Areas under human cultivation for centuries were reclaimed by nature with no one to till the fields, and the workers remaining found themselves in excellent bargaining positions with their once-untouchable feudal overlords due to a dire labor shortage. Imagine half the people in New York City, LA, or the San Francisco Bay Area keeling over in the space of less than a decade. If a similar proportion of people died in the United States today, the body count would pass the 100 million mark.
We’re talking about somewhere around a third of the overall population on the continent, and possibly as many as half in urban centers like Paris. The Black Death swept through Europe in the 1300s killed at least 50 million people worldwide-and that’s the low estimate. Historians love to argue, but it’s uncontroversial to say that this disease has had massive, ongoing, far-reaching effects for mankind.
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