{"product_id":"the-black-death-gordon-j-mackenzie-9798189404153","title":"The Black Death: Plague, Social Upheaval and the Transformation of England","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe disease did not merely kill millions. It changed the value of work, land and human life.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 1348, plague reached England after devastating communities across Eurasia, the Mediterranean and continental Europe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWithin months, households collapsed, parish priests died, churchyards filled and familiar systems of care and burial came under unbearable pressure. London opened emergency cemeteries, rural manors recorded waves of tenant deaths and communities struggled to harvest crops with too few surviving workers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet the Black Death was not only a story of mortality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe disappearance of perhaps two-fifths to one-half of the population created an unprecedented scarcity of labour. Workers demanded higher wages, tenants sought better land and servants moved in search of improved conditions.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEngland's rulers responded with coercion.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Ordinance of Labourers and Statute of Labourers attempted to freeze wages, restrict movement and force survivors to accept the conditions that had existed before the plague.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Black Death\u003c\/b\u003e follows the pandemic from its wider Eurasian origins through England's ports, towns, villages, churches and royal government.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt examines medical symptoms and medieval care, burial and belief, labour regulation, vacant farms, changing towns, clerical mortality, inheritance, women's work and the repeated plague outbreaks that prevented rapid recovery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on chronicles, government records, manorial documents, archaeology, ancient DNA research and modern scholarship, Gordon J. MacKenzie separates surviving evidence from later legend. The book avoids presenting the plague as a simple beginning of modern freedom while explaining how demographic catastrophe weakened older assumptions about wages, service and social rank.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the story of a society that survived mass death but could not restore the world that had existed before it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Gordon J. MacKenzie\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798189404153\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/27\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 200\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.55lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d","brand":"Gordon J. MacKenzie","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49002331439359,"sku":"9798189404153","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-black-death-gordon-j-mackenzie-9798189404153","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}