this catastrophe’s transformative effects on diverse aspects of medieval life. And crucially, Asbridge demonstrates that the plague was often at its most destructive in the Islamic world, where it ultimately played a role in the collapse of the mighty Mamluk Empire.
The Black Death also brings the human drama of this calamitous era to life, evoking the terror and the turmoil that beset cities such as London, Cairo, and Florence. Asbridge reconstructs the lives of the men, women and children who faced the Black Death—from ruling monarchs to peasant farmers—laying bare both the abject horror they endured and the courageous resolve they often demonstrated while striving to survive.
Uncovering a story that speaks to our own age, The Black Death highlights humankind’s capacity for compassion and resilience amidst a global crisis to explain how the medieval world confronted, and ultimately overcame, this shattering pandemic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Asbridge (The Crusades) revisits long-term impacts of "the most lethal natural disaster in human history" in this striking revisionist account of the Black Death. Drawing on firsthand accounts and modern-day genetic research, Asbridge argues that the plague's "devastating repercussions" were "felt most severely in parts of the Muslim world, rather than in Catholic Europe." The latter, despite a higher death rate, for the most part "proved capable of remoulding itself to meet the ongoing challenges" of a "new reality," whereas great political disruptions occurred in the "seemingly invincible Mamluk Empire—the Islamic force that had turned back the Mongol horde and crushed the crusaders." Crippled by the outbreak of plague, the Mamluk were soon "overrun by the Ottomans," a development that would transform the global balance of power for centuries. Other notable social changes brought about by the plague include an "exacerbated... persecution of religious minorities in Catholic Europe," particularly Jews in Germany. Throughout, Asbridge draws parallels with the Covid-19 pandemic, noting that Europe was better positioned to weather the social upheaval thanks to its economic dependence on "localized supply"—which Asbridge pegs as a vital lesson for today, as humanity stares down "a century that is likely to see the modern world remade almost beyond recognition" by climate change. This deeply researched study of global disaster has great resonance for the present moment.
