By the time the plague had subsided, about one-third of Europe's population had died. In many ways, the Black Death was an important turning point in the history of Europe, where economics, politics, and society would never be the same. It marked the beginning of the end of the medieval period and the start of a social transformation of the continent.

The most important effects were economic. Europe had lost millions of productive laborers. Crops went unplanted and unharvested, and vast tracts of farmland returned to wilderness. The food supply dwindled, but so did the demand for food and other goods. Prices fell, and the sudden shortage of workers raised the value of work. The plague also loosened the feudal bonds that tied peasants to the land and to the aristocratic class of landowners. With better opportunities beckoning in the...