Was Black Death a blessing in disguise for Europe?
Richard Muller
Richard Muller, Prof Physics, UCBerkeley, http://tinyurl.com/z7c55sa
Answered 21h ago
I would never say that such a terrible event could be a blessing. But Jim Arnold, a professor at UC San Diego (now deceased) told me a fascinating fact about the plague. The plague caused an acute labor shortage across Europe. In parts of Europe, he said, the result was improved conditions for the laborers. In other parts the result was more oppression, a restrengthening of the feudal system with reduced rights for workers.
He told me that he could draw a line between the two large regions, and when he saw it, he was startled. It was very close to the line of the “Iron Curtain” that (at the time he did this) divided Europe into democratic and autocratic regions.
This thought fascinated me. The idea that the oppression of Eastern Europe dated back to the 1300s was amazing. (Of course, now that I am gaining in age, that period doesn’t seem as remote as it did when I was younger.) I’d be interested to know if any research by professional historians reached a similar conclusion. Are there any published papers or books on this? Or was Jim just wrong, the result of an overly enthusiastic physical scientist trying to study history?
