The Plague 1. The Mongol Empire 2. The Plague in Europe

1. The Mongol Empire • First of all, where is Mongolia?

• In 1206 CE, Genghis Khan united the nomadic tribesmen of Mongolia and began a military conquest

• Khan’s forces conquered much of Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe

• The Mongolian Empire is the second-largest empire in the history of the world

• At its peak in 1279, it controlled: –33 million km2 –25% of the world’s population (110

million)

• The Mongolian Empire was 4 times the size of the Roman Empire

• The Mongolians established trade routes connecting its empire together and linking the empire to Europe

• But trade goods were not the only things the thousands of traders using those routes transported

• Where there are people, there are rats! • A pair of rats can produce 2,000 offspring

every year

• These rats carried flees, which were the carrier of a deadly bacteria that caused the plague

• By 1347, the plague had reached Italy via the trade routes from Asia

The Plague in Europe • The first outbreak of the plague in Europe

began in 1348 • For the next three years, it advanced

rapidly across Europe • There were major outbreaks in Europe

roughly every decade for the next 150 years

• By the end of the epidemic, 50 to 60% of the entire population of Europe had died from the plague!

• The plague killed as many as 200 million people

• It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover

• The plague created many social, religious, and economic problems in Europe, but more on those later...