There are around 2.8 billion people in Europe, North and South America, Japan and India. A huge chunk of these people are middle class. Neither rich nor poor, the middle classes are able to obtain comfortable shelter, an adequate supply of food, clothing and basic utilities like electricity and sewer service, as well as education for their children and entertainment for themselves. But I wonder how many people in the middle classes know that they owe their existence… to a flea!
Well, not to a flea, exactly. But rather Yersinia pestis, a bacteria that piggybacked on the flea… which in turn piggybacked on rats in the holds of ships. You might have guessed that I’m talking about the Black Death (a.k.a. the bubonic plague) which happened in Europe and the rest of the world between 1347 – 1351. Little is known about the epidemic outside of Europe except that it was also found in the Middle East, India and China and killed around 75 million people worldwide – around 34 million of which were Europeans. Of course, most of us learned about the Black Death in high school, yet we were often never taught about what the disease actually meant at the time and what happened after the disease had run its course…. which is odd, because one of the most important things to come out of the Black Death was the middle class itself!
A caste system is a social construct where people are born into a particular class and can never rise above their station. Although China and India are famous for their caste systems, Europe had one for nearly a thousand years too: the feudal system. The feudal system worked this way: at the top of the pyramid was the lord, who owned a piece of land ranging in size from a couple hundred acres to thousands of square miles. Underneath the lord were knights and clergy to protect the lord and his lands both physically and spiritually. Underneath those folks were merchants and tradesmen like blacksmiths and coopers. And at the bottom of the pyramid were the serfs, who were sharecroppers that paid the lord rent and required his permission to travel, move or even to marry in some cases!
But there was one place where the feudal system never really took hold: cities. Cities were generally independent of local lords. They had a class system, of course, but being centers of banking and commerce they were far more open to a “money talks, bullshit walks” mindset than their country cousins. Cities were also far more crowded than the country, so when a infectious disease hit town – like the plague – cities took an even harder population hit than the country. With the passing of the Black Death, labor would be in such great demand that many cities offered serfs freedom and cash to become city dwellers. Thousands took the cities up on their offers, only to find something even better waiting for them: a labor market so strapped for workers that they could dictate their wages to a degree.
The folks in the city were generally happy to give extra money to the former serfs, and that’s because they were even richer than they were before. The death of a third of Europe’s population meant that the survivors inherited tons of cash, valuables and land. And with that extra money, something happened to people that hadn’t happened in a Europe in a long, long time: they suddenly had leisure time. Theatre, once performed outside by migrant actors, now had permanent homes with complex stages and sets. Music, once the realm of the Church or the Crown, became more available to the wealthy. Art, once confined to churches and palaces, began to find its way into the homes of merchants and the lesser nobility. Food, once eaten just for sustenance, became both an entertainment and an enjoyment. And commerce, once a largely local affair, expanded to include the entire globe, as merchants searched for ways to obtain silks, porcelain and spices directly from their source instead of from Arabic middlemen.
This new engine of art and commerce was powered by what would one day become the middle class. And as trade, ever-increasing numbers of people were needed that were educated enough to keep a business’s books or speak Hindi. Universities, once owned by the Church, began to pop up all over the place. And because they were no longer beholden to the Church for their existence, few topics were off-limits. Europeans began to see the world not as some mysterious place directly governed by God but as a physical universe with laws that could be deciphered by mankind. And this learning kicked off even more learning, as businesses searched for practical answers for their problems. A silver mine, for example, might have been troubled by constant flooding. Scholars tried to figure out why water could not be pumped more than 30 feet at a time from the mine, but this only generated dozens of new questions, the answers for which sometimes had practical use in other industries.
Trade brought Europeans into contact with Arabic translations of classic Greek and Roman writings, as well as Islamic science and math; these texts made their way back to Europe where they kicked off the Renaissance… which itself led to the Age of Reason. And no document from the Age of Reason speaks louder for the middle class than the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that “all men are created equal”. Had there been no Black Death, serfs might have toiled in the fields for centuries before any meaningful change came their way. After all, many of the draconian measures put into place by the nobility as safety measures during the Black Death set off riots (such as the Jacquerie rebellion in France, the Ciompi rebellion in Italy and the Peasant Revolt in England); these riots were led by the “common folk” against their leaders and gave the peasants a political voice as well.
And finally, the new learning taking place and the risks associated with certain types of commercial ventures (like shipping) meant that Europeans were willing to pay someone handsomely for many tasks… which gave them the concept of social mobility. Unlike, say, China, where one was born into one class and stayed there for the rest of his life, in Europe one could take one thing (like gunpowder), add it to another thing (a bell) and make something new (a cannon) and then make a huge pile of money for doing so. That couldn’t happen in China, so gunpowder was used there for ceremonial (and very limited military uses) for a thousand years before Europeans came across it and turned it into one of the most important human inventions ever. A similar tale happened with the magnetic compass: China developed them hundreds of years before Europeans found them… but then a European merchant noticed that something like a compass would come in handy on his ships. He took the idea back to Europe with him, where the “compass concept” was investigated and refined… and ships could now go even further and make even more money!
It’s hard to imagine how the middle class might have developed at all… were it not for the Black Death.