At 12:40 PM 03/05/05 -0400, Damon wrote:
BTW, a prediction I have not checked out is that there would have been far fewer wars than average in Europe in the decades following the Black Death.
Somehow I doubt that. The Late Middle Ages was in part typified by the frequency, and the new brutality of war. In Western Europe alone we still had the 100 Years War, which reached its bloody climax in the 15th C, not to mention the War of the Roses, Burgundy vs. Switzerland, etc. I'd be interested in seeing this research, but one thing you would have to account for is the changing nature and attitude towards war that developed in the Late MA.
It seems in a short web search that nobody has correlated the deaths from disease and deaths from wars. I would not expect the Black Death to depress wars for more than the time for the population to come back up to pre Black Death levels--perhaps a few decades.
If anyone has pointers to decent numeric data, please let me know.
Keith Henson
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