Plague

Few events have touched the lives of our ancestors in such deadly form as Plague.

I commented on its history in a blog post in my other blog, Discover Genealogy on 21 August 2018: Natural Disasters and Family Misfortunes 16: Plague Readers are directed to that post for more detail about the origin, pathology and spread of the disease.

To briefly summarize that post, there have been three pandemics of the disease:

·         the Justinian, about 541-542 AD, which devastated the Byzantine Empire

·         the Black Death, 1346-1351 AD which spread across medieval Europe

·         the Modern Plague, which began in the 1860s in China and spread to port cities around the world by the early 1900s

Most genealogists will be at least passing familiar with the Black Death and subsequent plagues that attacked centres across Europe between the 14^th and 18^th centuries. Of those most known after the original outbreak in the mid-14^th century was the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666. Few areas of the continent were spared from the impacts of the disease.

 

Plague incidences in Europe (source Schmid, 2015)

An excellent source of information, ideal for reading by family historians, is a book by Bruce M. S. Campbell, titled The Great Transition. The author presents a detailed summary of the early decades of the Little Ice Age and some of the perils, including plague, that affected people and communities around the known world in the 13^th to 15^th centuries. Dr. Campbell has also made many presentations about the subject. One which is highly recommended was a talk given at a 2016 conference about The Crisis of the 14^th Century, organized by the German Historical Institute, and titled The environmental origins of the Black Death. You can, and should in my opinion, watch it on You Tube.

The Justinian and Black Death plague events occurred, probably not coincidentally, during cold climatic periods, respectively, the Dark Ages cold Period (400 to 900 AD) and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD). During these times, the warm, moisture-laden westerlies blew from the North Atlantic through southern Europe and into western Asia.

The rodent population, hosts of the yersina pestis virus, expanded as the central Asian desert they inhabited bloomed. During down cycles, fleas carrying the virus hopped on to rats and humans travelling through the region. Unsuspecting human populations across Europe were then infected by the rapidly spreading plagues.

 

Genesis of plague and the process of introduction into Durope (source Schmid, 2015)

Plague outbreaks, from the time of the Black Death in the 1340s, continued through the Little Ice Age, as the overall climatic conditions remained essentially unchanged. During the 18^th century, though, its effects were less severe, and the locations reduced in number and extent. By that time, hygienic conditions were substantially improved across the continent, lessening the potential of contracting the disease.

The Modern Plague epidemic began in China, possibly aided by cool climatic periods. The pathogen undoubtedly originated in the same desert areas of western Asia. It spread to other parts of the world through outbound ships from Chinese ports which were easier than through the ancient trade routes to the west.

Over the decades since the last outbreak, vaccines have been developed for treatment of the disease, although they are not 100% effective yet. Early detection and recognition of where the virus can be found has limited its exposure and transmission. The affliction is still endemic in many parts of the world, but the wrath of Mother Nature in producing epidemics of the type experienced during the Little Ice Age is unlikely.

References:

Campbell, Bruce. M. S. (2016). The Great Transition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Schmid, Boris V., Ulf Büntgen, W. Ryan Easterday, Christian Ginzler, Lars Walløe, Barbara Bramanti & Nils Chr. Stenseth. (2015). Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and

successive plague reintroductions into Europe. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), 112(10), pp. 3020-3025,retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/10/3020.full.pdf