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I am the god damn plague/Renaissance police and I will be issuing citations anytime I see these takes on the TL. No. Absolutely not. I rebuke all of this.
In the first place - shut UP about the Renaissance. Vasari has swindled your ass. It is just not the thing you think it is. https://going-medieval.com/2017/07/25/on-the-concept-of-the-renaissance-and-outkasts-hey-ya/
In the second place - acting as though medieval people didn't value their lives is just so ignorant and patronising. They did value their lives enough to flagellate themselves in the goddamn street to try to stop the plague. But sure. Whatever some Victorian told you, I guess.
Ugh just please read my plague content and then shut up. https://going-medieval.com/2020/04/02/not-every-pandemic-is-the-black-death/
Or listen to it. IDK. All you hoes owe me a drink. https://going-medieval.com/2020/03/31/on-the-plague-sex-and-rebellion/
No!! Jesus christ! Stop! That arose as a result of the social conditions created by the Black Death and was only possible because of wide scale civil unrest.
On the other hand, if Bloomberg is calling for wide scale civil unrest then they have absolutely read the room correctly for once.
Wait, also just circling back, where did Bloomberg get the "60% of Europe's population" figure? I know of various *cities* where that is true. (Bremen, Florence, Hamburg) but over all it is not, and also the majority of people loved in the countryside.
I mean Bohemia was fine, for example. (
)
I don't mean we need to downplay the severity of the event, but I have never seen 60% given as a Europe-wide figure.
)I don't mean we need to downplay the severity of the event, but I have never seen 60% given as a Europe-wide figure.
Oh also the majority of people "lived" in the countryside. Though presumably they were also loving there.
My man Brian also pointed out that both of these takes ignore, you know the "rest-of-the-world" that you may have heard of. Yeah the black death also hit Asia, the Middle East and Africa, all of whom absolutely did not GAF about the concept of the Renaissance one way or another.
They also didn't have much of a marked change in wages as far as I know there. Partially because people in those places were largely enjoying a better quality of life pre-plague so had less to revolt about.
Having said that, China had also just come through the Mongol conquests, so people were, shall we say, less interested in a bunch more upheaval. The stability and quality of life they were enjoying partially contributed to the initial outbreak, actually.
TL/DR did u know there are more kinds of people than just "white"?
Also this is a great place to learn more about why life actually sucked *more* during the Renaissance. Thanks Ada! https://twitter.com/Ada_Palmer/status/1246517647270973441?s=19
