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Amerind Studies in Anthropology
Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America
There is no question that European colonization introduced smallpox, measles, and other infectious diseases to the Americas, causing considerable harm and death to indigenous peoples. But though these diseases were devastating, their impact has been widely exaggerated. Warfare, enslavement, land expropriation, removals, erasure of identity, and other factors undermined Native populations. These factors worked in a deadly cabal with germs to cause epidemics, exacerbate mortality, and curtail population recovery.
Beyond Native Depopulation in North America challenges the “virgin soil” hypothesis that was used for decades to explain the decimation of the indigenous people of North America. This hypothesis argues that the massive depopulation of the New World was caused primarily by diseases brought by European colonists that infected Native populations lacking immunity to foreign pathogens. In Beyond Germs , contributors expertly argue that blaming germs lets Europeans off the hook for the enormous number of Native American deaths that occurred after 1492.
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians come together in this cutting-edge volume to report a wide variety of other factors in the decline in the indigenous population, including genocide, forced labor, and population dislocation. These factors led to what the editors describe in their introduction as “systemic structural violence” on the Native populations of North America.
While we may never know the full extent of Native depopulation during the colonial period because the evidence available for indigenous communities is notoriously slim and problematic, what is certain is that a generation of scholars has significantly overemphasized disease as the cause of depopulation and has downplayed the active role of Europeans in inciting wars, destroying livelihoods, and erasing identities.
Beyond Native Depopulation in North America challenges the “virgin soil” hypothesis that was used for decades to explain the decimation of the indigenous people of North America. This hypothesis argues that the massive depopulation of the New World was caused primarily by diseases brought by European colonists that infected Native populations lacking immunity to foreign pathogens. In Beyond Germs , contributors expertly argue that blaming germs lets Europeans off the hook for the enormous number of Native American deaths that occurred after 1492.
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians come together in this cutting-edge volume to report a wide variety of other factors in the decline in the indigenous population, including genocide, forced labor, and population dislocation. These factors led to what the editors describe in their introduction as “systemic structural violence” on the Native populations of North America.
While we may never know the full extent of Native depopulation during the colonial period because the evidence available for indigenous communities is notoriously slim and problematic, what is certain is that a generation of scholars has significantly overemphasized disease as the cause of depopulation and has downplayed the active role of Europeans in inciting wars, destroying livelihoods, and erasing identities.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published October 22, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 30, 2022
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.
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.
February 3, 2021
An interesting series of essays written in response to the ideas of Jared Diamond and Charles Mann. It makes a convincing argument against Diamond, Mann, and other scholars who preached the idea of the depopulating germ wave spreading across North America.
For a layperson such as myself, the essays do become somewhat redundant, but this is worth a read for anyone interested in going beyond the popscience.
For a layperson such as myself, the essays do become somewhat redundant, but this is worth a read for anyone interested in going beyond the popscience.
December 24, 2016
Read for my Evolution of Humans and Disease class. A great collection of essays describing the injustice of blaming Native American depopulation merely on disease and ignoring the ongoing structural violence that plagues these populations.
March 12, 2023
This is a dry read, but the information in the book is so interesting, I'm still rating it 5 stars. Pretty much every account of North and South America after Columbus emphasizes that Indigenous Americans were wiped out by plague. In this book, historians and anthropologists team up to show this story isn't true. Yes, plague is part of the story, but it's only one cause, and not necessarily even a leading cause, of the decline of Indigenous populations.
April 19, 2025
read the intro and the first essay. alternate narrative to the popular.
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June 24, 2016970.00497 B5736 2015
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews