disease as a weapon?

My question is why the Spaniards "bringing" diseases, is spoken about by many as if it were some devious weapon to kill the indigneous peoples in the Americas, no one could control contagious diseases... what are your thoughts on this?

Originally posted by pinguin   Unlike the Brits and Americans, that resorted to genocide as a matter of principle, Spaniards didn't want to exterminate the indians but to exploit them.

Originally posted by pinguin  Unlike the Brits and Americans, that resorted to genocide as a matter of principle, Spaniards didn't want to exterminate the indians but to exploit them.

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor ...  Be very careful in making blanket statements such as this, pinguin.  Are you trying to stir up trouble with this comment or is there some kind of overwhelming scholarly concensus with which to back it up?  If so, cite something to support the claim.

Edited by pinguin - 01-Nov-2007 at 02:43

PInguin,

Originally posted by Peteratwar PInguin,   As far as I am aware there was no and never was any genocide policy in the British Empire.   None in South Africa, India, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong,  Fiji and other islands, East Africa, Egypt, Belize, West Indies, Guyana etc.   That there may have been troubles at times which resulted in the deaths of some of the native inhabitants and the settlers. This is hardly uncommon if you look back over history.   However genocide as a policy was never there

Edited by pinguin - 01-Nov-2007 at 11:59

Originally posted by Panther Originally posted by pinguin   Comon sense, fellow.   Spaniards need the Indians to exploit them. Spaniards came to be lords, not to work by themselves, at least in the beginning.  Without Indians, the institution of the Encomienda didn't work.     Exploit? You mean... in effect they were slaves to be worked too death! We often are warned of our own glass houses Pinguin, as i will point out eventually in my post.

Originally posted by Panther Now of course, things just might have gone quite a bit differently for South America if she had gone through a massive influx of migrants to any number of shores of any nations in the region, Like what actually occured in the Northern part of the hemisphere.

Pinguin still with your anti Yankee stuff�

I think your original hypothesis is flawed: the Spaniards did not significantly have a different behaviour toward the native than, say, the Anglo-Saxons.

Here are something I guess everybody agrees on that can (partly but mainly) the differences between N and S America may come from the following factors:

1) There were more Native in Central America and the North of the Andes than in the North of the Americas (current days USA and Can), the South (Argentina) and the South-West (Brazil).

2) The smaller a community was the faster it was erased from the surface of the Earth.

3) The period when the worst losses occurred for the natives were not the "contact" but the conquest and the decades (up to a century) after the conquest.

4) The mightier the native state system before conquest the more chances the population had to survive and the institutions to be re-used by the Europeans.

5) The higher the ratio Europeans/native population the more the native were to suffer from the invasion.

6) The easier the terrain was the faster the extinction.


Lets take a few examples to check whether the factors I have mentioned were more likely to predict the level of extinction a native nation was to suffer:

A) The Selknam from the Tierra del fuego. They suffered a near 100% death rate due to Spanish-speaking governments. Arguably those who actually killed them came from the whole of Europe. Thus their executioner's origin has less to do with their disappearance than the fact that they weren't numerous, had little places where to hide, lived nomadic and tribal lives, and had already disappeared a few decades after the conquest (and thus couldn't enjoy a post-conquest recovery).

B) The Caribbeans. They also suffered a near 100% extinction. Once more from the hand of mostly Spanish-speaking conquerors. The relatively small size of the island did not allow them to hide anywhere, they were not very numerous and quickly outnumbered by the Europeans and the slaves, they had no institutions to offer the Spaniards, them too were too badly hurt to enjoy a post-conquest recovery.

C) The Mapuche. I guess Omar you know more about them than I do but over all there were badly massacred. Their population is likely to have fell by 95% in one generation. They neither suffered from a devastating invasion, but only after modern technologies made their territory easy to cross by the Europeans. They had little to offer the Chileans but they were lucky enough never to be too badly outnumbered by any kind of European settlers and to be numerous enough in the beginning to have enough stock to recover after the invasion.

D) It is interesting here to compare North American Nations with fairly similar histories. The Hurons and the Iroquois for instance. The former were less numerous, were more immediately in contact with the Europeans (i.e. higher Euro/ native ratio) and had a less effective style of institutions. As a result they are nowadays some thing like outnumbered by the latter something like 15 to 1. The same is true for comparisions between Apaches/Navajos or Sioux/Cherokee.

E) The places where well organized and very numerous native pre-contact societies existed have (relatively to the other) done well. Namely, Central America and the Andes. The Incas for instance enjoyed several advantages: no major European settlements, a large number of people pre-contact, a still significant population post-conquest, a fairly difficult country to go through, etc. As a result despite population losses raging from 50% to 95%, they could fairly well recover and now form most of the population of Peru and Bolivia.

F) Small communities protected by difficult terrain (even those conquered) never had too much to suffer.

If any of the people or systems involved in the conquest was particularly bad how do you explain that the same government (lets say Chile) totally erased some tribes, only partly destroyed other and had little more influence than a bad epidemics on the major native population?

Considering the immigration of Europeans. The case of Argentina is interesting. The Natives were almost totally eradicated from the country and it is one of the country in South America that have the most of Europeans. Why? Because they mostly arrived late (as late as the 1950s), quickly (mass migration started after 1800) and had very little chances to mingle with the native that were originally very few anyway.
Question: why did the USA, Canada, Argentina and to a lesser extent Brazil, Uruguay and Chile despite their various background and very varied institutional settings had fairly similar effects on their native populations?

PS: let also add a 7) in the factors. Lets divide the number of native conquered by the time of the conquest took and the higher number will likely predict the best outcome for the native populations.
For instance the Aztec Empire had (maybe) 20 millions subjects and it collapsed in 4 years, the number is thus 5,000,000. On the other hand the Mauche were around one million but fought for 300 years, their reference number is thus 3,333.
It would be interesting to make a more complete table, but I'm convinced that the nationality of the invaders would not correlate with the effect of the invasion.

Edited by Justinian - 03-Nov-2007 at 18:13