r/AskHistorians - Reddit
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Economic expansion ground to a halt amid the demographic catastrophe of the mid fourteenth century, when the Eurasian pandemic called the Black Death carried off perhaps 40 per cent of the population. The fifteenth century saw a slow recovery.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Why did this happen? The simple explanation is the Mongol conquest. However, China recovered from that disaster under the Ming by most measures, and the institutions created under the Song were still extant when the Mongols were expelled in 1368.
Stephen Davies • Just a moment...
By 1370 the population had fallen to half of its level under the Song.
Stephen Davies • Just a moment...
Pre-industrial China had reached a ‘high-level equilibrium’, a plateau of economic success. Its misfortune was that there was no incentive to climb any higher: the high-level equilibrium had become a trap.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
By the fourteenth century, Europe had reached broad economic and technological parity with China and the Islamic Near East. Between AD 1000 and c.1350 there was a long phase of economic growth. The population increased. Waste lands were colonized. Technical improvements like the mould-board plough (which opened up heavier lands) and the watermill i
... See moreJohn Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Then the Mongols invaded, and after that came the Ming empire. And the Ming were quite the opposite of the Song. They wanted tight, centralized control of everything. They literally controlled where you could travel, and they needed a report from every merchant on how much stock he held in his warehouse at regular intervals. This was a recipe for k... See more