People love repeating counterintuitive factoids. People do not love conducting deep historical research to check whether clever-sounding factoids are actually true. A common one is that the Black Death supercharged Europe’s economy. This is false.
Agreed. There is no evidence that massive plagues or famines generate long-term economic growth.
I would also add that the increased material standard of living during the period was not widespread across Europe. It was highly concentrated in the city/states of Northern Italy and later Flanders and the Netherlands.
It was the rise of commercial societies that create the economic growth, not the Black Death.
I would also add that this article illustrates the problems of understanding causality when one looks at only one region in one time period. If you want to know whether pandemics create economic growth, you need to examine many cases to see what the typical result is. That is why I am a strong believer in the comparative method of examining many regions across a very long time period. Unfortunately, historians do not typically do that. They tend to specialize in one region and one time period.
I contest your claim that "I can easily tell coherent and sensible stories for wildly different conclusions." I don't find either of your examples to be coherent and sensible. The landowner version would obviously work against landowners, and the specialized trade doesn't say anything about effects past one generation.
In terms of why this one might be different, you mention it yourself - the recent advance and spread of mechanical technology. That produces a significant efficiency in the economy's ability to _respond_ to labor becoming more valuable relative to land and capital. No similar overhang exists in your other examples.
I'm not sure you're wrong, but I _am_ sure you're overconfident.
https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-the-century-long is conducting deep historical research, and argues, I think convincingly, that though the equilibrium wage rose, because of draconian government price controls and other action to protect the interests of landholders, the share of gains going to English workers in the form of pay didn't rise, pointing to increased compensation in other forms, itself revealed both by private complaints by the rich and by government efforts to crack down on it.
I freely acknowledge that there was an economic boom in the 12th and 13th centuries before the plague, but I don't think anything in this essay disproves the claim that an increased ratio of land to labor produced a rise in the equilibrium wages of the laborers.
Actually, while I'm arguing with you, I'd like to make the point that your conflation of "the state is doing well" and "the typical farmer is doing well" is really very wrong. Plague is a disaster for the state; one of the reasons the Arabs of Muhammed had so much more power compared to the Byzantines and Persians than they normally did was that they were mostly not on the main plague routes, because Arabia is a backwater. The Antoine Plague, Plague of Justinian and Plague of Athens were terrible for the ability of those states to project force. But I, at least, don't know of any Roman historians comparing wages (measured in loaves of bread) in 160 to those in 220, because Roman historians normally don't talk about either wages or the price of bread. I first hear of it when Diocletian is issuing his price control edicts, establishing serfdom and instituting guilds, as you do in an economic crisis to keep wages low if the equilibrium price is too high for your tastes and you are an absolute monarch.
I'd also add that I have just been listening to the History of Byzantium podcast, which describes how the traditional landholding elites switched to basing their power entirely on government office during the transition from the empire of Justinian to the empire of the Heraclids, and how in the Macedonian Renaissance they had to cope with a new class of magnates who got their power due to the increasing population repopulating the countryside.
I would also note the fact that the famine in Bengal follows on a disastrous state collapse involving tremendous amounts of war, and plunder of everything that could be stolen (thus, I suggest, reducing the carrying capacity of the land), involving the destruction of entire industries as the EIC first plundered Bengal beyond belief, then attempted to retool it into a source of opium for export.
And I believe Ireland is traditionally agreed to be horrifyingly mismanaged with the absentee landlords doing a very bad job of managing their lands and both Irish peasants and landlords engaged in brutal campaigns of terrorism against each other, which also reduces the carrying capacity of the land.
There are a number of answer to this . One it's possible to have loss of population that doesn't actually reduce population from the malthusian edge.
Sometimes the sustaining population on the malthusian edge leads to environmental degradation of carrying capacity so even population dips don't help
You should look at skeletal height data to see if people were doing better after the population crashes.
It's possible to have everyone doing better in many humanistic and health metrics while actually having reduced sociopolitical and technological complexity from the population reduction in the heinrichian sense (see joe Heinrich on Tasmania and how population levels determine complexity maxima)
I think if you get into the details of each case you will see that population crashes do generally elevate standard of living for non elites but that doesn't necessarily mean "good for the economy" .
Population crashes don't necessarily lead to better economic conditions, and have no positive effect on long-term growth trends.
But reading Anton Howe's latest article, it looks like there was in fact massive upward pressure on wages in the wake of the Black Death. Only abnormally draconian and effective state intervention kept wages down.
IF there's still enough people with the know-how to farm at the technological frontier, and IF there's political stability, and IF there's no distortionary economic pressures, we should (and apprently do) see agrarian and unskilled urban wages rise in the wake of mass die-offs.
However, this could actually be bad for the non-agrarian economy. Cheap unskilled labor is great if I can productively employ it, or want to hire a servant. Food might not even become cheaper in cities, if the gains in agricultural productivity are being consumed directly on the farm in lieu of payment.
Do skeletal remains of rural populations show better health in the wake of plague and famine? Good way to test this theory.
The 13th & early 14th centuries were periods of extremely high inflation, particularly of land rents and natural resources like firewood. Governments were increasingly in debt. Wages were not keeping up with inflation. I'll cite Hackett-Fisher's The Great Wave for this.
The plague increased the ratio of land to labor so land owners had to raise wages and improve conditions. The urban collapse made it easier for serfs to find refuge and work in the cities where a year's residence could release one from serfdom. There's a reason that there were so many laws passed against higher wages after the plague.
After the plague, there was a century of rising wages, lower rents, general price stability and the effective end of serfdom. You can argue that economic growth was just as good before, during and after the plague, but if you were a serf or workman as most were, you went from a bad time to a good time.
We have a problem with this today. We have had decades of what appeared to be good economic growth, but the share of per capita GDP an hour of labor provides has fallen to keep the value of that hour roughly constant. If you were wealthy, the eras before and after that century of wage growth and price stability were the good times. If you weren't wealthy, that century was.
Agreed. There is no evidence that massive plagues or famines generate long-term economic growth.
I would also add that the increased material standard of living during the period was not widespread across Europe. It was highly concentrated in the city/states of Northern Italy and later Flanders and the Netherlands.
It was the rise of commercial societies that create the economic growth, not the Black Death.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-and-why-commercial-societies
I would also add that this article illustrates the problems of understanding causality when one looks at only one region in one time period. If you want to know whether pandemics create economic growth, you need to examine many cases to see what the typical result is. That is why I am a strong believer in the comparative method of examining many regions across a very long time period. Unfortunately, historians do not typically do that. They tend to specialize in one region and one time period.
Yeah, broad cross-comparisons are vital, it's the only way to get the general laws out of the individual cases.
I contest your claim that "I can easily tell coherent and sensible stories for wildly different conclusions." I don't find either of your examples to be coherent and sensible. The landowner version would obviously work against landowners, and the specialized trade doesn't say anything about effects past one generation.
In terms of why this one might be different, you mention it yourself - the recent advance and spread of mechanical technology. That produces a significant efficiency in the economy's ability to _respond_ to labor becoming more valuable relative to land and capital. No similar overhang exists in your other examples.
I'm not sure you're wrong, but I _am_ sure you're overconfident.
https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-the-century-long is conducting deep historical research, and argues, I think convincingly, that though the equilibrium wage rose, because of draconian government price controls and other action to protect the interests of landholders, the share of gains going to English workers in the form of pay didn't rise, pointing to increased compensation in other forms, itself revealed both by private complaints by the rich and by government efforts to crack down on it.
I freely acknowledge that there was an economic boom in the 12th and 13th centuries before the plague, but I don't think anything in this essay disproves the claim that an increased ratio of land to labor produced a rise in the equilibrium wages of the laborers.
Actually, while I'm arguing with you, I'd like to make the point that your conflation of "the state is doing well" and "the typical farmer is doing well" is really very wrong. Plague is a disaster for the state; one of the reasons the Arabs of Muhammed had so much more power compared to the Byzantines and Persians than they normally did was that they were mostly not on the main plague routes, because Arabia is a backwater. The Antoine Plague, Plague of Justinian and Plague of Athens were terrible for the ability of those states to project force. But I, at least, don't know of any Roman historians comparing wages (measured in loaves of bread) in 160 to those in 220, because Roman historians normally don't talk about either wages or the price of bread. I first hear of it when Diocletian is issuing his price control edicts, establishing serfdom and instituting guilds, as you do in an economic crisis to keep wages low if the equilibrium price is too high for your tastes and you are an absolute monarch.
I'd also add that I have just been listening to the History of Byzantium podcast, which describes how the traditional landholding elites switched to basing their power entirely on government office during the transition from the empire of Justinian to the empire of the Heraclids, and how in the Macedonian Renaissance they had to cope with a new class of magnates who got their power due to the increasing population repopulating the countryside.
I would also note the fact that the famine in Bengal follows on a disastrous state collapse involving tremendous amounts of war, and plunder of everything that could be stolen (thus, I suggest, reducing the carrying capacity of the land), involving the destruction of entire industries as the EIC first plundered Bengal beyond belief, then attempted to retool it into a source of opium for export.
And I believe Ireland is traditionally agreed to be horrifyingly mismanaged with the absentee landlords doing a very bad job of managing their lands and both Irish peasants and landlords engaged in brutal campaigns of terrorism against each other, which also reduces the carrying capacity of the land.
Was there not a sudden, large increase in GDP per capita after the plague hit? Graphs like this from Broadberry sure seem to show one:
https://share.google/images/FQAaJleiIZedRaVLU
There are a number of answer to this . One it's possible to have loss of population that doesn't actually reduce population from the malthusian edge.
Sometimes the sustaining population on the malthusian edge leads to environmental degradation of carrying capacity so even population dips don't help
You should look at skeletal height data to see if people were doing better after the population crashes.
It's possible to have everyone doing better in many humanistic and health metrics while actually having reduced sociopolitical and technological complexity from the population reduction in the heinrichian sense (see joe Heinrich on Tasmania and how population levels determine complexity maxima)
I think if you get into the details of each case you will see that population crashes do generally elevate standard of living for non elites but that doesn't necessarily mean "good for the economy" .
Population crashes don't necessarily lead to better economic conditions, and have no positive effect on long-term growth trends.
But reading Anton Howe's latest article, it looks like there was in fact massive upward pressure on wages in the wake of the Black Death. Only abnormally draconian and effective state intervention kept wages down.
IF there's still enough people with the know-how to farm at the technological frontier, and IF there's political stability, and IF there's no distortionary economic pressures, we should (and apprently do) see agrarian and unskilled urban wages rise in the wake of mass die-offs.
However, this could actually be bad for the non-agrarian economy. Cheap unskilled labor is great if I can productively employ it, or want to hire a servant. Food might not even become cheaper in cities, if the gains in agricultural productivity are being consumed directly on the farm in lieu of payment.
Do skeletal remains of rural populations show better health in the wake of plague and famine? Good way to test this theory.
Thanks very much for a clear and interesting piece.
The 13th & early 14th centuries were periods of extremely high inflation, particularly of land rents and natural resources like firewood. Governments were increasingly in debt. Wages were not keeping up with inflation. I'll cite Hackett-Fisher's The Great Wave for this.
The plague increased the ratio of land to labor so land owners had to raise wages and improve conditions. The urban collapse made it easier for serfs to find refuge and work in the cities where a year's residence could release one from serfdom. There's a reason that there were so many laws passed against higher wages after the plague.
After the plague, there was a century of rising wages, lower rents, general price stability and the effective end of serfdom. You can argue that economic growth was just as good before, during and after the plague, but if you were a serf or workman as most were, you went from a bad time to a good time.
We have a problem with this today. We have had decades of what appeared to be good economic growth, but the share of per capita GDP an hour of labor provides has fallen to keep the value of that hour roughly constant. If you were wealthy, the eras before and after that century of wage growth and price stability were the good times. If you weren't wealthy, that century was.