The second plague pandemic was a major series of epidemics of plague that started with the Black Death, which reached Europe in 1346 and killed up to half of the population of Eurasia in the next four years. Although the plague died out in most places, it became endemic and recurred regularly. A series of major epidemics occurred in the late 17th century, and the disease recurred in some places until the late 18th century or the early 19th century. After this, a new strain of the bacterium gave rise to the third plague pandemic, which started in Asia around the mid-19th century.
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which exists in parasitic fleas of several species in the wild and of rats in human society. In an outbreak, it may kill all of its immediate hosts and thus die out, but it can remain active in other hosts that it does not kill, thereby causing a new outbreak years or decades later. The bacterium has several means of transmission and infection, including through fleas on rats carried on ships or vehicles, fleas hidden in grain, and via blood and sputum directly between humans.
Overview
There have been three major outbreaks of plague. The Plague of Justinian in the 6th and 7th centuries is the first known attack on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of plague. From historical descriptions, as much as 40% of the population of Constantinople died from the plague. Modern estimates suggest that half of Europe's population died as a result of this first plague pandemic before it disappeared in the 700s. After 750, plague did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century.
The second pandemic's origins are disputed; it originated either in Central Asia or Crimea, and appeared in Crimea by 1347. It may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to 350–375 million by the year 1400. A study published in the journal Nature in June 2022 found evidence for Yersinia pestis in the teeth of early plague victims in the Tian Shan mountains, now northern Kyrgyzstan, indicating a likely origin of that iteration of the plague.
The plague returned at intervals with varying virulence and mortality until the early 19th century. In England, for example, the plague returned between 1360 and 1363, killing 20% of Londoners, and then again in 1369, killing 10–15%.
In the 16th century, the plague hit San Cristóbal de La Laguna in the Canary Islands between 1582 and 1583.
In the 17th century, there were a series of European "great plague" outbreaks: the Great Plague of Seville between 1647 and 1652, the Great Plague of London between 1665 and 1666, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679. The great plague of northern China arose in Shanxi in 1633 and arrived at Beijing in 1641, contributing to the downfall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644.
In the 18th century, there was the Great Plague of Marseille, which took place between 1720 and 1722; the Great Plague of 1738, which occurred in Eastern Europe between 1738 and 1740; and the Russian plague of 1770–1772, which took place in Central Russia and particularly affected Moscow. However, the plague in its virulent form seemed to gradually disappear from Europe, though lingering in Egypt and the Middle East.
By the early 19th century, the threat of plague had diminished, though it was quickly replaced by the spread of another deadly infectious disease in the first cholera pandemic, beginning in 1817, the first of several cholera pandemics to sweep through Asia and Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The third plague pandemic hit China in the 1890s and devastated India. While it was largely contained in the East, it became endemic in the western United States, where sporadic outbreaks of plague continue to occur.
Black Death
Arab historians Ibn Al-Wardi and Almaqrizi believed the Black Death originated in Mongolia, and Chinese records show a huge outbreak in Mongolia in the early 1330s.
In recent years, more research has emerged that shows the Black Death most likely originated on the northwestern shores of the Caspian Sea, and may not even have reached India and China, as research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan Dynasty showed no evidence of any serious epidemic in 14th-century India and no specific evidence of plague in 14th-century China.
