This would be more fun to discuss. IMO, the Aztecs deserved to be exterminated. Other AmerInd cultures I might shed half an imaginary tear for, but not the Aztecs.
Except for the whole persecuting Christians bit under certain Emperors… Plus it wasn’t as if being killed in gladitorial combat or being whipped to death as a slave was any better…
BTW virtually all Indian wars occurred for political reasons not by trying to persecute or “exterminate” pagans.
If I remember my graduate virology classes after all this time, it was not just smallpox but measles and influenza that devastated the New World. China and Japan had been exposed to those viruses - and had some immunity - well before the European voyages and colonization attempts that followed Columbus.
I think all this “it was the diseases, stupid” is a bit simplistic and kind of a convenient way of washing our collective hands. There were still plenty of natives left hundreds of years after Columbus was dead and gone, and other inflection points. What if, to name one example, the fraudulent Treaty of New Echota had received just one fewer vote in the Senate?
Then the Cherokee Republic might . . . just possibly, conceivably . . . have become a State of the Union separate from Georgia, setting a precedent. (Also raising a constitutional can-o’-worms, since the Constitution says no state can be deprived of territory without its consent.)
Ultimately irrelevant. Nowhere except in the most backwoods and barren regions did AmerIndians resist being ultimately absorbed into the immigrant population, and even then were largely assimilated into the larger immigrant culture. Ultimately, this was going to happen by human nature: people expand where they see opportunity. The minute AmerIndians were no longer a significant threat, it was arguments over regions and who owned what section of what, both in North and South America. People came and settled it themselves, regardless of what any law or treaty said, and they come from every corner of Europe.
I don’t think we have to guess too much about what would have happened. We can look to history and see what happened in other areas of the world where the people were not wiped out by European diseases. Colonization of Africa didn’t proceed until industrialization started giving the Europeans much better weapons and the ability to move lots of men and material into Africa. In India Europeans were able to use their advanced weaponry to aid some locals against others in order to set up European rule through some of the existing Indian rulers. In China the existing social order was too powerful and cohesive to allow the Europeans to set up much more than trading colonies.
Colonization of Africa and even some parts of Central and South America by Europeans was also delayed by tropical diseases. But then the guns and steel ultimately tipped the balance.
Most importantly, all of those places were (1) more populous and (2) more civilized and technologically advanced (even the Africans were living in the Iron Age while American Indians were still in the Stone age) and (3) more disease-ridden even before the Euros arrived than were the pre-Columbian Americas.
All the alternatives you’re mentioning lead to a failure of Cortez’s expedition. But had he failed, someone else would have lead another some years later.
That’s not what happened in South America, though. So, I don’t think it’s a given that local populations would necessarily be displaced by massive numbers of settlers. What is the USA could have been more similar to Mexico, with most of the population having local ancestry, no?
Or it could have led to the conclusion that invasion was too costly and that diplomacy/trade was the more efficient way to maximize profit.
In the world of the 15th century (and generally the world prior to the past century, for that matter), there isn’t a sense of international community, with international conventions and international law.
It’s tribe against tribe on every continent. Coalition against coalition. Political structure against political structure.
In that paradigm, the strong will always defeat the weak. The able will over-run the disabled. The clever will outsmart the slow. Those able to better develop technology will defeat those unable to do so. Or, if you like Jared Diamond’s perspective, the lucky will find themselves to have enough advantage to plink the unlucky.
The idea that “Europeans” were somehow fundamentally different in their perspective that the next guy over needs conquering if possible, is incredibly naive. This statement (by Kinthalis) is beyond silly…“a bunch of nut job Christians who devalued the lives of the native inhabitants simply because they hadn’t accepted Jesus as their personal savior.”
The “native inhabitants” of the entire world all had about the same perspective of the next guy over: Try to get his land, his women, and his stuff if you can.
European conquest of the world–particularly africa and the americas–resulted from superior competence, and not from inferior morality or unilateral absence of altruism.
Where the potentially-conquerable population was significantly more competent (or lucky, if you like Dr Diamond’s interpretation of the world), the Europeans couldn’t conquer as easily or completely, and didn’t. Areas of the world with primitive societies were a two-hit fight, and disease just a bonus weapon. Even without it, resistance would have been futile given the relative lame-ness of local progress toward a society that could defend on a world stage.
But make no mistake about history. The original peoples everywhere in africa and the americas were already doing their damndest to conquer, enslave and eliminate. They destroyed cultures and societies, and blotted out wherever they could. They just stunk at it compared with the Europeans, who took the concept to a world-class level.
So, no. European “contact” with the New World could not have played out better. The Europeans were playing to win, and local resistance didn’t have a bat’s chance. The assorted gods upon which both sides called upon had nothing to do with it, other than being a convenient rallying point.
More precisely, populations who created better metal technology and invented guns. It’s not like they found guns and steel under a bush.
And of course, Europeans had their own little brushes with germs back in the old country. Yersinia pestis bumped off a third of them in the 14th century.
Quite true. But it was “only” about a third. Not the 90 percent mortality rate that hit some native American groups.
The distance involved was substantial and the locals did not need to win; they just needed to make the cost of invasion and occupation such that diplomatic trade was clearly the more profitable approach. Remember that some few hundred years later a relative rag-tag group of colonists would throw off an empire’s control despite the greater military might of the latter. The Revolutionaries did not beat the British; they just made it not worth the cost.
OH, you mean the Chinese! Or do you mean hand-held firearms as used by infantry? Then the Ottomans.
As far as weaponry went the European Empires created and invented little. Contact allowed them to absorb and perhaps marginally improve upon the creations and inventions of others.
The bit with germs in Europe was that it rarely had a major differential effect on two warring sides’ populations. If one third of France was being killed off by the Plague (let alone 80 to 90%) while Spain was relatively unaffected, then Spain would have had a huge advantage in a conflict. But if both populations are having to deal with the same epidemic then no such competitive advantage is operative. The other issue was fraction of the population incapacitated at one time: society ceases to be able to function well when there are not enough healthy people available to plant, raise, hunt, and distribute food. An invading force immune to the Plague attacking Europe in 1350 would likely have had a walk-through. European society was in upheaval. Wars in Europe stopped during the Plague and the period immediately afterwards because the manpower and resources were not there to fight them from any side.
This.
Malaria did enormous damage to North American native populations. It’s not clear whether the falciparum strain brought by Africans did more damage than the vivax strain brought by Europeans.
I can only agree with your arguments and conclusion.
You’ll note that what you describe absolutely did occur in Mexico. It happened in a different way than in the United States, but at the end of the day native cultures were largely eradicated. The details, as I have said, simply don’t matter. If you want to posit an America with a slightly different complexion, go ahead; there’s no changing the history, though.