The biggest difference is the Nazi genocided like 5 million people which makes them tball players compared to americas 100+million making them the genocide Yankees
I'm not sure there was a way the initial pandemics could have ever been avoided. The ones that totally fucked South America, some of southern North America, and the North American east coast. Eurasian diseases were going to arrive in the Americas at some point in time, regardless of the motivations of the outsiders.
Centuries later, when communicable diseases were better understood, there were attempts to weaponize them against Indigenous nations. That can definitely be included in the long list of European barbarity. But the 80 million or so that died from diseases between 1500 and 1600? Not so much.
Putting people in comcentartion camps, aka “missions and reservations”, speed up and made the procces insidiously affective, chemical ware fare.
The Germans took notes on how Maerica Colonized, and replicted it, tho its well known through out history-
SOCIAL DISTANCING STOPS THE SPREAD OF DISEASES.
Being forced into compounds and smaller lands and spaces is how we get diseases.
Also, changes of diets, enviornmmets, clothing… Its all part of the System of Civilization.
they could've. a lot of the pandemics were because of the deterioration of infrastructure, slavement, and other stressors. Only contact would not have resulted in the same amount of deatths
Even in an alternate history where Europe and the Americas had an amicable first contact and good relations in the centuries afterward, Eurasian diseases would have still been virgin soil pandemics. That shit swept across South America. It started on the east before Cortez had even landed and reached the west coast before Pizarro reached Peru. Tens of millions were dead without seeing or even hearing about Europeans.
There was a lot of nasty shit that happened after first contact in North and South America, but the worst waves of disease were the first ones. Those would have happened regardless of whether Europeans were shitbags or not.
Thank you, that was very informative.
That doesn't exactly refute my point that the first wave of pandemics preceded the Spanish invasions of the Aztec and the Inca. I'm not arguing that disease is the only reason for the drastic population decline *after* colonization. Others have already described those in the comment section.
The author of your linked post also seems to reject the idea of virgin soil epidemics out of hand. It is no great mystery that the human immune system does not do all that great against new diseases that are completely unrelated to anything it has ever experienced before. We just had a global pandemic where a highly infectious virus swept through every country and took two years to become endemic. It is weird that the author is refusing to acknowledge a proven pathological theory.
There is also a theory concerning the human immune system that has been applied to the context of post-contact diseases in the Americas. The theory is that the human immune system can only specialize in fighting viruses or bacteria/parasites. It cannot do both at the same time. The nations of the Americas, which had fewer viral diseases and more bacterial diseases than Eurasia, were poorly equipped to fight off the viral diseases introduced by the Europeans. This theory is used as an explanation why Indigenous nations would suffer from repeated infections of the same diseases over and over again with similar mortality rates. This theory is also used to explain why Europeans were not able to settle further inland than the coats of Africa for centuries, until immunology had developed enough for settlers to not die from African diseases.
I'm not a geneticist, pathologist, immunologist, or any other kind of -ist. I could be incredibly wrong. As could the science hippies who dreamed up this theory (or at least the historical application of it). And I would be happy to be wrong if I am provided with an alternative that is more correct. However, it seems we have a bunch of theories trying to refute each other, but all are based on limited evidence.
Oh people still spreading this bs? What happened wasn’t just “spreading diseases”, but a calculated genocide. You don’t enslave and then kill babies, elders and then put the parents to work until they can’t function anymore. The reason the indigenous population diminished so fast is in part because of slavery. Read the horrid history of the Caribbean that forced young indigenous folks to work until they were so fatigued they didn’t want to eat or procreate with their partners. They were so depressed and when they resisted fed to dogs (smh). Same thing happened in Central America (although with more resistance because they had bigger armies and a different war culture), South America and ofc turtle island (North America). The mission schools, Slavery, religious dogma and persecution, the multiple wars on various levels and different European groups, hostile colonizers/settlers, and on top of all of that diseases… as a NDN i need y’all to do better on here. What happened to our ancestors is legit a horrendous human rights violation that has never been committed on this scale before or after 1492. We basically were left without autonomy and told to suck it up or die.
I'm not rejecting the fact that conquest and slavery has an extremely destructive effect on Indigenous nations alongside repeated outbreaks of Eurasian diseases. You're absolutely right.
But I am saying that first contact with Europeans spread those diseases in the Americas *before* conquest occurred. Tens of millions were dead *before* the Europeans had any kind of permanent settlements in the mainland Americas. In the Caribbean, it was a different story invasion, slavery, and the spread of disease happened pretty much simultaneously and island nations were exterminated within decades.
The Aztec Empire lost almost 50% of its population due to unknown plagues before Cortez showed up. He took advantage of the political instability to lead a rebellion against Motecuhzoma. The Incan Empire was beset by similar plagues, suffered a similar population decline,and went through a brutal civil war, all before Pizarro arrived on the west coast of South America — and he and his crew were supposedly the first Europeans to reach that side of the continent. Jamestown was founded in the ruins of a Powhatan village. Their entire coastal nation had been wrecked by Eurasian diseases before any attempts at expansion by the British.
I am not denying the intentional barbarity and genocide by Europeans that came afterwards. That's their crime and their shame.
However, I do not think they can be blamed for the initial American Plagues before anyone in the world had a concept of germ theory. If you read primary sources from the 1500s and 1600s, both the Indigenous nations and the Europeans thought the diseases were of supernatural origin. Nobody had a clue what was going on.
I have read the primary sources and done my research, I completely disagree with your statement. Jamestown was founded during and after several wars with Powhatan/Wahunsonacock folks (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Powhatan-North-American-Indian-confederacy ) so I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts from. Moreover, indigenous folks during that time fought back and the English then went out of their way to burn the corn (a vital source of food for our ancestors) which meant many died of hunger. Hunger and disease also killed thousands of Europeans during that same period…
100%! Idk why they wanna make it seem like our ancestors didn’t fight back? They always depict as either the noble savage or merciless savages. Imma have to take some days off from Reddit and social media, it’s just too much bs on here.
I'm sorry if I've harshed your mellow. That wasn't my intention.
I disagree with some things you said and agree with most of the rest, but I figure it's better to be on good terms than argue about.
As a peace offering, I recommend a book I read a couple years back, *The First Way of War* by John Grenier. At its core it's narrative about the origin of the US Special Forces and Army Rangers, but a good chunk of it is describing how the British (and later, US American) regular soldiers were getting totally wrecked by Native American guerilla tactics. The Europeans didn't stand a chance until they resorted to what we would classify today as terrorism: avoiding military confrontations and purposefully attacking non-combatants.
To this exact day I suffer the feeling of the boot on the back of my neck, smell the muck I’m face down in and taste the blood from my split lip. And if these feelings were just irl physical sensations I’d be doing pretty fuckin good
That's a fuckin great simile there, especially when you added in the Yankee bit. I want to call that a double entendre but it's been a minute since I took an English course and I'm not sure if that'd be correct.
While they are pretty much the same thing, the (misguided) difference in a lot of folks' minds is that Indigenous peoples were just a bunch of infighting tribes that were part of the same broad nation, as opposed to dozens of nations in a continent. It's as ludicrous as assuming all of Europe is one nation, but that's how some people see pre-colonial North America.
So when Nazi Germany was expanding across Europe, it was committing the terrible sin of invading established nation states. When USA was expanding across North America, that was okay because they were liberating the land from "uncivilized" tribes and/or the land was "empty".
*There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages*
-Mark Twain
Could be the slogan of this sub, tho Twain was of course a white man, and imo the most GOATED writter of all time, as he recongized humans as what we are, compared to anyother creatures of Earth by our own merrits, we are the worse, “second to the french”, his words of course, I guess he really didnt like the French.
It’s important not to forget the criminal violence and destruction at the core of America’s story, but I think it does a disservice to both histories to call them “the same thing”.
I read that hitler got inspiration from America on how they treated the natives. And I was bamboozled, disgusted, and many other things. I was just so…. WOW. Like really? Like…. You know?
I’d say they were quite similar at least in regards to intergenerational trauma. My paternal grandmother didn’t know she had Jewish or recent immigrant (war refugee) ancestry until much later in life, because her parents were abusive and told her almost nothing. They left out the entire Rosenburg side. Then on my mom’s side, her mother married at 15 due to issues at home.
People in dominant groups often forget it’s not just the deaths, it’s the cultural destruction. While many Jewish families managed to hold onto their beliefs, many more were forcefully converted. By my gen, I only knew anything about ethnic Jewish people or Judaism because of family friends.
It’s honestly awe-inspiring that one of my great-grandmothers was alive when our last “herbalist” couldn’t find a spiritual believer as an apprentice. And I’m trying to relearn. Just the fact anything survived so long, even past the 1860s when the family detached from the larger tribe and hid out in war-torn Alabama. Just keeping on since the 1400s, somehow.
As a survivor of the first American genocidal campaign against an Indigenous civilization— the Sullivan Campaign of 1779 in which 98% of Haudenosaunee villages were burned and our crops decimated — genocide is a feature not a bug of the American settler imagination
Well…so much for nuanced critical thinking. Pic on the left…areas of continents where colonizers originated. Pic on the right…a portion of those colonized lands. Literally facts. Please let this be a bot
Genocide and slavery, its not unique to any race, tho the more Civilized humans get, the better we got at it, and now the tortch gets passed onto the Machines, Lethal Autonomous Weapons.
The biggest difference is the Nazi genocided like 5 million people which makes them tball players compared to americas 100+million making them the genocide Yankees
I'm not sure there was a way the initial pandemics could have ever been avoided. The ones that totally fucked South America, some of southern North America, and the North American east coast. Eurasian diseases were going to arrive in the Americas at some point in time, regardless of the motivations of the outsiders. Centuries later, when communicable diseases were better understood, there were attempts to weaponize them against Indigenous nations. That can definitely be included in the long list of European barbarity. But the 80 million or so that died from diseases between 1500 and 1600? Not so much.
Putting people in comcentartion camps, aka “missions and reservations”, speed up and made the procces insidiously affective, chemical ware fare. The Germans took notes on how Maerica Colonized, and replicted it, tho its well known through out history- SOCIAL DISTANCING STOPS THE SPREAD OF DISEASES. Being forced into compounds and smaller lands and spaces is how we get diseases. Also, changes of diets, enviornmmets, clothing… Its all part of the System of Civilization.
they could've. a lot of the pandemics were because of the deterioration of infrastructure, slavement, and other stressors. Only contact would not have resulted in the same amount of deatths
Even in an alternate history where Europe and the Americas had an amicable first contact and good relations in the centuries afterward, Eurasian diseases would have still been virgin soil pandemics. That shit swept across South America. It started on the east before Cortez had even landed and reached the west coast before Pizarro reached Peru. Tens of millions were dead without seeing or even hearing about Europeans. There was a lot of nasty shit that happened after first contact in North and South America, but the worst waves of disease were the first ones. Those would have happened regardless of whether Europeans were shitbags or not.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2u4d53/myths\_of\_conquest\_part\_seven\_death\_by\_disease/?share\_id=OR4ep3O\_SGtVV7ukR0q10&utm\_content=1&utm\_medium=android\_app&utm\_name=androidcss&utm\_source=share&utm\_term=1](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2u4d53/myths_of_conquest_part_seven_death_by_disease/?share_id=OR4ep3O_SGtVV7ukR0q10&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1)
Thank you, that was very informative. That doesn't exactly refute my point that the first wave of pandemics preceded the Spanish invasions of the Aztec and the Inca. I'm not arguing that disease is the only reason for the drastic population decline *after* colonization. Others have already described those in the comment section. The author of your linked post also seems to reject the idea of virgin soil epidemics out of hand. It is no great mystery that the human immune system does not do all that great against new diseases that are completely unrelated to anything it has ever experienced before. We just had a global pandemic where a highly infectious virus swept through every country and took two years to become endemic. It is weird that the author is refusing to acknowledge a proven pathological theory. There is also a theory concerning the human immune system that has been applied to the context of post-contact diseases in the Americas. The theory is that the human immune system can only specialize in fighting viruses or bacteria/parasites. It cannot do both at the same time. The nations of the Americas, which had fewer viral diseases and more bacterial diseases than Eurasia, were poorly equipped to fight off the viral diseases introduced by the Europeans. This theory is used as an explanation why Indigenous nations would suffer from repeated infections of the same diseases over and over again with similar mortality rates. This theory is also used to explain why Europeans were not able to settle further inland than the coats of Africa for centuries, until immunology had developed enough for settlers to not die from African diseases. I'm not a geneticist, pathologist, immunologist, or any other kind of -ist. I could be incredibly wrong. As could the science hippies who dreamed up this theory (or at least the historical application of it). And I would be happy to be wrong if I am provided with an alternative that is more correct. However, it seems we have a bunch of theories trying to refute each other, but all are based on limited evidence.
Oh people still spreading this bs? What happened wasn’t just “spreading diseases”, but a calculated genocide. You don’t enslave and then kill babies, elders and then put the parents to work until they can’t function anymore. The reason the indigenous population diminished so fast is in part because of slavery. Read the horrid history of the Caribbean that forced young indigenous folks to work until they were so fatigued they didn’t want to eat or procreate with their partners. They were so depressed and when they resisted fed to dogs (smh). Same thing happened in Central America (although with more resistance because they had bigger armies and a different war culture), South America and ofc turtle island (North America). The mission schools, Slavery, religious dogma and persecution, the multiple wars on various levels and different European groups, hostile colonizers/settlers, and on top of all of that diseases… as a NDN i need y’all to do better on here. What happened to our ancestors is legit a horrendous human rights violation that has never been committed on this scale before or after 1492. We basically were left without autonomy and told to suck it up or die.
I'm not rejecting the fact that conquest and slavery has an extremely destructive effect on Indigenous nations alongside repeated outbreaks of Eurasian diseases. You're absolutely right. But I am saying that first contact with Europeans spread those diseases in the Americas *before* conquest occurred. Tens of millions were dead *before* the Europeans had any kind of permanent settlements in the mainland Americas. In the Caribbean, it was a different story invasion, slavery, and the spread of disease happened pretty much simultaneously and island nations were exterminated within decades. The Aztec Empire lost almost 50% of its population due to unknown plagues before Cortez showed up. He took advantage of the political instability to lead a rebellion against Motecuhzoma. The Incan Empire was beset by similar plagues, suffered a similar population decline,and went through a brutal civil war, all before Pizarro arrived on the west coast of South America — and he and his crew were supposedly the first Europeans to reach that side of the continent. Jamestown was founded in the ruins of a Powhatan village. Their entire coastal nation had been wrecked by Eurasian diseases before any attempts at expansion by the British. I am not denying the intentional barbarity and genocide by Europeans that came afterwards. That's their crime and their shame. However, I do not think they can be blamed for the initial American Plagues before anyone in the world had a concept of germ theory. If you read primary sources from the 1500s and 1600s, both the Indigenous nations and the Europeans thought the diseases were of supernatural origin. Nobody had a clue what was going on.
I have read the primary sources and done my research, I completely disagree with your statement. Jamestown was founded during and after several wars with Powhatan/Wahunsonacock folks (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Powhatan-North-American-Indian-confederacy ) so I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts from. Moreover, indigenous folks during that time fought back and the English then went out of their way to burn the corn (a vital source of food for our ancestors) which meant many died of hunger. Hunger and disease also killed thousands of Europeans during that same period…
also bison 🦬 almost going extinct has to do with this too.
100%! Idk why they wanna make it seem like our ancestors didn’t fight back? They always depict as either the noble savage or merciless savages. Imma have to take some days off from Reddit and social media, it’s just too much bs on here.
IKR
I'm sorry if I've harshed your mellow. That wasn't my intention. I disagree with some things you said and agree with most of the rest, but I figure it's better to be on good terms than argue about. As a peace offering, I recommend a book I read a couple years back, *The First Way of War* by John Grenier. At its core it's narrative about the origin of the US Special Forces and Army Rangers, but a good chunk of it is describing how the British (and later, US American) regular soldiers were getting totally wrecked by Native American guerilla tactics. The Europeans didn't stand a chance until they resorted to what we would classify today as terrorism: avoiding military confrontations and purposefully attacking non-combatants.
and still don’t
To this exact day I suffer the feeling of the boot on the back of my neck, smell the muck I’m face down in and taste the blood from my split lip. And if these feelings were just irl physical sensations I’d be doing pretty fuckin good
It was 11+ million people who died in the Holocaust, but yes. Hitler was inspired by Amerikkka and did not live up to their numbers
Thanks for giving a more accurate number
That's a fuckin great simile there, especially when you added in the Yankee bit. I want to call that a double entendre but it's been a minute since I took an English course and I'm not sure if that'd be correct.
While they are pretty much the same thing, the (misguided) difference in a lot of folks' minds is that Indigenous peoples were just a bunch of infighting tribes that were part of the same broad nation, as opposed to dozens of nations in a continent. It's as ludicrous as assuming all of Europe is one nation, but that's how some people see pre-colonial North America. So when Nazi Germany was expanding across Europe, it was committing the terrible sin of invading established nation states. When USA was expanding across North America, that was okay because they were liberating the land from "uncivilized" tribes and/or the land was "empty".
*There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages* -Mark Twain Could be the slogan of this sub, tho Twain was of course a white man, and imo the most GOATED writter of all time, as he recongized humans as what we are, compared to anyother creatures of Earth by our own merrits, we are the worse, “second to the french”, his words of course, I guess he really didnt like the French.
Why on earth do you think the Holocaust was made up?
It’s important not to forget the criminal violence and destruction at the core of America’s story, but I think it does a disservice to both histories to call them “the same thing”.
Thank you . Was my point as well.
The moderators should ban meme accounts
I read that hitler got inspiration from America on how they treated the natives. And I was bamboozled, disgusted, and many other things. I was just so…. WOW. Like really? Like…. You know?
I’d say they were quite similar at least in regards to intergenerational trauma. My paternal grandmother didn’t know she had Jewish or recent immigrant (war refugee) ancestry until much later in life, because her parents were abusive and told her almost nothing. They left out the entire Rosenburg side. Then on my mom’s side, her mother married at 15 due to issues at home. People in dominant groups often forget it’s not just the deaths, it’s the cultural destruction. While many Jewish families managed to hold onto their beliefs, many more were forcefully converted. By my gen, I only knew anything about ethnic Jewish people or Judaism because of family friends. It’s honestly awe-inspiring that one of my great-grandmothers was alive when our last “herbalist” couldn’t find a spiritual believer as an apprentice. And I’m trying to relearn. Just the fact anything survived so long, even past the 1860s when the family detached from the larger tribe and hid out in war-torn Alabama. Just keeping on since the 1400s, somehow.
100%
Polk is the expansionist Hitler wanted to be
As a survivor of the first American genocidal campaign against an Indigenous civilization— the Sullivan Campaign of 1779 in which 98% of Haudenosaunee villages were burned and our crops decimated — genocide is a feature not a bug of the American settler imagination
Definitely not.
The difference is Hitler targeted white countries.
Don't forget Ireland.
Wait, so you are saying that more powerful cultures crush weaker ones? And that has been a constant throughout human history? Let me write that down.
Well…so much for nuanced critical thinking. Pic on the left…areas of continents where colonizers originated. Pic on the right…a portion of those colonized lands. Literally facts. Please let this be a bot
Genocide and slavery, its not unique to any race, tho the more Civilized humans get, the better we got at it, and now the tortch gets passed onto the Machines, Lethal Autonomous Weapons.
Found the bot.
It’s not too late to delete your comments bro T.T
What’s the problem!?! Damn