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Even Columbus screwed over the Indians on the islands, even before disease had a chance to wreak havoc. Just the fact that they sailed in ships, wore armor, and

Even Columbus screwed over the Indians on the islands, even before disease had a chance to wreak havoc. Just the fact that they sailed in ships, wore armor, and had steel swords and rudimentary firearms gave a huge advantage to the Spanish.

lxmorj 6y ago
It’s an interesting alternative history idea though - what if the disease pressure was flipped but the technology was left as is?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  You had something like this during the European partitioning of Africa into colonial Empires. Africa was known as the “white man’s graveyard” due to various tropical diseases. In the end, for the most part, technology won, and Europe carved up Africa into various colonial Empires.
  - iguy 6y ago
    But it did take 400 years more technology than what Cortez had. The Zulu army was not a walk-over in the mid-19th C, although 50 years later (with gatling guns) it would have been.
upinsmoke1980 6y ago
Europeans hardly acted like saints, but it's still true that orders of magnitude more natives - perhaps as many as 90% - were killed by disease than by direct action of the colonists. I highly recommend the book 1491 by Charles Mann which talks about this (and much else). He explains how scientific estimates of the pre-Colombian population of the Americas keep getting revised upwards as we discover more evidence of just how many natives were wiped out by disease. It took Europeans hundreds of years to explore the entire continent; by the time they arrived in, say, the American West, the land was largely empty and the Indian population was very low. Only more recently have we started to figure out that European diseases spread through the continent much faster than European settlers did. It's likely that some of these "sparsely populated" areas were in fact much more populated in 1492, but the population collapsed through disease many generations before Europeans came into contact. I don't think we can fault Europeans too severely for this; the germ theory of disease wasn't understood until the late 19th century, and Europeans suffered greatly from epidemics too (when Colombus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 it was only about 150 years after the Black Death had killed a third of the population of the Europe.) But it's a fascinating book, and it's mysterious and sad to think that so many complex societies were devastated and erased while leaving so little trace of their existence.
- gnarbarian 6y ago
  No no! white people bad and evil! 1619 project!!!
- Retric 6y ago
  Even without germ theory Europe still used diseased blankets for attempted genocide on at least one documented instance in 1763. https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smal... Excerpts: Amherst wrote on July 16, 1763, "P.S. You will Do well to try to Inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect,..." Bouquet replied on July 26, 1763, "I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed." Smallpox was highly contagious among the Native Americans, and — together with measles, influenza, chicken pox, and other Old World diseases — was a major cause of death since the arrival of Europeans and their animals.[27][28][29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare What’s interesting about this is it wasn’t clear it actually worked. However, the approach suggests a better understanding of disease spread than a lack of germ theory would suggest. Plenty of evidence suggests biological warfare was common across European history. The last known incident of using plague corpses for biological warfare occurred in 1710, when Russian forces attacked the Swedes by flinging plague-infected corpses over the city walls of Reval (Tallinn).[18] However, during the 1785 siege of La Calle, Tunisian forces flung diseased clothing into the city.[17]
  - upinsmoke1980 6y ago
    Yes, Europeans had some general idea that disease was contagious, but that doesn't contradict anything I said. Smallpox blankets were used at least once and this was obviously terrible and should be condemened, as should the Aztecs' widespread practice of human sacrifice and the Iroquois's well-documented history of slavery and torture. Humans are great at being shitty to each other. It's still true that far, far more native Americans were killed by European disease than through any deliberate act of European volition, and that's a fact that sits separately from any moral judgements we might make about anything.

lxmorj 6y ago

It’s an interesting alternative history idea though - what if the disease pressure was flipped but the technology was left as is?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
You had something like this during the European partitioning of Africa into colonial Empires. Africa was known as the “white man’s graveyard” due to various tropical diseases. In the end, for the most part, technology won, and Europe carved up Africa into various colonial Empires.
- iguy 6y ago
  But it did take 400 years more technology than what Cortez had. The Zulu army was not a walk-over in the mid-19th C, although 50 years later (with gatling guns) it would have been.

upinsmoke1980 6y ago

Europeans hardly acted like saints, but it's still true that orders of magnitude more natives - perhaps as many as 90% - were killed by disease than by direct action of the colonists. I highly recommend the book 1491 by Charles Mann which talks about this (and much else). He explains how scientific estimates of the pre-Colombian population of the Americas keep getting revised upwards as we discover more evidence of just how many natives were wiped out by disease. It took Europeans hundreds of years to explore the entire continent; by the time they arrived in, say, the American West, the land was largely empty and the Indian population was very low. Only more recently have we started to figure out that European diseases spread through the continent much faster than European settlers did. It's likely that some of these "sparsely populated" areas were in fact much more populated in 1492, but the population collapsed through disease many generations before Europeans came into contact. I don't think we can fault Europeans too severely for this; the germ theory of disease wasn't understood until the late 19th century, and Europeans suffered greatly from epidemics too (when Colombus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 it was only about 150 years after the Black Death had killed a third of the population of the Europe.) But it's a fascinating book, and it's mysterious and sad to think that so many complex societies were devastated and erased while leaving so little trace of their existence.

gnarbarian 6y ago
No no! white people bad and evil! 1619 project!!!
Retric 6y ago
Even without germ theory Europe still used diseased blankets for attempted genocide on at least one documented instance in 1763. https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smal... Excerpts: Amherst wrote on July 16, 1763, "P.S. You will Do well to try to Inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect,..." Bouquet replied on July 26, 1763, "I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed." Smallpox was highly contagious among the Native Americans, and — together with measles, influenza, chicken pox, and other Old World diseases — was a major cause of death since the arrival of Europeans and their animals.[27][28][29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfare What’s interesting about this is it wasn’t clear it actually worked. However, the approach suggests a better understanding of disease spread than a lack of germ theory would suggest. Plenty of evidence suggests biological warfare was common across European history. The last known incident of using plague corpses for biological warfare occurred in 1710, when Russian forces attacked the Swedes by flinging plague-infected corpses over the city walls of Reval (Tallinn).[18] However, during the 1785 siege of La Calle, Tunisian forces flung diseased clothing into the city.[17]
- upinsmoke1980 6y ago
  Yes, Europeans had some general idea that disease was contagious, but that doesn't contradict anything I said. Smallpox blankets were used at least once and this was obviously terrible and should be condemened, as should the Aztecs' widespread practice of human sacrifice and the Iroquois's well-documented history of slavery and torture. Humans are great at being shitty to each other. It's still true that far, far more native Americans were killed by European disease than through any deliberate act of European volition, and that's a fact that sits separately from any moral judgements we might make about anything.