[lit-ideas] Re: McNeill on Civilized Societies' disease advantage
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2014 17:22:11 +0200
It does seem that the diseases were a potent biological weapon, but how
does this correlate with being civilized ? It is far from clear that the
Spaniards of the early 16. century, who had recently expelled the Muslims
and the Jews and who practiced Inquisition against Christians, were more
civilized than the Aztecs or the Incas. Moreover, even if they had been,
this would not necessarily have to be the cause of stronger immunological
systems. If, on the other hand, being civilized is a priori defined as
being resistant to diseases, then we have a version of 'survival of the
fittest' again, i.e. a self-validating circular theory.
The resistance to diseases might not necessarily have to do with being
civilized, but with being part of the Asiatic-European-African land mass
which had permitted numerous diseases to spread everywhere, and thus caused
natural selection (or whatever) for resistant immunological systems, while
the American populations had been geographically isolated and hence
hitherto avoided exposure to the same diseases. The sub-Saharan Africans,
who were also not necessarily more civilized than the Aztecs or the Incas,
proved more resistant to the European diseases, besides having a few of
their own which the Europeans found dangerous.
O.K.
On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> William McNeill wrote* Plagues and People* in 1976. In 1998 it was
> reprinted with the addition of his analysis of the AIDs disease. He
> thought the earlier publication was valid as is. I am 22% through the
> Kindle edition and have run across only one strange comment about the
> effect of disease upon the Aztecs during the Spanish invasion. His
> comment was something like one I made recently in regard to something else,
> namely that he read it some place but couldn’t remember where but (and here
> he expressed more confidence in his memory than I did in mine) some
> (primary or nearly primary) source provided evidence that disease was Cortes’s
> most potent ally. Yes, a few of the local Amerindian tribes (who had been
> mistreated by the Aztecs) helped Cortes, but only after they were convinced
> he was going to win. He had to demonstrate to them that he could win
> without them, and they wanted to be on the winning side.
>
> What follows is McNeill more broadly (and more usefully) writing about
> the process whereby disease assists a Civilized Society against a more
> primitive one. This passage would seem to apply to Rome’s ability to
> conquer with regularity (at least early on), all the nearby more-numerous
> but also more-primitive tribes.
>
> “When civilized societies learned to live with the “childhood diseases”
> that can only persist among large human populations, they acquired a very
> potent biological weapon. It came into play whenever new contacts with
> previously
> isolated, smaller human groups occurred. Civilized diseases when let loose
> among a population that lacked any prior exposure to the germ in question
> quickly assumed drastic proportions, killing off old and young alike
> instead of remaining a perhaps serious, but still tolerable, disease
> affecting small children.
>
> “The disruptive effect of such an epidemic is likely to be greater than
> the mere loss of life, severe as that may be. Often survivors are
> demoralized, and lose all faith in inherited custom and belief which had
> not prepared them for such a disaster. Sometimes new infections actually
> manifest their greatest virulence among young adults, owing, some doctors
> believe, to excessive vigor of this age-group’s antibody reactions to the
> invading disease organism. Population losses within the twenty-to-forty age
> bracket are obviously far more damaging to society at large than comparably
> numerous destruction of either the very young or the very old. Indeed, any
> community that loses a substantial percentage of its young adults in a
> single epidemic finds it hard to maintain itself materially and
> spiritually. When an initial exposure to one civilized infection is swiftly
> followed by similarly destructive exposure to others, the structural
> cohesion of the community is almost certain to collapse. In the early
> millennia of civilized history, the result was sporadically to create a
> fringe of half-empty land on the margins of civilized societies. Simple
> folk brought into contact with urban populations always risked
> demoralizing and destructive disease encounters. Survivors were often in no
> position to offer serious resistance to thoroughgoing incorporation into
> the civilized body politic.
>
> “To be sure, warfare characteristically mingled with and masked this
> epidemiological process. Trade, which was imperfectly distinct from
> warlike raiding, was another normal way for civilized folk to probe new
> lands. And since war and trade relations have often entered civilized
> records, whereas epidemics among illiterate and helpless border folk have
> not . . .” [McNeil, William.* Plagues and Peoples* (p. 86-87). Knopf
> Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]
>
> Lawrence
>
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