Earning Dignity: Labour Conditions and Relations During the Century of the Black Death in Marseille

Earning Dignity: Labour Conditions and Relations during the Century of the Black Death sheds a direct light on the changing labour market and working relations of medieval Marseille before and after the Black Death. The author’s close analysis of hundreds of notarized contracts and legal suits provides an unparalleled comprehensive study of the prime actors in work relations - masters and employees; men, women, and children- integral to the Massilian port economy through its most turbulent period of pestilence, warfare, and tense labour relations after 1348. By establishing the longer trends of pre-plague conditions, the author reveals the predicaments masters found themselves in the new labour shortages after the Black Death, the intensified used of money in work relations, and the broader place of unskilled workers (not least among them, women) in urban, household, agricultural, and maritime trades. The study ends as the calamitous century drew to a close, when changing relations, long-term debt, and demanded dignity of labourers undoubtedly created the basis for longer term trends in work relations in the century to follow.