Summary of John Kelly's The Great Mortality

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 Feodosiya, a city on the eastern coast of the Crimea, was a Genoese port that was one of the fastest-growing in the medieval world. The city was built as a monument to the Italian city-state’s wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory.

#2 Between 1250 and 1350, the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa was perfectly situated to take advantage of it. The port city doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size between 1250 and 1340, and its population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time.

#3 The Genoese, who were much closer to Asia than de’ Mussis and Heyligen, probably heard rumors about the disasters, but they faced so many immediate dangers in Caffa that they could not have had much time to worry about events in faraway India or China.

#4 The Black Death first spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, and then to China. It seems that the pestilence originated in inner Asia, and spread westward to the Middle East and Europe along the international trade routes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669356165

IRB Media

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Insights on John Kelly's The Great Mortality

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Feodosiya, a city on the eastern coast of the Crimea, was a Genoese port that was one of the fastest-growing in the medieval world. The city was built as a monument to the Italian city-state’s wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory.

#2

Between 1250 and 1350, the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa was perfectly situated to take advantage of it. The port city doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size between 1250 and 1340, and its population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time.

#3

The Genoese, who were much closer to Asia than de’ Mussis and Heyligen, probably heard rumors about the disasters, but they faced so many immediate dangers in Caffa that they could not have had much time to worry about events in faraway India or China.

#4

The Black Death first spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, and then to China. It seems that the pestilence originated in inner Asia, and spread westward to the Middle East and Europe along the international trade routes.

#5

The Lake Issyk Kul region in Kyrgyzstan is another often-cited origin point for the Black Death. In the late nineteenth century, a Russian archaeologist found that many cemetery headstones dated 1338 and 1339, and several of them contained a specific reference to plague.

#6

The Black Death arrived in the Crimea in 1346, and attacked the Tartar army. It then moved into the port, and attacked the Genoese defenders.

#7

The plague is the most famous example of what the Pima Indians of Arizona call oimmeddam, wandering sickness. It is believed that the plague originated in Genoa, and the Genoese were responsible for spreading it to Constantinople, Messina, Sardinia, and many other places.

#8

The Black Death was a disease that killed an estimated 200 million people worldwide. It came to Europe in 1347, and by 1352 it had reached Moscow, where it killed millions. It was particularly cruel to children and women, who died in greater numbers than men.

#9

The Black Death was a disease of rodents, and people were simply collateral damage in a titanic global struggle between the plague bacillus