The Black Death: a global contagion

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Today we're launching the latest of our Sunday series, and this time around we're going to be focusing on the Black Death. Emily Briffitt will be joined by Thomas Asbridge, author of The Black Death, A Global History, over the next three weeks, kicking off with today's first episode. The Black Death is remembered as one of the most devastating catastrophes in human history. A pandemic that swept across continents and killed millions.

But where did this deadly disease come from? How did it travel so quickly through towns and countryside? And did people at the time understand just how transformative the terrifying illness that was unfolding around them would be? I'm Emily Briffitz and I'm joined by historian Thomas Asbridge. In this first episode, we'll be tracing the origins and spread of the Black Death, exploring the moment it erupted onto the medieval stage.

Now, I wondered if we could start with a pretty notable example, a notable case, and that is the siege at Kafa. So the year is 1347 and we have a band of Genoese merchants who find themselves on the brink of annihilation. They're under siege in the port city of Cafe. On the Crimean Peninsula, they're thousands miles away from home, but for a moment there seems to be a sort of glimmer of hope for them. Their opponents are struck with this strange and merciless pestilence, but things are soon to take a turn for the worse for them.

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