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Post-Plague Labor Shortage and Social Unrest
Western Europe faced prolonged labor shortages after the Black Death, and states kept strengthening statutes such as the Labor Ordinances to suppress…
Timeline
- 1371–1380England · EnglandThe 1351 Labor Ordinances were repeatedly enforced in the 1370s, with local justices of the peace fining bargaining workers against pre-plague wage standards. The contradiction between labor scarcity and statutory repression kept building discontent among the urban and rural lower classes.
- 1377England · EnglandTo fund the war against France, Richard II's government levied a poll tax in 1377, graded by age, and imposed further levies in the following years. The new tax reached broad masses of peasants and townspeople, and combined with post-plague economic hardship to sharpen social tensions.
- 1372–1380Flanders · FlandersThe Kingdom of France likewise used statutes to restrict wages and serf migration; textile workers in the towns of Flanders rioted repeatedly over rising prices and stagnant wages. The drains of the Hundred Years' War intertwined with labor shortages, leaving Western European social structures in a state of high tension in the 1370s.
Sources
- Statute of Labourers 1351 https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/
- The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 — R. B. Dobson (1970)