Long-term change and case studies
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Flip to reveal answersWhat was the main effect of the Black Death on Western Europe's labour market?
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Question
What was the main effect of the Black Death on Western Europe's labour market?
Answer
It caused a severe labour shortage, making surviving workers scarce and valuable, so wages rose and serfdom declined.
Question
Define feudalism
Answer
The medieval system in which land was held in return for service and loyalty, binding lords and vassals in a hierarchy.
Question
Define manorialism
Answer
The estate system in which peasants worked a lord's land in exchange for their own plots and protection.
Question
What was the Statute of Labourers (1351)?
Answer
An English law trying to freeze wages at pre-plague levels; it failed and helped spark the 1381 Peasants' Revolt.
Question
When and why did the Abbasid Caliphate begin to fragment?
Answer
From the 900s, as distant provinces broke away and military strongmen seized real power, leaving the caliph a figurehead.
Question
What happened in 1258 to the Abbasid Caliphate?
Answer
The Mongols under Hülegü Khan sacked Baghdad, killed the last caliph, and ended over 500 years of Abbasid rule.
Question
How did the Black Death affect the Islamic world?
Answer
It spread along trade and pilgrimage routes, causing huge death tolls in cities like Cairo and Damascus and slowing recovery.
Question
Compare the political frame of the two regions during the 14th-century crisis
Answer
Western kingdoms survived the crisis, while the Abbasid Caliphate had already been destroyed by the Mongols in 1258.
Question
Why did the same plague empower Western peasants but not those in the Middle East?
Answer
In the West plentiful land plus scarce labour gave peasants leverage; the East faced collapsed unity and slower recovery.
Question
How had trade and economic power shifted by 1400?
Answer
Economic momentum tilted toward reviving Western Europe, with Italian cities like Venice and Genoa gaining trade dominance.
Question
Give one continuity across 750–1400 in both societies
Answer
Both economies stayed fundamentally agrarian, and religion remained central to social and political life.
Question
Which three dates anchor any essay on this crisis?
Answer
1258 (Mongol sack of Baghdad), 1348–49 (Black Death peaks in the West), 1351 (Statute of Labourers).
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Full study notes for Long-term change and case studies
Topic 6.3 hub
Crisis and change (c1300–1400)
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