After the Black Death

What were the effects of the Black Death of 1348–9 and subsequent outbreaks of epidemic disease on economy and society? This classic question lies at the heart of Mark Bailey’s new study, which represents the author’s 2019 James Ford Lectures in the University of Oxford skilfully reworked into a substantial and scintillating book. One might be forgiven for doubting whether a genuinely fresh take on such a well-trodden topic was possible. Yet Bailey meets this challenge with astonishing aplomb, demolishing a series of orthodox views on the period via re-readings of the huge secondary literature combined with a wealth of new primary evidence. Bailey builds in places on his 2014 book The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (rev. ante, cxxx [2015], pp. 971–3), but has extended and reinforced ideas in the latter to produce a more ambitious work which leads to novel and important conclusions at both the

Art · Economic history · Period (music · Political science · Serfdom · Sociology · Classics · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History