Concept

War, enslavement and famine after 1492

Forces that, with disease, drove the collapse of Native populations after 1492.

1 link, 0 backed by primary records

How each side tells it

Connections 1

The Great Dying of the Americas According to Alexander Koch According to Jeffrey Ostler According to David S. Jones Scholarship & press 1 2 3 4
Paul Kelton, quoted by HISTORY, says British forces cut down corn and burned homes, turning people into refugees, which left them far more vulnerable to disease than infected blankets did. Jones also holds that disease must have the dominant role; his point is about what the "no immunity" story can hide.

Proof 4 sources

Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019. Scholarship & press
societal breakdown following ongoing war, slavery and famine due to shortage of healthy labor force likely increased the potency of epidemics in the Americas
Genocide and American Indian History, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2 Mar 2015. Scholarship & press Archived copy
War, for example, can result in displacement, impoverishment, and social stress, thus increasing vulnerability to pathogens.
When smallpox broke out in Virginia in 1696 it spread rapidly along networks of human contact that had been shaped by violence, deracination, and deprivation, destroying Indian communities from the Carolinas to the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River to Illinois.
Virgin Soils Revisited, The William and Mary Quarterly, 2003. Scholarship & press
theories of immunological determinism in the American context also have “instrumentality,” deflecting attention away from moral and political questions.
Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare?, HISTORY, 15 Nov 2018. Scholarship & press
it would kill women and children, not just warriors

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