A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective (review)

This text, designed for the classroom, focuses on the issue of the apparent collapse of native American populations following Old World contact in the late fifteenth century. Suzanne Austin Alchon rightly argues that the lack of success of Amerindians in the confrontation with outsiders was not due to a single cause, but was based on a combination of factors. War, exploitation, slavery, migration, and disease all had a negative impact on New World peoples. While some recent scholars have stressed the role of epidemic disease in the process, here the author attempts a more balanced approach.

The first chapter, on the impact of disease in the Old World before 1500, sets the stage as Alchon points out that while epidemics came regularly, killer pandemics appeared less frequently, and the response to the threat of disease was similar across cultures. Her diagnosis of smallpox as the killer epidemic that afflicted the Athenians during the Peloponnesian Wars may be too quick, given the long debate among historians of medicine on the correct identification of this "plague" that was so important for the outcome of the conflict. But covering the history of disease and curing for several thousand years, from Asia through Europe and Africa, in twenty-five pages, does not leave space for elaboration. Alchon stresses that in the Old World, epidemics were not quickly followed by other epidemic waves, thus providing the opportunity for population recuperation.

Chapter 2 covers the New World disease environment before 1492, including a catalog of illnesses, mortality levels, and the nature and efficacy of native American medical practice. The Amerindian reaction to illness was remarkably similar to the response of people elsewhere in the world. Sickness in the Americas as in the Old World was seen as a loss of balance, and to achieve a cure it was necessary to restore that balance. The cause of disease was largely supernatural, and spiritual forces needed to be appeased. Specialists assisted in healing and caring for the sick. If all else failed flight was an alternative. Like other recent scholars, Alchon points out that America was not a disease-free paradise: disease did kill in epidemic form, and debilitate as well. The difference in America was the absence of some notorious Old World killers—smallpox, measles, and the plague among them.

The next two chapters treat the impact of epidemics on Amerindians from 1492 to the 1880s. The coverage is similar to other recent surveys, although the time frame is broader. Lack of space precludes detailed analysis. The author concludes that mortality rates for native Americans remained relatively high, even as medicine improved and mortality rates for Europeans and Africans declined, and that the "disparity in matters relating to the severity of disease and mortality appears to lie in the policies of colonial powers and their successor states throughout the region" (p. 108).

In the last chapter Alchon first examines native response to impending epidemic disasters, and then evaluates the significance of military conquest, indigenous slavery, exploitative labor, and migrations, and the impact of colonialism in general. She recognizes the heavy toll of Old World epidemics on "virgin soil" populations in the Americas, yet cautions that too much emphasis on the biological is misplaced and that students must recognize the differential role of colonial systems. She points out that the English and Portuguese tended not to be concerned about the health of native peoples, whereas the Spanish were, because of their need for a viable labor force. The Spanish of course arrived earliest, and took over the most densely populated and highly developed regions of the Americas. The impact of diseases on Amerindian peoples was similar to the impact on the Old World peoples...