Diseases and the Americas

Have diseases shaped the course of history? Most of us know that the Spaniards brought small-pox and measles to the Americas with them, diseases that the natives had never experienced. The death toll of the diseases played a major role in what followed: the Spaniards wiped out the ancient civilizations of the Americas. In addition, as Michael Oldstone writes in Viruses, Plagues and History, since the diseases seemed to selectively kill the natives but not the Spaniards (who had experienced and survived it in Spain), the natives came to accept that the Spanish gods must be superior than theirs: why else were they dieing while nothing seemed to happen to the Spaniards? This accelerated the conversion of millions of survivors to Christianity.

 

Another disease, yellow fever, brought to the Americas by the white man, killed both the natives and the Caucasians. This one came via blacks who had come trading or as slaves. It turned out the blacks were far more resilient to yellow fever. With the natives dying in hordes, the Caucasians decided to bring in slaves from Africa to the Americas as “labor replacements”…

 

Then there was France. At one point, it held massive territories in the Americas from the Caribbean to parts of Central America to Mexico to New Orleans (present day US) to all the way up the center of modern-day US till Canada! And then yellow fever swept through Haiti, a French colony. It barely affected the blacks, but it decimated the French troops. Sensing an opportunity, the blacks revolted and Haiti soon gained its independence. This was a big blow for Napoleon, France’s ruler at the time. It also made him disenchanted with his holdings in the Americas and he decided to exit. It led to the sale of the central parts of present day US to the, er, US of that time: the Louisiana Purchase. And thus French influence was removed from the New World and opened the doors for American growth westwards all the way to the Pacific.

 

During the building of the Panama Canal, Caucasian engineers and workers dropped like flies to yellow fever and malaria. The project’s financial viability was now under question. Unexpected earthquakes and landslides only added to the death and destruction in the region. The project plodded along before finally throwing in the towel in early 1889. The US took up the project a few years later, but came prepared thanks to their discovery of the way to prevent and cure yellow fever by then:

“By overcoming the disease, medical scientists paved the way to success for this engineering project.”

 

We don’t think of history as being influenced by diseases, do we?