A Not Too Distant Mirror

I think it was about forty years ago, while in college, that I read parts of historian Barbara Tuchman's work titled A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. It was probably for a research paper.  I cannot recall much of the detail of the book, but I do know that it covered various events of that century.  The 14th century, among other calamitous events saw: the Hundred Years War, a papal schism, and the great plague.  The mirror was a reference to the 20th century which, when the book was published in 1978, had seen various wars, including two world wars, the 1918 flu epidemic, the great depression, racial strife, equal rights, and other movements. Given that, I wonder what Barbara Tuchman would say today. We may be distant from the calamitous 14th century, but we are not too distant from those calamitous events of the 20th century.  We are less than 20% of the way through the 21st century, and it seems that we already have a century worth of calamitous events.

Tuchman's work, from what I recall, starts with a cooling period which followed what is often referred to as the  Medieval warm period.  Warmer weather, during the Medieval warm period, allowed for more marginal land to be tilled, which led to more crops to be grown and hence more population to be sustained.  Then came the cooling period, or climate change, which led to cold weather, floods and a resulting famine starting about 1314.  Depending upon account the famine would last from three to seven years.  By comparison, the 21st century has seen a changing climate, as much of the world the last ten years has been noticeably warmer, on average, than any of the prior three decades.  More significant rainfall and other weather factors affect populations.  Think of flooding in the Midwest and plain states just last year.  Similar flooding, but with colder temperatures occurred in the early part of the 14th century. 

Of course, the 14th century is best known for its greatest calamity the bubonic plague, better known as the Black Death.  Perhaps the 21st century will be defined by Covid-19.  The plague was spread primarily by rats to warriors and sailors, and who with the rats, carried it to ports and persons.  It then spread over all of Europe.  Covid began with a bat, and spread person to person and possibly by touching objects that may have been infected.  Think door handles and counters.  What is interesting is that much of the population of Europe was significantly affected by the plague. Estimates range from 30-50% of Europeans died of the plague. And to think it started when some Russians, the Tartars, decided to use the dead bodies of their comrades as projectiles against a Genoese army.  As these sailors returned to Italy and the plague sread to Italy and then to all of Europe.  Famine and the plague are very Malthusian-identified methods of population control.  According to Malthus, varied checks, of war, pestilence, floods and there after affects, such as starvation are a check to population growth. The 1918 flu epidemic had a much smaller death rate than the plague, but was still estimated at 3 to 5% of the population.  The Covid death rate is thought to be about .5 to 1%. 

Today, advances in agriculture and medicine have led to fewer impacts of drought, and disease than what was possible in the early 20th, much less in the 14th century.  In the 14th century doctors wore long beaks stuffed with herbs and essential oils, today health workers wear N95 masks, when available. However, our advances in a  global world come at a cost, think of the pests, that overrun North America as a result of globalization.  They destroy trees, plants and shrubs and some carry virulent diseases.  Then we also have the use of insecticides to battle bugs, and combined with the mono-culture of crops we see a significant decrease in pollinators. In medicine researchers see the mutation of bacteria into super bugs more resistant to the use of antibiotics.  The superbugs have come about due to the overuse of antibiotics.  Our ability to offset famine and disease comes at a cost.  Speaking of famine, East Africa has been suffering from a locust infestation that has ruined vegetation and crops, leading to a potentially devastating food situation.  Here in the U.S., at the same time, a big concern was the lack of beef in the meat aisle.  Covid closed a number of meat processing plants. Transfer of disease or pests has been with the world since the start of travel.

Of course, we have war.  For almost nineteen years the United States has been at war with Islamic fundamentalists who bombed the Twin towers, the Pentagon, and an aircraft taken down in the fields of Pennsylvania.  Filled with hubris yet again, the US spread the war to Iraq.  While, the 14th century had the 100 years war, the war on terror seems as if it will never end.  I have to think that 100 years in the 14th century is probably equal to about 10 years present time.  Activity and communications in the world move so much faster.  The twentieth century had a seemingly no-end to conflict.  The four year Great War was followed, less than a quarter century later, by an even larger world conflict. Five years after the end of WWII we had the police action of Korea followed later by the action in Vietnam.  Both of the latter arose in large part, according some historians, from the policies of FDR who desired to see American might replace British colonialism as the "peace" keeper of the world.  Of course, American hubris following WWII made the US think they were militarily invincible.  The Japanese thought the same in WWII, as the US did after.  However, Peter Bernstein (The Power of Gold) writes that unlike the 14th century, except for the two world wars, the major world powers were at peace during the 20th century.  He says the 14th century showed no such relief. As Bernstein writes, "The fourteenth century stands unmatched in history for its unrelenting sequence of famine, pestilence, social chaos, and warfare."  A terrible contrast to the advancements of the 12 and 13th centuries.  Bernstein may be correct, but the cold war produced a seemingly too large supply of nuclear weaponry.

The calamitous 14th century also saw revolts, one being the 1381 English peasant revolt.  In the US we now have protests and riots related to police use of force on persons of color, showing that the racial riots and civil rights programs of the 1960's did not fully effect change, and inherent bigotry is difficult to overcome.

Economically, while the 20th century had the Great Depression, the 21st century, so far, has had the Great Recession, and now the coming possible Covid recession.  However, an oddity occurred during the 14th century, particularly during the plague, when so many persons died, the wealth standard of the survivors increased.  Gold was the main standard at the time, as it has been throughout much of history, and as the population decreased the amount of gold saw an increase per-capita. Wealth then as today was not equally distributed.  Further, as today, who holds the money has the power.

The church had its papal schism in the 14th century, or two popes, (starting in 1378 and lasting into the 15th century), not to mention when a pope was imprisoned in the early part of the century.  This fact is almost lost to history, but this had marked effects on the Christian population of the middle ages.  The twentieth century saw church reform with Vatican II, but the 21st century saw a pope begin a reform of the reform, which led to more confusion for the decreasing numbers of faithful.  The pope who liked to look back to an earlier time resigned and promised to retreat into a life of prayer and contemplation, but he has had a tendency to come out with a statement or writings at critical junctures of decisions for the current pope.  Concerned with relativism, the reform adverse institution increasingly has allowed itself to become more and more irrelevant.

The calamitous 14th century followed two centuries of innovation and economic advancement.  The history of the middle ages is not dark, but produced advancements following the downfall of the Roman Empire.  Today, change moves much faster and this then leads to a theory I have that is built off of a psychologist and his talk about highs and lows in life.  The theory of the psychologist was the higher high a person experiences the lower his low, or depression.  In my theory something similar holds true for cultures and economies, the higher the highs, the greater the lows. Is it possible that the advances of the 12th and 13th helped produced the calamities of the 14th? That the industrial revolution led to the Great War, which in part led to WWII as Japan and Germany clambered for more natural resources? Is the digital revolution of today leaving too many behind? Coupled with the fact that time moves so much faster, change can come more rapidly. I guess that is something I need to further study.  Of course, the Industrial Revolution has led to acid rain, and the CO2 emissions is large factor in climate change.

In a sense what this post really shows is that no century is without its tumult and divisions, some centuries just have much more in terms of calamity, and in the 14th and today it all seems to begin with changes in weather.  We are far removed from the calamity of the 14th, but we are not as calamitous today as then, although we are only 20% through the 21st century.  We are all human, each with our own ideas, habits, and tendencies. Culturally, certain events have a tendency to cause long-lasting change, think of the 1960's, the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand, from which flowed alterations to the cultural and world landscape.  In some respects, as globalization has increased in the world, more conflict occurs, and interestingly tribalism and nationalism have advanced.  The advancement of tribalism, nationalism and individualism is what helps keep people or groups apart. Are these an inherent response to globalization?  While the world is in a series of calamitous events, we need to understand and respect the one common humanity and the earth on which we find ourselves.

Photos by author, May and June 2020