European Recovery After the Black Death

Timeline

1. 1377England · EnglandThe 1377 English poll tax census showed a population of just over two million, still well below the pre-plague estimate of five to six million, but recovered from the lows of the 1350s. Parish registers and manor accounts across regions also reflected recovering marriage and birth rates and the reclamation of wasteland.
2. 1371–1380Florence · TuscanyItalian city-states and Flemish textile centers regained vitality in international trade in the 1370s; banking and cloth trade volumes in Florence, Venice, Bruges, and elsewhere rebounded, and urban populations and building activity gradually increased, showing that post-plague economic networks were being rebuilt.
3. 1371–1380Rural Kingdom of France · FranceLabor scarcity strengthened the bargaining power of serfs and tenant farmers, forcing manor lords to lower rents and replace labor services with cash rents; some wasteland was converted to sheep pasture or left fallow. The fundamental change in the land-labor ratio became a long-term driver of the rural economic transformation of the late Middle Ages.