Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Maps
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface to the First Edition
- Author’s Note on the New and Revised Edition
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Part I What Was the Black Death?
- Part II The Origin of Bubonic Plague and the History of Plague before the Black Death
- Part III The Outbreak and Spread of the Black Death
- Part IV Mortality in the Black Death
- Part V A Turning Point in History?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Subject Index
- Index of Geographical Names and People
- Name Index
33 - Patterns of Conquest, Dynamics of Spread
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Maps
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface to the First Edition
- Author’s Note on the New and Revised Edition
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Part I What Was the Black Death?
- Part II The Origin of Bubonic Plague and the History of Plague before the Black Death
- Part III The Outbreak and Spread of the Black Death
- Part IV Mortality in the Black Death
- Part V A Turning Point in History?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Subject Index
- Index of Geographical Names and People
- Name Index
Summary
The beginning: ships and metastatic leaps of contagion
For obvious reasons, epidemics, like ideologies and religions, are disseminated by people and spread first and most rapidly along main routes of trade and travel to large urban centres, whether by land or sea. In medieval times, ship transport was by far the most efficient and rapid way of transporting goods and likewise disseminating disease at a distance. Epidemic disease, consequently, first invaded seaports, cities and commercial hubs along the coasts of the Mediterranean and the western coasts of Europe.
In the Black Death’s conquest of Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe the combination of ship transport and metastatic leaps is most conspicuous. Metastatic leaps started with the galleys that transported the Black Death from Kaffa to Constantinople. From Constantinople, the Black Death sailed in several directions. In this early spread, the Italian trading stations and small seaports that had been established and developed to serve the galleys on their long voyages back (and forth) to Venice or Genoa or to other destinations, such as Alexandria in Egypt, played a crucial role. Italian galleys from Kaffa sailed via Constantinople all the way to Alexandria whence the Black Death invaded the Middle East and North Africa. A metastatic leap from Messina in Sicily to Tunis established a second plague front in North Africa. Other metastatic leaps from Kaffa or from Constantinople by galleys carried the Black Death to Greece and to many cities and towns on the Mediterranean Sea, next to various locations along the coasts of Italy and the eastern Adriatic coasts. These seaport towns were contaminated at this early point exactly because they were important nexuses in regional and international trade. They functioned as epidemic epicentres whence contagion was spread in many directions to other towns and cities by ship along the coasts, or up navigable rivers, and over land by horse and carriage and packhorses in a process that eventually resulted in the blanketing of the countryside where the vast majority of medieval populations lived.
The early recognition of the outbreak of the Black Death in Marseille on 1 November 1347 shows that the city was contaminated by ship from Genoa before mid-September. Marseille became a very important epicentre whence the Black Death radiated along the coasts and spread inland.
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- The Complete History of the Black Death , pp. 620 - 637Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021