Gafney response to Herlihy, "The New Economic and Demographic System"

Response to Herlihy, “The New Economic and Demographic System”

In this lecture, Herlihy uses various types of evidence to suggest that the Black Death of 1348 contributed to a demographic shift in Western Europe that planted the seeds of modern technological and consumer-driven society, as well as contributing to a shift in the demographic structure of the population. As his last paragraph reads:

The great population debacle of the late Middle Ages did not, in sum, introduce an entirely new demographic system. But it did redistribute the population between the two tiers of the traditional system. Depopulation gave access to farms and remunerative jobs to a larger percentage of the population. High wages and low rents also raised the standard of living for substantial numbers. They became acquainted with a style of life that they or their children would not want easily to abandon. For a significantly larger part of society, the care of property and the defense of living standards were tightly joined with decisions to marry and to reproduce… Out of the havoc of plague, Europe adopted what can well be called the modern Western mode of demographic behavior. (57).

Much of Herlihy’s argument makes intuitive sense. A population-stressed Europe would, after recovering from the shock of loosing one third to one half of its population, of course seem to revive in such a way that those remaining would have a better quality of life than they had had before. More land would be available for few people, meaning that more animals could be raised and various types of crops pioneered. Also, significantly, the smaller population size and resultant wage hike would certainly encourage technological advances that would save labor. Labor became, in essence, a commodity, and was treated as such, both in the payment of high wages for services that once cost very little, and also in the imagining that human labor could be replaced by labor done by a machine, or done by human beings in conjunction with machines.

Herlihy’s arguments also seem to make sense in the context of plague and post-plague literature in Europe. Boccaccio describes plague-infested Florence as a kind of apocalyptic city; his young protagonists in their verdant retreat, with their self-made courtly way of structuring their time, seem like the remnants of a previous condemned civilization who will create a new way of life for themselves in the idyllic countryside. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales may also be read as a description of post-plague England; the social shiftings and meldings of estates that nearly all of the pilgrims display could by attributed to demographic upsets of the plague.

I do feel, however, that Herlihy focuses on the “positive” effects of the plague, while only hinting at some of the more devastating and unfortunate effects of the population loss, which might not have been recovered from so quickly. For example, Herlihy describes the loss of skilled practitioners that most professions suffered as a result of the population devastations of the plague: “Short years of service before death intervened, rapid turnover in members, wide recruitment of new persons, affected the quality of the product or service the professions provided” (45). Herlihy notes these changes as impetus new developments in technology. He does not, I think, give sufficient importance to these observations, preferring to give a more optimistic account of post-plague Europe. It may indeed have been the case that workers could charge more and could therefore enjoy different kinds of clothes and food, as well as access to education and other forms of improvement. But, if necessary tasks such as city organization and construction, doctoring the sick, and religious work were done poorly, the general quality of life in Europe may have declined in other significant ways, and may not have been able to “bounce back” as quickly as Herlihy would have us believe. Even such essentials as food and clothing, if not well raised and well made, would contribute little to the general wellbeing of a worker who survived the epidemic. And, with fewer checks and balances, less training, and higher demand, doctors, priests, and teachers could have taken advantage of a ravaged social system to influence people and make money without providing the services their professions require. The gross abuses of power by Catholic officials, such as the selling of false relics and absolution for sins, may well have been made possible by just such a demographic imbalance that Herlihy here describes in mostly positive terms.