In The Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made by Norman F.

Cantor, Cantor explores what is behind the Black Death and what the Black Death

brought to people in Europe from both microcosmic and macroeconomic

perspectives. The cause of the Black Death was uncertain due to the limited

medieval profession, but it was determined to be involved with bubonic plague and

anthrax. Cantor mentions other causes in these books, such as the Jewish

conspiracy, serpents, and cosmic He tells how the social class and status of royalty

changed, such as with the emergence of the yeoman class. In the chapter "Bordeaux

is Burning, he tells of a series of events that impacted totality and split the

Plantagenet family. During the Black Death, the status of women changed, and

women benefited from the property of their husbands who died from the plague.

Also, the terror of the plague resulted in the slaughter of innocent Jews. After the

outbreak of the Black Death, people became pessimistic about the social conditions

that changed Europe in the next few centuries. In Cantor's arguments, bubonic

plague and anthrax were involved in the transmission of the Black Death that was

caused by royalty and trade. He also mentions other causes, such as cosmic dust,

but there is no evidence to agree with the theories of cosmic dust. For the

consequences of the Black Death, he thinks that it brought class polarization, capital

accumulation, and social mobility into the yeoman class, with much evidence.

The Black Death was the greatest infectious disease in European history. The

limitations of the medieval profession in terms of diagnosis and cure created many

uncertainties in the clinical history of the Black Death. It was determined to be

involved with bubonic plague, a bacillus carried by parasites on the backs of rodents

that devastated the East in the sixth century A.D., which may not be the only cause

of the devastation of the 1340s. It is not exclusively in the black rats, and some
historians think that it stopped because the gray rats replaced the black rats. The

author thought that it was likely incorrect because bubonic plague can be carried by

any rodent, according to contemporary historians. It makes sense because this

plague should be transmitted to any species of rats; if not, it should be stopped in its

tracks. He believed that bubonic plague is transmitted to humans through rodents

but not from humans to humans. There’s a contraction between his saying and

modern medicine. According to what the author says "Modern medicine believes that

plague can be spread by saliva from an ill person to a healthy one at the pneumonic

stage, so medieval physicians were not entirely wrong", He sort of agreed that

bubonic plague can be transmitted between humans. However, he also said that the

city quarantines were not effective. It’s contracted from what he says about the

transmission. He also mentioned that the royalty who escaped to the countryside

had lower mortality rates than the people who lived in towns. It somehow proved that

the city quarantine might have worked. His perspective on the source of plague

differs and does not correspond to the examples in the book. Some people also

believed that it involved anthrax, an infectious cattle disease that has similar

symptoms as bubonic plague. Assuming the theories of Twigg are correct, the author

attributed the sources of anthrax to tainted red meat and wind-spread cattle ranches.

This theory was rejected by David Herliby in 1995 because anthrax didn't outbreak in

the mid-fourteenth century. But Edward I. Thompson of the University of Toronto

responded to Herliby with his evidence from archeological excavations in 1989 that

three anthrax spores were found in a cesspool next to a medieval hospital where

human waste was discharged and cattle herds were diseased. He also noted that

cattle that died of disease had been sold before the Black Death, according to

contemporary evidence. It corresponds to the author's statement that anthrax is

attributed to tainted red meat. Besides, high morality didn’t instantaneously lead to a

severe labor shortage but created empty slots for estate workers due to

overpopulation. For the next generation, it created a huge labor shortage. Peasants

demanded an increase in wages with their advantages in the labor market, but the

employers used laws to keep wages low against the inflationary labor market. It led

to peasant revolts.

Bordeaux was a significant city-port in medieval Europe that was owned by the

English royal family. Using the advantages of ambitious and artistic images, those

kings gained prestige and chivalric admiration to build a strong, centralized

bureaucracy. But its effectiveness would be diminished if the kind was weak. Rich

townsmen would not promote their radical or democratic thoughts; if they did, some

capitalists would assert political urban autonomy when the prestige of kings was

diminished. In 1152, Queen Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, bringing him wealth

and political influence, which helped him assert his hereditary claim to the English

throne as Henry II. In 1342, Edward III started to reclaim the French Plantagenet

lands he had lost from Henry II’s son, John Lackland. The author argued that

Edward was not a tyrant for educated people, so he was not a tyrant by this

definition. He provided some evidence that Edward met in parliament every year and

did a proper job in legislation to prove this viewpoint. I don’t think it makes sense

because Edward made millions of French commoners suffer and slaughtered them

for his goal of becoming king of both England and France. For French people, he

was a tyrant. Also, he had shifted much of the cost of Joan’s marriage to the

tax-playing subjects. As an emperor, he gained what he wanted at the expense of

the common people. Edward married his daughter, Princess Joan, to Prince Pedro,

an heir of the Castile kingdom. In Bordeaux, where the plague was causing trouble,
the royal entourage ignored the warning from the mayor and settled in the royal

castle. Both the companies and Princess Joan died of the plague, resulting in the

failure of the alliance with the Kingdom of Castile. Edward survived the plague by

escaping to an island and building a chapel dedicated to the Virgin. The author says

that it somehow reflected his gratitude for individuals but not his compassion for

victims. According to the quote "In fact, Edward gave the foundation only some

properties in Smithfield and a meager twenty marks a year, showing that the project

had quickly slipped down his list of priorities", I completely agree with this statement

because of his actions. If he were compassionate about what the common people

had experienced, he would at least pay the same amount to the new monastery. But

he didn’t. On a series of occasions, Edward III lost his political advantages and

eventually split the Plantagenet family.

The author claims that what the Black Death brought was class polarization,

capital accumulation, and social mobility into the yeoman class. I completely agree

with the author about what he presents in this book. Most people in England engage

in agricultural activities such as sheep and cattle ranching. The Cistercian monks

received scrub lands from patrons and turned them into great sheep ranches, which

earned them tremendous wealth. Also, monasteries hold most of the rent-paying

lands that brought them great revenues that allowed them to survive during the Black

Death. With the example of Halesowen, the Halesowen‘s lands were quickly

occupied by peasants to create revenues for the abbot’s treasury because of their

high quality of land and surplus of labor. By the quote "especially among male

gentry—and many great families were suddenly shaken and their security

threatened, their wealth and social status undermined", the social class made it clear

that rich people had prevailed even during the Black Death. It also led to conflicts
over property between heirs and widows. After Quin Emptores established a

capital-free market in the land in the 1290s, the legal status of serfdom became

dysfunctional as a shortage of workforce was replaced by a fluid labor supply. The

law of hierarchy had prevailed in the emergence of capitalism; peasants were

attempting to survive and seek freedom and rights under the control of lords. In

England, serfs had legal rights and fair treatment from lords. With the rise of real

estate capitalism, many serfs sought freedom to get rid of their identity as serfs. In

the thirteenth century, some ambitious serfs accumulated lands as freemen and

made themselves mobile, becoming yeoman classes. Yeoman claw holds 2% of the

wealth of England, and the increased population of gentry reflects the growing

wealth. Most gentry men died during the black deaths, resulting in legal conflicts over

property between heir and widow. Biological nullification often happened in the

gentry class because of the high morality rate of gentry men, which benefited the

women. After the death of their husband, women might be able to keep their dower

and have the property of their ex-husband. The shock of the Black Death resulted in

the instability of the gentry class over property, which led to the rise of the yeoman

class. Another crunch caused by the Black Death was the imbalance between supply

and demand for grains in the 1370s. Under the pressure of the price squeeze, lords

refused to increase wages and reduce rents against the demand of the working

class, while peasants attempted to improve their position. Also, the clerics who

graduated from Oxford had aroused the class consciousness of the peasants. It led

to the peasant revolt of 1381.

Jews were one of the biggest victims of the Black Death and suffered from the

suppression of society as a result of religion and poison issues. A Jew named

Agimet confessed under torture that he was delegated to put poison into wells in
different places. Therefore, Jews around the world have been accused because

people believe that they caused the plague. Many Jews were burned, asserted, and

forbidden to enter cities for the next hundred years. People who wanted to save

Jews gave in to the public. In addition to the poison issue, the shift in religion led to

the slaughter of Jews who converted to Kabbalah. The Christians doubted the

Kabbalah's relationship to black magic and witchcraft and regarded it as heresy.

They used the excuse of the plague to dissolve their debts to Jews and seize

property and money from Jews. Jews lost their social status as great international

merchants that they had around A.D. 1000. They immigrated to Poland, where they

saw the Jews as an economic asset, but they were slaughtered because of the

outbreak of cholera.

Some people argue about the cause of plague; one of the most radical causes is

cosmic dust. It comes from a book published in 1979, Diseases From Space, by

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, that life comes from beyond the earth,

and some bacteria show high resistance to extreme environments to make them

survive in space. Even though cosmic dust might be a good explanation for the

periodic vertical transmission of plague, the author provides no evidence to prove

this theory. There are a ton of explanations about the source of the plague. The

discovery of Mary Leakey, the earliest known human skeleton dating back to 2.5

million years in Africa, might have proved the diffusionism theory. East Africa might

be the source of the plague that started the human evolution that transmitted from

Africa to Europe. A series of plagues weakened the Athenians so much that they lost

wars and suffered from invasion. It also shaped the history of Rome, which changed

from a civilized society to a barbarian society. Without science, they relied on faith

healing and Christianity to distract them from their pain. Snake can be curative as
well as infective; theriac was a remedy for snake bits also made of snake that was

regarded as a prophylactic for the plague. It’s controversial about the cure. Owing to

the weakness of biomedical areas, people suffered from the plague and the terror it

brought. The biomedical trauma triggered the Italian Renaissance, such as a trend

toward pessimism and a change in artistic style.

Overall, this book was written from a third-person point of view and explores the

possible causes of plagues and how they affect people from the upper class to

peasants or serfs. For possible causes, Cantor gives examples and studies to prove

the connection with anthrax and bubonic plague, which is convincing. He keeps

developing those ideas in the next chapters, comparing and contrasting them with

other possible causes. He clearly referred to the plague that triggered the captalitism

that had an impact on the peasants and serfs. For the cosmic dust and serpents, he

provided no evidence to prove these theories but referred to the possibility that they

may relate to the plague. In the chapter "Death Comes to the Archbishop, he

provides some drawings with descriptions. I don’t find it necessary because the

quality of the drawing is not good enough to show every detail. In the chapter Jewish

Conspiracy, he keeps repeating the slaughter that happened to Jews. I found it not

useful as it is not completely related to other chapters. For resources, he used both

primary and secondary resources from the thirteenth century to the present. There’s

no connection between chapters, which is confusing. He skips the connection and

quickly goes through to the next theme. However, the index is comprehensive. I can

clearly see the main contents through the index, which is useful.