1. The Mongol Empire 2. The Plague in...
Transcript of 1. The Mongol Empire 2. The Plague in...
The Plague 1. The Mongol Empire 2. The Plague in Europe
1. The Mongol Empire • First of all, where is Mongolia?
• In 1206 CE, Genghis Khan united the nomadic tribesmen of Mongolia and began a military conquest
• Khan’s forces conquered much of Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe
• The Mongolian Empire is the second-largest empire in the history of the world
• At its peak in 1279, it controlled: –33 million km2 –25% of the world’s population (110
million)
• The Mongolian Empire was 4 times the size of the Roman Empire
• The Mongolians established trade routes connecting its empire together and linking the empire to Europe
• But trade goods were not the only things the thousands of traders using those routes transported
• Where there are people, there are rats! • A pair of rats can produce 2,000 offspring
every year
• These rats carried flees, which were the carrier of a deadly bacteria that caused the plague
• By 1347, the plague had reached Italy via the trade routes from Asia
The Plague in Europe • The first outbreak of the plague in Europe
began in 1348 • For the next three years, it advanced
rapidly across Europe • There were major outbreaks in Europe
roughly every decade for the next 150 years
• By the end of the epidemic, 50 to 60% of the entire population of Europe had died from the plague!
• The plague killed as many as 200 million people
• It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover
• The plague created many social, religious, and economic problems in Europe, but more on those later...