Post by rubl on Sept 19, 2020 9:45:12 GMT 7
With the 'modern' world is meant the Americas.
"How the modern world was shaped by epidemics 500 years ago
The coronavirus pandemic has been compared with many previous contagions, including the great plague and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. However, there has been little consideration of probably the most significant historical episode of disease. The modern world as we know it would not have existed without the epidemics that swept through the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries. These epidemics created the modern world.
In the wake of Christopher Columbus’s voyages of exploration, Europeans arrived in the Americas in ever-increasing numbers. They brought with them a range of viruses, such as smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps and chickenpox, to which Native Americans had no prior exposure and no immunity. Historians call the resulting epidemics “virgin soil epidemics”.
Coronavirus has demonstrated the impact that epidemic disease can have on a vulnerable population. Similarly, these virgin soil epidemics rapidly swept through Native American communities. Societies were overwhelmed. Everyone fell sick at once: there was no one to care for the sick and no one to plant or harvest crops.
The impact of the epidemics was extensive. At one level, they removed the people who could have resisted European expansion. Studies now suggest that the population of the Americas may have been as high as 100 million before contact with Europeans. In many regions, within a century of exposure to these diseases, 95% of the population died.
...
Some observers in east Asia have viewed the failure of western governments to control the coronavirus as evidence of the weakness and fragility of western democracy. Similarly, in the 16th century, Europeans saw the virgin soil epidemics as proof of their moral and biological superiority. They were evidence that God intended Europeans to take control of the Americas.
When the Pilgrims arrived in New England in the 1620s, they found the local population already decimated by disease. Along the coast were abandoned villages that provided perfect settlement sites. It was as if God had blessed the Pilgrims’ mission."
theconversation.com/how-the-modern-world-was-shaped-by-epidemics-500-years-ago-145905
"How the modern world was shaped by epidemics 500 years ago
The coronavirus pandemic has been compared with many previous contagions, including the great plague and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. However, there has been little consideration of probably the most significant historical episode of disease. The modern world as we know it would not have existed without the epidemics that swept through the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries. These epidemics created the modern world.
In the wake of Christopher Columbus’s voyages of exploration, Europeans arrived in the Americas in ever-increasing numbers. They brought with them a range of viruses, such as smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps and chickenpox, to which Native Americans had no prior exposure and no immunity. Historians call the resulting epidemics “virgin soil epidemics”.
Coronavirus has demonstrated the impact that epidemic disease can have on a vulnerable population. Similarly, these virgin soil epidemics rapidly swept through Native American communities. Societies were overwhelmed. Everyone fell sick at once: there was no one to care for the sick and no one to plant or harvest crops.
The impact of the epidemics was extensive. At one level, they removed the people who could have resisted European expansion. Studies now suggest that the population of the Americas may have been as high as 100 million before contact with Europeans. In many regions, within a century of exposure to these diseases, 95% of the population died.
...
Some observers in east Asia have viewed the failure of western governments to control the coronavirus as evidence of the weakness and fragility of western democracy. Similarly, in the 16th century, Europeans saw the virgin soil epidemics as proof of their moral and biological superiority. They were evidence that God intended Europeans to take control of the Americas.
When the Pilgrims arrived in New England in the 1620s, they found the local population already decimated by disease. Along the coast were abandoned villages that provided perfect settlement sites. It was as if God had blessed the Pilgrims’ mission."
theconversation.com/how-the-modern-world-was-shaped-by-epidemics-500-years-ago-145905