However, it is worth pointing out that the documented “smallpox blankets” stuff happened in the 1700s and 1800s, which was already a century or two after the continent had been greatly depopulated by diseases spread unintentionally.
I guess my sticking point is, does it matter if it was intentional? Contact with Europe destroyed them from both accidents and outright malice. It was still genocide even if it was on accident, imo.
smallpox being one, there is evidence smallpox originated from horses, which were abundant in europe, horses had thier own pox virus.(and going back further it came from an unknown rodent host.
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I have a suspicion that if it weren’t for all the disease the colonizers would have destroyed them anyway.
Also nobody intentionally made them deathly ill? Smallpox blankets.
You’re not wrong.
However, it is worth pointing out that the documented “smallpox blankets” stuff happened in the 1700s and 1800s, which was already a century or two after the continent had been greatly depopulated by diseases spread unintentionally.
Good point, I didn’t think about that.
Measles, syphillis, rubella, mumps, chickenpox even. chickenpox is especially dangerous to adults who never had it.
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“Guns, Germs, & Steel”?
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I guess my sticking point is, does it matter if it was intentional? Contact with Europe destroyed them from both accidents and outright malice. It was still genocide even if it was on accident, imo.
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smallpox being one, there is evidence smallpox originated from horses, which were abundant in europe, horses had thier own pox virus.(and going back further it came from an unknown rodent host.