Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650 (review)

Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. By Noble David Cook. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xiii + 248 pp., preface, introduction, map, illustration, tables, bibliography, index. $54.95 cloth.)

Few topics in the area of colonial Latin American history have remained as perennially controversial as native depopulation. Noble David Cook’s Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 focuses on the role of epidemics in relation to the catastrophic population loss concomitant with the European conquest of the Americas. While largely synthetic, Cook does not cite primary sources; rather, he mostly analyzes and discusses secondary works (his own previous studies included). His monograph proves essential to those seeking familiarity with the complex and often difficult to comprehend topic of depopulation.

Divided into five compact and smoothly written chapters, Born to Die focuses on but does not limit itself to the study of disease as a major contributing factor to native depopulation. Rather than simply narrate the ravages of introduced diseases such as influenza and smallpox, Cook provides a crisp discussion of such related topics as problems in quantifying the precolonial native population; the mechanisms whereby European diseases came to infect natives; the paths traveled by disease pathogens; the role of disease as an auxiliary in conquest; and native reactions to the epidemics. In the end the reader comes away with a thorough if not profound understanding of how introduced diseases unwittingly facilitated the process of conquest, making possible the subjugation of natives. Conversely, disease also served to lessen the wealth of the new areas, as they reduced the amounts of collectable tribute and restricted access to large pools of labor forcing Spaniards, at least in such areas as the Caribbean, to import necessary labor in the form of African slaves.

Born to Die starts with a rare gem: a genuinely useful introduction. Often introductions shed little light on the succeeding text. Perhaps cognizant of this, Cook wrote a careful introduction that serves as background for understanding the distinct and often contesting portrayal of Spaniards as either all-out evil (e.g., the Black Legend) or entirely blameless for the consequences of their actions (e.g., the White Legend). Cook moves beyond simplistic portrayals and instead seeks to understand depopulation in light of current research, and thus Europeans are spared the judgment of history, although Cook at no time apologizes for their deeds. Each of the succeeding chapters and the conclusion prove informative and interesting.

Chapters 2 (“The Deaths of Aztec Cuitláhuac and Inca Huayna Capac: The First New World Pandemic”) and 3 (“Settling In: Epidemics and Conquest to the End of the First Century”) prove the most original and arguably the most important in terms of their contributions to the study of native depopulation. Strongly reminiscent of Georges Lefebvre’s masterly La Grande Peur de 1789, Cook meticulously traces the spread of smallpox and measles from the Caribbean to the mainland and the related theme of the impact of the diseases on Spanish Conquest plans. By focusing not only on diseases in relation to humans but also on epidemics as separate entities obeying their own regulatory laws, Cook demonstrates that Europeans, even had they known that disease would lead to the deaths of millions of natives, would likely not have done anything differently. After all, it seems that sealing off the Americas was not an option taken seriously, even by such idealists as Bartolomé de las Casas.

Chapter 3 discusses the constant waves of diseases and their introduction to such areas as Florida. Cook ably demonstrates that rather than one wave of disease, natives had to contend with repeated epidemics, succeeding ones often proving more devastating than first waves because of their infecting already weakened and decimated populations. Some epidemics, like those that ravaged Mesoamerica in the 1540s, spared no one. Cook writes, “All sources concur that the death rate from the sickness was horrendous. It afflicted all...