Friday 27 August 2004

Pic of the day: For a change, this picture is not made by me (praise be to the Light for that!). I snagged it from a source attributing the University of Michigan, but it's a safe bet it is older than that.

Dawn of modernity?

Yesterday I briefly reviewed one of Harry Turtledove's Derlavai books (or you may think of them as his "Darkness" books, since each title includes the word "darkness" in some way). They are set on a fictional other world where magic is real and the continents are different, but strangely enough humans are exactly like on this world. Evolution hardly works that way, but I guess they may have immigrated from our own or a similar reality at some time in the past. Even so ... there is one more thing. It is a modern world. But is modernity unavoidable? Is it even likely?

Most fantasy books are set in the Middle Ages, or some variation on it. The Middle Ages of Europe, more exactly. There were other cultures of a similar level of advancement, but different in detail, such as China at the same time. (China was indeed more advanced, both technologically and culturally, than Europe around they year 1000.) Modernity did not happen there until it was much later imported from Europe. In fantasy books it is usually taken for granted that the Middle Ages never quite end, although some modern elements can be found randomly sometimes. But Turtledove simply skips the question of how it happened in his world. Well, how did it happen in ours?

There are books on this subject. Learned people have a decent income from researching and teaching about it. Obviously I will only briefly mention my own impression of it. I think (and I am not alone in thinking) that it all started with the Black Death.

***

It was until recently generally accepted that the Black Death was a bubonic plague. This is still the prevailing opinion. But bubonic plague lingered in Europe for generations afterwards, while the original onslaught of the Black Death eradicated half the population in a few years – weeks in each individual village. (Some sources say one third, or even a quarter ... people in the middle ages loved to exaggerate.) Anyway, this front-loaded destruction indicates that it may have been a different disease, even though writings from the time describe symptoms of bubonic plague. Perhaps the two arrived at the same time, or perhaps the first wave was a disease that reduced the immune system of its victim, so that far more than usual fell prey to the plague. The reason why I came to think of this is that about a fourth of Scandinavians are naturally immune to AIDS. One of the crucial pathways of the HIV virus is blocked by a mutation that renders the cells slightly different than usual in humans. The prevalence of this in an area where the Black Death had an extreme effect ... is it really a coincidence? If the plague itself caused it, why aren't people in India collectively immune to HIV, since the place has been swept over by bubonic plague for centuries and right up until our time?

In Norway, approximately two thirds of the population died during the first onslaught of the Black Death. From being a regional great power, it was reduced to an impoverished province almost overnight. In other parts of Europe, the effects were less dramatic, but the population declined quickly to around half of what it had been before. It seemed the greatest disaster the continent had ever faced. And yet it may have been the seed of Europe's future world domination.

The Black Death toppled the existing power structures. Most notably the Church, which had been the one pervasive power across all the different kingdoms and duchies and empires. Its hold on even the most intimate parts of human life was like nothing we can think of today, perhaps even exceeding the invasiveness of totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. Because it had been uncontested for centuries, it was accepted more or less as a part of creation along with mountains and rivers and seas. And then, over the course of a couple years, it proved unable to protect not just its parishes but its own priests. They died in even greater numbers than common people (since they were sure to come in contact with the plague victims during the Last Rites and burials). Suddenly, people lost their place in cosmos. Everything was possible. The ground itself shook under their feet.

In fact, the ground itself lost much of its value. In the High Middle Ages, owning land was the defining power. The feudal system was based on the fact that arable land was the critical resource. He who owned the land had all power. The kings lorded over the nobles, and the nobles lorded over everyone else. The farmers were reduced to serfs, working on land they did not own. Unable to survive without the land to farm, they were basically slaves.

With the Black Death, there was suddenly more land than people to work it. Entire villages were left deserted, while in most only the best land remained in use. And not necessarily with the same people who had used it before, as they may be dead with all their relatives. People could move away from their old serf life and start anew on some remote farm, and nobody would bother them. There was after all plenty for everyone.

***

Apart from toppling religious and feudal power structures, the Black Death also ushered in capitalism. As the value of land plummeted, the relative value of other resources rose. Trade became a legitimate source of wealth, as a rich trader could now compete with nobles in being an attractive partner, not just in business but also in marriage. It was really the nobles being depreciated rather than the merchants being appreciated, but the effect was a permanent change in their relative strength. While land did not move, goods did, and trade encouraged funding expeditions of exploration. New sources of trade goods were found as far away as China and the Americas.

Above all, the Black Death broke the stasis that has frozen society. OK, it is not true that the Middle Ages was a period of stagnation. There was some invention, and some social development. But it was a slow process, as the power structures grew ever more rigid. Nobles and priests had a common interest in preserving their power by portraying society as static. But the Black Death showed that change was not only possible, it was unavoidable. This lesson never left Europe, and eventually the rest of the world. Today, change is the only constant. This is the essence of modernity.

The wave of change caused exploration, invention, experimentation and its offspring, the scientific mindset that relies on experience rather than tradition. (Well, in theory ... it doesn't always work that way. But that's the heart of it.)

Did this necessarily cause the Industrial Revolution that happened some centuries later? Or was that a new leap that might never have happened? I don't know for sure. The fact that the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain, on the fringes of Europe, indicates that it may have been simply a coincidence (in so far as such things exist). If the steam engine had not been invented near natural sources of coal, it might have been forgotten again, as it was in ancient Greece. But by then we are quite a bit removed from the Middle Ages already. Perhaps other paths to modernity might have been found. Or perhaps society would have ossified again. I don't know, but that's why we have alternate history fiction. To help ask: "What if...?"