by Desconhecido
Also when it comes to the Black Death, internal social factors may have contributed to its impact, but the force of the pandemic would probably have been disastrous for any society, stagnated or not. Research have focused on how society changed after the disaster and on the economic processes triggered by the population drop. Again, due to differences in the political systems, social reactions may have differed between countries even though the overall development seems to have been similar on a general level. In Sweden like in some other countries the immediate reaction from the landowning elite, who saw their incomes dwindle when their tenants died and fields were laid wasted, was to increase oppression and to turn to brutal plundering. Janken Myrdal, who used crisis theory to interpret the line of events, called this phase the dysfunctional social reaction.5 According to him the counterproductive reaction by the elite deepened the crisis. The Black Death started a vicious circle in which internal social factors and reactions (together with recurring outbreaks of plague) played an important role. Thus, the increased oppression did not start the crisis but it acted as a positive feedback to the downward trend.
Oppression and plundering resulted in resistance and peasant revolts, which eventually turned successful. Rents and taxes were reduced and the share of the production that stayed with the peasants increased. This was the start of the recovery phase and once again positive feedback mechanisms may be identified. The starting point was the improved living standard of the large number of common people. It resulted in increased consumption, which stimulated craftsmanship, trade, iron production, etc., which in turn stimulated agricultural expansion. However, this was not only a phase of recovery but also of reconstruction. The crisis changed the power relationship between the classes and paved the way for a stronger state. Myrdal has emphasised that these structural changes were important parts of the late-medieval crisis and at the same time contributed to the strong expansion of the sixteenth century.6 The societal crisis thus may have had positive effects for economic growth seen in a longer time perspective.
To sum up the discussion so far, the late-medieval crisis had several characteristics typical for a major crisis: a dramatic population drop, a decreased total production and an economic recession, increased oppression leading to riots and conflicts, and changed power relationships, which challenged the political and social structures. On this general level it shows similarities with other major crisis and fits into a broader picture of societal crisis as an inherent part of human history.
Historical examples of societal crises and in particular of what is referred to as societal collapse has gained increased attention during the last two decades, both within the research community and among the general public. This is certainly due to concerns for our own society and problems that we have to face today and in the future. Typical case studies that have been widely discussed are the collapse of great empires and civilisations, like the Western Roman Empire and the Classic Lowland Maya, but also the collapse of much smaller societies in fragile environments, like Rapa Nui on Easter Island and the Norse settlements on Greenland.7 Naturally, processes and mechanisms have varied greatly between such different societies, and also the definition of collapse may vary between different authors. According to Joseph Tainter, collapse is first of all a political process characterised by a “… rapid, significant loss of an established level of socio-political complexity.”8 Although external catastrophes may have a triggering effect, the underlying cause of collapse is to be found in the structure and organisation of society itself. A single-event catastrophe, like a volcanic eruption or a major disease epidemic, never fully explains collapse. Jared Diamond suggests a similar but wider definition. According to him a collapse is characterised by “… a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.”9 Similar to Tainter, he finds social factors to be decisive for how societies manage to cope with stress and challenges and to modify their practices in response to perceived crises, and ultimately whether they will collapse or not.
Research on collapse, and particularly the work by Jared Diamond, has been influential within several disciplines, from archaeology and history to human ecology. However, it has also been criticised, most explicitly by the authors of the anthology Questioning collapse.10 They admit that societal crises in a historical perspective certainly existed, but rarely did societies collapse in an absolute or apocalyptic sense. The overriding human story is one of survival and regeneration rather than of collapse and societal failures. Therefore, according to the authors, it would be fruitful to focus more on survival strategies than on collapse and to emphasise resilience of past societies.11
Surprisingly, the late-medieval crisis is rarely discussed in this context. It is not included in the lists of historical examples of societal collapse presented by Tainter and Diamond, and it is only rarely discussed in connection to resilience thinking.12 This is surprising having in mind that the late-medieval crisis is frequently referred to as a major crisis and the Black Death generally regarded as one of the worst catastrophes to have ever struck Europe. The reason may be that medieval society – in spite of the severe crisis and dramatic population drop – did not collapse. This is, however, a matter of definition, and as Diamond points out, it becomes arbitrary to decide how drastic a decline must be before it qualifies to be labelled as a collapse.13 It seems justified to regard the population drop in connection to the Black Death as a collapse of the European population, but to interpret and quantify the possible decrease in complexity is more difficult. The decades after the Black Death were characterised by increased oppression and conflicts and the previously well ordered but rigid feudal system in Sweden as well as, for instance, in parts of Germany, was replaced by a plunder economy with robber barons raiding the countryside.14 Obviously this was a period of decreased economic and socio-political complexity. On the other hand, in spite of chaos and political instability, social structures remained surprisingly intact even in the most difficult of times. As Christopher Dyer points out for England in the years of the plague, everywhere officials, clerks and tenants died, but substitutes were usually found, and where fields were harvested, rents were collected.15 Royal courts and other institutions were robust enough to withstand the stress and soon resumed their work after a brief interval. Even feudalism in a wider sense survived but with a stronger state and somewhat weakened nobility.
Regardless of whether the late-medieval crisis should be classified as collapse or not, it may be fruitful to borrow research perspectives from the modern field of studies of historical collapse. Several such studies have a human-ecological approach with an interest in the relationship between society and the environment. Special attention has been paid to historical examples where overexploitation resulted in environmental destruction, which in turn was unfavourable for society. Environmental destruction may be deforestation, soil depletion, desertification, salinisation, etc. The paramount example is Easter Island, where environmental degradation was brought on by human deforestation, leading to societal collapse and dwindling population numbers.16 Frequently the fate of Easter Island and other historical examples of human mismanagement of the environment are used as a lesson and a warning to our own time:
The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean – once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won’t be able to get help.17
Even though one may be pessimistic about our ability (or willingness) to learn from the past, there is no doubt that concerns about our own environment have resulted in an increased interest in historical studies of how different societies have coped with environmental problems.
In the case of the late-medieval crisis, present knowledge indicates that it was not caused primarily by environmental mismanagement. The model proposed by Postan for
the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries involved environmental aspects: population pressure resulted in land reclamation of too poor soils, leading to decreasing land productivity, starvation and abandonment.18 This may have been a contributing factor in some areas, but on a European scale it was probably of minor importance. However, even if human impact on the environment was not the underlying cause of the crisis – but rather the plague pandemic in combination with harvest failures and social factors – the immense population drop and land-use changes certainly had significant consequences for the environment. It is important to note that the landscape already during the Middle Ages was strongly affected by human impact and in particular by agriculture. The original woodland cover of Europe was much reduced by clearing and by the thirteenth century the woodland that existed before the onset of the medieval expansion in the sixth century was reduced by at least 50%.19 Thus, the medieval landscape was a cultural landscape influenced and shaped by humans and their agricultural land use. Most ecosystems were anthropogenic ecosystems, tightly linked to human actions and society.
Because of the important human role in the ecosystems and for shaping and maintaining cultural landscapes, the dramatic decrease in human numbers in connection with the Black Death – perhaps a halving of the European population – must have had significant ecological consequences. We may expect reforestation of abandoned fields, meadows and pastures, but also other vegetation changes when new agricultural strategies were developed. A few attempts have been made to reveal vegetation change in connection with the late-medieval crisis by using pollen analysis and this is further elaborated in Chapter 4.20
The ecological consequences of the late-medieval crisis in Europe are an intriguing but still much under-researched area. However, parallels may be drawn with America. Infectious diseases like smallpox and measles, brought by Europeans in the sixteenth century, caused catastrophic drops in population numbers and massive disruption in society.21 Settlements were abandoned and fields and grasslands were reforested. It was not until relatively recently that it was realised to what large extent the pre-Columbian landscape had been affected by humans, shaped not only by agriculture but also by hunting and fire. The forests that the European colonists thought were primeval and enduring were actually in a state of swift change. The massive decrease in human population not only caused vegetation changes but also large-scale changes in the fauna. Many question marks remain, but it appears that the “land of plenty”, with its enormous populations of bison, passenger pigeons, etc., to some degree was actually a temporary effect of the sudden disappearance of humans.22
According to a hypothesis by Urban Emanuelsson, historical periods of decreased human impact were beneficial for biodiversity, not only in the short run, but also in a long-term perspective.23 He argues that recurrent periods of decreased human impact – due to disease, war and other factors – have contributed positively to the high biodiversity that characterised many traditional cultural landscapes of Europe before the agricultural revolution. To put it drastically, periods of hardship for humans may have been periods of relief for some species of both plants and animals. But the relationship is complicated, because many species are favoured by agricultural land use and other kinds of human disturbance.
What makes environmental changes particularly interesting in this context is that they may not just passively reflect the societal crisis – they may also in turn have affected the development and the course of the crisis. A bold and much debated hypothesis was proposed by William Ruddiman. According to him anthropogenic global warming due to the greenhouse effect is not a late phenomenon restricted to modern times, but may be traced back to the very beginning of agriculture when humans started to deforest the Earth. Gradual deforestation for millennia resulted in slowly increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a warmer climate than what would have been expected without the interference of humans. During periods of population drop, this long-term trend of a gradually increasing greenhouse effect was temporarily broken: abandonment of agricultural land resulted in a reversed development, with reforestation, decreased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cooler temperatures. Along this line of reasoning, Ruddiman argues that the population drop in Europe during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, together with the similar but even sharper population drop in the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, contributed to the low temperatures of the Little Ice Age. Hence, disease did not only kill millions of people, indirectly it changed the climate.24
The Ruddiman hypothesis has been criticised and climate modelling indicates that human impact is not necessary to explain the observed changes in carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature.25 Furthermore, we still know very little about the degree of reforestation in the wake of the pandemics. Still, the hypothesis has resulted in a fruitful debate on past human impact on the climate. And, more importantly, by pointing to the possibility that past societal change caused climatic change, which in turn may have had major consequences for society even on a global scale, it has drawn attention to the two-way relationship between society and the environment in a long-term perspective.
On a more local scale, the environmental and ecological aspects of the late-medieval crisis are tightly linked to strategies developed on individual farms. Decisions made by the survivors – for instance, to stay or to move, to change the balance between crop growing and animal husbandry, or to turn to non-agrarian activities – were decisive for their economy and for their general standard of living. The decisions also had environmental consequences, both short-term and long-term, which influenced the course of the crisis and the later expansion. In the following chapters we will investigate environmental and agricultural change in the wake of the Black Death, we will present examples of strategies developed at household level, and we will discuss possible changes in living conditions and diet.
Notes
1 Frank 1995, 228
2 Redman 1999, 450
3 See the different contributions to the so-called Brenner debate, compiled in Aston & Philpin (eds) 1985. In this debate the neo-Malthusian view is represented by Postan & Hatcher and Le Roy Ladurie while the Marxist view is represented in particular by Brenner and Bois
4 Myrdal 2012a, 209
5 Myrdal 2012a, 205
6 Myrdal 2012a, 235–237
7 See comprehensive introductions by Tainter (1988) and Diamond (2005)
8 Tainter 1988, 4
9 Diamond 2005, 3
10 McAnany & Yoffee (eds) 2010, see in particular the introductory chapter by the editors
11 Societal resilience is the ability of a society to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure
12 Svensson et al. 2012
13 Diamond 2005, 3
14 This was the “dysfunctional social reaction” according to Myrdal (2012a, 234–235). For Germany see Abel (1980, reprinted 2013, 76)
15 Dyer 2002, 272–273
16 Diamond 2005; 2007
17 Diamond 2005
18 Postan 1972
19 Williams 2006, 87ff
20 Lagerås 2007; Yeloff & van Geel 2007
21 The pioneer work was written by Crosby (1972, reprinted 2003). See also e.g. Cronon 1983 (reprinted 2003, 85ff); Redman 1999, 195–199; Ponting 2007, 211–214
22 Mann 2006, 350–366
23 Emanuelsson 2009, 225ff
24 Ruddiman 2003; 2005, 115–146
25 Claussen et al. 2005; Broecker & Stocker 2006; Olofsson & Hickler 2008
PART II
EMPIRICAL STUDIES
4.
Abandonment, agricultural change and ecology
Per Lagerås, Anna Broström, Daniel Fredh, Hans Linderson, Anna Berg, Leif Björkman, Tove Hultberg, Sven Karlsson, Matts Lindbladh, Florence Mazier, Ulf Segerström & Eva Sköld1
A palaeoecological approach to a societal crisis
The medieval landscape in Sweden as in much of Europe was a cultural la
ndscape. It was shaped by agriculture and most of the ecosystems were greatly influenced by human activities. When the human population was drastically reduced after the Black Death, and also when those who survived developed new strategies, we may expect environmental consequences. In fact, any large-scale change in society during the Middle Ages is likely to have resulted in changes in the environment, particularly in the vegetation.
Because of this strong relationship between vegetation and agriculture, studies on vegetation change may contribute to our understanding of the late-medieval crisis. However, documentary sources from the Middle Ages give us very little information about the vegetation. This is true for many countries but particularly so for Sweden, which has a rather scanty record of medieval documentary sources. Most preserved documents are of an economical character and tell us about taxes, rents, transactions and expenses, and they rarely give us any direct information on vegetation. Some glimpses may be gained from letters, legal documents (e.g. the landscape laws of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) or religious texts (like the visions of Saint Bridget), but they never explicitly describe the vegetation or the agricultural landscape. Preserved wall paintings in medieval churches may, when deciphered from their religious symbolism, provide some information on agricultural tools and practices (Fig. 2 in Chapter 2). But again, they give us glimpses and details and not the large picture. Old maps are perhaps the best documentary sources to past vegetation and to agricultural landscapes in general. Sweden has a wealth of such maps, in particular cadastral maps of hamlets and villages, but the oldest ones are from the seventeenth century, more than two centuries after the Black Death.
