Free exchange | Economic history
Plagued by dear labour
The Black Death was horrible but had benign economic effects
By C.W. | LONDON
This is the ninth post of Free exchange's series on economic history. A few previous blog posts can be found here, here and here.
THE Black Death was catastrophic. Historians still disagree over the timing of the plague—but 1348-51 and 1361-2 were peaks for much of Europe. About a third of the European population perished.
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