[axguscbklp]

True, but from what I understand the Europeans would probably have won anyway. In 1500 AD, indigenous Americans had about the same level of technological development that Europeans had had in 1500 BC, so I suspect that unfortunately even had diseases not played a role, it probably would just have been a matter of time before the Europeans managed to bring over enough people to overrun the Americas. It would have taken longer but I doubt that the indigenous Americans would have been able to adopt European technology fast enough and on a large enough scale to beat the Europeans back.

Now on the other hand, if Europe had suffered something like 50%+ death from American diseases while indigenous Americans suffered much lower death tolls from European disease - in other words, the reverse of what actually happened - then I figure that all bets would have been off. In that timeline maybe the indigenous Americans would have had enough room to maneuver that they would have been able to adopt European technologies in time to defend their lands.

[Bayart]

>Now on the other hand, if Europe had suffered something like 50%+ death from American diseases while indigenous Americans suffered much lower death tolls from European disease - in other words, the reverse of what actually happened - then I figure that all bets would have been off.

The Black Plague killed off 50% of the population in quite a few countries and it didn't result in any invasion. I'm not sure the rationale stands without a technological imbalance as a basis.

[soapdog]

Because it also hit the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Where would the invader come from? They were also dying of it too. In China alone there were about 40% dead according to recent estimates. The Black Plague was not restricted to Europe, it came to Europe and it wrecked nations everywhere. You can't have people invading, if these potential invaders are dealing with the same plague.

[Bayart]

>Where would the invader come from?

Poland ! I was alluding to the fact that the Plague wasn't uniform and that if demographic depression were an incentive to invade by itself, places that were unaffected (like Poland) would have expanded.

Instead Poland repeated the exact same pattern that had been pioneered in Gaul, then picked up by the Germans : expend East, where the Plague didn't have much effect, into non-Christian land and implement literate administration, centralized religion and feudalism.

The fact is the Black Plague didn't pose an existential threat in Western Europe, and it seems even else in other urban regions. I remember a historian, perhaps Le Goff or Leroy-Ladurie, remarking that the most astonishing thing about the Plague is that it changed nothing. The archives looked the same before and after. Just business as usual. In that sense the Thirty Years War was far more destructive.

All that to say that disease, as large as it gets, in itself isn't enough to sink well established institutions. And it's not a good enough argument to strip the Spanish of any credit in the conquest of the Americas.

[soapdog]

You might enjoy reading 1491 and learning more about the cultures of the Americas. There is way more there than "tech from 1500 BC", and I don't feel like just quoting from the book because I want people to go read it.

It is important to realise that there are recent estimates that mention 9 out of 10 people all over the Americas dying of diseases. Remember that diseases travel faster than European invaders, so by the time they arrive at those locations the population is already in kind of chaos and traumatised.

There were a lot of people living in the Americas. A lot. The first chronicles mention large cities and populations, other chroniclers passing the same regions some years later see nothing. In certain areas, such as the Amazon, where people built things out of wood, almost nothing remains.

It is also important to remember than in many cultures, part of the healing process for a disease involved family and loved ones doing wakes and staying close to the afflicted. This causes a havoc as contagious diseases such as pox spread and claimed whole families, and then the next family, and so on. Pox was not common, nor was flu.

Many variations of pox are associated with use beasts of burden, most of the indigenous cultures didn't use them. So no resistance to cowpox, smallpox, etc

> I doubt that the indigenous Americans would have been able to adopt European technology fast enough to succeed in beating the Europeans back.

Please, read that book. You'll see the indigenous population of North America adapting quite fast to European technology to the point of managing sailboats. Also, sidenote the Spanish first met the Inca not on land but on the sea, they bumped into one of their large sailboats. Europeans adopting indigenous technologies in South America because theirs didn't work. This happened everywhere. Everyone was adapting.

Many of us learned different stuff in school and uni, mostly because it takes a very long time for research to trickle into school curriculum, and also because of the bias of those telling the stories who century after century create a narrative that favours them.

There a lot of recent research that throws away a lot of what was taught to me in school. Unfortunately, the usual reaction from people is that "this is not what I was taught, so it must be wrong!" and then proceed to repeat fairy tales about technology superiority which is a positivist way of seeing things that is very flawed.

"Beating Europeans back" is not the only possible outcome. It is not about beating people back to the other side of the Atlantic. If so many native people had not died of diseases, the Americas would look much different today.

[thinkingemote]

>Remember that diseases travel faster than European invaders, so by the time they arrive at those locations the population is already in kind of chaos and traumatised.

What I got from that book was even more surprising. It's that by the time the Europeans got there the devastation had gone. The chaos and trauma one night expect from a horrific war had gone, like Europe 50 years on from WW2, this was over 150 (I think) later, so now instead was jungle, small villages, tiny populations. The scars back then were not visible to the Europeans, as disease hit these people a couple or more generations ago.

[axguscbklp]

I think that the native Americans would have managed to learn how to use European technology just fine, but I think that it would have been hard for them to build the necessary infrastructure to mass-produce it in time. Maybe if they had managed to ally with one group of Europeans long enough to hold the others off and give them the needed time, it would have worked.

[SuoDuanDao]

I doubt that, because of the disease factor. From what I remember of my high school history classes, the English and French were fairly closely matched in strength and fought each other for control of North America. The French did try to ally with the Huron confederacy, while the English traded with the natives but didn't get into serious negotiations until later. Their Alliance didn't help the Franco-Huron faction much, and though it wasn't mentioned I imagine that one factor would have been that pox can spread to one's allies more easily than people one is wary of.

Now, had Europeans had a germ theory of disease by then, maybe that dynamic could have turned out different...

[nradov]

At the time European technology wasn't mass produced either. Technological artifacts were still hand made one at a time by artisans.

[PicassoCTs]

Not really true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism#History

There were lots of artisans, but mercantilism the early stages already had state-run factories for cannons and other "central" managed technology.