Abstract
‘Big impacts’ focuses on the Black Death, which had an impact on every sphere of human activity. Indeed, the Black Death reshaped the course of European history. The case is strongest in the area where sudden, severe, and prolonged high mortality might be expected to have an effect—that of economic and social relations. The Black Death also had an impact on how people thought about their world and their place in it, and some have argued that there were wholesale changes in mentalities, amounting to turning points in contemporary culture. It is interesting to note that the process of accommodating plague took less time than one might imagine.
