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Thirty Days Outside the Walls: Ragusa's Plague Council, 1377

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Thirty Days Outside the Walls: Ragusa's Plague Council, 1377

Trace three trade networks to one port, then weigh a real council's choice.

Three networks, one port

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Roads That Met at the Adriatic

1In the 1300s, Ragusa (today Dubrovnik, in Croatia) was a small walled city-republic on the Adriatic Sea. It had little farmland, so its people lived largely by trade. Ragusan ships sailed to ports around the Mediterranean, and mule caravans carried goods inland to the silver mines of the Balkan hills. Many goods unloaded in its harbor had already traveled thousands of miles along three great networks of trade.

2Silk Road routes ran overland from China through Central Asia. By the 1300s, many caravans ended at trading ports on the Black Sea, such as Tana and Caffa, where Italian merchants bought Chinese silk and shipped it west. Indian Ocean sea lanes linked China, Southeast Asia, India, Arabia and East Africa. Pepper from India usually crossed the ocean to the Red Sea and was carried on to Alexandria, in Egypt, where Mediterranean merchants bought it. Trans-Saharan camel caravans carried West African gold north across the desert to ports such as Tunis, and historians think much of the gold in Mediterranean coins came this way.

3Ideas traveled with the merchants. Muslim traders and teachers helped spread Islam along the Indian Ocean coasts and across the Sahara. In the late 1100s, a merchant's son from Pisa, Italy, named Leonardo, later known as Fibonacci, learned the Hindu-Arabic numerals, including zero, while his father worked in the North African port of Bugia. In 1202 Leonardo published a book that taught Italian merchants to calculate with them.

4Disease traveled too. The Black Death, a plague probably spread by fleas on rats and from person to person, moved west from Central Asia along trade routes. In 1346 it struck Caffa. Within about a year, Italian ships had carried it to Constantinople and to Sicily, and early in 1348 it reached Ragusa. Like many Mediterranean cities, Ragusa lost many of its people, and the plague returned several times in later years.

5In July 1377, Ragusa's Great Council voted on a new rule. Anyone arriving from a place with plague, by sea or by land, had to stay for a month on the small island of Mrkan or in the nearby town of Cavtat before entering Ragusa. Later, Venice and other ports made travelers wait forty days. The Italian word for forty, quaranta, gave English the word quarantine.

1.
Using paragraph 2, which path did pepper most likely follow to reach a Ragusan ship?
Question 1 options
2.
Use paragraphs 2 and 4. Sort each item by the trade network that carried it toward the Mediterranean.
3.
Underline the sentence from paragraph 3 that tells how a new way of counting first reached Leonardo.

4.
Paragraph 4 traces the plague from Caffa (1346) to Constantinople and Sicily (about 1347) and then to Ragusa (1348). What does this order best suggest?
Question 4 options
5.
Use paragraphs 4 and 5. Subtract the earlier year from the later year.

The Black Death first reached Ragusa in 1348. The Great Council voted on its waiting rule years later.

The council meeting

Read the mock council meeting. Then answer the questions.

A mock meeting of Ragusa's Great Council, July 1377 (the speakers are made up; the rule and the vote are real)

Marin, a merchant (against): "My ships bring pepper bought in Alexandria and silk bought in the Black Sea ports. If every crew must sit on Mrkan for a month, captains will take their cargo to other harbors where they can unload at once. Our city has little farmland. Without trade, we cannot buy grain."

Doctor Jakov, the city's doctor (for): "I treated the sick in 1348. The sickness came to us by ship. It struck Caffa, then Constantinople and Sicily, and then our harbor. A sailor can look healthy when he lands and fall ill days later. If he waits a month away from the city, we will know before he walks our streets."

Stjepan, a caravan leader (against): "My mules come from the silver mines in the hills, not from the sea. And who can say for sure which towns have the plague? One rumor could stop all trade with a town that is perfectly healthy."

Councilor Nikola (for): "This rule does not close our port. Ships and caravans may still come; they only wait. A month of waiting costs less than a city full of the dying. Dead merchants buy and sell nothing."

Luka, a notary (against): "Travelers bring us more than goods. They bring letters, news from distant courts and new skills, such as the Arabic way of counting. Hold them back a month, and we learn everything a month late."

Result: the council passed the rule.
6.
Sort each argument from the meeting: does it support the waiting rule or oppose it?
7.
Marin's ships carry pepper from Alexandria and silk from the Black Sea ports. Using paragraph 2, which two networks does his cargo depend on?
Question 7 options
8.
Doctor Jakov says the sickness came by ship. Which detail from the passage best supports him?
Question 8 options
9.
In 1380 a ship arrives from a port where plague has been reported. It carries silk bought at Tana. Under the 1377 rule, what happens?
Question 9 options
10.
Stjepan asks who can say for sure which towns have the plague. Which weakness in the rule is he pointing to?
Question 10 options
11.
You are a member of the Great Council in 1377. Would you vote for the waiting rule? State your claim. Use at least one argument from each side of the meeting and one detail from the passage as evidence, and explain your reasoning.