The paroxysmal moment of the second plague pandemic, which spread across Europe from 1347 onwards, is traditionally referred to as the "Black Death". It remains the greatest demographic catastrophe in human history. Today, its study is an interdisciplinary laboratory: joint advances in funerary archaeology and anthropology, as well as microbiology and environmental sciences, have revolutionized the approach.
But it also poses a narrative challenge: how can we write a global history of a long-term event that is now subject to a triple overflow (chronological, geographical and disciplinary) without straying too far from the demands of social history? If the plague is "good to think about" for a history of power, it's not only because it puts to the test what history can do when it welcomes the contribution of all the sciences of the past, including when they delve into the archives of the living and those of the Earth. It is also because, historically, it was a test of the capacity of human societies to cope with mass death.