The Black Death Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Black Death - Essay Example Black Death served as a major turning point in the history of European civilization in that there was a high standard of living for the survivors, several problems arose for the clergy and nobles who apparently, were land owners as well as revolts by urban workers and peasants. The resulting high standard of living led to the more even distribution of wealth as well as the economic recovery after 1450.Popular uprisings were as a result of labor shortages due to death of the inhabitants, which made workers to demand high wages for their work, a thing that guild masters and nobles vehemently opposed. Secondly, Black Death severely exhausted medieval state’s tax base, causing kings to drastically raise taxes so as to meet chronic warfare expenses between England and France (Herlihy, 1997).Finally, the black death created problems for the clergy and nobles in 2 major ways; firstly the huge loss of population in the cities’ led to virtual collapsing of the grain markets, a k ey income source for church landlords and nobles having excess grain for selling. This particularly hurt the clergy and nobles who entirely depended on the land for income and wholly relied on the sale of excess grains in the urban centers for badly required cash. This led to the emergence of 2 main strategies for taking care of this loss in income; clergies and nobles resulted in the sale of liberty to their serfs, which raised quick cash, depriving them future incomes.