american-holocaust

SEX, RACE AND HOLY WAR 189Modern historical analysis has, in general terms, confirmed Villani'sdescription, with one important difference: it was far too sanguine. Forexample, although wages did increase in the century immediately followingthe explosion of the plague in the middle of the fourteenth century,after that time they spiraled drastically downward. The real wages of atypical English carpenter serve as a vivid point of illustration: between1350 and 1450 his pay increased by about 64 percent; then his wagesstarted falling precipitously throughout the entirety of the next two centuries,at last bottoming out at approximately half of what they had beenat the outbreak of the plague in 1348, fully three centuries earlier. Meanwhile,during this same period, prices of foodstuffs and other commoditieswere soaring upward at an equivalent rate and more, ultimately achievinga 5 00 percent overall increase during the sixteenth century . 122The combination of simultaneously collapsing wages and escalating pricesin an already devastated social environment was bad enough for an Englishcarpenter, but English carpenters were by no means poorly off comparedwith other laborers in Europe-and other laborers were positivelywell off compared with the starving multitudes who had no work at all.At the same time that the Black Death was wiping out a third of Europe'spopulation, and bouts of famine were destroying many thousands morewith each incident, the Hundred Years War was raging; it began in 1337and did not end until 1453. And while the war was on, marauding bandsof discharged soldiers turned brigands and highwaymen-aptly namedecorcheurs or "flayers"-were raping and pillaging the countryside. Finally,the requirements of a war economy forced governments to increasetaxes. Immanuel Wallerstein explains how it all added up:The taxes, coming on top of already heavy feudal dues, were too much forthe producers, creating a liquidity crisis which in turn led to a return toindirect taxes and taxes in kind. Thus started a downward cycle: The fiscalburden led to a reduction in consumption which led to a reduction in productionand money circulation which increased further the liquidity difficultieswhich led to royal borrowing and eventually the insolvency of the limitedroyal treasuries, which in turn created a credit crisis, leading to hoardingof bullion, which in turn upset the pattern of international trade. A rapidrise in prices occurred, further reducing the margin of subsistence, and thisbegan to take its toll in population. 123In sum, all the while that the popes and other elites were indulgingthemselves in profligacy and decadence, the basic political and economicframeworks of Europe-to say nothing of the entire social order-were ina state of near collapse. Certain states, of course, were worse off thanothers, and there are various ways in which such comparative misery canbe assayed. One measure that we shall soon see has particular relevance