ABSTRACT

One of the great episodes of culture contact in world history involved the incursion of Europeans in North and South America from 1492 onward. The outlines of the story are familiar. The discoveries of Columbus led to rapid European conquest, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean; North America followed a bit more slowly. Virtually all the advantages in the interchange were on the Europeans’ side. They had superior technology, with iron weapons and horses as well as guns. They had superior disease immunity; contact with European and African diseases would kill 80 percent or more of the Native American population within two centuries. Europeans quickly set up economic arrangements that would benefit them, seizing land from natives, attempting to use their labor and, where this was insufficient, importing slaves. Native American government structures were quickly undermined, particularly where, as in Central America and the Andes, they had been most elaborate.