The Black Death

by pchelp19

Hi there, fellow historians! I have a big request for you, ladies and gentlemen. I finally decided to man up and pick this topic for my thesis: The black death.

The only issue is... I couldn't find enough books regarding this topic in my country. I might have to order a few books from the US so I can thoroughly research important information about the plague. Do you guys have any good information that you could share? Or perhaps some books that I should look up? The more the merrier!

This post is basicaly a desperate attempt to find valuable information regarding "the black death" so I can make a great thesis. Thank you guys so much.

English is my 3rd language (I'm from EU), hopefully I didn't dissappoint you too much with my grammar!

y_sengaku

The most authoritative accounts of the plague are still those by Ole J. Benedictow:

  • Benedictow, Ole J. The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004.
  • ________. What Disease was Plague? On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
  • ________. 'Yersinia pestis, the Bacterium of Plague, Arose in East Asia. Did it Spread Westwards via the Silk Roads, the Chinese Maritime Expeditions of Zheng He or over the Vast Eurasian Populations of Sylvatic (Wild) Rodents?' Journal of Asian History 47-1 (2013): 1-31.

John Aberth becomes now the leading historian of this field of research, I suppose, but he has not published his own comprehensive overview of the Black Death that I'm waiting for yet.

  • Aberth, John. Plagues in World History. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 2011. (see Chap. 1).
  • [Historiographical Essay] ________. 'Ashes to Ashes, We All Fall Down: The Black Death'. In: Id., Contesting the Middle Ages: Debates that are Changing our Narrative of Medieval History, pp. 243-315. Routledge: London, 2019.
  • [Primary Source Collection] Aberth, John (ed.). The Black Death, The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 (Bedford Series in History and Culture). 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016.