many people are convinced today that the (smallpox and other) epidemics introduced to north america by european settlers were real. allegedly 100m native american people inhabited north america before and it is assumed that 90% fell victim to these epidemics. that would make it a greater catastrophe, measured by number of casualties, if i'm not mistaken?
That was for sure a big catastrophe, but where did you get your numbers?
"The population figure for indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus has proven difficult to establish. Scholars rely on archaeological data and written records from settlers from the Old World. Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated the pre-Columbian population as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitate to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for 100 million or more." - that's for both North and South America.
< many people are convinced today that the (smallpox and other) epidemics introduced to north america by european settlers were real.
Out of curiosity, why do you word it this way? I'm curious because I have a coworker that thinks the smallpox story is some evil liberal conspiracy of some sort, and never happened. Yet I see only evidence for, not against.
Mass death from disease clearly happened. I think there is some room to question how much of it was intentional. Clearly some of it was intentional, but if diseases unthinkingly carried over on the first voyages are responsible for a large number of the deaths, we should take note of that.
i tried to word it neutral with regard to intentionality. after what i read it was considered more of a tragedy then anything else, but i think there are new interpretations, which are also mentioned in comments above.
