220109 The "Great Dying" of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, 1492-1650 (S) (WiSe 2023/2024)

After 1492, when Columbus accidentally landed in the Caribbean (instead of India), contact between Europeans and American indigenous peoples proved particularly deadly for the latter. In the following 150 years (and afterwards as well), the indige-nous population suffered massive losses, sometimes estimated to no less than 80-90 percent of the pre-Columbian total. The reasons were multiple. However, the great-est factor was disease introduced by Europeans, as part of the "Columbian Ex-change" (A. Crosby), with devastating effect. In this seminar we will look into con-temporary historical accounts of the "Great Dying", discus their reliability, and compare the evidence with archaeological findings. We will then discus demograph-ic problems of how to estimate pre-Columbian American populations and how to assess later developments. Of course, we will also look into the reasons and contro-versies that emerged around theme. The latter include debates about the role of vio-lence and its relation with disease; the problem of genocide and historical memory; and, last but not least, most recent debates about the environmental effects of demo-graphic decline.