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→Different Impacts of the Black Death
The Black Death had substantially different impact on populations and exacerbated social change in many regions. In Western Europe, where populations were generally higher prior to the Black Death, the reduction of population made the remaining peasants and workers better able to negotiate higher wages. Revolts and rebellions occurred after the plague, but it uliatemly helped lead to major social changes. It also led to the death of some of the nobility. Law changes to inheritance, allowing women in particular to inherit, led to gradual gender changes. Greater power to serfs as their wages went up also helped, in the long-term, to finally finish serfdom in Western Europe. In effect, the Black Death helped to liberate societies as more power was given to peasants and laborers.
In Eastern Europe, it had the opposite effect of strengthening serfdom. In this case, population densities were much lower, thus revolts that followed the Black Death were less common. Upper classes simply reinforced their power through laws that tied workers to land and limited their wages and power. Revolts by the peasants only became a major problem in the 16th through the 19th centuries, where only during the 1800s was serfdom finished removed in Eastern Europe. While two different types of European economic and political systems began to emerge after the Black Death, in the Middle East a different outcome occurred. First, cities that were very populated, such as Cairo and Mosul, diminished greatly in population, leading to a de-urbanization in the Near East that took a long time to recover from. In fact, it was not until the 20th century that some cities and regions in the Middle East reached their Medieval population levels.
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