What moral, social, and political effects did the plague have on fourteenth-century China?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Effects of the Plague on China
1. moral
a. plague disturbed, even subverted, the sense of security and
stability associated with a traditional way of life
2. social
a. population of the empire fell, though losses were not uniform
1. 120 million in the mid–fourteenth century to 80 million
in the census of 1393
b. social mobility
1. scholar elite
2. hold on power lapsed and was not fully reasserted until
well into the fifteenth century
3. political
a. plague, combined with other natural disasters, helped to stir up
religious movements that over spilled into political revolution
b. popular revolt took on a new agenda: revolutionary millenarianism
1. doctrine that in an imminent, divinely contrived
relaunch of history, God would empower the poor
c. divinely appointed hero would put a bloody end to the struggle
of good and evil
1. inspired peasant rebels in the 1350s
2. rebel leader rose to prominence by inventing a medicine
that could cure a plague
d. a millenarian peasant rebellion in 1368 forced the Mongols out