Within a century of contact, the Indian population in the Caribbean and Mexico had shrunk by over 90 percent.ĭuring the sixteenth century, when the House of Habsburg presided over an empire that included Spain, Austria, Italy, Holland, and much of the New World, Spain's enemies created an enduring set of ideas known as the "Black Legend." Propagandists from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands vilified the Spanish as a corrupt and cruel people who subjugated and exploited the New World Indians, stole their gold and silver, infected them with disease, and killed them in numbers without precedent. Isolated from such diseases as smallpox, influenza, and measles, the indigenous population proved to be extraordinarily susceptible. Oppressive labor, disruption of the Indian food supply, deliberate campaigns of extermination, and especially disease decimated the Indian population. The European discovery of the New World had a devastating impact on the Indian peoples of the Americas. Of these, four argued that Columbus's voyage had harmed human happiness. Late in the eighteenth century, around the time of the three hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage of discovery, the Abbé Raynal (1713-1796), a French philosopher, offered a prize for the best answer to the question: "Has the discovery of America been beneficial or harmful to the human race?"Įight responses to the question survive. Digital History Printable Version The Black Legend
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