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The Black Death and Justinian’s Plague: History’s Worst Pestilences

Khalid Elhassan January 8, 2025 13 min

Plague - Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death — Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death. Live Science

5. The Consequences of the Plague

Plague - Black Death victims — Black Death victims. Herbology

The immediate reactions to the first and deadliest Black Death wave were only temporary: the dead died, but life went on for the survivors. Within a few years, trade resumed, the economy picked up, and the survivors went back to waging wars and settling their disputes and differences by killing each other. The Black Death’s longer term consequences revolved around the sudden impact of a significantly reduced population. In many parts of Europe, the land under cultivation shrank because many serfs and laborers had died. However, that often led to an increase in productivity in the land that was still cultivated. With more land available than could be cultivated, people focused on the best agricultural lands, and abandoned more marginal lands or turned them into pastures.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.