2.14.2011
Assignment #4
To search for truth in history means to put in a lot of work. One would need to go through piles of books and scholarly reviews, researching to find contradictions and different opinions. Then one must start analyzing the sources of these opinions and only then can they begin to decide what is truthful and what is not. In this assignment, we were supposed to look at scholarly reviews of two very important books in the modern understanding of the “Black Death.” In this process, I began by going onto the University of Minnesota website and going into the library page. I ended up on a site titled “Book Review Index Online Plus.” I entered the titles of each of the books, and began to read the short reviews of each book. I looked for reviews that explained both the essential facts the author mentioned as well as ones that explained the author’s main points.
I rejected most book reviews that failed to give me a grasp of either the book or the main arguments of the book. Furthermore, I rejected all articles that did not give me an understanding of what the author was trying to use to back up their claims. Being selective in how I chose my reviews allowed me to gather the most relevant information and to focus on the main issues that existed between the two books. It also gave me the luxury of seeing the more important differences that existed between two books that take opposite approaches to opposite arguments about the same topic.
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The reviews that I used for Cohn’s book were:
Sharon T. Strocchia’s review in the 2004 Journal of Social History
Daniel Mallecks’s review in the 2003 History: Reviews of New Books
The reviews that I used for Benedictow’s book were:
Mary Lindermann’s review in the Summer 2006 edition of Renaissance Quarterly
Cohn’s review in the 2005 N Engl J Med
The most interesting of all these reviews, for obvious reasons, is Cohn’s review on Benedictow’s book. It is here that we find the major differences between the two vantage points. This was an obvious choice to me. The other reviews that I chose had some interesting input on the style and validity of the arguments in each of the books. I tried to piece together what I thought the ideal review would have contained. I figured that it would address the main points, explain the background of the author and his or viewpoint, and then look at the actual argument of the book. A good review would look critically at the sources, and with a skeptical view analyze if they are worth mentioning in terms of helping the authors argument. This reviews relatively fit that bill.
Cohn’s goal in The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe was to dispute the notion that the medieval plague (the black death) and the modern plague came from the same bacterium. The bacterium that was in question was the subtropical Y Pestis. Cohn argued, using very extensive records as well as chronicles, doctor records, and accounts of miracles, that the disease that spread so quickly across Europe could not have been the same as the one that spread across Asia. He argues not only that the Black Death did not follow the symptoms of the Y Pestis bacterium, but that the speed by which the Black Death spread across Europe was much too fast for the spread of the Y Pestis.
Benedictow’s goal in The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History was to prove that the Black Death stemmed from the Y Pestis and that the Black Death’s impact on European society was much greater than history was giving it credit for. He argued that it killed up to 60 percent of the population, which is much more that the previously recorded 30 percent. He goes into great detail in explaining the route that the Black Death had in each country. He does this by splitting up his book into 34 chapters just explaining the demographic effect of the Black Death on the inhabitants of each.
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The interesting aspect of these two books, and I’m sure the reason that we were given these two books for this assignment is that the two author’s disagree on everything. They disagree on the type of bacteria it was that caused this outbreak. They disagree about the overall effects and population changes that occurred directly because of the Black Death. They disagree about the method by which the Black Death was transported from place to place. They disagree about its relation to the modern plague. It is in these disagreements that a reader has to try to find truth for one side or the other.
For me, reading about a topic that I know very little about, I found Cohn to have a more complete argument. One of the reviewers, Mary Lindermann, mentioned that Benedictow fails to look at the Black Death from more than a demographic point of view. She explains the notion that if he wanted to create a complete history of this tragic event, he would have to look at it from a cultural and social standpoint as well. I found this point to be the deciding factor. Benedictow ignores the social and cultural aspect. His knowledge of demographic changes during the period is extensive, and using them the reader really gets an understanding for the damage this pandemic did to European culture. But it was hard to get a grasp of what he was saying without looking at it from a broader scope.
My bias towards the work and opinion of Samuel Cohn’s book might have stemmed from the fact that I got to read positive reviews of his book and then read his review of Benedictow’s book. Had I got to read Benedictow’s review of Cohn, I might have had a better opinion on the issue and might not have taken sides so fast. That being said, I found the evidence that the reviewers mention about the speed with which the disease spread to be compelling in the sense that it almost automatically rules out the Y Pestis virus.
The future research on the topic will directly involve the use of a more scientific approach. More than likely, it will stem from the analysis of bodies that can be found from this time period. Through the medical symptoms displayed by the corpses, historians will have a greater understanding of what exactly totaled the population of Europe. The research could also come from a more cultural approach to the issue. This would be manifested in the attempt to understand the effects the Black Death had on the cultural and social lives on people in each nation separately.
The Essay on The Black Plague People Death Europe
In the fourteenth century Europe was cursed by a deadly plague, which killed one third of Europe's people. This epidemic is known as the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague. The plague was carried by rats and fleas along the trading posts, rapidly covering Europe. The plague is greatly effective when it attacks the weak and at this point in time Europe was already weakened from poor farming. The ...
Sources:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200503103521026
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