How The Bubonic Plague Rebuilt The Major Polities Of Eurasia

            How the Bubonic Plaque Rebuilt the Polities of Eurasia.
             Going into the thirteenth century the Mongol Empire had grown to an unprecedented level. Under the control of the Khans the Mongol empire consisted of almost all of Asia and parts of Eastern Europe, reaching into Poland and Hungary (Tignor et al. 37). From this point of Mongolian rule up to the end of the fourteenth century the bubonic plague spread throughout the Eurasian land mass. These germs devastated the societies of Eurasia. However, the devastation caused by the bubonic plague or the Black Death opened up the opportunity to rebuild the polities of Eurasia. .
             When Mongol armies besieged the Genoese trading outpost of Caffa on the black sea they not only damaged old trading links between the Far East and the Mediterranean, they also unleashed an even more devastating and invisible force. The Mongols brought with them to Caffa a disease picked up in the Gobi desert: the bubonic plague. The plague was then carried to Italian seaports where it spread up into Europe and the Northern parts of Africa via trade routes. As a result of this epidemic outbreak the death rates among infected populations ranged from 25 to 50 percent. The devastation went as far as wiping out entire populations. The Chinese population plunged from around 120 million to 80 million over the course of a century. Europe saw its numbers reduced by one-third (Tignor et al. 45). In the words of Ibn Kahldun, an Arab historian, "Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire world changed" (Tignor et al. 45). Another important result of the devastation was "the weakening of political foundations of many European societies" (Tignor et al. 44). This weakening caused the centralization and consolidation of power among rulers throughout Eurasia: Eurasia's polities were beginning to be rebuilt.