WEST, NATURAL RESOURCES AND POPULATION CONTROL POLICIES IN AFRICA IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, THE

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2005 by Martin, Guy

Similarly, the French philosopher-aristocrat and keen observer of early American society Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in 1840, remarked: "If we reasoned from what passes in the world, we could almost say that the European is to other races of mankind what man is to the lower animals: he makes them subservient to his use, and when he cannot subdue them, he destroys them."18

A travel companion of Christopher Columbus in 1493 and catholic missionary priest sent by the King of Spain to Hispanola (Santo-Domingo) in the early 16th century, Bartolome de Las Casas observed that Spanish conquistadores were busily engaged in the genocide of the Indian population-which he describes as peaceful, friendly, and welcoming to strangers-of the various Caribbean islands. Las Casas estimated that over a 40-year period (1492 to 1541), all but 200 of the 3 million Indians who lived in Hispanola had been killed, and that the 500,000 inhabitants of Lucayes island had known the same fate. According to Las Casas, the macabre labors of the conquistadores in the more than 30 Caribbean islands and on the continent (central and south America) resulted in a total death toll exceeding 15 million Indians:

In the course of forty years [1492 to 1541], more than 12 million men, women and children died unjustly due to the tyranny and devilish undertakings of the Christians. This is an accurate and true estimate. In fact, 1 believe- "and I don't think that I am mistaken," that the total death toll of the Indian population amounted to more than 15 million.19

Las Casas also shows that greed was the prime motivation for the conquistadores dastardly actions: "Christians have killed and destroyed so many worthy souls for the sole purpose of acquiring gold, of enriching themselves very fast, and of enhancing their social status."20

What is striking in this regard is the scale and intensity of the genocide of the Indians of the Caribbean islands and Central America. Thus, Yves Bénot notes that within a 15-year period (1492-1507), the Indian population of Hispanola was reduced from 1.1 million [3 million according to Las Casas] to 60,000. By 1520, only about 1,000 Indians remained on the island, and none remained on that of Puerto Rico.21 In Mexico, there were about 25 million people when the Europeans arrived in 1519. Fifty years later, the figure had fallen to 2.7 million. Fifty more years later, there were 1.5 million Indians left. Over 90 per cent of the native population had been wiped out in a hundred years.22

The European (essentially British and French) colonization of North America resulted, through war, epidemics and diseases, in a drastic reduction of the population of indigenous American Indians. From a population estimated at 16 million in 1492, the North American Indians merely numbered 600,000 in 1800 and 375,000 in 1900, a loss of 15,625,000 people (or 97.6 per cent of the original population)!23

In addition to cheap alcoholic beverages, the European explorers brought with them a number of diseases then unknown in Africa, which spread, epidemic-like, with deadly speed among the African population who had no immunity or remedy against them, decimating entire villages and regions in the process. German anthropologist Georg Gerland observed in 1868 that the diseases of the whites have often been a decisive exterminating factor. Even healthy whites could be infectious as they carried a 'miasma,' a 'dust of disease,' which was the name in those days for what we would now call bacteria and viruses.24 Thus, the annual reports of the Native Affairs Department in Natal Province, South Africa, "bore evidence of the increasing ravages of measles, leprosy, smallpox, enteritis, dysentery, pneumonia, enteric fever, malaria fever, venereal disease and tuberculosis."25