Agricultural and Labor Crisis Caused by the Black Death

Name: Agricultural and Labor Crisis Caused by the Black Death
Start: 1349
End: 1352

Type Event Region Europe Time 1349–1352

Around 1349, the Black Death caused a sharp decline in Europe's population, leading to abandoned farmland, severe labor shortages, fluctuating grain …

Timeline

1349–1350England · EnglandIn 1349, English parish registers and manor accounts showed large numbers of serfs and hired laborers dead; many manors lacked the hands to complete spring plowing and autumn harvest, fallow and abandoned land expanded, livestock went untended, and grain output fell significantly.
1349–1352Western Europe · Western EuropeSurviving laborers gained bargaining power, wages rose while rental income came under pressure; in 1349 England issued the Statute of Labourers attempting to freeze wages and compel labor, and lords in France and elsewhere tightened labor-service obligations, but demographic change had become irreversible, and serfdom and the manor economy gradually moved toward transformation.

Sources

Statute of Labourers 1349 (1349) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw3/23/1
The Black Death: An Economic History — Philip Ziegler (1969)