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→Different Impacts of the Black Death
==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 changesand increasing power for women in Europe in particular. Greater power to serfs as their wages went up also helped, in the long-term, to finally finish serfdom in Western Europe. In the immediate sense, serfs and nobility often fought in the years after the Black Death, but the lack of productivity in farms did help to give more powers to peasants in Western Europe. In effect, the Black Death helped to liberate societies as that helped to set the stage for the Renaissance revival that occurred in Europe in the century after the Black Death.<ref>For more power was given to peasants on Western Europe after the Black Death, see: Herlihy, David, and Samuel Kline Cohn. 1997. <i>The Black Death and laborersthe Transformation of the West.</i> Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.</ref>
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 removed in Eastern Europe.<ref>For more on the effects in Eastern Europe, see: Ziegler, Philip. 2010. <i>The Black Death.</i> Stroud: The History Press Ltd, pg. 85</ref>
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 Egypt, large areas along the Nile became abandoned, contributing to economic decline there. In effect, the Middle East became far weaker politically and economically after the Black Death. In fact, it was not until the 20th century that some cities and regions in the Middle East reached their Medieval population levels. In east Asia, rebellions eventually broke out against the Mogul ruling dynasty in China (Yüan dynasty). This was aggravated by the plague, where ultimately China regained its independence.
