Demographic catastrophe in America after the arrival of the Europeans

The demographic catastrophe in the Americas after the arrival of the Europeans is, according to many historians, a historical event consisting of a sharp decline in the indigenous population in the Americas as a result of the arrival of the Europeans in the continent that was due to multiple factors, including some of the diseases they brought, war conflicts resulting from the colonial process and slavery.

Population figures for the indigenous peoples of the Americas before colonization have proven difficult to establish. The academic ones are based on archaeological data and written records of the European settlers. By the end of the 20th century, most scholars favored an estimate of about 50 million, and some historians advocated a estimate of 100 million or more.

In an effort to circumvent the control that the Ottoman Empire exercised over land trade routes to East Asia and the control that the bull Aeterni regis granted Portugal over maritime routes through the coast Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Catholic Monarchs decided to finance Columbus' voyage in 1492, which ultimately led to the establishment of colonial states and the migration of millions of Europeans to the Americas. The population of Africans and Europeans in the Americas grew steadily after 1492, while the indigenous population began to plummet. Eurasian diseases such as influenza, pulmonary plague or smallpox devastated the American populations since they were not immune to them. Conflicts and direct wars with newcomers from Western Europe and other American tribes further reduced the population and disrupted traditional societies. The extent and causes of the decline have been described as genocide.

American population before 1492

Background

Although researchers vary in their estimates of the number of inhabitants in the Americas when the conquistadors arrived and the percentage by which the population has declined since then, there is a general consensus that the American population did indeed decline by the first century of the conquest of America, and that this decrease was considerable.

Beyond this general consensus, researchers have traditionally been divided into minimalists and maximalists depending on whether they propose lower or higher amounts, both for the pre-Columbian population and for mortality later.

There are currently three historiographical currents with divergent positions regarding the pre-Columbian American population:

• La currentdefended mainly by some American scholars. It estimates the American population prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 100 million or more. Some of the estimates of this alcist stance consider that the population of pre-Columbian America amounted to 700 million as defended by Woodrow Borah (1964) or from 90 to 110 as estimated by Henry F. Dobbyns (1966).

• La intermediate current or moderate alcist, defended by historians like Karl Theodor Sapper (1924), Paul Rivet (1924), Herbert Joseph Spinden (1928), William M. Denevan (1956), where the estimates always range from 40 to 75 million people.

• La moderate current or bassistin which the estimates would never reach 20 million inhabitants. Advocates of framed postures in this current are the Venezuelan hypnist and philologist Angel Rosenblat (1945) who estimated that the population would be about 13.3 million or the historian Alfred Louis Kroeber (1939), who defends an even lower figure, 8.4 million people.

Calculations by various experts (in thousands):

Regional estimates of the pre-Columbian population

There are numerous estimates of the population of specific areas of America such as the central Mexican zone or the Andean zone.

Occasionally historians defend an area in that current. For example, Denevan, who defends a population estimate for all of America that can be classified within the moderate or intermediate bullish current, nevertheless defends the existence of a great disproportion between Central Mexico and the rest of America, since for that specific area he defends magnitudes close to half of the entire American population and fit into the bullish current.

Hispaniola

One of the first estimates of the pre-Columbian population was made by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, for the island of Hispaniola, which according to the priest would have 3 to 4 million inhabitants before the arrival of the Hispanics.

Modern estimates, as in the rest of the Americas, fluctuate around an upward or moderate current. The most bullish estimate is the one advocated by Sherburne Friend Cook and Woodrow Wilson Borah in the 1970s XX: about 8 million. Recently Frank Moya Pons using the same method as Cook and Borah, but with different approaches -and the use of census data, such as that of 1508- has reduced the estimate to less than 400,000 individuals. The rest of the estimates They defend bearish positions such as that of Rosemblat, who defended some 120,000 inhabitants for the island in the moments prior to the arrival of Columbus or intermediate positions such as those of Pierre Chaunu, according to whom some 500,000 individuals would inhabit the island or Noble David Cook, who estimates the population between about 500,000 and 750,000 people.

As soon as we add the other islands of the Caribbean Sea, figures like those of Krober (200,000 people) who makes an analogy regarding his calculations for North America, or those of Denevan, five million, who doubles his estimates compared to Hispaniola because the area is twice as large, those of Rosenblat who, based on the chronicles, estimate at 300,000 or Sapper and his studies on the carrying capacity of the land, speak of two to three and a half million square meters. people.

A 2020 study based on the genetics of 263 pre-Columbian individuals from the Caribbean states that the combined population of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola was a minimum of 500-1,500 individuals and a maximum of 1,530-8,150 individuals, for at least ten generations prior to the individuals studied. The authors state that previous estimates of hundreds of thousands are surely excessive.

Caribbean population estimates by source (by thousands):

Estimates of the population of Hispaniola (by thousands):

Central America

After the conquest by the Aztecs, the Spanish undertook several campaigns to this region, they encountered several very populous Mayan cities from southern Mexico to El Salvador. In the southern part of the peninsula they also found several highly populated agrarian manors in addition to certain nomadic jungle tribes. One of the problems when calculating the area is that several times scholars have differed that it is Central America, including or subtracting important parts of the territory.

From the lowest estimates of 800,000 -Kroeber- to the highest of 13,500,000 -Dobyns, who used as a method an estimate of a depopulation of about 95%, that is, that the pre-Columbian population must have been about twenty times that of colonial records - there are various middle points. Denevan, Sapper and Driver all estimate between five and six million. For his part, Steward speaks of just over 700,000, although he excludes Guatemala.

Regarding the Maya specifically as a group, there are two clearly differentiated currents of thought: on the one hand, there are those who believe that from the XII with the beginning of the decadence of its civilization its population decreased, being a smaller testimony of what it had been at the time of the Spanish arrival. On the other side are those who believe that the population continued to grow until the 16th century, when, as in the rest of the continent fell hastily.

The figures given vary from the extremes of 280,000 that Kroeber gives to Helmurt O. Wagner's eight or ten million for the century XVI. On the contrary, there is Spiden and Sylvanus Griswold Morley who estimate eight and thirteen million Mayans for the sixth and twelfth centuries respectively but from that moment they begin to decrease. For his part, Eric S. Thompson gives the most moderate figures, by the IX century they would have been between two and three million.

Estimates according to Central American population sources (by thousands):

Central Mexico today

Within the uptrend, Cook and Borah estimated the population of this area at about 25 million people, while Denevan defends about 21.5 million and Dobyns makes the higher estimate, about 32.5 million..

In the moderate or intermediate uptrend we can frame the calculations of Sapper who considers that this area was inhabited by between 12 and 15 million people before the arrival of Cortés.

Italian demographer Massimo Livi Bacci has made frameable estimates on this moderately bullish position. Thus, in a criticism of Cook and Borah's calculations, he estimated that their calculation would have assumed a population density for central Mexico higher than that of any European country, and almost all Chinese and Indian regions, and according to this author this is unthinkable based on modest agricultural productivity (well below the highest in Europe or China), insufficient agricultural technology and a rugged territory that equally made it difficult to develop agriculture at the levels required to support the population estimated by Cook and Borah.

However, the agricultural techniques developed by the Mesoamerican civilizations (Olmecs, Mayas, Aztecs, Chichimecas, Huascas, Toltecs, Tlaxcaltecas, Zapotecs, etc.) have been studied for their great engineering in the use of the land and water which denotes sufficient agricultural technology to supply populations proposed by upward currents.

For this Italian demographer, the population of central Mexico would not exceed 10 million people. Rosenblat takes the estimate even lower, barely 4.5 million.

However, the most bearish is that of Henry L. Morgan, who criticizes the bullish figures, and puts the pre-Columbian Mexican population at a maximum of two million. In addition, something very common for these societies was that once that the tribe reached a level of growth higher than that allowed by the ecosystem, the tribe divided and the "excess population" migrated to another area.

Mexican demographic reduction in the XVI century (in thousands):

Central Andes

This region encompasses one of the most studied and best documented areas of the Americas. Its population must have been much greater than that of the other areas, except Mesoamerica. Among the states and towns that were in it when the Spaniards arrived, the Inca Empire undoubtedly stands out first and, to a lesser extent, the Chibcha peoples such as the Muiscas and Taironas.

The most accepted estimates of the Inca population are from 11 to 15 million inhabitants (Noble David Cook, W. Denevan, Sapper, Smith and Watchtel), although there are more bullish estimates of up to 30 or 37 million, such as the from Dobyns and bassists with only 2 to 3 million like Shea's or Rosenblat's, or up to 6 from Rowe. For its part, apparently the most densely populated area was the Altiplano Collano, home to the Kollas and Aymaras mainly. Conservative estimates support very similar population magnitudes for this area.

As for the Muiscas, we can speak of three hundred thousand -Kroeber and Jaramillo- to two million -Triana- although Hernández often cites the figure of one million and they were the most advanced peoples of current Colombian territory along with the Taironas. For his part, the renowned Colombian archaeologist Reichel-Dolmatoff gives the figure of five hundred thousand. On the other hand, the Taironas were estimated between six hundred thousand and one million people. However, all the studies indicate that the Muiscas were more advanced than them in agricultural techniques and development of government institutions, which is why they were more numerous. After the conquest, some groups of Taironas sought refuge in the mountains of Santa Marta where they lived in relative isolation until the end of the 19th century.

Andean population estimate (by thousands):

South American Lowlands

This region, so extensive, that included the Amazon, southern Brazil, eastern Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and central-southern Chile, and so varied because it had a large number of climates different. From tropical jungles to frozen steppes. It is also one of the least studied, quite unlike the central Andes or Mesoamerica.

Thus, the estimates vary from between one million -Kroeber- to something more than eleven -Dobyns- but it can also be classified as bearish, moderate and bullish. Among the first is Rosenblat who readjusts Steward's data -mainly based on chronicles- and is at two million (one million less than his colleague) and among the latter Sapper with three to five. Among the bulls, excluding Dobyns, we can mention W. Denevan, who tells us of 8,500,000 souls.

Since the 1970s, a series of social studies and new archaeological discoveries began to be made that allow us to give ourselves a better image of how advanced several of the peoples of this region were compared to those of neighboring regions. For example, Suzanne A. Alchon estimates that it could have been between seven and eight million (compared to the thirteen or fifteen that he estimates for the central Andes), which indicates that the difference could be enough for about a third of the South American population to live in these regions..

According to some authors, among the most important groups in these regions are the Guarani and Tupi, closely related, who are estimated to be between a million and a half and two million souls in total. Mapudungun are estimated to be up to a million people at the time of first contact with the Spanish.

Lowland population estimate (in thousands):

United States and Canada

The territory north of the Rio Grande has always been considered considerably less densely populated than more tropical latitudes. Obviously the climate played an important role in this, but also the little technological or political development of their towns, except for some notable cases. The locations where the highest density was achieved were Florida, parts of California and New England, and the Colorado and Mississippi river basins.

Among the bearish estimates we can mention those of Mooney, Rivet, Wilcox, Kroeber, Rosenblat and Steward, all at around one million inhabitants. Among the moderates would be Sapper and Ubelaker with two to three and a half million and for Lastly, the bulls, like Dobyns, who initially estimated at almost ten (1966) years later raised the number of inhabitants to eighteen million (1983).

US and Canadian population estimates (by thousands):

Population decline

After early contacts with Europeans and Africans, some believe that the death of 90-95% of the native New World population was caused by Old World diseases. Smallpox is suspected to be the main culprit and responsible of killing almost all the native inhabitants of the Americas. For more than 200 years, this disease affected all New World populations, mostly without intentional European transmission, since contact at the turn of the century 16th century until possibly the French and Indian Wars (1754-1767). In Florida alone, approximately 700,000 Native Americans lived there in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2,000. In the Spanish Florida, until 1675 the first count of indigenous inhabitants was not carried out. Prior to this date, general information appears on the number of the Indian population between 1618 and 1635, estimating their number at 30,000 divided into 44 doctrines. The 1675 list was made by the soldier Pedro de Arcos, fulfilling the mandate of Governor Pablo of Hita and Salazar. The Indian-English allied attack of 1702 on the Spanish settlements in Spanish Florida had serious consequences both in the reduction of the total number of inhabitants and in the greater inter-ethnic relationship with the population settled in San Agustín.

According to anthropologist and former Brazilian senator Darcy Ribeiro, the Indians were the fuel of the Spanish colonialist productive system. In Latin America, there was a population of approximately 70 million Amerindians before the arrival of the Spanish and 150 years later only 3.5 million remained. Half had died from plagues (diseases) brought by the white man. The rest were killed in the wars of conquest or forced labor in the mines and sugar mills. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and whooping cough, which were chronic in Eurasia.

Most diseases came to the Americas from Europe and Asia. An exception is syphilis, which originated in the Americas before 1492. A form of tuberculosis has also been identified in pre-Columbian populations, using bacterial genome sequences collected from human remains in Peru, and was probably transmitted to humans through through seal hunting. For several historians, leprosy was a pre-Columbian disease, although this is controversial. Thevet (1557) was the first to affirm that the indigenous people of Brazil were never attacked by leprosy and other historians maintain that scabies it was introduced to the Americas by the Spanish and enslaved Africans. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% (tens of thousands) of Northwestern Native Americans in the United States. The smallpox epidemic of 1780- 1782 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest experienced several earlier smallpox epidemics, about once a generation after contact with Europeans began at the turn of the century XVIII: late 1770s, 1801-03, 1836-38, and 1853. These epidemics are not as well documented in the historical records.

Recent scholars have studied the link between physical colonial violence, such as war, displacement, and slavery, and the spread of disease among native populations. For example, according to Coquille scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker, & #34;In recent decades, however, researchers have challenged the idea that disease alone is responsible for the rapid decline of the indigenous population. The research identifies other aspects of European contact that had a profoundly negative impact on the ability of native peoples to survive foreign invasion: war, massacres, slavery, overwork, deportation, loss of will to live or reproduce, malnutrition and famine from the disruption of trade and its networks, and the loss of subsistence food production due to loss of land".

In his book The Holocaust in Historical Context, Steven Katz has said about it:

It is probably the greatest demographic disaster in history: the depopulation of the New World, with all its terror, with all its death.

According to the researchers Cook and Borah of the University of California at Berkeley, in thirty years twenty million Mesoamerican indigenous people died and a century later only 3% of the original population remained.

The American researcher H. F. Dobyns has calculated that 95% of the total population of the Americas died in the first 130 years after the arrival of Columbus. The population loss was so high that it was partly responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin lands". By the time significant European colonization began, the native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in the disappearance of the settlements and the abandonment of the cultivated fields, since the forests were recovering, the colonists had the impression of a land that was an untamed desert.

In regards specifically to the Spanish colonization of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia, the native peoples there "were subjected to forced labor and, due to poor living conditions and malnutrition, succumbed to wave after wave of unidentifiable illnesses". Also, in connection with British colonization in the Northeast, Algonquian-speaking tribes in Virginia and Maryland "suffered from a variety of diseases, including malaria, typhus, and possibly smallpox." These diseases were not solely a case of native susceptibility, however, because "as settlers took their resources, native communities were subjected to malnutrition, famine and social stress, all of which made the people were more vulnerable to pathogens. Repeated epidemics created additional trauma and population loss, which in turn disrupted the provision of medical care". Such conditions would continue, along with rampant disease in native communities, throughout colonization, the formation of the United States, and multiple forced relocations, as Ostler explains that many scholars "have yet to understand how the United States in the expansion created conditions that made native communities highly vulnerable to pathogens and the severity of diseases that affected them.... Historians continue to ignore the catastrophic impact of the disease and its relationship to US policy and action, even as it is before their eyes".

For their part, Cook and Borah, from the University of California at Berkeley, established after decades of research, that the population of Mexico decreased from 25.2 million in 1518 to 700 thousand people in 1623, less than 3% of the original population. In 1492, Spain and Portugal together did not exceed 10 million people and in all of Europe lived between 57 and 70 million. Mexico would only recover the population it had in the century XV, in the 1960s.

Small was fatal to many Native Americans, causing devastating epidemics and repeatedly affecting the same tribes. After its introduction to Mexico in 1519, the disease spread throughout South America, devastating indigenous populations in what is now Colombia, Peru, and Chile, during the XVI the disease was slow to spread northward due to the sparse population in the desert region of northern Mexico. It was introduced to eastern North America separately by settlers who arrived in 1633 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and local Native American communities were soon affected by the virus. He came to the Mohawk nation in 1634.

Between 1613 and 1690 the Iroquois tribes living in Quebec suffered twenty-four epidemics, almost all caused by smallpox. In 1698, the virus crossed the Mississippi and caused an epidemic that nearly wiped out the Quapaw Indians of Arkansas.

Biological Warfare

Chronicles of the time relate that Francisco Pizarro sent slaves and soldiers ahead of his men carrying spears with canvases impregnated with secretions from smallpox patients. They also say that, when setting up a camp, the invaders abandoned clothes belonging to patients with smallpox or gave them as gifts to the indigenous people. The technique of spreading diseases among the population ensured victory.

During the siege of British-held Fort Pitt in the Seven Years' War, Colonel Henry Bouquet ordered his men to remove smallpox-infested blankets from his hospital and present them to two neutral dignitaries of the British Lenape Indian during a peace settlement negotiation, according to the captain's ledger entry, "To bring smallpox to the Indians." In the weeks that followed, Sir Jeffrey Amherst conspired with Bouquet to "Extirpate this Execrable Breed" of the Native Americans, writing: "Could it not be devised to send smallpox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? On this occasion, we must use all the stratagems at our disposal to reduce them". His colonel agreed to try.

Scientists of the XXI century such as V. Barras and G. Greub have examined such reports. They say that smallpox is transmitted by respiratory droplets in personal interaction, not by contact with fomites, such objects as Trent described them. The results of such attempts to spread the disease via objects are difficult to distinguish from natural epidemics. Mid-to-late 19th century , at a time of increased European-American travel and settlement in the West, at least four different epidemics broke out among the Plains tribes between 1837 and 1870.

Vaccination

After Edward Jenner's demonstration in 1796 that smallpox vaccination worked, the technique became more widely known and smallpox became less deadly in the United States and elsewhere. Many settlers and natives were vaccinated, although, in some cases, officials attempted to vaccinate natives only to discover that the disease was too widespread to stop. At other times, business demands led to the breaking of quarantines. In other cases, natives refused vaccination on suspicion of whites. The first international sanitary expedition in history was the Balmis expedition that aimed to vaccinate indigenous peoples against smallpox throughout the Spanish Empire in 1803. In 1831, government officials vaccinated the Yankton Sioux at the Sioux Agency. The Santee Sioux refused vaccination and many died.

When Plains tribes began learning about 'white man's diseases,' many intentionally avoided contact with them and their commercial products. But the lure of commercial goods, such as metal pots, pans, and knives, sometimes proved too strong. Still, the Indians traded with the white newcomers and inadvertently spread disease to their villages.

Tahuantinsuyo

Peruvian historian Villanueva Sotomayor argues that:

It all indicates that the Tahuantinsuyo had fifteen million inhabitants. In the time of the Colony the indigenous population declined drastically. In fact, in 1620 the population reached only 600 thousand. From 1532 to 1620, there were 14,400,000 less inhabitants, in just 88 years.

• The average decrease per decade was 1,655,172 inhabitants.
• By year: 165,517 inhabitants.
• By day: 453 inhabitants.

All this, without taking into account the vegetative growth of its population. The rights of the Indians were not taken into account at all. No conqueror was interested in watching the natural. The Indian Council had given a American Indigenous Labour Code, which read: "The Indians are free. Therefore no one who exercises authority is dared to captivate natural Indians from the Indians, Islands and Tierra Firme del Mar Ocean, as well in time and occasion of peace and war. The Indians and Indians have, as they should, every freedom to marry anyone they want, as well as Indians and Spaniards, and that this does not hinder them. The Indians can freely trade with their fruits and maintenance, as well as with the Spanish, as with other Indians. We order and command that the Spaniards who insult or offend or mistreat Indians be punished with greater rigor, that if the same crimes are committed against Spaniards." Each of these four provisions was a dead letter, lyric statement.

Estimates by Bartolomé de Las Casas

The following is Bartolomé de Las Casas' estimate of the number of indigenous people killed between 1492 and 1542. These figures are defended by some authors and rejected by others. The same debate occurs about the causes of the same (Las Casas mainly blames the military conquest, mistreatment and enslavement of that mortality).

• In La Española 1.100.000 to 3,000.000 dead.
• In Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles 3,000.000
• In Castilla de Oro 1,000,000
• In Nicaragua 500,000 to 600,000
• Central Mexico 4,000.000
• In Naco and Honduras 2,000,000
• In Pánuco, Michoacán and Jalisco 15,000 to 20,000
• In Soconusco 200,000
• In the Gulf of Paria and the Costa de las Perlas 1,000,000
• In Venezuela 4,000.000
• In Peru 4,000.000
• Unknown figure in Yucatan, Cartagena de Indias, Yuyaparí River, Florida, Río de la Plata, New Granada and Santa Maria.

Causes of population decline

The causes that explain the drastic demographic decline in America have always been the cause of controversy. From spheres generally unrelated to historiography, current politicians, journalists and political organizations, as well as authors, have stated that the demographic catastrophe was the result of campaigns of systematic extermination, therefore it would be a genocide. Other historians, along the same lines, have pointed out that it would be the brutal conditions of colonial society, such as the "Encomienda", which would be responsible for the demographic catastrophe, pointing out that these conditions of exploitation, not accidental would constitute genocide. Defenders of the hypothesis of systematic extermination, in general, attribute the demographic debacle to an intentional action by Europeans.

In general, no historian denies that the conditions of servitude and exploitation to which the indigenous population was subjected caused deaths, but some maintain that no human effort could reduce the indigenous population from 60 to 95 under a systematic that did not exist and throughout a century. But there is a great consensus among historians, demographers and ecologists that point to the introduction of diseases unknown to the indigenous people, and for which they lacked defenses, as the fundamental cause of the demographic debacle, estimating between 75 and 95% of the population decrease attributable to epidemic diseases due to a process of microbial unification of the world originating in the West (Europe, Asia and Africa) due to commercial dynamics and that cumulatively and successively affected indigenous people of all ages.

Epidemics as the most important quantitative factor

"Epidemia of smallpox, Florentine Codex."

Since the 1980s, there has been a broad consensus among researchers about the influence of epidemics introduced by Europeans on the rapid decline of the Native American population. The figures used range from 30 to 95% of the population that existed before the arrival of the Europeans. Few historians deny the brutal nature of the conquest and the colonial society, which contributed to worsen and aggravate the situation, although some do, such as Ricardo Levene, among others.

The Mexican demographer Elsa Malvido established that in Mexico between 1518 and 1540 there were three large smallpox epidemics (the first perhaps also included measles) that immediately annihilated the population, causing 80% mortality.

In his work Empire, the British-born Hispanist historian Henry Kamen analyzes the demographic debacle of Spanish America. Thus, he states that the cruelty of the Spaniards was undoubted, also pointing out that the extermination of the natives was not convenient for the Spaniards themselves:

The cruelty employed by the Spaniards is incontrovertible. It was ruthless, brutal and the colonial regime never managed it. The Spaniards, of course, had no interest in destroying the natives; doing so would obviously have undermined their basic institution, entrusting it.

Henry Kamen, Empire. La Forja de España As a World Power, ISBN 8403093160, pg. 153

However, he also states, citing David Noble Cook's work Born to Die. Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650, that such cruelty could not have been the cause of the demographic catastrophe that devastated the native population, given the scarcity of the European population:

And yet, the cruelty inflicted on the inhabitants of the New World was responsible for only a small part of the subsequent disaster. There were never enough Spaniards in America to kill the huge number of natives who perished. Without a doubt, the main reason for the catastrophic decline in the population of the Americas was the infectious diseases carried by the Europeans. The natives of the Atlantic world were not rid of diseases or epidemics. And the European invasion brought new and cruel ways of dying. The bacteria carried by the Spaniards shook the Caribbean region as soon as Columbus disembarked and reached the continent even before Cortes. The first great epidemic (of smallpox) occurred in La Española, at the end of 1518, reached Mexico in 1520 and, apparently, spread throughout North America and probably also by the Inca Empire. [...] The direct impact of the diseases was devastating and the Indians recorded it in their chronicles. There were other causes of mass death, but they were all indirect or long-term effects.

[...]The arrival of the European, apart from the brutalities that he could commit later, seems to have had only a small role in the epic of a disaster of cosmic proportions. [...] The total number of people affected can never be calculated with reliability, but it is not exaggerated to suggest that, among the indigenous peoples of the New World, more than ninety percent of the deaths were caused by contagious diseases rather than cruelty.

Kamen, H., ibid., pg. 154-156

Ecologist Jared Diamond, in his work Guns, Germs and Steel, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and several awards for best scientific book (such as the Royal Society Prize for Science Books), estimates the impact of diseases introduced by Europeans in 95% of the population:

The smallpox, measles, flu, typhus, bubonic plague and other endemic infectious diseases in Europe had a decisive role in European conquests, as many peoples were decimated on other continents. For example, a smallpox epidemic devastated the Aztecs after the failure of the first Spanish attack in 1520 and killed Cuitláhuac, the Aztec emperor who briefly succeeded Moctezuma. Throughout America, the diseases introduced by the Europeans spread from tribe to tribe long before the arrival of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated percentage of 95% of the native American population existing on the arrival of Columbus.

Jared Diamond, Guns, germs and steel - A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, ISBN 978-0099302780, pg. 77-78

He agrees with historian Alfred Crosby who in his book "Ecological Imperialism" poses as "European" consisting of implanted animals, weeds and plants, but above all infections and diseases prospered in America facilitating the triumph of Europeans:

The smallpox crossed for the first time (...) at the end of 1518 or the beginning of 1519, and for the next four centuries it would play such an essential role in the advancement of white imperialism in overseas like gunpowder. Perhaps a more important role, because the indigenous made the muskets and then the rifles, turn against the intruders, but the smallpox fought very rarely on the indigenous side. Normally intruders were immune to it as well as to other childhood diseases of the Old World, most of which were new across the oceans.

Alfred Crosby, "EchologicalImperialism: the Biologic Expansion of Europe, 900-1900", ISBN 8474233674

Researcher Jorge Gelman, giving his opinion on the debate of genocide and the demographic catastrophe in the Conquest of America, stated:

I am not sure that the term (genocide) is the most appropriate, although there is no doubt about the magnitude of the mortanity among the American indigenous peoples, who followed the European invasion and conquest. The reasons are very varied: probably from a quantitative point of view the worst was illnesses, but they were empowered by exploitation, famines, the separation of families by forced labour systems.

Regarding the same debate, and in line with Henry Kamen, the Argentine historian María Sáenz Quesada denies the accusations of systematic extermination, arguing that the Europeans could not eliminate their workforce:

I wouldn't say there were massive murders, I'd say there were struggles. Aztecs and Cortes for example fought. Deliberated massacres to kill indigenous people did not exist, for the simple reason that they were the labor force that the Spanish would use.

Robert McCaa also introduces ecological devastation as an aggravating factor of the demographic catastrophe:

The role of diseases cannot be understood without taking into account the cruel treatment to which the masses of the native population were subjected (forced immigration, slavery, abusive labour demands, and exorbitant taxes) and the ecological devastation that accompanied the Spanish colonization.

Other researchers, such as Ward Churchill, a professor of ethics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an ethnic activist, argue that although disease was the direct cause that most affected the demographic catastrophe, Europeans intentionally exacerbated its effect:

Were they cast back terrified, saying, "a moment, we must put an end to this whole process, or at least slow it to the extent possible, until we can face a way of preventing its effects from spreading?" Not much less. His response, in the entire continent, consisted of accelerating the speed of propagation by extending it to the extent of humanly possible.

One of the drawbacks that have been pointed out to the theory of epidemics as the cause of the demographic catastrophe, is that there is no known pandemic that has practically eliminated the entire population of a continent, "due to because, as a rule, viruses, microbes and parasites do not kill most of their victims».

Not even the Black Pest, a symbol of virulent disease, was as deadly as it is sustained were these epidemics. The first incursion into Europe of the Black Pest, between 1347 and 1351, constituted the classic epidemic in virgin territory. The mutation just created the lung variant of the bacillus known as yersinia pestis. But even on that occasion the disease ended with more than a third of its victims.

Estimate of the percentage of indigenous people killed according to the plague:

Table with the main pests that occurred with the place where they happened:

Other added factors were the forced displacements of the population due to reduction policies (Indian towns, villages) and forced displacements of the workforce to different environments, as well as what the historian Nicolás Sánchez called it "desgana vital", that is, the psychological disappointment over the conquest and the despair caused by the collapse of the indigenous world, as well as the destruction of subsistence economies in some societies.

It should be mentioned that the diseases also caused indirect mortality because in several cases they caused abortions and infertility to those who suffered or had suffered from them. For example, a woman sick with measles had a high chance of giving birth to malformed or sick children. It is also very possible that mumps and smallpox caused infertility among males.

It should also be mentioned that the plagues spread very quickly, they arrived before the Spanish armies, for example a smallpox plague affected the Inca Empire in 1524 several years before the arrival of Francisco Pizarro and that the coastal areas of Colombia were affected since the year 1500, twenty years before the establishment of permanent European settlements.

Systematic extermination

The Belgian Defense Minister (see Genocide in the Belgian Congo), André Flahaut, maintained in 2004 that the largest genocide in world history was committed in North America, stating that the debacle demographic was due to murder and extermination and minimizing the role of epidemics. The extermination would continue according to the minister until today. He stated so when presenting on April 8, 2004 a government report entitled Genocides . The journalistic chronicle transcribes his statements as follows:

...in North America, the greatest genocide in world history was committed (...) in North America alone 15 million indigenous people were killed since Christopher Columbus set foot on this continent in 1492, and suggested that extermination continues until today. Another 14 million were slaughtered in South America (...). Although the number of victims cannot be known for certain, there is irrefutable evidence of a deliberate campaign of extermination, dispossession and acculturation of native peoples, opposed to different negationist theories. Such theories argue that the diseases that killed much or most of the indigenous people were a unfortunate byproduct of ”contact” among cultures.

The Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations maintains that they have been the object of a process of genocide:

That the Indigenous Peoples have been victims for five hundred and thirteen years of a process of genocide, colonization and discrimination resulting from imperial ideologies and policies, which have violated our fundamental rights. Any dialogue between Indigenous Peoples, the State and the Society must take into account the collective and historical nature of these rights.

Journalist and writer Eduardo Galeano, author of Las venas abiertas de América Latina, using the word otrocidio as equivalent to genocide, affirming that Native Americans were subjected to genocide in the name of religion, which is equated with the genocide they currently suffer due to progress:

At first, looting and the other were executed in the name of the God of heaven. Now they are fulfilled in the name of the god of Progress. However, in that forbidden and despised identity some keys of another America are still frightening.
America, blind of racism, doesn't see them.

Historian Oreste Carlos Cansanello, from the National University of Luján, referring to a controversy over the use of the term "genocide", subscribes to it, but not as a campaign of systematic extermination, but as a result of the exploitation of indigenous peoples for the extraction of precious metals:

[The conquest and colonization of America was] a crusade of evangelization, but the main objective was the crusade for the extraction of metals and that led to the death of millions of inhabitants, a death that was not exactly accidental, so it was a genocide... In no way is indigenous genocide saved as any other genocide.

However, the Argentine historian Félix Luna made the following comment to a piece of news broadcast by the official news agency under the title 513 years have passed since the greatest genocide in history:

It's biased and unilateral. Of course, when talking about conquest, there was violence and cruelties, but to say that it was the greatest genocide in history is an exaggeration, and I am amazed.

Consequences of the demographic collapse

Defeat of the Aztec and Inca empires

When Christopher Columbus arrived in America, the population of the Spanish and Portuguese peoples together did not reach 10 million people and in all of Europe they lived between 57.2 and 70 million. The total population of the original peoples exceeded several times the number of Spanish and Portuguese in all estimates, and Dobyns has estimated it at 110 million.

The Mexica and Inca peoples each outnumbered the Spanish and Portuguese in population. Thirty years later, the Spanish and Portuguese peoples already outnumbered the Mexicas and Quechuas in population, and a century later they had more inhabitants than the entire indigenous American population.

Under these conditions, the possibility that the autonomously developed cultures and empires in America would remain standing for millennia was implausible. Spain, which arrived in America with less than half the Mexican population, 20 years later had double that, and 100 years later it had more than ten times the Mexican population. Faced with the magnitude of these data and the extermination that they alone produced in American societies, the incidence of military or cultural factors in the conquest process can be considered minor.

American historian Charles Mann says that Spain "would not have defeated the [Aztec] Empire if, while Cortés was building the ships, Tenochtitlán had not been ravaged by smallpox in the same pandemic that later devastated the Tahuantinsuyu... The big city lost at least a third of its population as a result of the epidemic, including Cuitláhuac."

Something similar happened with the Inca Empire, defeated by Francisco Pizarro in 1531. The first smallpox epidemic was in 1529 and killed among others the emperor Huayna Cápac, father of Atahualpa. New epidemics of smallpox broke out in 1533, 1535, 1558, and 1565, as well as typhus in 1546, influenza in 1558, diphtheria in 1614, and measles in 1618. Dobyns estimated that 90% of the population of the Inca Empire died in these epidemics.

The miraculous triumph of this conqueror, and of Cortes, whom he so successfully emulated, was largely due to the triumphs of the smallpox virus

Alfred Crosby.

In New Spain, the most serious point of the demographic debacle occurred after the great epidemic of cocoliztli and matlazáhuatl in 1576 and 1581, respectively, when the population indigenous population was reduced to 1 million individuals. The XVII century would balance the population through greater ethnic interbreeding and greater European immigration and it will be in the mid-18th century when the population recovers an approximate number (20 million inhabitants) that Mesoamerica had at the time of contact (1519).

Transatlantic slave trade to America

Scheme of an English black boat.

To replace as workers the large number of indigenous people killed during the XVI century, from the XVII Europeans bought around 60 million Africans south of the Sahara, of which about 12 million arrived alive in America where they were reduced to slavery.

African population exported to other continents, excluding those killed en route (in thousands):

Arrival of slaves to America between 1500 and 1870 (thousands):

African slave trade by destination area in America (by thousands):

Historical demographic evolution

Historical evolution of the population of Latin America (by thousands):

Historical evolution of the population of Anglo-America (by thousands):

Ethnography

Ethnic composition of the population of Latin America (by thousands):

Non-slave immigration to the Americas between 1500 and 1998 (thousands):

Population at the end of the colonial period

In the following table population of Spanish America at the end of the colonial period (by thousands):

The following table shows the population at the end of the XVIII century according to Claudio Esteva Fabregat's estimates for Latin America:

Post-independence period

Estimate of the American population in 1823 (in thousands). They are divided into 13,471,000 whites, 8,610,000 Indians, 6,433,000 blacks, and 6,428,000 mixed race:

Population of Latin America by country up to 1900 (by thousands):

Estimate of the American population in 1849 (in thousands):

Fonts

Notes