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→Different Impacts of the Black Death
====Different Impacts of the Black Death====
[[File:The flagellants at Doornik in 1349.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Figure 2. People began to question religious authority more openly after the Black Death.]]
The Black Death had substantially different impacts on populations and exacerbated social change in many regions. In Western Europe, where populations were generally higher prior to the Black Death, the reduction of population made the remaining peasants and workers better able to negotiate higher wages (Figure 1). Revolts and rebellions occurred after the plague, but it ultimately helped lead to major social changes. It also led to the death of some of the nobility. Law changes to inheritance, allowing women in particular to inherit, led to gradual gender changes and increasing power for women in Europe in particular. Serfs also increased their power as their wages went up. In the long-term, the plague helped stamp out serfdom in Western Europe. In the immediate sense, serfs and nobility often fought in the years after the Black Death, but the lack of productivity in farms did help give more powers to peasants in Western Europe. In effect, the Black Death helped to liberate societies and helped to set the stage for the Renaissance revival that occurred in Europe in the century after the Black Death.<ref>For more on Western Europe after the Black Death, see: Herlihy, David, and Samuel Kline Cohn. 1997. <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674076133/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0674076133&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=569436813dfc847384081edccdef75ff The Black Death and the Transformation of the West].</i> Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.</ref>
In Eastern Europe, it had the opposite effect of strengthening serfdom. In this case, population densities were much lower, thus revolts that followed the Black Death were less common. Upper classes simply reinforced their power through laws that tied workers to land and limited their wages and power. Revolts by the peasants only became a major problem in the 16th through the 19th centuries, serfdom lingered longer in Eastern Europe and did not disappear until the 19th Century.<ref>For more on the effects in Eastern Europe, see: Ziegler, Philip. 2010. <i>The Black Death.</i> Stroud: The History Press Ltd, pg. 85</ref>
