Stuart Borsch | Assumption College (original) (raw)

Papers by Stuart Borsch

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Jul 1, 2004

Irrigation systems were the first source of great abundance that stemmed from the Agricultural Re... more Irrigation systems were the first source of great abundance that stemmed from the Agricultural Revolution. They were also humanity's first great environmental curse. Long before issues of global warming and freshwater shortages haunted the modern world, irrigation systems blessed and bedeviled humans with their promise and peril. While a well-ordered functional irrigation system provided inhabitants with seed-to-yield ratios that were the envy of any dryfarming regime, these same irrigation systems could collapse in toto, bringing disaster on a scale never seen in rain-fed agricultural systems. This article will examine the tragic ruin of the irrigation system of Egypt in the wake of Black Death depopulation. It will compare this case to that of the dry-farming system in post-plague England. A comparison between the effects of rural labor shortage in the hydraulic economy of Egypt with labor shortage in the rain-fed economy of England reveals a weakness in the otherwise functional pseudo-Malthusian marginal product of labor function. 1 According to the pseudo-Malthusian model, labor scarcity and land abundance, resulting from depopulation, should lead to higher productivity due to greater marginal returns to labor. Yet, while this did indeed occur in England, Egypt was devastated by labor shortage. Why does this model not seem to work for Egypt's hydraulic system? The answer lies in the second part of the marginal product graph, one that is seldom used by economic scholars of pre-modern history. The following analysis will show that this often overlooked section of the marginal product curve can serve to explain daunting enigmas that lie at the heart of disasters that have affected many irrigation economies.

Mamlūk Studies Review, 2004

Some thirty years ago, Robert Lopez, Harry Miskimin, and Abraham Udovitch boldly set out to depic... more Some thirty years ago, Robert Lopez, Harry Miskimin, and Abraham Udovitch boldly set out to depict the economic panorama of post-plague Europe and the Middle East in their article, "England to Egypt, 1350-1500: Long-Term Trends and Long-Distance Trade." 1 Within the confines of England, Italy, and Egypt, they described a widespread pattern of economic deterioration. This degeneration, they argued, was the product of several factors. One of these was the little ice age. 2 The little ice age was a period of climatic change that broke the warm spell in northern Europe and brought with it drenching rains and horrifically cold winters. In England, this heavy rainfall coupled with icy winters ushered in a famine the like of which had never been seen before or since. 3 In other areas, such as southern Europe, it may have accelerated soil erosion. In the Middle East and Central Asia, they speculated that it might have ushered in a dry spell that brought similar catastrophic famines to these regions. Another factor that affected all of these regions was the intensification of warfare. 4 From the Hundred Years War in Europe to the campaigns of Tamerlane in the Middle East, warfare brought with it widespread devastation to urban and rural areas alike. Finally, they argued that plague ushered in a major demographic retrenchment that was followed by a severe and widespread economic depression. 5 Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch focused on two major aspects of the subsequent economic depression: social stratification and the lack of bullion engendered by the imbalance of trade flows between East and West, North and South. 6 Economic dislocation, they argued, brought with it an end to the comparatively open and

... I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ahmad Abd al-Aziz Adam, my constant companion and friend in... more ... I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ahmad Abd al-Aziz Adam, my constant companion and friend in Cairo. My special thanks go to Muhammad Shishtawi, who as-sisted me in reading the endowment deeds (waqfiyyat) at the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Wizarat al-Awqaf). ...

Of all of the chronicles that survive from the Mamluk period, al-Maqr|z|'s Khitati s no doubt the... more Of all of the chronicles that survive from the Mamluk period, al-Maqr|z|'s Khitati s no doubt the most renowned and familiar source for historians. Yet near the beginning of his text, he voices concern about an issue that has thus far remained unexplained and unaccounted for. "The people used to say," al-Maqr|z| writes, "'God save us from a finger from twenty,'" meaning 'please, God, don't let the Nile flood reach the height of twenty cubits on the Nilometer!'" For, he explains, this dangerously high flood level would drown the agricultural lands and ruin the harvest. Yet in our time, the chronicler bemoans, the Nile flood approaches twenty cubits and this high flood level-far from drowning Egypt's arable land-doesn't even suffice to supply them with water. 1 Al-Maqr|z| associates this phenomenon with various problems in the social structure and the economy-including the breakdown of the irrigation system. 2 The story behind this tale of misery, echoed by other chroniclers, is both more complicated and more revealing than appears at first sight. For not only is al-Maqr|z| correct in his assertion, but-as a seemingly strange coincidence-the Nile floods during his time are in fact much higher than they had ever been before. Was nature conspiring with the economic woes of this period to create this bizarre situation? I would like to offer a theory that will explain this puzzling coincidence, link it to the catastrophic period of bubonic and pneumonic plague epidemics that started with the Black Death in 1348-49, 3 and give us a sense of the quantitative scale of the breakdown in the irrigation system. Egypt's basin irrigation system was the mechanism by which the Nile's annual Middle East Documentation Center. The University of Chicago. 1 Al-Maqr|z|, Kita≠ b al-Mawa≠ 'iz˛ wa-al-I'tiba≠ r f| Dhikr al-Khitat¸ wa-al-A± tha≠ r (hereafter Khitat) (Cairo, 1270/1853-54), 1:60. 2 Ibid. 3 The Black Death actually began in Egypt in late 1347, when a ship arrived in Alexandria with all but a few of its crew and passengers dead-the few survivors died shortly thereafter. The plague then spread rapidly throughout the city (this story of corpse-ridden ships arriving from ports in the Black Sea and Constantinople is repeated by various sources throughout the Mediterranean world). But the main years for mortality from the Black Death were 1348 and 1349.

This article reexamines wages in Egypt using new evidence not analyzed in my previous study of th... more This article reexamines wages in Egypt using new evidence not analyzed in my previous study of the late Mamluk economy (Borsch, The Black Death in Egypt and England, 2005). The results show that wages for unskilled labor fell precipitously from the 1300s to the 1400s and stayed at a very low level thereafter. Shown in the figure below are the primary quantitative results from approximately 300 wage listings from the late thirteenth century to the late seventeenth century.

Middle East Journal, 2012

The Middle East Journal, 2012

Mamlūk Studies Review, 2016

A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteen... more A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteenth-century Cairo. What he wanted to know was whether or not we should give credence to the historical accounts that report peak urban fatality rates (deaths per day) of a thousand for major epidemics. 1 He also wanted to know how these mortality figures were actually determined and suggested that these numbers might in fact be more symbolic in nature than statistic. Finally, he asked if we can accept the estimations of historians that place cumulative death tolls for Cairo at levels of 100,000 or higher. 2 These are very good questions and they apply equally well to Mamluk Cairo and its forty-some plague outbreaks. 3 Michael Dols opened this same can of worms nearly four decades ago as he examined mortality from the 833/1429-30 plague outbreak in Cairo. 4 Dols expressed some dissatisfaction with his attempts, but nevertheless came up with a tentative approximation of some 90,000 for the 833/1430 outbreak's death toll. Dols clearly intended to work on the data from another major plague outbreak (864/1460) but as his career was cut short, the statistics he had gathered were left abandoned on a page of his last article on the subject. 5 1 This article comes out of work conducted at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Bonn University. The authors would like to thank the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg and its staff for their generous support that made this collaborative work possible.

A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteen... more A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteenth-century Cairo. What he wanted to know was whether or not we should give credence to the historical accounts that report peak urban fatality rates (deaths per day) of a thousand for major epidemics. 1 He also wanted to know how these mortality figures were actually determined and suggested that these numbers might in fact be more symbolic in nature than statistic. Finally, he asked if we can accept the estimations of historians that place cumulative death tolls for Cairo at levels of 100,000 or higher. 2 These are very good questions and they apply equally well to Mamluk Cairo and its forty-some plague outbreaks. 3 Michael Dols opened this same can of worms nearly four decades ago as he examined mortality from the 833/1429-30 plague outbreak in Cairo. 4 Dols expressed some dissatisfaction with his attempts, but nevertheless came up with a tentative approximation of some 90,000 for the 833/1430 outbreak's death toll. Dols clearly intended to work on the data from another major plague outbreak (864/1460) but as his career was cut short, the statistics he had gathered were left abandoned on a page of his last article on the subject. 5 1 This article comes out of work conducted at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Bonn University. The authors would like to thank the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg and its staff for their generous support that made this collaborative work possible.

Annales de démographie historique, Jan 31, 2018

The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusin... more The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Con tributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advan ces a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens dis cussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.

上智アジア学 = Sophia journal of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern studies, 2017

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Jul 1, 2004

Irrigation systems were the first source of great abundance that stemmed from the Agricultural Re... more Irrigation systems were the first source of great abundance that stemmed from the Agricultural Revolution. They were also humanity's first great environmental curse. Long before issues of global warming and freshwater shortages haunted the modern world, irrigation systems blessed and bedeviled humans with their promise and peril. While a well-ordered functional irrigation system provided inhabitants with seed-to-yield ratios that were the envy of any dryfarming regime, these same irrigation systems could collapse in toto, bringing disaster on a scale never seen in rain-fed agricultural systems. This article will examine the tragic ruin of the irrigation system of Egypt in the wake of Black Death depopulation. It will compare this case to that of the dry-farming system in post-plague England. A comparison between the effects of rural labor shortage in the hydraulic economy of Egypt with labor shortage in the rain-fed economy of England reveals a weakness in the otherwise functional pseudo-Malthusian marginal product of labor function. 1 According to the pseudo-Malthusian model, labor scarcity and land abundance, resulting from depopulation, should lead to higher productivity due to greater marginal returns to labor. Yet, while this did indeed occur in England, Egypt was devastated by labor shortage. Why does this model not seem to work for Egypt's hydraulic system? The answer lies in the second part of the marginal product graph, one that is seldom used by economic scholars of pre-modern history. The following analysis will show that this often overlooked section of the marginal product curve can serve to explain daunting enigmas that lie at the heart of disasters that have affected many irrigation economies.

Mamlūk Studies Review, 2004

Some thirty years ago, Robert Lopez, Harry Miskimin, and Abraham Udovitch boldly set out to depic... more Some thirty years ago, Robert Lopez, Harry Miskimin, and Abraham Udovitch boldly set out to depict the economic panorama of post-plague Europe and the Middle East in their article, "England to Egypt, 1350-1500: Long-Term Trends and Long-Distance Trade." 1 Within the confines of England, Italy, and Egypt, they described a widespread pattern of economic deterioration. This degeneration, they argued, was the product of several factors. One of these was the little ice age. 2 The little ice age was a period of climatic change that broke the warm spell in northern Europe and brought with it drenching rains and horrifically cold winters. In England, this heavy rainfall coupled with icy winters ushered in a famine the like of which had never been seen before or since. 3 In other areas, such as southern Europe, it may have accelerated soil erosion. In the Middle East and Central Asia, they speculated that it might have ushered in a dry spell that brought similar catastrophic famines to these regions. Another factor that affected all of these regions was the intensification of warfare. 4 From the Hundred Years War in Europe to the campaigns of Tamerlane in the Middle East, warfare brought with it widespread devastation to urban and rural areas alike. Finally, they argued that plague ushered in a major demographic retrenchment that was followed by a severe and widespread economic depression. 5 Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch focused on two major aspects of the subsequent economic depression: social stratification and the lack of bullion engendered by the imbalance of trade flows between East and West, North and South. 6 Economic dislocation, they argued, brought with it an end to the comparatively open and

... I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ahmad Abd al-Aziz Adam, my constant companion and friend in... more ... I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ahmad Abd al-Aziz Adam, my constant companion and friend in Cairo. My special thanks go to Muhammad Shishtawi, who as-sisted me in reading the endowment deeds (waqfiyyat) at the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Wizarat al-Awqaf). ...

Of all of the chronicles that survive from the Mamluk period, al-Maqr|z|'s Khitati s no doubt the... more Of all of the chronicles that survive from the Mamluk period, al-Maqr|z|'s Khitati s no doubt the most renowned and familiar source for historians. Yet near the beginning of his text, he voices concern about an issue that has thus far remained unexplained and unaccounted for. "The people used to say," al-Maqr|z| writes, "'God save us from a finger from twenty,'" meaning 'please, God, don't let the Nile flood reach the height of twenty cubits on the Nilometer!'" For, he explains, this dangerously high flood level would drown the agricultural lands and ruin the harvest. Yet in our time, the chronicler bemoans, the Nile flood approaches twenty cubits and this high flood level-far from drowning Egypt's arable land-doesn't even suffice to supply them with water. 1 Al-Maqr|z| associates this phenomenon with various problems in the social structure and the economy-including the breakdown of the irrigation system. 2 The story behind this tale of misery, echoed by other chroniclers, is both more complicated and more revealing than appears at first sight. For not only is al-Maqr|z| correct in his assertion, but-as a seemingly strange coincidence-the Nile floods during his time are in fact much higher than they had ever been before. Was nature conspiring with the economic woes of this period to create this bizarre situation? I would like to offer a theory that will explain this puzzling coincidence, link it to the catastrophic period of bubonic and pneumonic plague epidemics that started with the Black Death in 1348-49, 3 and give us a sense of the quantitative scale of the breakdown in the irrigation system. Egypt's basin irrigation system was the mechanism by which the Nile's annual Middle East Documentation Center. The University of Chicago. 1 Al-Maqr|z|, Kita≠ b al-Mawa≠ 'iz˛ wa-al-I'tiba≠ r f| Dhikr al-Khitat¸ wa-al-A± tha≠ r (hereafter Khitat) (Cairo, 1270/1853-54), 1:60. 2 Ibid. 3 The Black Death actually began in Egypt in late 1347, when a ship arrived in Alexandria with all but a few of its crew and passengers dead-the few survivors died shortly thereafter. The plague then spread rapidly throughout the city (this story of corpse-ridden ships arriving from ports in the Black Sea and Constantinople is repeated by various sources throughout the Mediterranean world). But the main years for mortality from the Black Death were 1348 and 1349.

This article reexamines wages in Egypt using new evidence not analyzed in my previous study of th... more This article reexamines wages in Egypt using new evidence not analyzed in my previous study of the late Mamluk economy (Borsch, The Black Death in Egypt and England, 2005). The results show that wages for unskilled labor fell precipitously from the 1300s to the 1400s and stayed at a very low level thereafter. Shown in the figure below are the primary quantitative results from approximately 300 wage listings from the late thirteenth century to the late seventeenth century.

Middle East Journal, 2012

The Middle East Journal, 2012

Mamlūk Studies Review, 2016

A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteen... more A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteenth-century Cairo. What he wanted to know was whether or not we should give credence to the historical accounts that report peak urban fatality rates (deaths per day) of a thousand for major epidemics. 1 He also wanted to know how these mortality figures were actually determined and suggested that these numbers might in fact be more symbolic in nature than statistic. Finally, he asked if we can accept the estimations of historians that place cumulative death tolls for Cairo at levels of 100,000 or higher. 2 These are very good questions and they apply equally well to Mamluk Cairo and its forty-some plague outbreaks. 3 Michael Dols opened this same can of worms nearly four decades ago as he examined mortality from the 833/1429-30 plague outbreak in Cairo. 4 Dols expressed some dissatisfaction with his attempts, but nevertheless came up with a tentative approximation of some 90,000 for the 833/1430 outbreak's death toll. Dols clearly intended to work on the data from another major plague outbreak (864/1460) but as his career was cut short, the statistics he had gathered were left abandoned on a page of his last article on the subject. 5 1 This article comes out of work conducted at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Bonn University. The authors would like to thank the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg and its staff for their generous support that made this collaborative work possible.

A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteen... more A historian of Ottoman Egypt recently posed some key questions about plague mortality in eighteenth-century Cairo. What he wanted to know was whether or not we should give credence to the historical accounts that report peak urban fatality rates (deaths per day) of a thousand for major epidemics. 1 He also wanted to know how these mortality figures were actually determined and suggested that these numbers might in fact be more symbolic in nature than statistic. Finally, he asked if we can accept the estimations of historians that place cumulative death tolls for Cairo at levels of 100,000 or higher. 2 These are very good questions and they apply equally well to Mamluk Cairo and its forty-some plague outbreaks. 3 Michael Dols opened this same can of worms nearly four decades ago as he examined mortality from the 833/1429-30 plague outbreak in Cairo. 4 Dols expressed some dissatisfaction with his attempts, but nevertheless came up with a tentative approximation of some 90,000 for the 833/1430 outbreak's death toll. Dols clearly intended to work on the data from another major plague outbreak (864/1460) but as his career was cut short, the statistics he had gathered were left abandoned on a page of his last article on the subject. 5 1 This article comes out of work conducted at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Bonn University. The authors would like to thank the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg and its staff for their generous support that made this collaborative work possible.

Annales de démographie historique, Jan 31, 2018

The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusin... more The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Con tributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advan ces a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens dis cussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.

上智アジア学 = Sophia journal of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern studies, 2017

Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World is the first book to synthesize the new evidence and resea... more Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World is the first book to synthesize the new evidence and research methods that are providing fresh answers to crucial questions in the history of the Black Death. It was only in 2011, thanks to ancient DNA recovered from remains unearthed in London’s East Smithfield cemetery, that the full genome of the plague pathogen was identified. This single-celled organism probably originated about 7-8000 years ago and has caused three pandemics in recorded history: the Justinianic (or First) Plague Pandemic, around 541-750; the Black Death (Second Plague Pandemic), conventionally dated to the 1340s; and the Third Plague Pandemic, usually dated from around 1894 to the 1930s. This ground-breaking book brings together scholars from the humanities and social and physical sci­ences to address the question of how recent work in genetics, zoology, and epi­de­miology can enable a rethinking of the Black Death's global reach and its larger historical significance. Aside from the Preface ("The Black Death and Ebola: On the Value of Comparison,” which was newly composed for the hardback edition), the essays here first appeared in the inaugural double issue of The Medieval Globe (vol. 1, 2014), a new journal sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The journal issue remains available open-access at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1/.

This book should be cited as follows: Monica H. Green, ed., Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death, TMG Occasional Volumes 1 (Kalamazoo, MI, and Bradford, UK: Arc Medieval Press, 2015), ISBN is 978-1-942401-00-1.

A symposium held at the University of Illinois in January 2015 to discuss the volume as a point of intersection between the sciences and the humanities was videotaped. That can now be seen online at: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/The+Black+Death+and+BeyondA+New+Research+at+the+Intersection+of+Science+and+the+Humanities/1_g1tg61l5.

A review of the volume, by Lester K. Little, can be found here: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/22361/28313.

published in same format 2005 as Black Death in Egypt and England

this Excel file uses conditional format to render 3-D via filtered low resolution processing of S... more this Excel file uses conditional format to render 3-D via filtered low resolution processing of SRTM data. The intent is to provide the Nile Delta on a single worksheet. The Buhayra province in the North West also represents the canal system of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt (1250-1517 CE)