Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650The biological mingling of the Old and New Worlds began with the first voyage of Columbus. The exchange was a mixed blessing: it led to the disappearance of entire peoples in the Americas, but it also resulted in the rapid expansion and consequent economic and military hegemony of Europeans. Amerindians had never before experienced the deadly Eurasian sicknesses brought by the foreigners in wave after wave: smallpox, measles, typhus, plague, influenza, malaria, yellow fever. These diseases literally conquered the Americas before the sword could be unsheathed. From 1492 to 1650, from Hudson's Bay in the north to southernmost Tierra del Fuego, disease weakened Amerindian resistance to outside domination. The Black Legend, which attempts to place all of the blame of the injustices of conquest on the Spanish, must be revised in light of the evidence that all Old World peoples carried, though largely unwittingly, the germs of the destruction of American civilization. |
Contents
In the Path of the Hurricane Disease and the Disappearance of the Peoples of the Caribbean 14921518 | 15 |
The Deaths of Aztec Cuitlahuac and Inca Huayna Capac The First New World Pandemics | 60 |
Settling In Epidemics and Conquest to the End of the First Century | 95 |
Regional Outbreaks from the 1530s to Centurys End | 134 |
New Arrivals Peoples and Illnesses from 1600 to 1650 | 166 |
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afflicted Alchon Amerindian Andean Epidemic History arrived Aztec Bartolomé Black Legend Bogotá Brazil bubonic plague Cambridge Caribbean Casas central Mexico Cieza de León coast coastal Columbus conquest Cook and Lovell Cortés Cuitláhuac Cuzco deadly death Depopulation devastated died Disease Outbreaks Dobyns Early Colonial Guatemala endemic epidemic epidemic disease Europeans expedition Federmann fleet Florida Francisco Friar George Lovell Hispaniola Huayna Capac Ibid illness Inca Indians Indies infected influenza island Jesuit Juan land Lima López de Gómara Madrid malaria measles Medicine Mesoamerica Mexico mortality mosquitoes Nahuatl native Americans Newson Nicaragua Noble David Cook North America Oklahoma Press Old World Disease Outbreaks in Central Panama pandemic Pedro Peru pestilence pneumonic plague Prem Quito region reported sailed Santo Domingo Secret Judgments settlement settlers Seville ships sickness sixteenth century slaves smallpox smallpox and measles smallpox epidemic smallpox pandemic South Spain Spaniards Spanish spread suffered symptoms Taino tion typhus University Press voyage wrote yellow fever