• edel@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Very true, but Spaniards did not know about the lack of immunity from European diseases and never had that intention for erasure of Indigenous. The English, that colonized 2 centuries after the Spaniards, used European diseases as an additional tool for complete genocide on indigenous.

      • edel@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Germ theory was unknown then and those Spaniards lacked understanding of contagion, well I’m lying, the people then knew about contagion with blood and corpses but not through items like air or blankets. The disease spread, while catastrophic it was fully unintentional. The only accounts like the famed Bartolomé de las Casas described the diseases as “divine punishment” or “mysterious plague”, never as a warfare tool.

        However with the British, again more than 2 centuries later, there was knowledge and intent as per Jeffrey Amherst and Colonel Henry Bouquet discussing it “Could it not be contrived to send the smallpox among the disaffected tribes?” “I will try to inoculate them with some blankets…” during the Siege of Fort Pitt (1763).

        • Forester@pawb.socialBanned from community
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          1 year ago

          Case? You seem confused, I said the natives were mostly gone before the English stepped foot in the new world. That’s a historical fact read a book. I’m not saying anything else. I have no case.