070141 SE Research Seminar Global History - Globalization and Critique of Globalization (2021S)

The medieval period is still heavily underrepresented in global history debates. Yet, the late medieval period was characterised by intense trans-regional trade networks reaching from the Iberian Peninsula to Southern Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Black Sea, and from Flanders to the British Islands, Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea area. Political, religious and intellectual contacts as well as military conflicts enabled long-distance knowledge sharing and the transfer of practices as well as a rapid spreading of deadline viruses. In the second half of the 14th century, the virus Yersinia pestis spread from Central Asia to the Middle East, the Mediterranean World and all parts of Europe, returned in several waves over many decades and killed larger parts of the world population. No wonder that contemporaries as well as historians have considered the so-called Black Death as a decisive factor in late medieval history. In contemporary sources as well as in historiography, the pandemic disease has played a central role both in identity discourses and political argumentation as well as in historiographical meta narratives to explain socio-economic and political or intellectual change.

In the research seminar, we will study historical and historiographical explanations and interpretations of the Black Death and its consequences for economy, society and politics. We will analyse and compare medieval documents from different parts of the medieval world and discuss competing and at times contradictory narratives in historiography. Four aspects will be at the heart of our discussion: 1. The transmission of the virus. 2. Socio-economic consequences for the distribution of land. 3. Shifts in labour relations. 4. Processes of marginalisation and criminalisation.