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The Western Experience, 8/e

Mortimer Chambers, University of California - Los Angeles
Barbara Hanawalt, Ohio State University
Theodore Rabb, Princeton University
Isser Woloch, Columbia University
Raymond Grew, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Breakdown and Renewal in an Age of Plague

Problems for Analysis

I. Population Catastrophes


1		What were the main developments that characterized the economic and demographic disasters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? How can these developments best be explained?

II. Economic Depression and Recovery


2		Considering the loss of population, the technical advances, and the innovations in business institutions, was the long-term effect of the depression and demographic decline economically beneficial? Why?



3		What are the major issues in the history of women during the Middle Ages? Which do you think are the most important? Why?

III. Popular Unrest


4		What caused the rural and urban revolts of the fourteenth century? Analyze the governmental policies, the economic circumstances, and the psychological tensions that led to them.

IV. Challenges to the Governments of Europe


5		In what ways was the feudal equilibrium in government broken in the fourteenth century? How is this illustrated by the Hundred Years' War?



6		Compare political development in Italy with that in France or England.



7		In what ways were the states of Italy able to gain relative stability during the fifteenth century?

V. The Fall of Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire


8		In what ways did the decline of Byzantium lead to important changes in the Mediterranean and the West?



9		How did the various Ottoman institutions contribute to the successful rise and expansion of this powerful empire? What role did the sultan and the Janissaries play?

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