A major debate in regards to the imperialism in the New World and the harm done to Native peoples, is to what extent was depopulation caused by the epidemic disease across the hemisphere, and to what extent was it caused by the impact of European imperialism?
The premise of this book is that the deterministic model championed by popular science writers such as Jared Diamond and Charles Mann is wholly inadequate when measured against the evidence on hand, and is furthermore grounded in an ideology that seeks explanations other than colonialism.
This is a tremendously convincing book, because the authors incorporate a multidisciplinary approach - not only utilizing oral histories, written records, and theories of ideology, but also using forensic science, statistical models, bioarchaeology, and a variety of scientific tools. The authors demonstrate that disease did NOT inexorably march across the continent, wiping out societies before the Europeans reached them. Rather, they highlight that decreasing health often matched the timing of increased deprivation caused by European colonial policies and intervention.
For example, I learned that the first major epidemic among California Natives did not occur until 1833, 57 years after the Mission system began and nearly a century after the first European expeditions reached the region.
This book is tremendously important for 3 reasons:
1. It's true. The deterministic model of, say, Guns Germs and Steel, is founded on bad science, bad history, and bad anthropology.
2. It's multidisciplinary and three-dimensional. The authors look at a variety of health issues from a variety of time periods - from the archaeology of pre-Columbian cataclysm in the Southwest, to written accounts of US massacres of Cherokee during the Revolutionary War, to the forensic science of grave sites in Spanish churches in La Florida.
3. Human agency. The authors highlight the role of human agency in Native depopulation. On the one hand, they rightly highlight that it is impossible to talk about disease without also talking about artificial deprivation of food and resources, forced deportation and ethnic cleansing, forced labor and slavery, cultural genocide, and other harmful actions of imperial regimes. As one of the authors said in regards to disease - "Native Americans were not born vulnerable, they were made vulnerable." And on the other hand, it highlights the variety of Native responses to demographic and social turmoil - relocation, incorporation of outsiders, ethnogenesis, quarantine measures, medicinal practices, cultural shifts, assimilation, resistance, proposing new arrangements with Western powers, religious movements, new diets and nutritional strategies, new economic models.
This is an extraordinary book, and I would highly recommend it.
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