A Cattle Panzootic in Early Fourteenth-Century Europe

Citation

Newfield T (2009) A Cattle Panzootic in Early Fourteenth-Century Europe. Agricultural History Review, 57 (2), pp. 155-190. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bahs/agrev/2009/00000057/00000002/art00003

Abstract
In the early fourteenth century, annals, chronicles, correspondence, petitions, and poems all document severe mortalities of cattle in regions as distant as Mongolia and Iceland. Relevant passages from this literature are collected here and used with manorial accounts from England and Wales to illuminate a European cattle panzootic that spread west from central Europe c.1315, in the context of a widespread subsistence crisis (the Great European Famine), persisting in Ireland until c.1325. The origins, duration and extent of the pestilence are considered and a relatively detailed picture of its epizootiology is drawn. How the panzootic might be retrospectively diagnosed and why a diagnosis should be attempted is also discussed.

Keywords
Cattle Plague; Rinderpest; Medieval; Europe; Famine.; Animal behavior; Zoology; Animal genetics; Nature Effect of human beings on Europe History To 1500

Journal
Agricultural History Review: Volume 57, Issue 2