SE Academic Review 2023

45 ACADEMIC REVIEW 2023

II Global comparisons of events that affected Europe enables medieval historians to reconstruct the significance of past events. Recent scholarship on disease history has highlighted that it is possible to extend the geographic parameters of our understanding of the Black Death by looking at parts of the world that have not featured in prevailing narratives about the disease. A reassessment of plague has been developed by Monica Green in her research on the Black Death, namely the Second Plague that swept across Europe and the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East, usually understood to have occurred between 1346-53 (Green, 2015, p. 2). Her investigation was published in the inaugural publication of The Medieval Globe , which includes several articles from experts of different fields who have sought to advance thinking about pandemic history by drawing on old and new scientific and humanistic methods. The ambition of the journal was to encourage interdisciplinary research of the entire medieval era to issue a new praxis for medieval studies and transform the ways historians might investigate the period (Symes, 2015, p. 2). Green’s contribution drew on research completed by genetic scientists in 2011 on the microevolution of plague’s causative organism, the bacterium Yersinia pestis ( Y. pestis ) (Bos, et al., 2011). Using phylogenetic studies of the modern Y. pestis genome the complete genome of Y. pestis was sequenced from ‘ancient’ DNA samples, showing that the evolutionary strands of Y. pestis have been found in different parts of the world. This suggests that the 14th-century Black Death was possibly a global phenomenon. This could change the agenda for historians of medieval Europe to start examining new comparative and connective studies of the Black Death, which would advance a body of literature that has usually investigated the European impacts of the disease. Green’s study argues that sub-Saharan Africa and the connected points of the Indian Ocean Basin need to be included in historical writing about the Black Death. The origin of the plague can be attributed to the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau after Y. pestis emerged there in c.1268, or at least sometime between 1142-1339 (Green, 2015, p. 37; Cui, et al., 2013). Green argues that if trade routes explain the transmission of plague across western Eurasia, then southern trade trajectories of the disease from the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau need to be considered as well (Green, pp. 47-48). For example, black

pepper and musk were important commodities that were transported across the Indian Ocean trade network. The Malabar Coast of southwest India produced vast amounts of black pepper during the Middle Ages and China was one of its main markets. Moreover, the popularity of Tibetan musk meant that it was transported through the Indus Valley and distributed to the western ports of the Indian Ocean and along the Red Sea to Egypt (Green). This would mean that regions whence Y. pestis originated were connected with the various trade points of the Indian Ocean Basin, providing the conditions necessary for the transmission of plague (Green, p. 48). The need to consider the presence of the Black Death in sub-Saharan Africa emerges from the recognition that simultaneous major economic decline damaged East African trade centres during the 14th century in Shanga, Tumbatu, Kilwa and Great Zimbabwe (Green, pp. 44-45). This pattern of simultaneous economic depression has been identified as a hallmark of the immediate impact of plague (Carmichael, 2015). With the identification of strains of the Y. pestis genome in African plague victims (Green, pp. 37-38) historians have an exciting opportunity to examine the sub-Saharan experiences during the time of the Black Death and consider what comparisons and connections can be made with Europe’s experience. Historians of medieval Europe might seek to re-examine interpretations of the impact of the disease. Recent scholarship has argued that, following an immediate period of socio-economic decline, the long-term impact of the Black Death led to increases in trade and consumption across Europe (Belich, 2016, p. 99). Furthermore, James Belich has advanced the notion that the expansion of western Europe took place because of the Black Death, arguing that the pandemic triggered a restructuring in technology, politics and trade. Such arguments appear less convincing, however, when explanations of the impact in Europe are compared against the possible presence of plague at the same time in sub-Saharan Africa. If the Black Death is reconstructed as a global pandemic that affected sub-Saharan Africa as well as the regions already identified in Eurasia, historians should rightly consider new questions. In the long term, did trade in Africa experience similar upturns to those identified in Europe? Was there a period of African expansion similar to that of western Europe in the post-Black Death era? If not, then why