DBQ Sources: Health Impacts of Trade
OERPROJECT / GLOBAL HEALTH ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: HEALTH IMPACTS OF TRADE1Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “DBQ Sources: Trade Networks, 1200-1450 CE”, OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/PurposeUse a variety of primary and secondary sources to deepen your understanding of trade networks around 1200 to 1450 CE. ProcessAnalyze the following sources. If you are using these sources to respond to an essay prompt, you should underlineor highlightany evidence that will support your claim. You can also use theQuick Sourcing Tool. Document 1Source: Still from Rebuilding the Silk Road (01:25), OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/Videos/Origins/Era4/Rebuilding-the-Silk-Road
OERPROJECT / GLOBAL HEALTH ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: HEALTH IMPACTS OF TRADE2Document 2Stefano describes the devastating impact of the Black Death in Florence in 1348, highlighting the skyrocketing prices of basic goods like food and clothing, as well as the shortage of resources for caring for the sick and burying the dead. With most businesses and guilds shut down, the streets were nearly empty, with only apothecaries and churches remaining open.Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, birth name Baldassarre Buonaiuti, (1336–1385) was a wealthy businessman, historian, and politician from Florence, Italy. He spent most of his time as a diplomat for the Florentine government and traveled to various cities in Europe.In the year of the Lord 1348 there was a very great pestilence in the city and district of Florence. ...Many died from [carrying away the dead], some rich, some after earning just a little, but high prices continued. Servants, or those who took care of the ill, charged from one to three florins per day and the cost of things grew. The things that the sick ate, sweetmeats and sugar, seemed priceless. ... eggs cost between twelve and twenty-four pence each; and he was blessed who could find three per day even if he searched the entire city. Finding wax was miraculous. ... Dressing in expensive woolen cloth as is customary in [mourning] the dead, that is in a long cloak, with mantle and veil that used to cost women three florins climbed in price to thirty florins and would have climbed to 100 florins had the custom of dressing in expensive cloth not been changed. ... Benches on which the dead were placed cost like the heavens and still the benches were only a hundredth of those needed ... None of the guilds in Florence was working. All the shops were shut, taverns closed; only the apothecaries and the churches remained open. If you went outside, you found almost no one.Source: Marchione di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti, Cronaca fiorentina. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores. Volume 30, ed. Niccolo Rodolico (Citta di Castello: 1903–13). http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/marchione.html
OERPROJECT / GLOBAL HEALTH ACTIVITYDBQ SOURCES: HEALTH IMPACTS OF TRADE3Document 3Al-Maqrīzī explains how the Black Death severely disrupted daily life and trade in Egypt and Syria. Many artisans shifted to handling the dead, and the prices of goods plummeted as people sold off belongings of the deceased. Essential workers like water carriers and domestics became scarce, causing wages and the cost of basic necessities, like water and grinding wheat, to soar. The government even had to encourage artisans to return to their trades.Ahmad Ibn Alī al-Maqrīzī (1364–1442) was an Egyptian historian who wrote about the impact of the Black Death on Egypt and Syria under the Mamluk dynasty.Most of the trades disappeared, for a number of artisans devoted themselves to handling the dead, while the others, no less numerous, occupied themselves in selling off to bidders [the dead’s] movable goods and clothing, so well that the price of linen andsimilar objects fell by a fifth of their real value, and still further until one found customers ...Thus the trade disappeared: One could no long find either a water carrier, or a laundress, or a domestic. The monthly salary of a groom rose from thirty dirhams to eighty. A proclamation made in Cairo invited the artisans to take up their old trades, and some of the recalcitrant [unruly] reformed themselves. Because of the shortage of men and camels, a goatskin of water reached the price of eight dirhams, and in order to grind an ardeb of wheat, one paid fifteen dirhams.Source: John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348 –1350: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 87.