30. Long Term Consequences
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 cultivated. With more land available than could be cultivated, people focused on cultivating the best agricultural lands, abandoning more marginal lands or turning them into pastures.
The shortage of labor was also a boon to surviving laborers. Faced with a labor scarcity, landowners and employers were forced to compete for workers by offering them better wages and working conditions. Those changes brought new fluidity to a hitherto rigidly stratified society. The land economy survived, but was weakened, as a new money economy – which ultimately replaced it – emerged. Psychologically, the shock of the Black Death caused more people to ask more questions to which the Catholic Church had few answers, which served to speed up and fuel the budding Renaissance. The world would never be the same.
