Hmm. Your first comment is a complaint that the reason people talk about disease with regard to the conquest of the New World is to let themselves off the hook for genecide and that disease killing of the natives was largely a myth. I don't think you've demonstrated that. In fact your first link counters your whole argument as I understand it:
Abstract. The myth persists that in 1492 the Americas were a sparsely populated wilderness, -a world of barely perceptible human disturbance.- There is substantial evidence, however, that the Native American landscape of the early sixteenth century was a humanized landscape almost everywhere. Populations were large. Forest composition had been modified, grasslands had been created, wildlife disrupted, and erosion was severe in places. Earthworks, roads, fields, and settlements were ubiquitous. With Indian depopulation in the wake of Old World disease, the environment recovered in many areas. A good argument can be made that the human presence was less visible in 1750 than it was in 1492.
I don't think that anybody here is arguing that violence against the natives Americans didn't happen. (The genocide in Argentina was particularly egregious.) The discussion is about the importance of disease in the initial phases of colonization. I think that it's pretty clear a large die off was a necessary precuser to colonization. It is part of why you don't see as much European colonization on other continents.
You can read The Conquest of the Inca by John Hemming for an account of how disease affected the Inca before the Spanish invaded.
You can also read just about any history of Plymouth Colony to know that the settlers found an empty harbor to settle in. Accounts of Plymouth Colony like yours frustrate me because you imply that the settlers had to massacre people in order make an initial settlement when the massacre you refer to happened seventeen years after the initial settlement and comes from an incident where natives for fought alongside settlers. This is because the Plymouth settlers were initially welcomed by local tribes hoping to use them as support against their enemies.
This is why I bring up the universality of violence and empire. Oftentimes when people talk about colonialism as something that was done to the natives, as if the natives had no agency or understanding of their own. It reads like a sort of benevolent racism but I think that what's really going on is the replacement of one oversimplification with another.
Violence is not just a part of European and a few other civilizations but a part of humanity generally. This is important to understand. You can't treat the conquest of the Americas like it was some sort of aberration or the result of something specific to European culture that can be rooted out. This is a broader condition of humanity generally. So no, I don't think that modern gun violence has anything more to do with the conquest of the Americas than it does with the conquest of Babylon by Assyria.
I appreciate the time you spent on your comment. Would you mind not indenting the block quote? People need to side-scroll to read it, which is particularly problematic on mobile. It's common on HN to use a ">" prefix and sometimes asterisks to italicize block quotes instead.
Sorry. I posted yesterday just before bed. Here's the quote in full:
"Abstract. The myth persists that in 1492 the Americas were a sparsely populated wilderness, -a world of barely perceptible human disturbance.- There is substantial evidence, however, that the Native American landscape of the early sixteenth century was a humanized landscape almost everywhere. Populations were large. Forest composition had been modified, grasslands had been created, wildlife disrupted, and erosion was severe in places. Earthworks, roads, fields, and settlements were ubiquitous. With Indian depopulation in the wake of Old World disease, the environment recovered in many areas. A good argument can be made that the human presence was less visible in 1750 than it was in 1492."
You can read The Conquest of the Inca by John Hemming for an account of how disease affected the Inca before the Spanish invaded.
You can also read just about any history of Plymouth Colony to know that the settlers found an empty harbor to settle in. Accounts of Plymouth Colony like yours frustrate me because you imply that the settlers had to massacre people in order make an initial settlement when the massacre you refer to happened seventeen years after the initial settlement and comes from an incident where natives for fought alongside settlers. This is because the Plymouth settlers were initially welcomed by local tribes hoping to use them as support against their enemies.
This is why I bring up the universality of violence and empire. Oftentimes when people talk about colonialism as something that was done to the natives, as if the natives had no agency or understanding of their own. It reads like a sort of benevolent racism but I think that what's really going on is the replacement of one oversimplification with another.
Violence is not just a part of European and a few other civilizations but a part of humanity generally. This is important to understand. You can't treat the conquest of the Americas like it was some sort of aberration or the result of something specific to European culture that can be rooted out. This is a broader condition of humanity generally. So no, I don't think that modern gun violence has anything more to do with the conquest of the Americas than it does with the conquest of Babylon by Assyria.