Did Black Death trigger the rise of Europe?
HistoryExtra podcast
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The Rise of Europe and the Black Death
After the Black Death there's a huge shortage of labour and that shifts West Eurasian technology towards labour saving techniques. The big incentive for turning to muskets was not necessarily that they were any better than bows but that they took far less time to learn how to use. In Europe the shortage of labour meant that people abandoned the use of large galleys for anything except warfare in the Mediterranean. Once Europeans could build forts on foreign coasts or Ottomans for that matter they gave a real advantage at least as far as coastal towers concerned.
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