In the Wake of Death: Socioeconomic Effects of the Black Death in Medieval England

The Black Death is one of the most infamous pandemic diseases that have ever spread through the world. While most of Europe was devastated by the plague of the fourteenth century, England was in a unique position to recover and evolve from the effects of the plague. In particular, the Black Death in England facilitated a change in social and economic systems. Following the immense depopulation caused by the disease, lower classes benefited from the increased demand of labor, as they were able to decide the kind of work they performed and were able to influence their own wages. Upper classes on the other hand fared poorly in the aftermath of the plague. As a result of this shifting socioeconomic power, tensions rose between the upper and lower classes of England, culminating in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Though the upper classes had successfully fought to regain the social and economic powers they had lost due to the plague, the lower classes of English society gained a new level of respect and importance in the eyes of the nobility that would shape the state’s growth and development into the twenty first century