Social and economic impact and revolts
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Flip to reveal answersHow did the Black Death change the balance between lords and peasants?
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Question
How did the Black Death change the balance between lords and peasants?
Answer
It killed about a third of people, making labour scarce, so peasants could demand higher wages and better terms while lords lost bargaining power.
Question
Define serfdom.
Answer
A system in which an unfree peasant was legally bound to a lord's land, owing labour and dues and unable to leave the manor.
Question
What happened to wages and rents after the plague?
Answer
Wages rose sharply because workers were scarce, and rents fell as lords competed to keep tenants on their land.
Question
What was the Statute of Labourers (1351)?
Answer
An English law that froze wages at pre-plague levels and made it a crime to demand or pay more, forcing people to work.
Question
What is a poll tax?
Answer
A flat tax charged on every adult head, so it hit the poor far harder than the rich — a trigger of the 1381 revolt.
Question
What triggered the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381?
Answer
A third flat-rate poll tax, on top of frozen wages and hated labour laws, sparked the rising in Essex and Kent.
Question
Who were Wat Tyler and John Ball?
Answer
Wat Tyler led the 1381 rebels' march on London; John Ball was the radical priest who preached equality between rich and poor.
Question
How did the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 end?
Answer
Wat Tyler was killed at Smithfield, King Richard II broke his promises, and the leaderless revolt was crushed — but the poll tax was dropped.
Question
What was the French Jacquerie (1358)?
Answer
A short, violent peasant rising north of Paris against the lords, in the context of the Hundred Years' War and noble weakness after Poitiers.
Question
Compare the causes of the 1381 revolt and the Jacquerie.
Answer
1381 was triggered by the poll tax; the Jacquerie by war taxes and noble weakness after Poitiers — but both flowed from post-plague social tension.
Question
Why does the decline of serfdom matter most in the long run?
Answer
Though the revolts were crushed, labour scarcity meant lords could not re-tie peasants to the land, so serfdom faded in Western Europe over the next century.
Question
Beyond the countryside, where else did unrest appear after the plague?
Answer
In towns and cities, where craftsmen and the urban poor revolted against rich elites trying to hold wages and prices down.
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Topic 6.3 hub
Crisis and change (c1300–1400)
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