Bubonic Plague in China: From the Yuan to the Qing

Exеcutеd by:

Kirill Khоlоdеnkо Studеnt ID:

Dr. Zhang Zhaoyang

Course:

History of Sino-Foreign Cultural

Introduction
 In this paper, I will attempt to analyze the existing historical scholarship to find

out the current consensus on the role of a disease that since the 14th century had wreaked

havoc and led to millions of casualties across the entire Eurasian landmass, including

China. The latter will be the geographical scope of our paper. That sickness was the

bubonic plague, which is colloquially known as the Black Death or as scientifically as

Yersinia pestis, which is a bacterial strain that infects rodents and then gets transmitted to

human hosts, leading to extremely high mortality rates if left untreated. However, whether

the pandemic was indeed caused by this particular strain, which was only discovered in

1894 by Alexandre Yersin in Hong Kong, is still a matter of debate.

An ongoing scientific discussion that will be addressed in this paper concerns

the scope and impact of bubonic plague under Yuan dynasty, specifically during its late

years starting in 1330s. Some historians argue that China under the Yuan was severely

affected by the plague first, and not much less than Europe a decade later. Others disagree,

pointing out the lack of Chinese archival data on the matter and the absence of mentions of

symptoms and/or the unusual behavior of rodents, which played a crucial role in the

transmission of the disease in other parts of the world, and thus was observed and

recorded.

We will summarize the arguments of proponents of both views, reaching an

independent conclusion that will attempt to serve as a bridge between the two approaches.

Finally, we will briefly look at the less controversial issue of the spread of bubonic plague

under the Ming and Qing dynasties, describing the effects it had on the population and

society, as well as the differences between these outbreaks and the alleged earlier ones.

This will mark the end of our research.

Although the bubonic plague later called the Black Death is usually associated

with Europe because of the mass casualties which it has caused there, it is hard to ignore

the fact that the Black Death most likely originated in Asia and possibly devastated a

sizable part of its population as well1.

Historians generally hypothesize that the bubonic plague has begun in Central

Asia in general, and specifically in Mongolia and Western China2. It seems that the rodents

which carry the plague bacteria are indigenous to the Central and Western Asian areas of

Kurdistan and Northern India. Chinese written sources and grave marks mention a large

outbreak of a plague disease on the territory of Mongolia from 1338-1339 which is about a

decade before the pandemic broke out in Europe3.

Unfortunately, the extent of the plague damage in Asia is not as well

documented as it is for Europe — however, those sources that are available might point to

the first outbreaks of the Black Death. Medieval Arab historians Al-Maqrizi and Al-Wardi

believed that the bubonic plague had first come from Mongolia through the Silk Road

which was a main trade route to Europe 2, while the contemporary historians tend to think

that “the epidemic began with an attack that Mongols launched on the Italian merchants’

last trading station in the region, Caffa in the Crimea” 3. After that, the plague presumably

spread from Italy to other European countries by fleas carried on small animals,

predominantly rats.

1 Szczepanski, Kallie. “How the Black Death Started in Asia” ThoughtCo, Dec. 12, 2019
2 Supotnitskiy, M. V. Itoricheskaya informatsiya o vspishkah chumy kak istochnik idey dlya nauchnyh otkrytiy v
chumologii [Historical information on outbreaks of plague as a source for future discoveries in the studies of the
plague]. P. 320
3 The Black Death: A History From Beginning to End. Hourly History.
  The Arab historian Ibn al-Wardi of Aleppo (1291-1349), who later fell victim

to the plague himself, collected information on the place of origin of the Black Death,

suggesting that Muslim traders brought the plague to Syria from Crimea. He wrote about

northern Asia as an area where the plague epidemics had probably originated, describing

the impact it must have had on Yuan dynasty: “China was not preserved from it, nor could

the strongest fortress hinder it”4.

Speaking about China, we cannot miss the fact that, according to various

sources, during the Yuan and Ming dynasties it suffered from major epidemics at least four

times. The first period was over the last fifteen years of the Yuan (1344-1345; 1356-1360,

1362), then in 1407-1411, which was the toughest outbreak of the fifteen century in China,

in 1587-1588 and over the last years of the Ming dynasty governance which is 1639-1641

and 1643-1644. Oftentimes those epidemics struck China together with droughts, which

caused the famines, further aggravating the situation. That was the case in 1544-1546,

1587-1588, 1639-16415.

According to the 1393 census China lost over 60 million of its total population

since the beginning of the 1200s. The reason for such a dramatic decline might be the

overall weakened state of the country that was caused by Mongol conquest of the Southern

Song dynasty, natural disasters as the Little Ice Age and the spread of infectious diseases

probably including, but not limited to, the bubonic plague. Some of that missing population

was killed by the mass hunger and upheaval in the transition from Yuan to Ming rule, but

one of the hypotheses is that significant casualties were caused by the plague. However,

4 George D. Sussman, “Was the Black Death in India and China?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, 3
(2011), pp. 319–55
5 Timothy Brook. Yuan and Ming. The Troubled Empire. pp. 65-66
this population loss could also be explained by flaws in Mongol methodology of

demographic statistics.

Before the third plague pandemic of late XIX century, Western medical

community was almost unaware of the existence of plague beyond Europe, Nоrth Africa,

and the Middle Eаst6. The first to propose that the late-Yuan epidemic was a bubonic

plague was the Singaporean epidemiologist Wu Lien-Teh in 1911, even though his idea

was not supported by sufficient evidence 7. Much later in 1976, the historian William

McNeill adopted this assumption as the backbone of his masterwork on the global history

of epidemics8, Plagues and Peoples, and described the way plague bacteria might have

spread throughout the Eurasian continent from Mongolian steppes. He also deemed it

“impossible to believe that the plague did not affect China, India, and the Middle East” 9.

Using his broad knowledge of epidemiology and world history, McNeill attempted to paint

a picture of the bubonic plague in China and India. Since that publication, however, further

studies on the matter largely have not been conducted. Therefore, according to George D.

Sussman’s assessment from 2011, contemporary scholarship currently does not share any

degree of certainty on whether bubonic plague had indeed ravished China, let alone could

describe the impact it had on the society there10.

In regards to Yuan China, there were two main territories vulnerable to plague

from the 14th century: the northwest which is close to the steppe reservoir of the disease,

and the southwest which is close to the Himalayan reservoir. Even though we cannot

distinguish the bubonic plague from any other epidemic disease using available records till

6 George D. Sussman, “Was the Black Death in India and China?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, 3 (2011).
p. 324.
7 Ibid, p. 324
8
9 William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1976; New York), p. 196
10 George D. Sussman, “Was the Black Death in India and China?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, 3
(2011). p. 324.
the 19th century when the third plague pandemic had begun and the whole world was

fighting it, the most feasible reason for such a drastic drop in the population between 1200

and 1393 is the plague pandemic rather than mass killings perpetrated by Mongols, even

though traditional Chinese historiography often preferred to emphasize the latter.

Starting with the second half of the 13th century (1252-1253), the Mongol

horsemen entered the regions of the habitat of wild rodents which even nowadays are

endemic carriers of the plague. It is possible that invaders missed the rules and traditions of

the locals on how to protect themselves from infectious diseases. So they accidentally

infected themselves and became carriers, allowing the disease to escape its places of

origin.

Moreover, in 1253 after the return of Mongol horsemen from the raid into

Yunnan-Burma, Yersinia pestis brought back with them adapted to the local rodent species.

From there, the bacteria could spread from to the West along the steppe areas, occasionally

through human and animal migration. It is possible that then, shortly before 1346, the pool

of endemic rodent infection came near to its natural limits.

The issue that raises a lot of questions is that the Chinese records did not

demonstrate anything outstanding that could be connected to the plague. However, the

Chinese records for 1331 show that an epidemic in Hebei province that took the lives of

nine tenths of the population, as well as reports of 1353-1354 epidemic that state that

casualties amounted for “two thirds of the population”. Foreign-operated Chinese Imperial

Maritime Customs Service gives a similar account, but with a different name of the

province - this time Hunan. Year 1352, as well time between as 1356-1362, is marked as a

“great pestilence” that claimed the lives of 900 thousand people. Even considering the fact
that the interruptions of record keeping might be the result of the breakdown of

administrative routines during the prolonged Mongol conquest of China (1213-1279), it is

still unclear why such mass casualties would be underreported. Still, it seems that such a

rapid population decline is quite likely had been caused by the disease and not just the

Mongol conquests.

According to Sussman, Yuan dynasty faced three rounds of epidemics in its

four final decades, with the first one taking place in 1331-1334, moving from Hebei and/or

Hunan provinces. It was followed by an epidemic in Fujian and Shandong and coincided

with the flood caused by the Yellow River in 1344-1346. Finally, yet another epidemic

ravaged northern and central China during the Red Turbans rebellion in the 1350s. All

three were characterized by extremely high mortality rates. However, Sussman emphasizes

that it is not possible to confidently link those outbreaks to Yersinia pestis, at least due to

the lack of records describing the symptoms that victims suffered from. In any case, large-

scale and very lethal epidemics ran over China in those decades and continued to happen in

the centuries to come. Whatever that disease was, Sussman states that it likely entered

China “from the Mongolian steppes north of Hebei and not from the Yunnan focus in the

far southwest”. This pattern might indicate that the infection most likely came from the

northern steppes, where it was later found in the nature in the XIX century 11. So, if plague

had indeed affected Yuan China, these epidemics are the closest that we can get to the

potential candidates.

Historians note that among the other causes of the collapse of the Yuan

Dynasty (1271-1368), such as inefficient governance and flawed monetary system, ethnic

tensions caused by the Four Class system, the plague epidemics could have also played a

11 George D. Sussman, “Was the Black Death in India and China?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, 3
(2011). PP. 350-351
role. According to the History of Ming, the first wave of the Black Death epidemic

happened in 1344 with the epicenter in Huai River Basin, hometown of Zhu Yuanzhang,

who later became Hongwu Emperor of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Many of his relatives

died of famine and diseases. Epidemics, along with natural disasters, certainly fit in the

narrative of the loss of the mandate of heaven by the Yuan Dynasty. During his journey in

the role of a traveling monk, he met Guo Zixing (in 1352), who was the founder of the Red

Turban Rebellion against the Mongols. There, Zhu Yuanzhang became a leader quickly

and eventually captured the entire country, founding the Ming Dynasty in 1368, in the

subsequent two decades. Even though the causes of the fall of the Yuan dynasty were quite

diverse and complex, the assumption that the plague played some part in this process

seems quite adequate.

However, some researchers question the assumption that the epidemics took

place in China during the 14th century were actually the plague. For instance, the

demographic historian Ole Benedictow states that obstacles for bacteria to spread rapidly

throughout the continent were too strong  to allow the plague to travel from the Yuan realm

to shores of the Black Sea in just two years (1344-1346). Moreover, Mongolia prevented

the caravan trade between Europe and China in 1343 which is the year before the epidemic

disease outbreak in the Yuan making such a spread almost impossible612.

John Norris in his 1977 article “East or West? The Geographic Origin of the

Black Death” also argued that China somehow avoided the spread of the plague, which,

according to him, originated in Kurdistan, from where it spread to southeastern Russian

126 Ole J. Benedictow. “Yersinia pestis, the Bacterium of Plague, Arose in East Asia. Did it
Spread Westwards via the Silk Roads, the Chinese Maritime Expeditions of Zheng He or over the
Vast Eurasian Populations of Sylvatic (Wild) Rodents?”, 2013. Journal of Asian History, vol.
47, no.1. pp. 1-31.
7
William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1976; New York), pp. 165-168
and then to Europe13. His argument was based on a complete lack of any firsthand account

of the plague symptoms in the notes of Mongols and/or merchants from the Silk Road. He

also contested the importance of the Silk Road in transmitting the disease, as by that time 3

out of 4 khanates had converted to Islam and stopped recognizing the authority of the

Great Khan, who became a de-facto emperor of China and not the of the entire Mongol

world. This made trade along the Silk Road more cumbersome and less dynamic right

before the European plague pandemic. Finally, he used ideas of another scholar, R.

Devignat, about evolutionary differences between strains of the plague to refute McNeill’s

assumption that the Mongols carried the disease from Yunnan to Mongolia to Crimea14.

Historian Carol Benedict states that Chinese records contain very not enough

evidence to make an argument that any epidemic in China before the establishment of the

Qing dynasty was in fact a Yersinia pestis plague. Contemporary Chinese word for plague

- 鼠 疫 (shǔyì) or rat epidemic - only enters the circulation in the XIX century, further

deepening the idea that classic symptoms of the plague and its connection with rodents was

probably not observed by the Chinese under pre-Qing dynasties15.

One of the works of a German medical historian J. F. C. Hecker released in

1832 covered the possible reasons that lead to a plague pandemic that “extended from

China to Iceland and Greenland”], such as famines, floods, droughts and epidemics in

China at the beginning of the 14th century and several similar misfortunes in the European

countries. Yet Hecker based his understanding of the emergence of the plague outbreaks on

poor conditions and natural disasters, not on the long chain of contagion.

13 John Norris, “East or West? The Geographic Origin of the Black Death,” Bull. Hist. Med. 51, no. 1 (Spring
1977): 1–24. P. 10.
14 Ibid, P. 22.
15 George D. Sussman, “Was the Black Death in India and China?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, 3
(2011). P. 344
 Modern demographic historian Cao Shuji proposes that the outbreaks of 1587

and 1639 were in fact plague and connects them with the reopening of the border trade

with the Mongols in 157116. Moreover, the Chinese farmers’ mass migration to the

Mongolian steppe might have caused the habitat change of local rodents (gerbils) who

likely were the natural plague carriers. Researcher believes that the jump from rats to

humans had occurred again in 1580, the year the epidemics started in Shanxi province 17.

The outbreak was followed by the closing of horse markets but it was already an inefficient

measure. In May of 1582 the plague reached Beijing and broke out again five years later in

1587.

Despite the measures taken by Ming Emperor Wanli and his chief grand

secretary Shen Shixing in providing medical aid to counter the outbreak, the mortality from

infectious diseases, including what we now presume to be plague, remained high in the

northern part of China at the end of the 16th century. According to demographic historian

Cao Shuji, the death rates of that region stood at approximately 40-50 percent18.

In 2010 the scientific journal Nature Genetics published a research paper titled

“Yersinia pestis genome sequencing identifies patterns of global phylogenetic diversity”

conducted by an international team of scientists, led by Dr. Mark Achtman of University

College Cork, who intended to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the Yersinia pestis

bacterium. As a part of a study scientists compared the genetic structure of 282 strains of

the bacterium, isolated from locations around the world, including China, the US, India,

and the former Soviet Union and revealed how the they mutated over time. The research

determined that the bacterial strain most likely have come out from China, and proposed an

16 Timothy Brook. Yuan and Ming. The Troubled Empire. P. 66

He in the 14th century. The scholars made such a daring suggestion after mapping the

stopping points on Zheng's voyages and compared them to known plague outbreaks in

those areas. However, the Zheng He transmission theory is not completely viable

considering the fact that all the crew on his ship most likely would have died en-route if

the rats were indeed infected by the plague19.

In 1855, already under late Qing, the third outbreak of bubonic plague started

in Yunnan Province, China and sprang up again in 1910, killing more than 10 million

people. The worldwide notice was received when it reached Hong Kong and Canton,

moving to the seaports of India, Australia, South and North America. According to the

World Health Organization, the third plague pandemic was active till the 1960. India,

China and Mongolia suffered the most. Now there are still cases of the plague taking place

worldwide but they almost never reach the stage of an epidemic or rarely even cause

mortality due to the wide spread of effective antibiotic treatment.

Yu-Dong Zhang, professor of University of Leicester, comments on the

contemporary plague situation in China, observing that people living in the  countryside of

Gansu, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and Tibet where the plague is most concentrated

nowadays are still in the group of risk of infection because a lot of plague-carrying rodents

live in those areas. Even hunting marmots for their pelts can lead to the infection. So

developing “more stringent oversight on contact with rodents” is a crucial problem in the

contemporary epidemiology.

Conclusion

19Achtman, Mark. “Yersinia Pestis Genome Sequencing Identifies Patterns of Global Phylogenetic
Diversity.” Nature Genetics 42, no. 12 (2010): 1140–43. 
 There is a plausible chance that the Yersinia pestis invaded China in 1331 from

the natural areas inhabited by the plague-carrying rodents in the neighboring regions. As

mentioned above, the main obstacle in the study of the plague epidemic in China is the

lack of relevant documentation during several periods of the Ming and Yuan dynasties

governance.

Those intervals of “historical silence” give rise to disputes on the nature of the

epidemics and questions on the primary reasons for the dramatic population decreases. For

some scholars, such as McNeill, China under the Yuan is closely linked to the global

spread of the plague in the 14th century. For others like Benedictow, this hypothesis is an

overstretch, since many obstacles that would have interfered with such a long-distance

transmission can be named and not enough data is available to support claims of the spread

of the disease in the China proper before Ming dynasty.

George D. Sussman made an extremely valuable contribution to the study of

bubonic plague in China, analyzing the existing literature and eventually reaching the

overarching conclusion that perhaps China in fact did not experience the plague in the 14th

century. Future research would hopefully shed more light on the issue, yet as of now, no

definitive conclusions can be drawn on whether Yersinia pestis had indeed served as a

major factor contributing to the weakening and downfall of the Yuan dynasty, as well as to

the sharp population decline of that period.

As for the influence of the plague on Ming and Qing dynasties, the findings are

somewhat more compelling. Epidemics during that occurred in China multiple times

during these time periods were devastating, yet were mostly contained within regions and
never reached the level of destructiveness that characterized the march of plague across

medieval Europe in the 14th century. The spread of the disease was much slower than in

medieval Europe and resulted in much less casualties compared to the entire population of

the country.

So, to sum things up, we can conclude with an overall statement that even

though China may or may have not encountered the plague under Yuan dynasty, it was

certainly not immune to the disease and definitely got affected by it in later periods.

Bibliography

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2. Timothy Brook. Yuan and Ming. The Troubled Empire.

3. Ole J. Benedictow. “Yersinia pestis, the Bacterium of Plague, Arose in East Asia. Did it

Spread Westwards via the Silk Roads, the Chinese Maritime Expeditions of Zheng He or

over the Vast Eurasian Populations of Sylvatic (Wild) Rodents?”, 2013. Journal of Asian

History, vol. 47, no.1. pp. 1-31.

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