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111-544: The historiography of the Atlantic World, known as Atlantic history , has grown enormously since the 1990s. The Atlantic World comprises the histories of Europe , Africa , and the Americas . Travel over land was difficult and expensive, so settlements were made along the coast, especially where rivers allowed small boats to travel inland. Distant settlements were linked by elaborate sea-based trading networks. Since

222-530: A DNA study. While it is difficult to determine exactly how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, estimates range from 3.8 million, as mentioned above, to 7 million people to a high of 18 million. Scholars vary on the estimated size of the Indigenous population in what is now Canada prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact . During the late 15th century

333-510: A complex and contested legacy as the largest successful slave revolt in history and was accompanied by widespread violence. With Spain tied down in European wars, the mainland Spanish colonies waged independence movements over a long period from 1806 to 1830, sometimes inspired by, but often fearful of, the Haitian example, which delayed effective independence movements in the slave societies of

444-583: A factor of 10 over 800–1,000 years. The data also show that there have been genetic exchanges between Asia, the Arctic and Greenland since the initial peopling of the Americas . A new study in early 2018 suggests that the effective population size of the original founding population of Native Americans was about 250 people. Early explanations for the population decline of the Indigenous peoples of

555-477: A lower genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions. Decreasing genetic diversity with increasing geographic distance from the Bering Strait can be seen, as well as a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska (genetic entry point). A higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America

666-472: A more oligarchic outcome than when viewed through a traditional nationalistic lens. Atlantic history Atlantic history is a specialty field in history that studies the Atlantic World in the early modern period . The Atlantic World was created by the contact between Europeans and the Americas, and Atlantic History is the study of that world. It is premised on the idea that, following

777-505: A twenty-five percent to eighty percent Indigenous population decrease post-contact. Roland G Robertson suggests that during the late 1630s, smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot (Huron) , who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in the area of New France . In 1871 there was an enumeration of the Indigenous population within the limits of Canada at the time, showing a total of only 102,358 individuals. From 2006 to 2016,

888-591: A way to give insight in regards to power and ownership of lands that had already been claimed, essentially creating a greater desire to finding new routes and land. One major goal for centuries was finding the Northwest Passage (through what is now Canada) from Europe to Asia . Given the scope of Atlantic history it has tended to downplay the singular influence of the voyages of Columbus and to focus more on growing interactions among African and European polities (ca 1450–1500), including contact and conflict in

999-525: Is an important distinction to be made between "societies with slaves", such as colonial New England, and "slave societies", where slavery was so central that it can properly be said to define all aspects of life in that region. The French colony of Saint-Domingue was one of the first American jurisdictions to end slavery, in 1794. Brazil was the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to end slavery, in 1888. The Spanish conquistadores conquered

1110-505: Is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million, with a figure of 500,000 currently accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health. Although not without conflict, European Canadians ' early interactions with First Nations and Inuit populations were relatively peaceful. However repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza, measles, and smallpox (to which they had no natural immunity), combined with other effects of European contact, resulted in

1221-536: Is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans and their firearms. The South or Central American infrastructure allowed for thousands of European conquistadors and tens of thousands of their Indian auxiliaries to attack the dominant Indigenous civilization. Empires such as the Incas depended on a highly centralized administration for the distribution of resources. Disruption caused by

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1332-468: Is little more than imperial history under another name. It has been argued that it is too expansive in claiming to subsume both of the American continents, Africa, and Europe, without seriously engaging with them. According to Caroline Dodds Pennock, indigenous people are often seen as static recipients of transatlantic encounter, despite the fact that thousands of Native Americans crossed the ocean during

1443-435: Is nothing more than a scholarly article of faith... In contrast, historian Russel Thornton has pointed out that there were disastrous epidemics and population losses during the first half of the sixteenth century "resulting from incidental contact, or even without direct contact, as disease spread from one American Indian tribe to another." Thornton has also challenged higher Indigenous population estimates, which are based on

1554-585: Is now Brazil, and 12 million in the Inca Empire ), the lowest estimates give a population decrease from all causes of 80% by the end of the 17th century (nine million people in 1650). Latin America would match its 15th-century population early in the 19th century; it numbered 17 million in 1800, 30 million in 1850, 61 million in 1900, 105 million in 1930, 218 million in 1960, 361 million in 1980, and 563 million in 2005. In

1665-403: Is observed. A relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations is a scenario that implies coastal routes were easier than inland routes for migrating peoples ( Paleo-Indians ) to traverse. The overall pattern that is emerging suggests that the Americas were recently colonized by a small number of individuals (effective size of about 70–250), and then they grew by

1776-418: Is possible that documents relating to such acts were deliberately destroyed, or sanitized. By the middle of the 18th century, colonists had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus. They well understood the concept of quarantine, and that contact with the sick could infect the healthy with smallpox, and those who survived the illness would not be infected again. Whether

1887-528: Is subject to cross-cultural misinterpretation, omission of facts, or other such changes that could affect the quality of description of African spiritual practices. Maintaining the integrity of cultural practices was difficult due to disagreement with European propriety and European tendency to generalize the African demographic makeup to merely "Central African", rather than acknowledging individual cultures. Eventually, most African traditions such as Kilundu, which

1998-459: The Atlantic slave trade . European workers arrived as indentured servants or transported felons who went free after a term of labor. In short, the Atlantic World was one of widespread inequality where the exploitation of human labor provided the foundation for a small handful of elites to reap enormous profits. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade played a massive role in shaping the demographics of

2109-556: The Aztec Empire , more accurately now referred to by scholars as the Mexica empire, in present-day Mexico , and the Inca Empire , in present-day Peru, with surprising speed, assisted by horses, guns, large numbers of Native allies, and, perhaps above all, by the devastating mortality inflicted by newly introduced diseases such as smallpox . To some extent the prior emergence of the large and wealthy Inca and Mexica civilizations aided

2220-644: The Beaver Wars . According to the Cambridge World History , the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, and the Cambridge World History of Genocide, colonial policies in some cases included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples in North America. According to the Cambridge World History of Genocide, Spanish colonization of the Americas also included genocidal massacres. According to Adam Jones , genocidal methods included

2331-688: The Black Death if it were not for the constant enslavement they were subject to. He further contends that enslavement of Native Americans was in fact the primary cause of their depopulation in Spanish territories; that the majority of Indians enslaved were women and children compared to the enslavement of Africans which mostly targeted adult males and in turn they were sold at a 50% to 60% higher price, and that 2,462,000 to 4,985,000 Amerindians were enslaved between Columbus's arrival and 1900. Throughout history, Indigenous people have been subjected to

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2442-408: The Indigenous peoples of the Americas before European colonization have been difficult to establish. Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million, though many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million by the end of the 20th century. The monarchs of the nascent Spanish Empire decided to fund Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492 , leading to

2553-632: The Population history of American indigenous peoples ). Many foods that are common in present-day Europe, including corn (maize) and potatoes , originated in the New World and were unknown in Europe before the 16th century. Similarly, some staple crops of present-day West Africa, including cassava and peanuts , originated in the New World. Some of the staple crops of Latin America, such as coffee and sugarcane , were introduced by European settlers in

2664-709: The Seven Years' War , Colonel Henry Bouquet ordered his men to take smallpox-infested blankets from their hospital and gave them as gifts to two neutral Lenape Indian dignitaries during a peace settlement negotiation, according to the entry in the Captain's ledger, "To convey the Smallpox to the Indians". In the following weeks, Sir Jeffrey Amherst conspired with Bouquet to "Extirpate this Execreble Race" of Native Americans, writing, "Could it not be contrived to send

2775-504: The Taínos . The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval, in which God removed the Indigenous peoples as part of His "divine plan" to make way for a new Christian civilization. Many Native Americans viewed their troubles in a religious framework within their own belief systems. According to later academics such as Noble David Cook, a community of scholars began "quietly accumulating piece by piece data on early epidemics in

2886-614: The Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (1776). The result was strong government that became even stronger during the Bourbon reforms of the 18th century. Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a less centralized manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and most would have representative assemblies. Most of

2997-648: The encomienda system). The cattle introduced by the Spanish contaminated various water reserves which Native Americans dug in the fields to accumulate rainwater. In response, the Franciscans and Dominicans created public fountains and aqueducts to guarantee access to drinking water . But when the Franciscans lost their privileges in 1572, many of these fountains were no longer guarded and so deliberate well poisoning may have happened. Although no proof of such poisoning has been found, some historians believe

3108-623: The establishment of colonies and marking the beginning of the migration of millions of Europeans and Africans to the Americas. While the population of European settlers, primarily from Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands, along with African slaves, grew steadily, the Indigenous population plummeted. There are numerous reasons for the population decline, including exposure to Eurasian diseases such as influenza , pneumonic plagues , and smallpox ; direct violence by settlers and their allies through war and forced removal ; and

3219-562: The historiography of the British Empire , which had been introduced a century before by George Louis Beer and Charles McLean Andrews . Historians studying colonialism have long been open to interdisciplinary perspectives, such as comparative approaches. In addition there was a frustration involved in writing about very few people in a small remote colony. Atlantic history opens the horizon to large forces at work over great distances. Some critics have complained that Atlantic history

3330-472: The "great dying". According to one of the researchers, UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin , the large death toll also boosted the economies of Europe: "the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world. It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue that domination." When Old World diseases were first carried to

3441-699: The Americas . It encompasses a wide range of demographic, social, economic, political, legal, military, intellectual and religious topics treated in comparative fashion by looking at both sides of the Atlantic. Religious revivals in Britain and Germany are studies, as well as the First Great Awakening in the Thirteen Colonies . Emigration , race and slavery are also important topics. Researchers of Atlantic history typically focus on

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3552-694: The Americas and their relation to the subjugation of native peoples." Scholars like Cook believe that widespread epidemic disease, to which the Indigenous peoples had no prior exposure or resistance, was the primary cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus , measles , influenza, bubonic plague , cholera , malaria , tuberculosis , mumps , yellow fever , and pertussis , which were chronic in Eurasia. However, recently scholars have studied

3663-522: The Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, they spread throughout the southern and northern hemispheres, leaving the Indigenous populations in near ruins. No evidence has been discovered that the earliest Spanish colonists and missionaries deliberately attempted to infect the American Natives, and some efforts were made to limit the devastating effects of disease before it killed off what remained of their labor force (compelled to work under

3774-544: The Americas in 1492 was not necessarily at a high point and may actually have already been in decline in some areas. Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a low point by the early 20th century. Using an estimate of approximately 37 million people in Mexico, Central and South America in 1492 (including 6 million in the Aztec Empire , 5–10 million in the Mayan States, 11 million in what

3885-685: The Americas include the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores , as recorded by the Spaniards themselves, such as the encomienda system, which was ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion , but in practice was tantamount to serfdom and slavery . The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas , whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against

3996-462: The Americas, especially in areas where huge plantations were the norm, such as in Brazil and the Caribbean. Roughly three quarters of immigrants to the Americas before 1820 were African, and more than half of these Africans were originally from West or Central Africa. In Brazil, the population percentage of Africans was even higher, with about seven African to every one Portuguese immigrant. Because there

4107-605: The Atlantic Workshop at New York University in 1997. Other scholars in the field include Ida Altman , Kenneth J. Andrien, David Armitage , Trevor Burnard, Jorge Canizares-Esguerra , Nicholas Canny , Philip D. Curtin , Laurent Dubois, J.H. Elliott , David Eltis, Alison Games, Eliga H. Gould, Anthony Grafton , Joseph C. Miller , Philip D. Morgan , Anthony Pagden , Jennifer L. Anderson, John Thornton , James D. Tracy , Carla G. Pestana , Isaac Land , Richard S. Dunn, and Ned C. Landsman. Alison Games (2006) explores

4218-510: The Atlantic World and as major sources for slave labor. An elaborate network of economic, geopolitical and cultural exchange took shape—an "Atlantic World" comparable to the "Mediterranean World". It linked the nations and peoples that inhabited the Atlantic litoral of North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. The main empires that built the Atlantic World were the British, French, Spanish , Portuguese and Dutch; entrepreneurs from

4329-453: The Caribbean and Brazil until the late-19th century and later. In long-term perspective, the revolutions were mostly successful. They spread widely the ideals of republicanism , the overthrow of aristocracies, kings and established churches. They emphasized the universal ideals of The Enlightenment , such as the equality of all men. They emphasized equal justice under law by disinterested courts, as opposed to particular justice handed down at

4440-474: The Dutch coped by recruiting immigrants of other nationalities. In New England , the massive Puritan migration of the first half of the 17th century created a large free workforce and thus obviated the need to use unfree labor on a large scale. Colonial New England's reliance on the labor of free men, women, and children, organized in individual farm households, is called the yeoman or household labor system. There

4551-634: The European Union and the continuing importance of NATO played an indirect role in stimulating interest throughout the 1990s. Bernard Bailyn's Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World promoted social and demographic studies, and especially regarding demographic flows of population into colonial America. As a leading advocate of the history of the Atlantic world, Bailyn has since 1995 organized an annual international seminar at Harvard designed to promote scholarship in this field. Professor Bailyn

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4662-617: The French and the American Revolutions as successful models against other types of revolutions. Indeed, he developed a wider understanding of the changes that were led by revolutionary processes across the Western civilization. Such work followed in the footsteps of C. L. R. James who, in the 1930s, connected the French and Haitian Revolutions. Since the 1980s Atlantic history has emerged as an increasingly popular alternative to

4773-713: The Indigenous population has grown by 42.5 percent, four times the national rate. According to the 2011 Canadian census , Indigenous peoples ( First Nations – 851,560, Inuit – 59,445 and Métis – 451,795) numbered at 1,400,685, or 4.3% of the country's total population. The population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of cultural and racial superiority . Historian Francis Jennings argued, "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not possibly have created or sustained large populations." In 1998, Africanist Historian David Henige said many population estimates are

4884-639: The Malthusian assumption that "populations tend to increase to, and beyond, the limits of the food available to them at any particular level of technology." The European colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of so many people it contributed to climatic change and temporary global cooling , according to scientists from University College London . A century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus , some 90% of Indigenous Americans had perished from "wave after wave of disease", along with mass slavery and war, in what researchers have described as

4995-798: The Mediterranean and Atlantic islands, as critical to the emergence of the Atlantic World. Awareness of the Atlantic World, of course, spiked post-1492: after the earliest European voyages to the New World and continuing encounters on the African coast, a Euro-centric division of the Atlantic was proclaimed between the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The West Coast and Central Africa, which are distinct from one another and each made up of many competing polities, played core roles in shaping

5106-576: The Mississippi in exchange for $ 5,000,000". According to Jeffrey Ostler, "Of the 80,000 Native people who were forced west from 1830 into the 1850s, between 12,000 and 17,000 perished." Ostler states that "the large majority died of interrelated factors of starvation, exposure and disease". In addition to the removal of the Southern Tribes, there were multiple other removals of Northern Tribes also known as "Trails of Tears." For example, "In

5217-766: The New Europe, Christendom, and even the United Nations (UN). He concludes, "The early modern Atlantic can even be read as a natural antechamber for American-led globalization of capitalism and serve as an historical challenge to the coalescing New Europe. No wonder that the academic reception of the new Atlantic history has been enthusiastic in the United States, and less so in Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal, where histories of national Atlantic empires continue to thrive." Population history of American indigenous peoples Population figures for

5328-606: The New World began with the American Revolution , 1775–1783, in which France, the Netherlands and Spain assisted the new United States of America as it secured independence from Britain. In August 1791 a coordinated slave uprising in the wealthy French sugar colony of St. Domingue began the Haitian Revolution . A long and destructive period of international warfare there came to a close with the creation of Haiti as an independent black republic in 1804. It has

5439-555: The North American Thirteen Colonies that became the United States had strong self-government via popular assemblies that countered the authority of governors with their own assertions of rights via parliamentary and other English sources of authority. Only property owners could vote in British polities, but since so many free men in mainland British Colonial America owned land, a majority could vote and participate in popular politics. The British challenge to

5550-605: The Northeast, Algonquian speaking tribes in Virginia and Maryland "suffered from a variety of diseases, including malaria, typhus, and possibly smallpox." These diseases were not solely a case of Native susceptibility, however, because "as colonists took their resources, Native communities were subject to malnutrition, starvation, and social stress, all making people more vulnerable to pathogens. Repeated epidemics created additional trauma and population loss, which in turn disrupted

5661-591: The Seminar program, 202 from universities in the US and 164 from universities abroad. Its purpose was to advance the scholarship of young historians of many nations interested in the common, comparative, and interactive aspects of the lives of the peoples in the lands that are part of the Atlantic basin, mainly in the early modern period in order to contribute to the study of this transnational historical subject. Bailyn's Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours (2005) explores

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5772-607: The Spanish were aware of the spread of smallpox, they made no mention of it until 1519, a quarter century after Columbus arrived in Hispaniola. Instead he contends that enslavement in gold and silver mines was the primary reason why the Native American population of Hispaniola dropped so significantly. and that even though disease was a factor, the Native population would have rebounded the same way Europeans did following

5883-478: The United States played a role as well after 1789. Other countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, were active on a smaller scale. American historian Bernard Bailyn traces the concept of the Atlantic World to an editorial published by journalist Walter Lippmann in 1917. The alliance of the United States and Great Britain in World War II, and the subsequent creation of NATO , heightened historians' interest in

5994-444: The abuses in the Americas were never entirely or permanently abolished. The Spanish also employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the mita , and treated their subjects as something between slaves and serfs . Serfs stayed to work the land; slaves were exported to the mines, where large numbers of them died. In other areas the Spaniards replaced the ruling Aztecs and Incas and divided the conquered lands among themselves ruling as

6105-565: The areas that Northern tribes were removed to were already inhabited: "The areas west of the Mississippi River were home to other Indigenous nations—Osages, Kanzas, Omahas, Ioways, Otoes and Missourias. To make room for thousands of people from the East, the government dispossessed these nations of much their lands." Ostler writes that when Northern Nations were moved onto their landing 1840, "The combined population of these western nations

6216-730: The authority of colonial assemblies, especially via taxation, was a major cause of the American Revolution in the 1770s. A wave of revolutions shook the Atlantic World from the 1770s to the 1820s, including in the United States (1775–1783), France and French-controlled Europe (1789–1814), Haiti (1791–1804), and Spanish America (1806–1830). There were smaller upheavals in Switzerland, Russia, and Brazil. The revolutionaries in varied places were aware of recent anti-colonial struggles in other Atlantic societies and even interacted with one another in many cases. Independence movements in

6327-572: The borders and contents of the emerging field, which emphasizes cosmopolitan and multicultural elements that have tended to be neglected or considered in isolation by traditional historiography dealing with the Americas. Bailyn's reflections stem in part from his seminar at Harvard since the mid-1980s. Other important scholars are Jack Greene, who directed a program at Johns Hopkins in Atlantic History from 1972 to 1992 that has now expanded to global concerns. Karen Ordahl Kupperman established

6438-513: The catastrophic impact of disease and its relationship to U.S. policy and action even when it is right before their eyes." Historian David Stannard says that by "focusing almost entirely on disease ... contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent—a sad, but both inevitable and "unintended consequence" of human migration and progress," and asserts that their destruction "was neither inadvertent nor inevitable," but

6549-403: The challenge of finding a vantage point that is not rooted in any single place. One impetus for Atlantic studies began in the 1960s with the historians of slavery who started tracking the routes of the transatlantic slave trade . A second source came from historians who studied the colonial history of the United States . Many were trained in early modern European history and were familiar with

6660-404: The colonization of the Americas reshaped Africa and Europe, provided a foundation for later globalization, and insists that our understanding of the past benefits from looking beyond the nation state as our primary (or sole) category of analysis. The beginning of extensive contact between Europe, Africa, and the Americas had sweeping implications for the environmental and demographic history of all

6771-547: The conditions for diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and malaria to flourish. Unlike the populations of Europe who rebounded following the Black Death , no such rebound occurred for the Indigenous populations. Similarly, historian Jeffrey Ostler at the University of Oregon has argued that population collapses in North America throughout colonization were not due mainly to lack of Native immunity to European disease. Instead, he claims that "When severe epidemics did hit, it

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6882-552: The convergence of the multiple strands of scholarly interest that have generated the new field of Atlantic history, which takes as its geographic unit of analysis the Atlantic Ocean and the four continents that surround it. She argues Atlantic history is best approached as a slice of world history. The Atlantic, moreover, is a region that has logic as a unit of historical analysis only within a limited chronology. An Atlantic perspective can help historians understand changes within

6993-579: The course of the Columbian Exchange . The slave trade played a role in the history of the Atlantic World almost from the beginning. As European powers began to conquer and claim large territories in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, the role of chattel slavery and other forced labor systems in the development of the Atlantic World expanded. European powers typically had vast territories that they wished to exploit through agriculture, mining, or other extractive industries, but they lacked

7104-641: The deaths of thousands of innocent people. The law calls his offense criminal negligence. Yet in light of all the deaths, the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans, and the terrible suffering the region endured, the label criminal negligence is benign, hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences." However, some sources attribute the 1836–40 epidemic to the deliberate communication of smallpox to Native Americans, with historian Ann F. Ramenofsky writing, " Variola Major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets. In

7215-433: The decrease of the population correlates with the end of religious orders' control of the water. In following centuries, accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common. Well-documented accounts of incidents involving both threats and acts of deliberate infection are very rare, but may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged. Many of the instances likely went unreported, and it

7326-478: The depopulation of the Antilles . The practices of forced labor, brutal punishment, and inadequate necessities of life, were the initial and major reasons for depopulation. Jason Hickel estimates that a third of Arawak workers died every six months from forced labor in these mines. In this way, "slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the Indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, as it set

7437-470: The disappearance or transformation of most African religious practices. For example, the practice of consulting kilundu, or Angolan spirits, was seen as homosexual by Portuguese authorities, a clear example of Eurocentrism in colonial societies, as European ideas of religion often did not match African ones. Unfortunately, there is a lack of documents written from the African point of view, so almost all information from this time period in these colonial societies

7548-435: The easiest and cheapest way of long-distance travel was by sea, international trading networks emerged in the Atlantic World, with major hubs at London , Amsterdam , Boston , and Havana . Time was a factor, as sailing ships averaged about 2 knots speed (50 miles a day). Navigators had to rely on maps of currents or they would be becalmed for days or weeks. These maps were not only for navigational purposes however, but also as

7659-524: The extermination of Indigenous peoples took the lives of 100 million people: "...the total extermination of many American Indian peoples and the near-extermination of others, in numbers that eventually totaled close to 100,000,000." A 2019 study estimates the pre-Columbian Indigenous population contained more than 60 million people, but dropped to 6 million by 1600, based on a drop in atmospheric CO 2 during that period. Other studies have disputed this conclusion. The Indigenous population of

7770-644: The field revolve around the ecological and epidemiological impact of the Columbian exchange . Robert R. Palmer , an American historian of the French Revolution , pioneered the concept in the 1950s with a wide-ranging comparative history of how numerous nations experienced what he called The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (1959 and 1964). In this monumental work, he did not compare

7881-589: The following: Some Spaniards objected to the encomienda system of labor, notably Bartolomé de las Casas , who insisted that the Indigenous people were humans with souls and rights. Because of many revolts and military encounters, Emperor Charles V helped relieve the strain on both the Native laborers and the Spanish vanguards probing the Caribana for military and diplomatic purposes. Later on New Laws were promulgated in Spain in 1542 to protect isolated Native, but

7992-505: The fragmentary nature of the evidence. Estimates range from 8–112 million. Scholars have varied widely on the estimated size of the Indigenous populations prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact . Estimates are made by extrapolations from small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used the existing estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people. Nonetheless, more recent estimates still range widely. In 1992, Denevan suggested that

8103-661: The free labor states of the North, federal and state officials, supported by farmers, speculators and business interests, evicted Shawnees, Delawares, Senecas, Potawatomis, Miamis, Wyandots, Ho-Chunks, Ojibwes, Sauks and Meskwakis." These Nations were moved West of the Mississippi into what is now known as Eastern Kansas, and numbered 17,000 on arrival. According to Ostler, "by 1860, their numbers had been cut in half" because of low fertility, high infant mortality, and increased disease caused by conditions such as polluted drinking water, few resources, and social stress. Ostler also writes that

8214-482: The general disruption of societies. Scholarly disputes remain over the degree to which each factor contributed or should be emphasized; some modern scholars have categorized it as a genocide , claiming that deliberate, systematic actions by Europeans were the primary cause. Traditional scholars have disputed this characterization, maintaining that incidental disease exposure was the primary cause. Pre-Columbian population figures are difficult to estimate because of

8325-555: The history of interaction between societies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Other scholars emphasize its intellectual origins in the more systematic and less political approach of the French Annales school, especially the influential work by Fernand Braudel on the Mediterranean World (trans. 2 vols, 1973). In American and British universities, Atlantic World history is supplementing (and possibly supplanting)

8436-479: The interconnections and exchanges between these regions and the civilizations they harbored. In particular, they argue that the boundaries between nation states which traditionally determined the limits of older historiography should not be applied to such transnational phenomena as slavery , colonialism , missionary activity and economic expansion . Environmental history and the study of historical demography also play an important role, as many key questions in

8547-492: The last three decades of the 16th century, the population of present-day Mexico dropped to about one million people. The Maya population is today estimated at six million, which is about the same as at the end of the 15th century, according to some estimates. In what is now Brazil, the Indigenous population declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated four million to some 300,000. Over 60 million Brazilians possess at least one Native South American ancestor, according to

8658-564: The link between physical colonial violence such as warfare, displacement, and enslavement, and the proliferation of disease among Native populations. For example, according to Coquille scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker , "In recent decades, however, researchers challenge the idea that disease is solely responsible for the rapid Indigenous population decline. The research identifies other aspects of European contact that had profoundly negative impacts on Native peoples' ability to survive foreign invasion: war, massacres, enslavement, overwork, deportation,

8769-463: The loss of will to live or reproduce, malnutrition and starvation from the breakdown of trade networks, and the loss of subsistence food production due to land loss." Further, Andrés Reséndez of the University of California, Davis points out that, even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox, there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519, implying that, until that date, epidemic disease played no significant part in

8880-509: The new feudal lords with often, but unsuccessful lobbying to the viceroys of the Spanish crown to pay Tlaxcalan war demnities. The infamous Bandeirantes from São Paulo , adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and Native ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves . Serfdom existed as such in parts of Latin America well into the 19th century, past independence. Historian Andrés Reséndez argues that even though

8991-479: The nineteenth century, the U. S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." In Brazil, well into the 20th century, deliberate infection attacks continued as Brazilian settlers and miners transported infections intentionally to the Native groups whose lands they coveted. After Edward Jenner 's 1796 demonstration that the smallpox vaccination worked,

9102-537: The older discipline of imperial history, although it could be argued that the field is simply a refinement and reorientation of traditional historiography dealing with the interaction between early modern Europeans and native peoples in the Atlantic sphere. The organization of Atlantic History as a recognized area of historiography began in the 1980s under the impetus of American historians Bernard Bailyn of Harvard University and Jack P. Greene of Johns Hopkins University, among others. The post-World War II integration of

9213-460: The operation so earnestly they decide that it must be some new mode or trick of the pale face by which they hope to gain some new advantage over them." So great was the distrust of the settlers that the Mandan chief Four Bears denounced the white man, whom he had previously treated as brothers, for deliberately bringing the disease to his people. During the siege of British-held Fort Pitt in

9324-422: The previous 100 years. These wars cost the lives of approximately 19,000 white people, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians, including men, women, and children. They safely estimated that the number of Native people who were killed or wounded was actually around fifty percent more than what was recorded. There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre-Columbian America, but there

9435-445: The problems that most European governments faced in the Americas was how to exercise authority over vast expanses of territory. Spain, which colonized Mexico, Central America, and the greater part of South America, established a network of powerful viceroyalties to administer different regions of its New World holdings: the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535), the Viceroyalty of Peru (1542), the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717–1739), and

9546-444: The provision of healthcare." Such conditions would continue, alongside rampant disease in Native communities, throughout colonization, the formation of the United States, and multiple forced removals, as Ostler explains that many scholars "have yet to come to grips with how U.S. expansion created conditions that made Native communities acutely vulnerable to pathogens and how severely disease impacted them. ... Historians continue to ignore

9657-433: The region that a more limited geographic framework might obscure. Attempts to write a Braudelian Atlantic history, one that includes and connects the entire region, remain elusive, driven in part by methodological impediments, by the real disjunction that characterized the Atlantic's historical and geographic components, by the disciplinary divisions that discourage historians from speaking to and writing for each other, and by

9768-530: The regions involved. In the process known as the Columbian Exchange , numerous plants, animals, and diseases were transplanted—both deliberately and inadvertently—from one continent to another. The epidemiological impact of this exchange on the indigenous peoples of the Americas was profound, causing very high death rates and population declines of 50% to 90% or even 100%. European and African immigrants also had very high death rates on their arrival, but they could be and were replaced by new shipments of immigrants (see

9879-508: The repeated and forced removal from their land. Beginning in the 1830s, there was the relocation of an estimated 100,000 Indigenous people in the United States called the " Trail of Tears ". The tribes affected by this specific removal were the Five Civilized Tribes : The Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. The treaty of New Echota, was enacted, which stated that the United States "would give Cherokee land west of

9990-479: The result of arbitrary formulas applied from unreliable sources. Population size for Native American tribes is very difficult to state definitively, but at least one writer has made estimates, often based on an assumed proportion of the number of warriors to total population for the tribe. Typical proportions were 5 people per one warrior and at least 1 up to 5 warriors (therefore at least 5–25 people) per lodge, cabin or house. The total peak population size only for

10101-640: The result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem. He also wrote: ...Despite frequent undocumented assertions that disease was responsible for the great majority of indigenous deaths in the Americas, there does not exist a single scholarly work that even pretends to demonstrate this claim on the basis of solid evidence. And that is because there is no such evidence, anywhere. The supposed truism that more native people died from disease than from direct face-to-face killing or from gross mistreatment or other concomitant derivatives of that brutality such as starvation, exposure, exhaustion, or despair

10212-542: The rise of sustained European contact with the New World in the 16th century, the continents that bordered the Atlantic Ocean —the Americas , Europe , and Africa —constituted a regional system or common sphere of economic and cultural exchange that can be studied as a totality. Its theme is the complex interaction between Europe (especially Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal) and their colonies in

10323-657: The sixteenth century, some by choice. Canadian scholar Ian K. Steele argued that Atlantic history will tend to draw students interested in exploring their country's historian beyond national myths , while offering historical support for such 21st century policies as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Organization of American States (OAS), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),

10434-512: The small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." His Colonel agreed to try. Most scholars have asserted that the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic was "started among the tribes of the upper Missouri River by failure to quarantine steamboats on the river", and Captain Pratt of the St. Peter "was guilty of contributing to

10545-574: The smallpox out of a bottle and destroy them." The Reverend Isaac McCoy was quoted in his History of Baptist Indian Missions as saying that the white men had deliberately spread smallpox among the Indians of the southwest, including the Pawnee tribe, and the havoc it made was reported to General Clark and the Secretary of War. Artist and writer George Catlin observed that Native Americans were also suspicious of vaccination, "They see white men urging

10656-633: The study of specific European colonial societies in the Americas, e.g. British North America or Spanish America. Some historians have criticized the North Atlantic emphasis as downplaying the importance of African history and the transatlantic slave trade on Brazilian and Caribbean history. Atlantic World history differs from traditional approaches to the history of European colonization in its emphasis on inter-regional and international comparisons and its attention to events and trends that transcended national borders. Atlantic World history emphasizes how

10767-459: The technique became better known and smallpox became less deadly in the United States and elsewhere. Many colonists and Natives were vaccinated, although, in some cases, officials tried to vaccinate Natives only to discover that the disease was too widespread to stop. At other times, trade demands led to broken quarantines. In other cases, Natives refused vaccination because of suspicion of whites. The first international healthcare expedition in history

10878-556: The threats were carried out, or how effective individual attempts were, is uncertain. One such threat was delivered by fur trader James McDougall , who is quoted as saying to a gathering of local chiefs, "You know the smallpox. Listen: I am the smallpox chief. In this bottle I have it confined. All I have to do is to pull the cork, send it forth among you, and you are dead men. But this is for my enemies and not my friends." Likewise, another fur trader threatened Pawnee Indians that if they didn't agree to certain conditions, "he would let

10989-572: The total population was approximately 53.9 million and the populations by region were, approximately, 3.8 million for the United States and Canada, 17.2 million for Mexico, 5.6 million for Central America, 3 million for the Caribbean, 15.7 million for the Andes and 8.6 million for lowland South America. A 2020 genetic study suggests that prior estimates for the pre-Columbian Caribbean population may have been at least tenfold too large. Historian David Stannard estimates that

11100-454: The transfer of governance to the Spanish, since these native empires had already established road systems, state bureaucracies and systems of taxation and intensive agriculture that were often inherited wholesale and then modified by the Spanish. The early Spanish conquerors of these empires were also aided by political instability and internal conflict within the Mexica and Incan regimes, which they successfully exploited to their benefit. One of

11211-573: The tribes listed in this table is 3,529,240 in the US and Canada (including 507,675 in Canada). This number is very similar to Snow's estimate for the US and Canada and to Alchon's, Denevan's and Milner's estimates. Genetic diversity and population structure in the American land mass using DNA micro-satellite markers ( genotype ) sampled from North, Central, and South America have been analyzed against similar data available from other Indigenous populations worldwide. The Amerindian populations show

11322-592: The war and the colonization hampered the traditional economy, and possibly led to shortages of food and materials. Across the western hemisphere, war with various Native American civilizations constituted alliances based out of both necessity or economic prosperity and, resulted in mass-scale intertribal warfare. European colonization in the North American continent also contributed to a number of wars between Native Americans, who fought over which of them should have first access to new technology and weaponry—like in

11433-495: The whim of a local noble. They showed that the modern notion of revolution, of starting fresh with a radically new government, could actually work in practice. Revolutionary mentalities were born and continue to flourish to the present day. When assessed in comparative perspective, the American Revolution (and especially the Federal Constitution that protected slavery as a legal institution) seems less radical and with

11544-496: The work force that they needed to exploit their lands effectively. Consequently, they turned to a variety of coercive labor systems to meet their needs. At first the goal was to use native workers. Native Americans were employed through Indian slavery and through the Spanish system of encomienda . Indian labor was not effective on a large scale for complex reasons (e.g., high death rates and relative ease of escape to Native communities), so plantation owners turned to African slaves via

11655-605: Was 9,000 ... 20 years later, it had fallen to 6,000." On 8 September 2000, the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency's participation in the ethnic cleansing of Western tribes. In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the " California Genocide ." Newsom said, "That's what it was,

11766-494: Was often less because Native bodies lacked immunity than because European colonialism disrupted Native communities and damaged their resources, making them more vulnerable to pathogens." In specific regard to Spanish colonization of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia, Native peoples there "were subject to forced labor and, because of poor living conditions and malnutrition, succumbed to wave after wave of unidentifiable diseases." Further, in relation to British colonization in

11877-746: Was such a large population of Africans, it is unsurprising that African slaves aided in shaping the culture of these regions. In the early colonial period, there was a high prevalence of African spiritual practices, such as spirit possessions and healing practices. Presumably, these practices served as a point of connection and as an identity hold for slaves hailing from the same African origin. Such cultural practices allowed, at least to an extent, African slaves to maintain kinship structures similar to those that they might have seen in their homeland. In many cases, European authorities viewed spiritual positions that were highly esteemed in African societies to be socially unacceptable, morally corrupt, and heretical. This led to

11988-710: Was the Balmis Expedition which had the aim of vaccinating Indigenous peoples against smallpox all along the Spanish Empire in 1803. In 1831, government officials vaccinated the Yankton Dakota at Sioux Agency . The Santee Sioux refused vaccination and many died. While epidemic disease was a leading factor of the population decline of the American Indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors

12099-496: Was the promoter of " The International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 " at Harvard University. This was one of the first, and most important, academic initiatives to launch the Atlantic perspective. From 1995-2010 the Atlantic History Seminar sponsored an annual meeting of young historians engaged in creative research on aspects of Atlantic History. In all, 366 young historians came through

12210-507: Was ultimately reduced to the popular Brazilian dance "Lundu", were either absorbed into other African traditions or reduced to a ritual simply resembling the original tradition. The extent of voluntary immigration to the Atlantic World varied considerably by region, nationality, and time period. Many European nations, particularly the Netherlands and France, only managed to send a few thousand voluntary immigrants. Though 15,000 or so who came to New France multiplied rapidly. In New Netherland ,

12321-477: Was warfare. According to demographer Russell Thornton, although many people died in wars over the centuries, and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes, warfare and death by other violent means was a comparatively minor cause of overall Native population decline. From the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1894, wars between the government and the Indigenous peoples ranged over 40 in number over

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