Episode 207: After the Black Death

Historically Thinking

In 1347 the population of England was something on the order of 5.5 million. After the first wave of the Black Death had crashed upon the island’s shores and then receded, that population had been reduced to 2.8 million. Immense tragedy lies behind that number, and immense consequences as well. But the plague would return to England again in 1361, 1369, and 1375, with further human cost. And the climate made war against the English as well, with a cold period that led to crop loss and famine. Investigating the consequences of the Black Death has been one of the major areas of research for historians of medieval England since nearly the creation of modern history. Now Professor Mark Bailey offers us a new interpretation of those consequences, in a deeply researched and thought through study After the Black Death: Economy, society, and the law in fourteenth-century England. Mark Bailey is Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.