Old World Disease in the New World

Final word count: 1,550 of 1,500 limit

• Why did the New World peoples succumb to Old World disease and what was distinctive about their own diseases ecologies? Discuss in reference to the Americas.
• How different might history have been had human beings suffered from the same diseases the world over?


In Plagues and People, William H. McNeill states that the ‘…Amerindian population on the eve of the conquest [was] at about one hundred million…’ Evidence of this large population derives from the great structures that required a large human workforce, such as the Mounds of North America and the monuments left by the Aztecs of Central America and the Incas of South America; there are also firsthand accounts from explorers like de Soto and Columbus, and a broad scattering of archaeological evidence across the Americas. However, 50 years after Cortez’s arrival at Mexico the population had shrunk to one tenth of its former size. (McNeill 213; Crosby 210, 211, 212 and Cook 19)

Old World endemic diseases played the starring role in the destruction of the Amerindians, as these peoples had no acquired resistances to Old World diseases. This, observes William H. McNeill, ‘… acted to tip the world balance sharply in favour of the civilized communities of Eurasia.’ (McNeill 215, 218, 225)

The modern disease regime, and hence modern civilisation, derives from the fact that disease experienced peoples flourished while disease inexperienced communities were destroyed. Limits on food supply and on any given community’s ability to adapt to its environment were also important factors. (McNeill 233)

Because Europe ‘grew up’ with disease there had been time to adjust socially and epidemiologically to each disease as it appeared; William H. McNeill states that ‘…the more diseased a community, the less destructive its epidemics become.’ (McNeill 231) Yet, as the Amerindians had no experience with most of Eurasia’s diseases, and the bombardment they underwent was, as David Stannard writes, ‘…synergistic, not merely additive,’ the synergistic effect was devastating, for it not only wiped out masses of the population but also demoralised the Amerindian society. (Stannard 319; McNeill 215)

Amerindians had no diseases to share with the Old World that had any comparable depopulating impact with diseases that the Old World would share with them, even if yellow fever and syphilis did originate from the Americas, which, with no conclusive evidence on either side, is debatable. (McNeill, pp. 208, 227)

Once introduced to virgin soil, the ability of many diseases to quickly reproduce allows them to spread a chain of infection quickly across large geographical areas despite the lack of large enough populations to maintain them for long durations. (Crosby 196 and McNeill 219) As Alfred Crosby points out, people in the prime of life are most susceptible to foreign disease, for the vital nature of their bodies is to ‘…overreact and smother normal body functions with inflammation and edema.’ (Crosby 199)

The diseases of the Amerindians included encephalitis, hepatitis, pinta, polio and yaws; however, they were without amebic dysentery, bubonic plague, chicken pox, cholera, dengue fever, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid fever, trachoma, whooping cough and a number of helminthic infestations. (Crosby 197-198)

Smallpox was the first Old World disease to arrive and thus spread destruction throughout the New World. Its affects on the Amerindian populations was particularly severe, for not only did it produce a death rate of from 25% to over 50%, but its transmission by breath made it highly contagious, and its 10-14 day incubation period allowed seemingly healthy victims time to flee and carry it to new communities. (Crosby 200, 201)

Measles was the second to arrive and second only to smallpox in the devastation it caused the Amerindian populations. (Stannard 314) Next, in 1546 there came a new disease that was probably typhus, followed in 1558-1559 by influenza, which killed many in both the Old and New World. In Europe the death rate was 20% and, although there are no statistics for the Americas, it can be assumed that because it was a virgin land the death rate would have been at least as severe. (McNeill 216-218)

Along with the immediate distraction smallpox causes, it also has a lasting affect on populations because it kills pregnant women in unusually high numbers and the surviving pregnant women suffer an infant mortality rate of at least 50%. Also, as David Stannard delineates, ‘…the single most important cause of male sterility – obstructive azoospermia – is cased by smallpox.’(Stannard 315)

The introduction of malaria affected the whole tropical zone of the Americas. It affected settlement patterns and, along with yellow fever, reduced the numbers of Europeans and completed the eradication of the Amerindian peoples, especially those of the Caribbean. Surviving European entrepreneurs then found a lack of slave labour and felt compelled to start importing slaves from Africa, who seemed to have, as William H. McNeil states, an ‘…epidemiological advantage in resisting malaria…’ (McNeill 219, 221, 223)

As David Stannard suggests in his article Disease and Infertility, the introduction of diseases from the Old World to the New not only killed many people but, also, its adverse affect on reproduction sent populations of indigenous people spiralling down unrecoverably. The subject of David Stannard’s article is Hawaii’ s experience with disease invasion but he argues that it is reasonable to assume that Amerindians would have suffered a similar reproductive experience. The alarming birth to death ratio, even in the non-epidemic years where the median crude death rate was 4.73% to a birth rate of 1.93% of the population, shows a total population decrease of 2.8% which left the population in 1860 at half the size it had been a mere 30 years earlier. The main contributors to this severe population decrease were: high infant and child mortality rates due to epidemic disease and congenital syphilis, where two thirds of children thus born, died; high rates of ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion and sterilisation due to infection from gonorrhoea and sexual transmitted syphilis (which although in debate, is highly unlikely to have effected Amerindians pre-invasion); the STD (sexually transmitted disease) related side-effect of pelvic inflammatory disease, which would have caused 60+% of female sufferers to become sterile; epididymitis in men would have left 50-80% of sufferers sterile; and there would have been less incidence of sexual intercourse due to extreme coital pain in those with gonorrhoea. (Stannard 305-312)

Europeans noted that Amerindians living on the west coast of North America in the late 18th century suffered under the weight of much sexually transmitted disease, which shows that STDs had become endemic among Amerindians since the European invasion. (Stannard 317)

As David Stannard states, ‘…stress – in the terrifying face of apparent ongoing genocide – was greater among native peoples than most modern American or Europeans can even imagine’; and as stress is a major disruption to neurohormonal transmittion, which is critical in reproductive ability, it would have only served to accelerate the genocide. (Stannard 318-19)

From both the Europeans’ and Amerindians’ points of view the evidence was conclusive: God was punishing the Amerindians. It seemed to both sides that the Europeans had, as William H. McNeill puts it, ‘… divine approval for all they did.’ After all, when disease struck it decimated Amerindian populations while leaving the Europeans virtually untouched. (McNeill 216-217) Perhaps the most damaging consequence of these entrenched religious beliefs was the willingness of the Amerindians to accept the authority of anyone ‘…who spoke with a loud voice and had white skin…’, which reinforced social hierarchies and oppression to the advantage of the Europeans. (McNeill 217)

The staple Amerindian diet of maize and potatoes produces a large amount of calories per acre, so by the 15th Century South and Central American populations had surpassed the population requirements to sustain ‘civilised’ diseases. However, because the population was so dense in most areas that hunting was not possible, they were basically an agricultural people. The lack of domesticated animals meant that environmental famine would hit hard; therefore, as archaeological evidence suggests, the periodic disease and epidemic deaths Amerindians suffered was related to famine, not ‘civilised’ disease. The most likely reason for the absence of ‘civilised’ disease in South and Central America is the lack of wild animals necessary to infect and carry animal diseases between domesticated herds, and thus the spread of disease was greatly reduced, allowing significantly less opportunity for cross-species contamination. (McNeill, pp 209-212) In North America there were simply no domesticated animals and, therefore, no opportunity for cross-species contamination. (Crosby 210)

I propose that Europeans would not have been able to expand and, therefore, dominate the world so easily without the help of alien diseases. A worldview of co-existence probably would have been dominant earlier in history, for genocide would have been virtually impossible without this help. Technology would have probably been a much more highly valued commodity because it would have been the only commodity apart from wide food availability, and hence a population surplus, that gave one people the edge over another. The Amerindians had greater food availability than the Europeans and were it not for disease they would have easily beaten Cortez and gained the means of travel in the form of ships and horses, which in turn would have at least lead to trade and thus the acquirement of knowledge. Lack of transport seems to have been the only thing holding the Aztec and Incan Empires back; had not disease devastated them we could have the Aztec or Incan Empire where today the United States Of America’s Empire holds. How different would U.S. history be if disease hadn’t swept through Massachusetts Bay in 1616-1617, killing a good deal of the Amerindians there, and undoubtedly demoralising the rest, just three years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock? After all, it was the Amerindians’ kindness and charity that allowed the Pilgrims to survive and prosper, thus encouraging more foreign settlers. (McNeill 219)

Bibliography

Cook, Noble David, Born to die: disease and New World conquest. 1492—1650, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998.

Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: the biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986.

McNeill, William H., Plagues and Peoples, revised (ed), Anchor Books, New York 1998.

Stannard, David E., ‘Disease and infertility: a new look at the demographic collapse of native populations in the wake of western contact’, in Kenneth F. Kiple and Stephen V. Beck eds, Biological Consequences of European Expansion, 1450-1800, Ashgate/Variorum, Aldershot and Brookfield, 1997.