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Conclusion of disease and native americans
Impact of disease on native american culture
Impact of disease on native american culture
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Jared Diamond's theory of Guns, Germs and Steel was that the foundation of agriculture was mainly based on geographical luck. He believed that if one didn’t have the good geographical location, one would not be able to develop in ways that other people with good location would. This was further divided into Guns, Germs, and Steel. His thesis applies to the British colonization of Australia in 1788. According to Australianmuseum.com.au, they believe the British have used guns against Aboriginals. As stated by Warren he hypothetically believes that smallpox was deliberately brought in by the British. Also stated by Pei he believes that the reason as to why Australia didn’t develop steel was because of their location and adverse climates. …show more content…
This was eventually known as the Black War. Pemulwuy was the main leader of the resistance against the white settlement taken in Botany Bay, Sydney. In 1790 Pemulwuy killed Governor Phillip's gamekeeper thinking that he had been mistreating Indigenous Aborigines. So in retaliation, the British tried to capture Pemulwuy in 1797. The British eventually captured him, wounded. Soon Pemulwuy escaped from conviction. In 1802 Pemulwuy was shot by two settlers and his head was brought to Governor King. The Aborigines fought back and hundreds of both British and Indigenous people died. The British had the upper hand because of the use of guns, it killed the Aboriginals immediately because they did not understand this new weapon that had been introduced into their land. This conclusion supports Diamond’s thesis that guns which originated from Eurasian land, had control over populations of people which therefore bequeathed to European …show more content…
He believes that smallpox was purposely brought into the Northern Sydney region as an act of warfare compelled by the increasing Indigenous opposition and a lack of ammunition of the British armed forces. Although there is strong opposition who do not believe that smallpox was introduced to Australia by the British. The people who oppose against Warren argue that the smallpox virus would have been destroyed by the heat of an Australian summer. The smallpox outbreak is believed to have happened because the Indigenous people were resisting against white settlement. Whether or not the smallpox epidemic was a contrived act of war, it is clear that the smallpox outbreak which killed much of the indigenous population, their deaths helped the British colonization easier. Australia had not had this type of disease before, which made it extremely hard for the Indigenous Australians to find a cure to this introduced disease that came from the This supports Jared Diamond’s theory that diseases among the Eurasians which originated from the Middle Eastern domestic animals, such as smallpox, which were fatal to populations not originating from the Eurasian land which therefore contributed to European’s
Crosby, in his chapter regarding syphilis, addresses the controversy surrounding its origins. One theory that Crosby seems to point out is the notion that syphilis may have existed in pre-Columbian Europe. A piece of evidence that Crosby makes mention of is how “neither syphilis nor anything resembling it is mentioned at all in the documentation of the Columbian voyages written prior to the first epidemic of the pox in Europe.” (Crosby 137) This would seem to suggest that the disease had a somewhat presence in Europe, but Crosby refutes the claim, asserting that undocumented information is not a good enough reason to support this theory. One major theory that Crosby describes is the Unitarian theory, or the theory that syphilis evolved over time. The argumentation for this theory is heavily present in Crosby’s book, as he notes how the disease evolved and spread through the armies of Charles VII of France. Because syphilis is a highly transitive disease through sexual intercourse, the fact that many of Charles’s soldiers, following many battles, “engaged in the usual practice of rape and sack” around the mid-1490s, suggests this type of transformation of the disease. (Crosby
“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples ' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves” (Jared Diamond). In the book Guns Germs and Steel he accounted a conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician that had asked “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”. Diamond tries to answer this by describing the difference in use of government throughout history by bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
“Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome smallpox has existed and by you extirpated”. This quote comes from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Jenner, he founder of the smallpox vaccine. It would only be 100 years later that Jefferson would see his dream fulfilled, but not without struggle. In House on Fire, author William H. Foege shares his first hand view of the lengths that society needed to go through to rid the world of the disease that had plagued it for so long. The story of the fight against smallpox extends long before our efforts for global eradication and is a representation of how society deals with widespread disease. House on
Whether this tactic to devastate brought unknown disease, such as Smallpox, which depopulated the New World in such a way as giving the settlers who the Native nations was intentional is under debate.18 The culture of conquest was well developed by the Europeans well before they landed on Turtle Island. The idea of colonialism and methods of relocation and exploitation of a population was developed, practiced and perfected well before the fifteenth century.19 Modern Europe was based on the exploitation of human labor and the displacement of populations within Europe. The intent to accumulate wealth by procuring additional lands, resources and labor, used colonial domination and exploitation to do
In closing, the variola virus affected a great amount in that era including, military strategy, trade, and native populations. Elizabeth A. Fenn’s book Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 sheds light on a significant aspect of that era that had not been given proper credence beforehand. She also illuminated the effect of smallpox when it came to race and social status. With regard to race, smallpox decimated much of the non European populations partly because of their lack of an innate immunity to that virus and Europeans lack of regard for those of a different race. Fenn’s argument on social status showed how the poorer strata’s of society suffered more severely from the variola virus because of their lack of finances to get inoculated; thus, the poor often suffered a worse strain of the virus which often lead to death.
Blackbird's book, like many similar autoethnographic texts, is a combination of autobiography, history, ethnography, and polemic. He opens with a conventional reference to inaccuracy in current histories. In the course of correcting the record he relates the story, preserved by elders of his nation, of a smallpox epidemic during the height of the French and Indian War, about 1757. Blackbird's story is unique because of the unusual disease vector.
After the First Fleet arrived on the continent in 1788, the British tried to set up a relationship with the Aborigines that was benevolent and peaceful, as Governor Philip instructed; however their actions did not reflect this same idea. Their interactions commonly ended with violence, and occasionally death, particularly in the Myall Creek Massacre. On June 10, 1838 there were twelve British men came into contact with thirty of the Aboriginals, or people of Wirrayaraay, at Myall Creek. Up until this time, the British people who settled in the area became increasingly skeptical of the native Australians, and this nervousness led to a series of conflicts with these native people; these conflicts ended with the death of the thirty aboriginals at Myall Creek. This massacre is a prime example of how the natives were impacted by the British settlers, because it was one of the most tragic of the frontier conflicts between the peoples. Not only were these natives killed on June 10th, these Wirrayaraay people were first rounded up, and then tied together before being killed by the British settlers soon after. The British settlers who tied up and murdered these natives were British convicts who were freed, and allowed to pursue the native tribes. This massacre exhibits the impacts of the British settlers on the Australian natives, because it shows how they were affected by the brutal treatment by the British convicts, who made up a majority of the British
...s to the English. This war was called the Pequot War and it was as deadly as the Powhatan-Indian war.
In Jared Diamond’s excerpt from his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he puts forward the historical narrative of how human evolution progresses at varying rates for different cultures due solely to the particular geographic region that people assimilate from. Diamond supports this thesis with specific evidence on the importance of food production, emphasizing that food is the main ingredient needed for a population to experience progress and growth, enabling that culture to expand around the world. I agree with Diamond’s dissertation and find it compelling due to his logical evidence and ethos on the topic.
There is data to suggest that around the beginning of the 16th Century, there were approximately 18 million Native Americans living in North America. By 1900 the population of the Indigenous peoples had declined to about 250,000. The common belief has been that this rapid decrease in population has been due to the disease that Europeans brought with them when they migrated to the “new world”. Historian Alfred W. Crosby writes that “it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin soil epidemics.” Many reports and essays focus on disease as the main killer of the Indigenous population, but few often look at how the European and Indigenous population responded to disease. The questions that this report will address are based on documents located within chapter five of the textbook Major Problems in Atlantic History edited by Alison F. Games and Adam Rothman. The documents are Two Governors Describe the New England Smallpox Epidemic, 1633-1634, and Indians Respond to Epidemics in New France, 1637, 1640. The questions addressed in this report include: How did the Europeans interpret the disease among the native population, and how did they respond to it? How did the Native Americans respond to European intervention in fighting off the disease? Were the Europeans aware that they had brought this disease with them to the “New World”? The European view of the epidemics against the Indigenous peoples were seen as acts of God trying to purge the world of “unchristian” peoples. The Europeans were only acting as they were instructed to by their authority, the Catholic Church. All European action was heavily regulated by the church, and thus is reflected in their treatment of the sick N...
Discussion Ancient Aboriginals were the first people to set foot on the Australian continent, over 40,000 years or more before colonization (Eckermann, 2010). They survived by hunting and gathering their food, worshipping the land to protect its resources, and ensuring their survival. The aboriginal community has adapted to the environment, building a strong framework of social, cultural, and spiritual beliefs (Eckermann, 2010). Colonisation of Australia began in 1788, when Englishman Captain Cook claimed the land as an empty, uninhabited, continent giving it the classification Terra Nullius and leaving it open to colonization. Eckermann (2010), stated that the English failed to recognise the aboriginal tribes as civilized, co-inhibiters of the land, feeling they had no right to a claim.
Microbes from Europe introduced new diseases and produced devastating epidemics that swept through the native populations (Nichols 2008). The result from the diseases brought over, such as smallpox, was a demographic catastrophe that killed millions of people, weakened existing societies, and greatly aided the Spanish and Portuguese in their rapid and devastating conquest of the existing American empires (Brinkley 2014). Interaction took place with the arrival of whites and foreigners. The first and perhaps most profound result of this exchange was the imp...
...nt of the Western Hemisphere. Today, for example, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, and Puerto Rico all have substantial or predominantly black populations in place of indigenous Indians lost to smallpox." (Thomson, 122) This, in turn, lead to the triangle slave trade, which produced the largest level and wide spread practice of slavery ever seen. Many historians agree that these turn of events could not have happened without smallpox. This single microbe not only changed the population makeup of the New World, but forever changed the New World culture and economy.
Although the Columbian Exchange allowed for the beneficial exchange of cultures, ideas, foods, and animals around the world during the 1450-1750 time period, it also had a dark side. One detrimental result of the Columbian Exchange would be the spread of smallpox from Europe to the New World. The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before the Spanish conquest of the New World, there were no sickness or health related issues that Natives were forced to face.
The most hotly debated of which has been the population of the Native American 's from the time of Columbus through the Revolutionary War. According to our readings of Alfred Crosby 's paper on the “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America”, he offers the following reasoning behind the debate. “Unfortunately, the documentation of these epidemics, as of the many others of the period, is slight, usually hearsay, sometimes dated years after the events described, and often colored by emotion. Later in his paper, Crosby details how the Native American 's continued to suffer from diseases during the same time that the new settlement of Plymouth was struggling to survive and well into the 19th century. While the exact population of the Native American 's will never be known or completely agreed upon, the common message from all parties is that as more and more Europeans arrived, the Natives suffered and their population decreased. Neal Salisbury, Professor of History at Smith College, agrees with Crosby and our dominant view concerning the impact of diseases afflicting the Native Americans during the Colonial period. He also argues that the “Puritan Colonists were also aware of how the diseases were affecting the tribal populations (Salisbury pg.