Just saw a nifty show on The History Channel called The Plague, with one interviewee hypothisizing 50% of Europe’s population succumbing. Anyone know if anything comparable ever occurred anywhere else? Wiki seems to feature only Europe and the Middle East, how about the rest of Asia? The rest of Africa? Any evidence of similar events in pre-Columbian America?
Plague has hit pretty much everywhere in the world (at least anywhere with significant population) including Australia. The Third Pandemic started in China in 1855 and spread from there. IIRC the Third Pandemic came in two waves with the second wave mostly staying within China.
The Justinianic plague in mid 6th century started in Asia.
The 14th century plague started in western China and apparently was fairly severe, According to McNeil in 1331 it took out 90% of Hopei province and by the 1350’s it was more widespread, killing “two thirds” of the people in eight different provinces ( granted this in the context of the beginning of the violent disintegration of the Yuan dynasty ). Similar records show regular devastating epidemics in east Asia that seem to parallel those in the west in severity. So, yep, they were not immune, just less well documented ( at least in the west ).
Africa I’m less informed on. North Africa of course was part of the Mediterranean complex. But sub-Saharan Africa had more tenuous connections via trans-Saharan trade routes. It may be that the lower population densities in much of sub-Saharan Africa limited the severity of outbreaks, leading to just more localized disasters. Combine that with a lower pre-modern level of literacy and local record keeping and such may have been effectively hidden from modern historians. But plague certainly has active reservoirs in Africa today.
- Tamerlane