Summary of John Kelly's The Great Mortality

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Feodosiya, a city on the eastern coast of the Crimea, was a Genoese port that was one of the fastest-growing in the medieval world. The city was built as a monument to the Italian city-state’s wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory.
#2 Between 1250 and 1350, the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa was perfectly situated to take advantage of it. The port city doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size between 1250 and 1340, and its population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time.
#3 The Genoese, who were much closer to Asia than de’ Mussis and Heyligen, probably heard rumors about the disasters, but they faced so many immediate dangers in Caffa that they could not have had much time to worry about events in faraway India or China.
#4 The Black Death first spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, and then to China. It seems that the pestilence originated in inner Asia, and spread westward to the Middle East and Europe along the international trade routes.

Sujets

• Medieval
• Edad Media
• Middle Ages
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669356165
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on John Kelly's The Great Mortality
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Feodosiya, a city on the eastern coast of the Crimea, was a Genoese port that was one of the fastest-growing in the medieval world. The city was built as a monument to the Italian city-state’s wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory.

#2

Between 1250 and 1350, the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa was perfectly situated to take advantage of it. The port city doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size between 1250 and 1340, and its population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time.

#3

The Genoese, who were much closer to Asia than de’ Mussis and Heyligen, probably heard rumors about the disasters, but they faced so many immediate dangers in Caffa that they could not have had much time to worry about events in faraway India or China.

#4

The Black Death first spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, and then to China. It seems that the pestilence originated in inner Asia, and spread westward to the Middle East and Europe along the international trade routes.

#5

The Lake Issyk Kul region in Kyrgyzstan is another often-cited origin point for the Black Death. In the late nineteenth century, a Russian archaeologist found that many cemetery headstones dated 1338 and 1339, and several of them contained a specific reference to plague.

#6

The Black Death arrived in the Crimea in 1346, and attacked the Tartar army. It then moved into the port, and attacked the Genoese defenders.

#7

The plague is the most famous example of what the Pima Indians of Arizona call oimmeddam, wandering sickness. It is believed that the plague originated in Genoa, and the Genoese were responsible for spreading it to Constantinople, Messina, Sardinia, and many other places.

#8

The Black Death was a disease that killed an estimated 200 million people worldwide. It came to Europe in 1347, and by 1352 it had reached Moscow, where it killed millions. It was particularly cruel to children and women, who died in greater numbers than men.

#9

The Black Death was a disease of rodents, and people were simply collateral damage in a titanic global struggle between the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis and the world’s rodent population. Environmental upheaval, such as earthquakes and floods, can play a role in igniting plague.

#10

The role of malnutrition in human plague is controversial, though it is true that bacteria have more difficulty reproducing in malnourished hosts.

#11

The existence of only a few of these conditions is not enough to start a pandemic, or a major outbreak of plague. The Victorian West was far more densely interconnected and populated than medieval Europe, but when a major wave of plague swept through China and India a century ago, the populations were healthy enough to prevent the disease from gaining a foothold in either America or Europe.

#12

The environment was well suited to Y. pestis in the fourteenth century. The population of medieval Europe was low compared to today’s nearly 400 million, and the resources available to the population were becoming dangerously overcrowded.

#13

The medieval body was in as bad a shape as the medieval street. The Church and common folk believed that the plague was a form of divine retribution for human wickedness.

#14

The jump of plague into humans is driven by the rat flea’s desperation. It does not particularly like human blood, but as plague kills off the local domestic rat community, the flea’s only alternatives are starvation or humans.

#15

The Black Death was a plague that killed millions in the 14th century. It was transmitted by a flea bite and had a two- to six-day incubation period. It typically created buboes in the abdominal region or thigh, and its victims were also often afflicted with petechiae, or God’s tokens.

#16

The Black Death, the most lethal of the three forms of the plague, is characterized by malodorousness, nervous system disruption, and hemorrhagic bruises. It is not as contagious as pneumonic plague, which can spread directly from person to person.

#17

The Black Death was a highly contagious disease that was not only extremely lethal, but also explosive in the manner of a nuclear chain reaction. It spread through breath, and victims violently coughed up blood.

#18

Between the autumn of 1347, when the Genoese arrived in Sicily, and the winter of 1351–52, when the plague crossed the icy Baltic back into Russia, Y. pestis drew a hangman’s noose around Europe.

#19

The Black Death arrived in Europe in 1347, and in just a few months, it killed so many people that the bells were stilled to preserve public morale. It then moved eastward toward London, where the king mourned his daughter.

#20

In 1349, the plague made its way through the German forests and killed everyone in its path. It took three and a half years for the plague to travel around Europe and kill everyone.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The first Europeans to travel to Asia were clerics like John de Marignolli, who pronounced the Tartar Great Khan delighted, yea exceedingly delighted, by the pope’s gifts.

#2

The second wave of European visitors to China were merchants, who were attracted to the East by the opportunity to buy Asian goods at the source. The sea route took two years, but the sights were amazing.