Re:The Viking Invasion of Leicestershire (2012)
by inglor_cz on Monday February 22, 2021 @03:17PM
(#26229991)
> When they deliberately gave diseased blankets to indigenous peoples, I think that checked off both boxes.
While this event has been documented, it wasn't an everyday occurence. "Normal" violence and raids were much more typical during the 400 years of the conquest of both Americas.
The first infectious diseases were introduced onto the continent in early 16th century. At that time, neither Europeans nor Natives had much understanding about the root causes and applied magical thinking (witches, wrath of heaven, acts of God/Satan, punishment for sins).
Western understanding of epidemics has been a mess, arguably until today - see contemporary Covid deniers etc. I have just read a report about a Slovak member of government (Labor Minister) wanting to open the churches and arguing with a 1710 wave of black plague in Trnava that was purportedly stopped by the citizens praying to the Holy Virgin. And this is a Central European EU member state in 2021! Now try 1521.
And massive die-outs of native population was a cause for concern in the Spanish parts of the empire; the Spanish took two well-operated indigenous empires (Aztec and Incan) with all the infrastructure, resources and mines to get rich off, only to see their workforce melting away. They weren't happy about that - any more than today's Facebook would be about half of their users dying.
While this event has been documented, it wasn't an everyday occurence. "Normal" violence and raids were much more typical during the 400 years of the conquest of both Americas.
The first infectious diseases were introduced onto the continent in early 16th century. At that time, neither Europeans nor Natives had much understanding about the root causes and applied magical thinking (witches, wrath of heaven, acts of God/Satan, punishment for sins).
Western understanding of epidemics has been a mess, arguably until today - see contemporary Covid deniers etc. I have just read a report about a Slovak member of government (Labor Minister) wanting to open the churches and arguing with a 1710 wave of black plague in Trnava that was purportedly stopped by the citizens praying to the Holy Virgin. And this is a Central European EU member state in 2021! Now try 1521.
And massive die-outs of native population was a cause for concern in the Spanish parts of the empire; the Spanish took two well-operated indigenous empires (Aztec and Incan) with all the infrastructure, resources and mines to get rich off, only to see their workforce melting away. They weren't happy about that - any more than today's Facebook would be about half of their users dying.