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Embargoes and Grain Exports: The Missing Link in the Story of the Black Death
Embargo of the trade in grain in the Black Sea in 1345-06 tells the story of how this kept the plague from spreading from port to port in the Mediterranean
Source:
Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain, Embargoes, and Yersinia pestis in the Black Sea, 1346–48
By Hannah Barker
In: Speculum (2021), Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 97–127
When, how, and why did the Black Death reach Europe, and why were the results so devastating? Recent phylogenetic studies of the bacterium Yersinia pestis have demonstrated that the specific strain responsible for the catastrophe developed in China in the first half of the thirteenth century. The bacterium then took approximately 150 years to reach the area near Lake Issyk-Kul in modern-day Kyrgyzstan, where tombs dated to 1338–1339 bear witness to an outbreak. From there, it took approximately seven years to reach the Venetian colony of Tana, near the Sea of Azov, and Solgat in the Crimea. From these locations, it spread to Constantinople and then to the major ports and trading hubs of the eastern Mediterranean, such as Alexandria, Messina, Genoa, Marseille, Ragusa, and Venice. Finally, the disease spread inland as well as northwards.
This leads to a specific question: why did the pestilence gain such gravitas at this particular moment? Why did it “suddenly” erupt with such violence? And, if at all, to what extent was this caused by endemic reservoirs that had survived from the Justinianic plague of the sixth century? Archaeologists and scientists are currently studying the different strains of the bacterium and how they shaped the course of the European catastrophe.
Sources produced by people present in the Black Sea region during the Second Pandemic—including Genoese colonial administrators, Venetian diplomats, Byzantine chroniclers, and Mamluk merchants—offer an important perspective. They show that the Venetian community at Tana played a significant role in plague transmission; that it took over a year (from spring 1346 to autumn 1347) for the plague to cross the Black Sea to Constantinople; that people crossed the Black Sea in 1346, but commodities did not, owing to a series of trade embargoes; that grain was one of the most important Black Sea commodities in both volume and strategic value; and therefore that the embargoes of 1346 delayed plague transmission by temporarily halting the movement of grain, along with its accompanying rats, fleas, and bacteria.
When Venice, Genoa, and the Golden Horde made peace and lifted their embargoes in 1347, both the grain trade and the spread of plague resumed, precipitating the later European disaster and devastation.
In a brilliant and detailed exposé of the evidence provided by letters, diplomatic reports, legal documents, and chronicles, the historian Hannah Barker lifts the veil on these crucial political manoeuvres, which delayed the spread of the pestilence.
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Recent studies from 2025 supplements this study by demonstrating how a forced volcanic climatic cooling-off of the Mediterranean region in the year 1346 led to a significant drop in average temperatures of between 1.5º and 2º, which caused widespread famine. Although not as harsh as the downturn caused by the Samala eruption in 1256, this led to an invigorated diplomatic effort to have the embargo lifted so that cities in Italy might lessen the strain by importing grain. Ultimately this is claimed to be the last missing piece. However, the question still remainss, to which extent and how, bacterial reservoirs and other rodents than the black rats played a role in the north of Europe.