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The Birth of New Spain
- brudgers 6y agoSub title How the Spanish arrival transformed the land—and decimated the population—of Mesoamerica is an understatement. “Decimation” is the death of 1 of 10. The indigenous people in the Americas died at rates much higher. The article describes details of 60-95% death rates. The article reinforces downplaying the scale of horror in the title by science-washing its ruthlessness as an agricultural lifestyle choice.
- 627467 6y agoAnecdotal evidence that the title may not be downplaying the scale: while you are probably right about the ethymology of decimate, I, for one always understood the word as meaning virtual total destruction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bluedino 6y agoI’ve never heard it used to mean 1 in 10 either. I wonder if GP is a native English speaker
- narag 6y agoIt has nothing to do with English. It was a practice that some ancient armies (Romans, IIRC) did with defeated populations, when they had refused to surrender. It's now used when you mean that a sizeable part of a population dies, not necessarily one tenth, but it's interesting to remember the origin of the expression.
- alistairSH 6y agoIt was actually used on Roman soldiers for capital offenses (cowardice, rebellion/treason, etc). The cohort being punished would be divided into groups of 10, then draw lots. The "lucky" 9 were then expected to kill the 10th.
- grey-area 6y agoThat's incorrect. It had nothing to do with defeated populations either.
- Jedd 6y agoI try to use it to mean ~ 1/10th - given the origins of the word, and the availability of 'devastate' as a more appropriate word to describe 'near total destruction'. I think it's one of those cases where people have heard decimate, not known what it means, think it sounds more sophisticated than devastate, and have substituted it in. It makes the language poorer for people who understand the distinction, as our communication would benefit from increased nuance, rather than myriad synonyms.
- 627467 6y agoI don't know if this works as proof that languages get poorer (overall). What I do know is that it is not uncommon for meanings to evolve and for new words to appear to (possibly?) cover for lost meanings. Considering that most languages now are considered to be part of handful root-languages (ie. Indoeuropean) the macrotrend I see is for languages to get more diverse - for many a measurement of richness.
- mercer 6y agoI think it's a somewhat snobbish assumption that a language becomes poorer because the meaning of particular words drift. It doesn't take into account, as you say, the many, many new words that enter our lexicon. Of course, those who make this assumption will probably thumb their nose at how 'unsophisticated' these new words are. It's a weird hill to die on. Language should be fun!
- Jedd 6y ago> I think it's a somewhat snobbish assumption that a language becomes poorer because the meaning of particular words drift. This is very much not what I said. My claim is that by reducing the variation and nuance available in the language by reducing the precision of some words such that they are then mere synonyms of several other words -- results in a poorer language, and (perhaps) poorer cognitive opportunities for speakers & writers of that language. Meaning of words definitely do drift, and that's okay. What I resist is the perhaps ineluctable drift towards a lowest common denominator of usage. For what it's worth I find language much more fun when I can stretch it to its (or rather my) fullest, appreciating the history and subtlety of words and phrases I employ, rather than wishing for language to be pedestrian and exclusively utilitarian.
- kzrdude 6y agoIt's a fact that the common usage of the word decimate has diverged from the original meaning. Dictionary: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/decimate https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/decimat...
- CarbyAu 6y agoYeah. I read "decimate" with the broader definition. I would write "decimate" with the narrower definition. But that scenario doesn't come up much.
- mercer 6y agoThat scenario seems like a recipe for miscommunication though, unless you first lecture the reader on what decimate 'should' mean :).
- zozin 6y agoWhat do you mean by science-washing? Are you implying that the Spanish intentionally killed 60 to 95% of indigenous Americans?
- aunty_helen 6y agoIn Uruguay it was closer to 98%, when the indigenous people didn't want to conform with property rights, the order was given to wipe them out. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanza_del_Salsipuedes https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanza_del_Salsipuedes (There's no English article unfortunately)
- dgut 6y agoThat was after the Spanish authorities were kicked out of that region. The New Laws and Laws of the Indies, which had been in place for nearly three centuries by then, forbade such actions.
- bluedino 6y agoCould the Spanish have known at the time that they carried diseases that would nearly wipe out the natives?
- sprafa 6y agoHow? Their understanding of disease was surely rudimentary?
- narag 6y agoIn the 1500s, nobody knew better.
- jackcosgrove 6y agoThe miasma theory of disease was the dominant understanding of Europeans at the time. Miasma was understood to emanate from putrescence but was not communicable between people. Germ theory did not take hold until the 19th century.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoNo, but they became aware of it as the diseases were spreading and took the opportunity to conquer the areas.
- pvaldes 6y agoThe picture is incomplete in any case. Some researchers talk about a sustained decline linked with environmental problems and bad manage of a too fast growing population long before the arrival of spanish. Paleontological data from Mexico show a dry period extended between 500 and 1150 A.D. Mayans where wipped just by environmental problems and climate change after they distroyed the nature trying to feed their growing population. It seems that we are wired to commit the same stupid mistake again and again (Ethiopy, Sahara, Indonesia, Brazil... No forest -> no water -> no agriculture -> no humans). Big cities where deserted by climate changes when agriculture stopped to work, entering in a "tragedy of commons" process. We must take in mind also that the "before" number is just that, a stimate. Is adopted because it fits with the narrative but is also possible that the population numbers given to invaders were inflated for tactical purposes.
- alexandrerond 6y agoHow can you be so angry at history that even an article that plainly exposes the huge population declines and gives pointers to causes (disease mostly, not agriculture) bothers you? What should it say instead to appease you? It's a really good excerpt, interesting and by no means whitewashes anything. If it did it wouldn't give you the figures.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Decimation” is the death of 1 of 10. No, the primary modern definition is “kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.” Etymologically, it comes from the name of a Roman punitive practice of deliberately killing one in ten of a group as a form of collective punishment of the group, but outside the context of describing that specific practice it is pretty much never used to refer to the death of 1/10 of a group.
- captmeatballs 6y agoAmazing article. I love reading well documented history. Thanks for sharing, is your book on Amazon?
- scottlocklin 6y agoForget whatever this nerd wrote: Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote the Iberian Anabasis.
- ableal 6y ago"[...] —a policy called congregación. This sort of European settlement pattern, featuring nucleated and typically walled urban centers with largely vacant fields surrounding them, was the product of centuries of total war in which walking great distances to one’s agricultural fields was the price people paid for defense. Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican patterns of warfare and land tenure had developed a more dispersed settlement distribution [...]" That's interesting. You can read about the European patterns as far back as classical Greece - when the season came, one city would gather some soldiers, go bust up the other city's fields, set up some triumph marker, and get back home ...
- smogcutter 6y agoIt seems to me they’re talking about the small hamlet as a center of defense, not just the city. After all, medieval farmers didn’t walk from the city to their fields every day. They generally lived in outlying hamlets and villages, and brought goods to the city on market day. Nonetheless, the population was concentrated in the villages and not dispersed in homesteads or something. Most of London, for example, is actually outlying towns that were gradually absorbed into the metropolis. You could also suggest another reason the population was concentrated, that was probably at work in the new world as well: if you’re the local aristocrat, and your job is to tax the peasants and muster them in wartime, it really helps to have them all in one place. As for the Greeks, what’s funny is that they were hilariously bad at siege warfare. In almost 30 years of on and off warfare, neither Athens nor Sparta was ever seriously threatened until the very end. And while it’s totally dumb to compare a bronze age epic with actual history, let’s be real, the Romans would’ve finished off Troy in a month.
- 082349872349872 6y agoI hope it was mostly defensively and not offensively oriented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps would be an example of the latter. In these days of economic cold warfare, it's interesting to think of metropolitan areas as those settlements which have sufficiently-developed economies that they are resistant to single-factor speculative attacks (whether on a currency or an actual basket of goods). Internal economies would be the safest protection, as trade networks may or may not be useful, depending upon the relative interdiction capabilities of one's friends and foes. see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrali... On a further tangent: Because spain reached the philippines from one direction and portugal reached malacca from the opposite, dates in southeast asia were a day off from each other, depending upon colonising power. It is a logical truth that all babies born in the philippines on Tuesday, 31 Dec 1845 were neon green and spoke hebrew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_caetera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_caetera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines.htm https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_philippines...
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThe Roman Catholic Church had a prominent role in the Spanish colonization of the Americas: - How Bishop Diego de Landa collected every Mayan codex and then did a massive book burning with all of them. - The Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition, which was used to convert natives to Christianity. Another aspect that is missing is the Spanish caste system, where there was a racial hierarchy where indians and blacks had a lower social status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta And finally, other aspects are missing, such as the economic systems put in place by the Spanish: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacienda Also, how the Spanish Phillipines were governed by the Viceroy of New Spain.