The Spread of The Great Plague

The Black Death has spread a lot in Europe, so much so that it took around 50 million people, reducing the population of Europe by more than fifty per cent. It made a drastic change in the world at the time and the years, decades and centuries after. In these tasks, we were asked to complete and examine the map and colour in the first cities to be infected with this disease. The years, as well as the colour, differentiate from each other to be able to see the pattern on where and how rapid it began to spread.

Once you have completed the map, answer these questions:

1. What date and in what city did the plague start in Europe? It started at around 1349 a year after it has spread around Italy and France.

2. Referencing the colours, in what year did the plague spread the most? The Plague has spread the most in the year 1348.

3. What patterns do you see in the map? The Black Death began spreading around cities near the coast, which I would comprehend them to be trade locations, trade routes for goods around the continent.

4. List some reasons why you think it took a whole year for the plague to get from Paris to London and Liege? Some of my ideas on why this was the case is because, the people of France and Italy might've only then begun to feel ill, which naturally at whom is where you would stay. Another idea is travellers for reasons unknown have not been travelling to London and Liege then. The final thought that has come up in my mind is that people were simply dead then, the population is less than what it used to be; resulting in fewer people travelling, ill, dying or dead.

 The following is a comic strip that simplifies how the disease has spread from Asia to Europe. The sequence of events is of the following:

1. Traders in the Crimea have been besieged for three years by Tartar hordes from Central Asia.
2. The Black Death breaks out among the Tartars.
3. The Tartars used their sieged machines to fling their dead inside the walls of the fort.
4. The disease spreads to the people inside the fort.
5. The Tartars flee.
6. The survivors inside the fort set sail for Europe bringing the disease with them.