The Ties between the Rise of Genghis & outbreaks of the Plague in Europe

The initial outbreak of plague takes place among countries of Western Europe and dates back to the years 1348-1350. It is believed that during this short period of time Europe lost one-third of its initial population.

To draw the connection between events of the Plague and the rise of the Great Mongol Empire, a brief description of the Mongols themselves and their lifestyle is required. To start, the Mongols were then and are to this time nomadic peoples who come from the Eurasian Steppes, north of the old Chinese empire and the east of Korea. The Mongols were prairie people at large, who used their large animal herds as their main sustenance. The clans lived in transportable Yurts and moved steadily in the search for grazing lands for their herds. With the conquests by the rulers like Chinggis Khan, Odegei Khan, Mongke Khan, and others, the empire constantly grew, spreading multiple directions, including Europe, as far as Kiev. (“Mongols”).

So how did Plague spread to Europe? Mongol expansion along with all the functional consequences, like the recovery of the old trade roads, movement of the goods, ideas, and animals, also had ones. Moreover, the most fatal of them was spread of the multiple diseases including bubonic plague, that ended up reshaping much of the Afro-Eurasia.

To understand why is that and in what ways this disease has a connection to Mongols, let’s take a look at what the Plague itself is, how it spreads (in different regions), what symptoms it has and what is a proper environment for the development of the plague.

There are two different perspectives on the Plague development. The first aspect to pay attention to is an outbreak of the Yersinia pestis producedinfection. Secondly, it is essential to consider, that plague is a complex disease regarding ecology, as it involves the nonhuman carriers, different directions, and even climate changes.

Human infection by Yersinia pestis is an acute bacterial infection, with an incubation period being from one day to a week. The initial symptoms are high fever, prostration, and a characteristic lesion of a regional lymph node of the axilla or groin areas. These are most knows in history as bubonic plague, due to bubo (grossly enlarged infected lymph nodes), after what the organism is not likely to recover, as the mortality rate on over 70%. The patients are also characterized by restless dread and anxiety. Blood poisoning can occur without bubonic stage as well, as plague pneumonia is often a hematogenous metastatic infection. Spreading via a respiratory route can vary widely due to multiple reasons, like temperature and humidity. However, pneumonic plague is a winter disease and has a rare appearance in history.

Plague is a phenomenon in human society, as it has usually appeared that humans are incidental victims of this enzootic disease. For the plague to spread, there are few conditions required, like enzootic reservoir (wild animal species or groups of species, infected by the plague bacillus.) Most of the animals do not get killed by this disease, but they can harbor it over for a long time. There were documented cases of these wild animals infecting the black rats ( who are human-commensal rodents), which showed high sensitivity to the organism and died in significant quantities. The rats’ fleas (the Xenopsylla cheopis species), who are heat- dependent, abandoned the cold bodies of their previous hosts in search for new ones. If there were no rats around, these fleas attacked humans. Consider, that these exact fleas have previously fed on the blood of an animal with Y pestis poisoning. When it bites a new host, it regurgitates bacteria into rather than feeding on that host (Stephen R. Ell, 1989). This way humans become incidental victims, being rat flea’s last choice for a host. This type of transmission and, by the way,  the plague epidemics among humans itself, can occur at any time of the year, but preferably in summer. This is where a clear connection between the conquests of the Mongols and plague in Europe draws.

During the outbreaks of the plague, the mortality rate tempted to be higher than during the previous times. Old age, cancer, different illnesses, and great violence in the society were other causes of deaths during the epidemics. The society was suffering from the inevitability of the fatal ending. People were scared, hopeless and angry, as they had nowhere to run from this epidemics.

It is clear that the society did not cope well with the plague and it resulted in violent outbreaks and split of the society at all. It was no new, that people would attack each other, arranged riots with the total loss numbers not far from the amounts of deaths caused by the plague. Thousands of people died of wounds after such outbreaks of violence on the factories and in churches. An interesting example of such events is the case of the parish of San Pietro (during the Bubonic plague epidemy in Venice in 1630), where on the Arsenal factory, which manufactured beds and ships for the sick of plague people, with the huge at the time number of employees, on October 23-25 of the 1630, 31 person had died of wound, with 18 coming from the parish if San Pietro. Moreover, 58% of deaths originated in a parish near the Arsenal. Thus, there was a major civil disturbance in that neighborhood. Moreover, San Pietro was a patriarchal church of Venice, plus, the seat of ecclesiastic government in the city as well (Stephen R. Ell, 1989), and that was too explosive of a combination.

Though some people went through the horrible events of the plague with prayers, most of the people had lost their fate in church, as these were not able to do anything about the plague. This led to the era of spiritual and intellectual upheaval and questioning that preceded what came to be known as the Protestant Reformation.

References

Stephen R. Ell, “Three Days in October of 1630: Detailed Examination of Mortality during an Early Modern Plague Epidemic in Venice”, 1989.

Power-point presentation “Mongols.”

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]
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