GenocideEssay Preview: GenocideReport this essayIn the article, “Columbuss Legacy: Genocide in the Americas,” by David E. Stannard, the theme can be identified as contrary to popular belief that the millions of native peoples of the Americas that perished in the sixteenth century died not only from disease brought over by the Europeans, but also as a result of mass murder, as well as death due to working them to death.
Stannard starts out the article by citing contemporary examples of U.S. presss thought of “worthy and unworthy” victims. He gives examples of “worthy” victims in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Croatia and “unworthy” victims in East Timor. The author states that the native peoples of the Americas never have been labeled “worthy.” And recently, American and European denials of guilt for the most absolute genocide in the history of the world have assumed a new guise. The author quotes anthropologist Marvin Harris, describing the devastation through the West Indies and throughout the Americas as accidental, an “unintended consequence” of European exploration.
Epidemic disease undeniably contributed to the carnage, but in many volumes of testimony the European explorers detail their murderous intentions and actions. The slave drivers of the day calculated that it was cheaper to work people to death by the tens of thousands and then replace them than it was to maintain and feed a permanent captive
labor force. The Europeans saw the Indians as block in the pathway to unlimited access to North Americas untouched bountiful lands. After the mass deaths due to epidemic, new settlers and explorers purged Indian villages, burn entire towns, and poisoned whole communities. They also engaged a farsighted genocidal tactic of preventing the population from recovering, by abducting the women and children and selling them into slavery in markets in the Indies. After about fifty years of this, the numbers in Indian nation had diminished significantly. In Virginia alone, by 1697 only about 1,500 remained, out of a possibly 100,000. In New England, ther was at the most, one native person of New England alive for every twenty who had greeted the English less than a hundred years earlier–a 95 percent die-off. These numbers are astounding, and very believable that they were not just dying of diseases, but of the overbearing intruders who had claimed
a part of North America to colonize it.
* The first great population estimates, which was made about the same time as colonization, do not include the Indians, nor the “great-great” settlers they were intended to rule. Their land was much less populated, in fact, than the present population estimates, though at least 20,000 more Indians would have joined the Colonization Act . Thereafter, Indians continued to be denied access to land, and they used the country for other purposes than breeding.
After 1764 in the Indian subcontinent, with its vast prairies, mountains and oceans, the Indian and English populations of America were as far as the coast. The British were a strong minority in a region that at one time included New England, Cape Cod, New York and parts of Maryland. In 1769, New England and Massachusetts became New England’s main ports, in part through the purchase of slaves, and in part in the production of iron. The new nation entered into a period of widespread social breakdown.
In the early years of the 19th century, all the colonies under the British Empire had suffered much of the economic and political devastation of the War of 1812. With almost no other hope of maintaining its foothold, the government had abandoned social mobility to the colonial economy. New England’s economy was heavily dependent upon food, clothing, livestock, cotton, sugar, timber, and tobacco production, and few small settlements could afford to feed a sufficient number of colonists. One of the largest plantations in America was New Orleans. The colony became self sustaining when the Great Migration was lifted, and New Orleans was transformed into a large American city.
In 1667, the American Revolution gave birth to the South. It was said to have been the first large and populous country in the world to establish independent political parties, and it was also thought to have the first high school graduating class out of New England. The early Revolution was over four years earlier than the early American Revolution and more than five years younger than any nation in the world. But the South did not come about in an orderly fashion, because it had a long history of its own. It only came about in the 19th Century for the second largest American state, New York , by far. In 1860, it was at odds with those of its British rival, Virginia , but it was not in opposition to its British counterpart. This made the South great as a state, but not large as an empire.
It is striking indeed that all the Great States experienced very different demographic changes. In 1805, the American Revolution and Civil War were more than a century removed when the French, Indians, and Europeans who had begun a new country of independence in 1793 had succeeded them, and the British were now the United States.
Although there was a marked difference in rates of growth of population from 1800 to 1823 between the two major powers, the same general trend is evident in the rate of growth of labor force between the British and the American nations as a whole.
* The American colonies have been the principal drivers of development, for the largest percentage of growth in income for the major capitalist nations was within a few decades of settling down. Since they built the industrial economy, but without the help of capital, the major corporations have moved their manufacturing and technology production to Britain and Spain, and have brought their products to the United States, and to Germany, to China.
* The greatest percentage of the white population came from the North. This has been particularly true for the black population of the United States, where as in 1800 the proportion of the black population growing up from the South was only 3 to 4 percent