Black Death Historiography A Research Proposal

Abstract The Black Death historiography research project will take an in-depth look at the evolution of Black Death scholarship. Beginning in 1830, the project will examine the historians and other scholars who devoted their lives to uncovering the details of the illness that swept through Europe and Asia in 1348 to 1350. Although the medical cause behind the Black Death was questioned for decades, some of the latest research from McMaster University has sequenced the genome of the bacteria and confirmed that it was a form of bubonic plague. During the first portion of the project, the researcher will be delving much deeper into the historiography of Black Death, as well as investigating the latest research from paleomicrobiology sources. This will include a visit to McMasters Institute for Infectious Disease Research centre. During the second portion of the research project, the researcher will compile the data gained and synthesize the findings into a paper for dissemination. It is suspected that through this detailed research, that has never been undertaken before, the wax and wane of Black Death Scholarship will coincide with the changes that occurred in the larger field of History.
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Table of Contents Introduction.page 3 Problem Statement..page 4 Review of Research.page 5 Objectives..page 10 Hypothesis.page 10 Definitions.page 11 Methods/Analysis..page 11 Resources/Personnel..page 12 Timeline.page 12 Budget...page 13 Anticipated Resultspage 13 Limitations.page 13 Conclusion.page 14 Bibliography..page 15 Acknowledgments.page 16

Introduction The Black Death, as a historical event, has captivated countless historians since the 14th century. Although plagues had occurred in Europe previously, and would continue to arise into the 20th century, the Black Death typically refers to the outbreak that transpired across Europe and into the Mediterranean between the years of 1348-1350. The plague spread as far north as to encompass all of Scandinavia. The same illness most likely began in China in 1346 and traveled through India and the Middle East before reaching the Mediterranean in 1348, although it is unconfirmed. It is difficult to identify exactly how damaging this plague was, however, it is estimated that the Black Death killed between 25-35% of Europes population. That could mean anywhere from 75 to 200 million died within three years. Some towns throughout Europe suffered from mortality rates of up to 75-80%. Until the 19th century, doctors and historians who examined the Black Death had few hypothesis of what caused the plague. Until the advent of microbiology, the cause of the Black Death was typically explained as some sort of Oriental disease.1 After the discovery of bubonic plague bacteria, research into the Black Death expanded and slowly began focusing of scientific research and discoveries. Fierce debates raged on whether the bubonic bacteria, Y. Pestis truly caused the 3 year pandemic. By the 21st century, paleomicrobiologists were able to extract bacteria from 14th century plague victims, which effectively ended one debate, but opened up new areas of research for historians.

Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker. The Black Death in the fourteenth century. (London, 1833), 20.

Problem Statement This research proposal details the outline for a project examining the past two hundred years of historical research and writing on the Black Death. Since the early 19th century, the scholarship surrounding the Black Death has changed immensely and is reflective of the evolution of all historical scholarship. Black Death historians in the early 1800s were categorized by their flowery prose and their lack of in-depth research techniques. Each subsequent generation of historians added more concrete evidence to Black Death scholarship. The research project will examine how and why the scholarship around the Black Death evolved since the early 1800s. The project will also touch upon how the field of history progressed during the same time period. There has been no investigation into the historiography of the Black Death and there is much valuable information to be learned by tracking the development of the scholarship. The recent developments in Black Death scholarship are a good example of how historical illnesses and diseased should be researched extensively. Historians are helping doctors understand the causes of plagues and epidemics, and how they spread across the globe historically. For example, historians and archaeologists have used skeletal evidence to prove that syphilis originated in North America, despite the myth that it was another European disease brought over to the New World with early explorers.2 This gives historians a better idea of the health and struggles that early North American lived with. The new evidence being discovered by paleomicrobiologists about the Black Death will hopefully encourage historians and medical professionals to look into the ancient microbes of other diseases.

Bruce M. Rothschild History of Syphilis. Clinical Infectious Diseases 40, no. 10 (2005): 1454.

Review of Research The macabre interest in the Black Death is due to the sheer amount of lives lost during the 14th century illness. The fascination with this epidemic allowed countless authors to pen books, essays, monographs, poems and songs among other forms of narrative over the past six and a half centuries. Without a doubt, the manner in which historians consider the Black Death has altered drastically inside that time period. Within the past two centuries, Black Death historians left their armchairs for the laboratory. Few changes are as noticeable as the increased reliance on scientific data and the decreased importance placed on the Black Death as a world altering event. The earliest historical account examined for this project was written in 1833 by Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker, a well-known Black Death historian during the 19th century.3 His writing in the book The Black Death in the Fourteenth Century was reflective and colourful; more suited now for poetry or fiction than historical pursuits. Hecker was not the only influential Black Death historian during the 19th century, however there was little interest in the topic until the end of the century. The final decade of the 1800s proved fruitful for those who had an expressed interest in the Great Pestilence, as it was then known. Francis Aiden Gasquet, an English Benedictine monk, wrote The Great Pestilence in 1893 which influenced Black Death scholars for generations. He proposed that the Black Death closed the medieval period of history and brought about the beginning of the modern age. Among his suggestions, he proclaimed that the Black Death spared the rich and only claimed the poor, who were unhealthy to begin with.4

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Hecker. The Black Death.

Francis Aidan Gasquet. The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9) now Commonly Known as The Black Death. (London, Simpkin Marschall, Hamilton, Kent, 1893), 196.

Gasquet additionally mentioned in his first chapter that the Black Death was most likely a form of bubonic or Eastern plague.5 Only one year after Gaquest published his monograph, Alexandre Yersin discovered the bacteria Yersinia pestis during a bubonic plague epidemic in Hong Kong. For Gasquet and his contemporaries this was the explanation of how the Black Death was transmitted across Europe; from fleas, hidden amongst the fur of the common black rat. Bubonic plague remained the explanation for the Black Death into the 20th century, although other explanations would later arise. G.G. Coulton noted in 1924 that the modern diagnosis suggests that the Black Death was the bubonic plague which spread shockingly fast once imported to virgin soil like Europe.6 Coulton believed that the Black Death affected the course of history to an extraordinary extent. He elaborated by proclaiming that the catastrophe did deeply affect the later course of European civilization; and secondly, it contributed to hasten that impulse of independent research which we call the Renaissance and that religious revolution, closely akin to it, which we call the Reformation.7 It can be ascertained that historians in the early 20th century believed the Black Death was the event that separated the middle ages from the modern world. For an extended period, scholarship surrounding the Black Death was largely unchanging. However, as methods of history began to evolve, so did the questions being asked by historians. The final few decades of the 20th century brought about a tremendous revolution in Black Death research. Beginning in 1978, with The Black Death: A Turning Point in

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Ibid., 7. G.G. Coulton. The Black Death. (New York: Robert M. McBride & Co, 1930), 10. 7 Coulton, The Black Death, 101.

History?, historians began researching questions that previously had been unchallenged. The book consisted of essays that re-examined various elements of the 14th century disease. David Herlihys addition to Black Death scholarship was a book consisting of three separate essays written by him prior to 1985. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West is an influential monograph that successive historians refer to frequently. These essays distanced themselves from the Malthusian framework and queried whether or not the bubonic plague was truly the cause of the Black Death. Questions were raised which dealt with the lack of epizootic, the rate of spread of the disease and its seasonal occurrence.8 Herlihy was also one of the first supporters of Graham Twiggs The Black Death: a Biological Reappraisal, the controversial book that revolutionized Black Death scholarship during the 1980s. Graham Twigg was a zoologist by trade but used his experience to explore the possibility that the Black Death was caused by something other than the Y. pestis bacteria and the bubonic plague. Among other arguments, he noted that the bubonic plague was only one of many diseases that produce the dark skin rashes common during the 14th century epidemic.9 Twigg put forth his own unique alternative to bubonic plague: anthrax. According to Twigg, anthrax kills domestic animals, produces pustules which are jet black and could easily be mistaken for buboes, and is highly infectious.10 Visceral anthrax is antibiotic resistant, and kills 90% of people in just 2 to 3 days.11 The spores of infection are easily carried in the air, or on skins, furs and wool. Historians researching the Black Death after 1985 would now customarily inform their readers whether they subscribe to the traditional belief of the bubonic plague, or an alternative
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David Herlihy. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997) 26. 9 Graham Twigg. The Black Death: a Biological Reappraisal. (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), 209. 10 Ibid., 217. 11 Ibid., 217.

theory. These changes to Black Death research can be correlated to the development of new technology and the overall change in historical scholarship. John Kelly, took a different approach to defending the plague theory. He acknowledged openly that the Third Pandemic in Hong Kong, which named the Y. pestis bacteria and bubonic plague responsible, resembled the Black Death in no way. While acknowledging the difference in symptoms, the lack of a rodent epizootic during the 14th century, and the unlikelihood of bubonic plague developing into pneumonic, he presented alternative theories without overlooking evidence previously developed.12 He noted that Russian historians believe the epidemic was a humanized form of Marmot plague which would explain the differences in symptoms.13 Historians who did not believe the Black Death was caused by the bubonic plague had the difficult problem of asking both historians and the public alike to re-evaluate what they considered as fact about the Black Death. In addition, there is no one alternative theory that these historians can subscribe to; they are bonded only by the common belief that bubonic plague was not the major disease behind the Black Death. A collection of scientific essays concerning the Black Death was published in 2008. Pestilential Complexities: Understanding Medieval Plague contained numerous plague denying essays that counter the traditional theories. New evidence was presented in the essay Epidemiology of the Black Death and Successive Waves of Plague. Samuel K. Cohn Jr., who also wrote the introduction to David Herlihys monograph, noted that during the initial infection no one place was re-infected two or more years running. To Cohn, this demonstrated that
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John Kelly. The Great Mortality: an Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time.(New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 299. 13 Ibid., 300.

immunity was developed which lasted more than the six months or less that humans can acquire today to resist against Y. pestis.14 In 2010, the Black Death scholarship intensified. Ewan Callaway presented the findings of collaboration between Canadian and German universities. Palaeogeneticists from both countries announced that they had decoded the DNA sequence of the Y. pestis bacteria from the bodies of 14th century English victims who died during the Black Plague. Since 2010, three other scientific papers have been published that have successfully found Y. pestis DNA in the mass graves of Black Death victims. The tides of Black Death scholarship changed again. Scientists involved in Black Death research are now asking historians to concentrate not on whether Y. pestis caused the Black Death plague, but question why the bacteria affected the population so differently than it does now. A researcher involved in one of the scientific papers that demonstrated the Y. pestis bacteria was in the mass graves of the Black Death victims, Sharon DeWitte, also contributed to a new theory in 2013. In the article Between Famine and Death: England on the Eve of the Black Death Evidence from Paleoepidemiology and Manorial Accounts, DeWitte and her fellow researchers concluded that most of the population of England and other parts of Europe were chronically ill due to protein, calcium and Vitamin B12 deficiencies. The authors determined that the Great Famine and the Great Bovine Pestilence which occurred earlier in the 14th century, caused a generation of frail individuals who were highly susceptible to the Black Death.

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Norman F.Cantor. In the Wake of the Plague: the Black Death and the World It Made . (New York: Perennial/HarperCollins, 2002), 85.

The increased reliance on scientific data is not exclusive to Black Death history; all historians are placing more importance on scientific evidence. The 21st century has been more interested in facts and proof rather than speculative theories. When comparing Heckers monograph from 1833 to Cohns Epidemiology of the Black Death and Successive Waves of Plague, it is difficult to imagine that they were examining the same topic. The grand, sweeping statements, such as the 14th century epidemic being the cause of both the Reformation and the Renaissance, no longer find their place in 21st century historical monographs. The past century has taught Black Death historians that even accepted truths sometimes must be re-examined. Objectives The research project will closely examine the historical and contemporary findings of historians concerning the Black Death. Beginning in the early 1800s, sources used by historians and other researchers will be investigated to determine how and why historians can to the conclusions they reached, and how the historiography of the Black Death has evolved. When inspecting 21st century scientific findings, such as the paleomicrobiology tests that took place on the corpses of Black Death victims, the research project will break down the scientific jargon and weave the results into the historiography and the ramifications of the discovery. Hypothesis It is hypothesized that the evolution of Black Death historiography followed its particular path due to both changes in the profession of history, as well as advancements in medical and scientific technology. Black Death history began with armchair historians making grand sweeping statements, passed through fierce debates by tenured professors and now rests momentarily on the evidence provided by new scientific research and tests. Understanding how
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and why Black Death research evolved will illuminate what areas of Black Death history still need examination and explanation. Additionally, it will help historians recognize how the field of history has changed as a whole. Definitions Historiography: The study of the writing of history and of written histories. Paleomicrobiology: The study of ancient and historical micro-organisms, including human diseases. Method/Analysis The research for this project will be done in two phases: research done in Calgary, using libraries, the internet and loaned books to research medical history, and then research done in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada at McMaster University. In the first phase, the researcher will be almost exclusively consulting writings by historians. Other medical history monographs of early historians, such as Justus Hecker and Francis Aiden Gasquet, will be examined for comparison and contrast purposes. More historical writings which mention the Black Death will be examined to understand how other historians viewed the illness and whether their views compliment or disagree with the understanding of the evolution of Black Death historiography. The second phase of research will be done on the campus of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Researchers from McMasters Institute for Infectious Disease Research were one of the two groups involved in the sequencing of the entire genome of the Black Death in 2010. Research undertaken will be: viewing and reading documentation
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chronicling the work of researchers, as well as visiting the Institute for Infectious Disease Research and interviewing the team of researchers. After both phases of research are completed, the researcher will begin to work on analyzing the new information gained. The data will be studied and complied into a chronological research paper that documents the beginning of Black Death historiography, the transition of the field, and finally, where there research rests in 2014. The researcher will not only be reading and compiling information, they will also be interpreting the findings of preceding historians with more information that may have been available at that time. The writings from the past two centuries form a lengthy history of Black Death research and the researcher will be taking new information into account. As well, they will be examining the older material with that idea that while it may not be entirely historically accurate, there are still many important aspects to 19th and 20th century historical research. Resources/Personnel This research project will be undertaken as the thesis of a Masters of Arts degree in History. The resources needed include cost of living as well as tuition of one graduate student. There will also be travel expenses due visiting archives located in different cities. The only personnel working on the project will be one graduate student. Timeline Thesis Approval Data Collection and Research Travel to McMaster Data and Research Analysis May 2014 June July 2014 June 22 June 28, 2014 August 2014

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Budget School and Living Tuition Cost Living Expense Travel Fees Plane Hotel Per Diam Archival Fees William Ready Archives (McMaster) Books from Amazon Anticipated Results The results expected from this research project will include an increase of information regarding how historians and laypeople considered the Black Death as an illness and a historical event. It will also showcase how the evolution of Black Death historiography is a reflective example of how the field of history has changed in the past two centuries. An extensive historiography of the Black Death will help current historians to consider what research has been done already, and what areas are in need of expansion. Limitations One of the limitations of this project is the ability to fulfill all the research needs within the timeframe and budget. The historiography of Black Death scholarship spans two centuries and two continents, and it may be difficult for one researcher to accurately capture all the information. The research project will not specifically be adding new knowledge about the Black Death disease itself, however, it will help researchers to recognize what areas are in need of more exploration. $1,500 $12,000 $635 $95 per night/$570 total $40 per day/$240 total Free (at time of writing) $300

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Conclusion There is a substantial amount of research concerning the Black Death that has been relatively unread and unexamined in the past two centuries. This research project will synthesize that information while explaining how and why Black Death scholarship has evolved. This will optimistically lead to more research into other ancient diseases and their effect on a global scale. Both historians and modern day medical research teams have much to learn from ancient and historic diseases.

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Bibliography Bos, Kirsten I, Verena J. Schuenemann, G. Brian Golding, Hernn A. Burbano, Nicholas Waglechner, Brian K. Coombes, Joseph B. McPhee et al. A Draft Genome of Yersinia Pestis from Victims of the Black Death. Nature 480, no. 278, (December 2011): 506-510. Bowsky, William M, ed. The Black Death: a Turning Point in History? Huntington, New York: R. E. Krieger, 1978). Callaway, Ewen. Plague Genome: The Black Death Decoded. Nature 478, no. 7370, (September 2011): 444-446. Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: the Black Death and the World It Made. New York: Perennial/HarperCollins, 2002. -Cohn Jr, Samuel K. Epidemiology of the Black Death and Successive Waves of Plague Pestilential Complexities: Understanding Medieval Plague, edited by Vivian Nutton. London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2008, 74-100. Coulton, G.G. The Black Death. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co, 1930. DeWitte, Sharon and Philip Slavin. Between Famine and Death: England on the Eve of the Black Death Evidence from Paleoepidemiology and Manorial Accounts. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 44, no. 1, (Summer 2013): 37-57. Gasquet, Francis Aidan. The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9) now Commonly Known as The Black Death. London, Simpkin Marschall, Hamilton, Kent, 1893. Haensch, Stephanie, Raffaella Bianucci, Michel Signoli, Minoarisoa Rajerison, Michael Schultz, Sacha Kacki, Marco Vermunt et al. Distinct Clones of Yersinia Pestis Caused Black Death. PLoS Pathog 6, no.10: e1001134. doi:10.1371. Hecker, Justus Friedrich Carl. The Black Death in the Fourteenth Century. London, 1833. Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: an Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005. Levett, Ada Elizabeth. The Black Death. Oxford, 1916. Nohl, Johnannes. The Black Death: a Chronicle of the Plague. New York: Harper, 1924. Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004.
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Rothschild, Bruce M. History of Syphilis. Clinical Infectious Diseases 40, no. 10 (2005): 1454-1463. Salzano, Franciso Mauro. Targeted Enrichment of Ancient Pathogens Yielding the pPCP1 Plasmid of Yersinia Pestis From Victims of the Black Death. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 4, (August 2011): 1-7. Sherman, Irwin W. Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World. Washington, DC: ASM Press, 2007. Twigg, Graham. The Black Death: a Biological Reappraisal. New York: Schocken Books, 1985. Welford, Mark R., and Brian H. Bossak. Validation of Inverse Seasonal Peak Mortality in Medieval Plagues, Including the Black Death, in Comparison to Modern Yersinia pestis-Variant Diseases. PLoS ONE 4, no. 12 (2009): 1-6.

Acknowledgements The work done by previous historians is gratefully acknowledged.

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