The mixed legacy of 1492

[unhappycamper]

The mixed legacy of 1492
By James Carroll
October 11, 2010

IT IS commonly observed that 1492, in addition to being the year of Christopher Columbus, was also the year of the Jews — their expulsion from Spain by the same Ferdinand and Isabella who sponsored the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. But the overlap of events (actually, Columbus set sail in the very week of the banishment) has historic significance, for it was in Iberia that ancient Christian anti-Judaism had recently morphed into genetic anti-Semitism — the idea that Jews are contemptible not because of their religion, but because of their “blood impurity.’’ This notion of a group’s innate biological inferiority tragically gripped the European imagination just as the encounter with the New World occurred. It was a decisive factor in the creation of modern racism that determined so much of what came in the wake of Christopher Columbus. Contempt for Jews was practice for contempt for aboriginal peoples.

The racist myth of European superiority still shapes the story of the colonial conquest — starting with how the Caribs, Mayans, and Aztecs are remembered as never having had a chance against Spanish steel and gun powder. But it wasn’t technological genius that led to the dominance of the newcomers, nor was it their courageous soldiering, intellectual heritage, or moral superiority — much less the favor of God.

By far, the most decisive factor in the quick establishment of European control was the accident of disease. The immune systems of Western Hemisphere indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by pathogens that accompanied the Europeans, with the result that populations of so-called Amerindians were almost instantly decimated. The population of Mexico, to take one example, fell from 25 million in 1517, when Europeans first came there, to 1.5 million a century later. Guns were an advantage for sure, but viruses made the difference.

For reasons still unknown, the immune systems of the conquistadors knew no such vulnerability to unfamiliar pathogens encountered in the New World. If Spaniards had fallen sick instead of Mayans and Aztecs, the post-Columbus narrative would be very different. In fact, the real story of what the historian Alfred W. Crosby Jr. dubbed “the Columbian exchange’’ is that, in the massive transfer of life forms — micro and macro — that took place between the hemispheres, Europeans lucked out in almost all ways. Stupendous benefits like the potato and corn went eastward across the ocean — uniquely fertile crops which provided crucial new sources of nutrition for a burgeoning European population. Indeed, as the economic historian David S. Landes observes, the soon-ubiquitous potato accelerated that burgeoning. In exchange, in addition to viruses, the native peoples of America received, to take another bitter example, horses, which served mainly as military machines in contests they lost. America received cattle and sheep, which — another bitterness — required the fencing of vast tracts of grazing land, the European introduction of ownership.

In the three centuries after Columbus, European population increased by between 300 and 400 per cent, while the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere fell by about 90 per cent. Multiple factors account for this disparity (and historians like Landes, Jared Diamond, and Ian Morris propose various theories), but chief among them is surely the accident that Europeans were random beneficiaries of the east-west encounter. But for a fluke of biology at the very outset, it could have gone the other way. Racial superiority had nothing to do with the triumph of people who were suddenly thinking of themselves as white.

[pipoman]

1. It was a time when this planet was up for grabs,

in a survival of the fittest fashion. It really didn't matter whether the conquerors of 'the new world' were Spaniards, Brits, or Asian..it was inevitable. That said, I sort of like my little corner of the US and I haven't hurt or killed a single person to get it..I think I'll keep it without remorse. Those who are feeling badly or hateful about Columbus, there is nothing more satisfying than divesting yourself of those things which contribute to your negative feelings and living in a van down by the river..

[Kind of Blue]

2. Funny, always wished the day would

come when his celebration would not be part of my consciousness. Thanks for the reminder though, for me it means I spent less time hating this year.

[Odin2005]

3. IMO the death of Native Americans from European diseases is the greatest tragedy in history.

Contact could have been a boon for the peoples of the Americans via importing Eurasian metallurgy, livestock, firearms, and shipbuilding; instead it destroyed them. :(

Aztecs with guns, cattle, and horses would have been a superpower.

[Javaman]

5. I think, eventually, the disease issue would have happened anyway...

sadly.

Even if the Europeans arrived peacefully.

Small pox is horrible.

[proteus_lives]

8. "Aztecs with guns"

Their empire was already tottering when the Europeans arrived.

The neighboring were getting tired of the whole getting sacrificed to the gods thing.

[InvisibleTouch]

4. You can thank the black plaque and the squalid conditions...

...of the Middle Ages for the resistant European immune system. Those who couldn't handle the pathogens died off, in huge numbers - leaving those with resistance alive to breed and pass that immunity along to their descendants.

[DirkGently]

6. A worthy post. There was nothing "fitter" about the European conquerers. They just killed better.

[Igel]

7. That actually misses the point.

They didn't kill better. They were killed less.

The state of epidemiology in 1500 was pretty bad. Jenner, in the late 1700s, was considered to have shaken the medical community with the very idea of cowpox vaccinations. Pasteur had trouble with his ideas in the mid-late 1800s.

By the time the Spanish got to the Aztecs or the Incas, by the time the first Brits landed in North America, the diseases had spread and wiped out a lot of the population. It's been claimed that if you wipe out 80-90% of a civilization with specialized roles you essentially destroy the civilization--it simply collapses, and what you see 30 or 100 years later is going to be rather different. This is true in North America, too, because the Spanish made a number of exploratory trips up through the American South.

I have trouble calling the population reduction that resulted from pandemics "genocide" because "genocide" bears, for me, some moral stigma, it's a hate crime, and you can't accidentally be immoral or unknowingly commit a hate crime.

There was cultural genocide afterwards, to be sure; there were enough instances of physical genocide, the extirpation of tribes and ethnic groups. There was certainly oppression and subjugation. These were fairly common at the time, hardly a uniquely European affair, and made much easier because of all the plagues. (I can't help but remember that Cortes was helped by members of a tribe that had been conquered by the Aztecs and treated badly--the Aztecs failed to properly win hearts and minds, I guess. The Pilgrims were also similarly helped.)

[DirkGently]

9. Disagree. I think Diamond's thesis of "Guns, Germs and Steel" holds more water.

It's worthy to point out the impact of disease resistance, but there's no question the Europeans killed better. I'm not aware of any data suggesting disease wiped out "80-90%" of indigenous populations, are you?

The better "point," in my view is that neither explanation (disease or firepower / centralized gov't, etc.) for the conquest of the Americas points to racial or cultural superiority. One culture was simply able to wipe the other out. There's no inherent "good," or "natural order" to be found there.

[Kind of Blue]

10. I think the point is well made.

In my readings and family stories, the Europeans would never give up going after resources and human bounty. If not the plague, another way would have been found to force indigenous people to interact. Besides, the Native Americans, take Japanese early encounter with Westerners, for example. Let's not forget the slave trade. Sure, many would blame shift and say they had help from the interior.

But as Sylviane A. Diouf writes in "Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies," "The fact that Africans did not constitute one population but many whose interests and needs could be vastly divergent has not reached the general public. Although it seems acceptable that the French and the English, or the English and the Irish, fought one another for dozens of generations and did not see themselves as being part of the same people—not even the same race—such a notion is still dif¤cult to grasp for many when it comes to peoples in Africa."

I think we have to face the inhumanity as a whole head-on and stop pointing to this or that as having big influence, when really we have a greedy machine out to take by force one way or another what it wants.

[Gaedel]

11. Slave trade

It wasn't until after 1600 that more slaves left Africa than were taken to Africa. The countries of northern Africa were constantly raiding the Mediterranean coast of Europe for slaves (even in the 1600s, there was a raid from Morocco that depopulated a town in Ireland). It was only the massive number of slaves required by the Indian dieoff that caused the massive transfers from Africa to the New World.

Much of the post-Renaissance shift of political power from Italy and Spain to northern Europe was caused by constant slave raiding on the shores of Europe.

[Bullet1987]

12. I don't know...there was a strong intention very early on to enslave Africans

and utilize their resources, in those days it was mostly the draw of gold from West Africa. All the way back in 1452, 40 years before Columbus's voyage, Pope Nicholas V issued a bull authorizing the King of Portugal to make war on the infidels, to conquer their lands, and enslave their natives. Between 1479-1480, The Treaty of Alcacovas is signed between Spain and Portugal ending the War of Succession. It is later strengthened giving Portugal sole rights to "discoveries" made on the African coast. This was still about 12 years before Columbus's voyage. In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV gives Portugal's Southern Exploration initiative his blessing through a papal bull called Aeterni regis. It granted sovereignty over "whatever lands and islands shall be found...in the vicinity of Guinea (Africa).

All of the above happened before 1492, Portugal had basically been given a colonial authority before Columbus's "discovery" was even made. There is much more to the story, but I agree with the OP that 1492 was an extremely pivotal year for World History. One era was coming to an end and another was beginning.

[Kind of Blue]

13. No, it is greed, tyranny and exploitation

at the heart of the matter. That is what caused the holocausts on any of the coasts. Let's stop the blame shifting.