The Black Death: The Plague That Made Workers Rich

In October 1347, twelve Genoese ships sailed into the harbour of Messina. Within five years, the Black Death had killed tens of millions of people. But the strangest part of the story comes after the dying: workers could suddenly name their price, landlords panicked, kings passed laws against higher wages, and in the end ordinary people rose in revolt. This is the story of the plague in about sixteen minutes: the road from Central Asia, doctors who blamed the stars, the germ found in ancient teeth, the massacres of Jews, the first quarantine, and which parts of the famous story are true and which are not. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:09 The Ships at Messina 2:26 The Road From the East 4:01 Nobody Knew Why 5:44 The Germ in the Teeth 7:38 The Search for Someone to Blame 9:00 The First Quarantine 10:20 The Empty Fields 11:47 The Price of Work 13:11 The Angry Years 14:43 What the Plague Left Behind SOURCES Maria A. Spyrou et al., "The source of the Black Death in fourteenth-century central Eurasia", Nature 606 (2022) Kirsten I. Bos et al., "A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death", Nature 478 (2011) Katharine R. Dean et al., "Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic", PNAS 115 (2018) Adam Izdebski et al., "Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic", Nature Ecology & Evolution 6 (2022) Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History (Boydell Press, 2004) Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Collins, 1969) Rosemary Horrox (ed.), The Black Death (Manchester University Press, 1994) Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (Free Press, 1983) Gregory Clark, "The Long March of History: Farm Wages, Population, and Economic Growth, England 1209-1869", Economic History Review 60 (2007) Nico Voigtlaender and Hans-Joachim Voth, "The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War, and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe", Review of Economic Studies 80 (2013) World Health Organization, Plague fact sheet Wikipedia (as an overview, checked against the above): Black Death, Black Death in Italy, Strasbourg massacre, Peasants' Revolt, Statute of Labourers 1351, Plague doctor costume All images are credited in the pinned comment. Scenes without a surviving picture are AI-generated illustrations; they are marked there. Maps, charts and counters are custom animations. The voice is AI-generated. The music is self-generated. #BlackDeath #MedievalHistory #History