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In human geography, McNeill's law is the process outlined in William H. McNeill's book Plagues and Peoples. The process described concerns the role of microbial disease in the conquering of people-groups. [1] Particularly, it describes how diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, scarlet fever, and sexually-transmitted diseases have significantly reduced native populations so that they are unable to resist colonization. [2]
According to McNeill's Law, the microbiological aspect of conquest and invasion has been the deciding principle or one of the deciding principles in both the expansion of certain empires (as during the emigration to the Americas) and the containment in others (as during the crusades). [3] The argument is that less civilized peoples were easily subjugated due to the immunological advantages of those coming from civilized countries. [4] An evidence presented to support the hypothesis involves the manner diseases associated with Europeans were rebuffed in their forays into disease-experienced countries such as China and Japan. [5]
McNeill's law also maintains that parasites are not only natural but also social in the sense that these organisms are part of the social continuum and that the human social evolution is inextricably linked with genetic transformations. [4]
Instances of McNeill's law occur from ancient times. The Israelites migrating out of the Nile Valley, probably the most densely populated area in the world at the time, into the relatively dry, less densely populated surrounding country were moving into territory that was safer vis-à-vis communicable disease and were carrying with them infections often unknown and quite possibly deadly to the scattered local peoples. [6]
The first people-group fully wiped out due to European expansion (with the possible exception of the Arawaks) was the Guanches of the Canary Islands. Despite an inbred ferocity, superior knowledge of the land and even a possible tactical superiority, they were eventually wiped out through the concentrated efforts of the Spanish and Portuguese. McNeill's Law would place the deciding factor squarely on the introduction of deadly diseases and parasites from the mainland to the previously geographically isolated islanders.[ citation needed ]
This is the likely explanation, as what records still exist show numerous deaths by disease on the islands and a declining birth rate, leading eventually to the almost complete end of the Guanches as a race.[ citation needed ]
Other instances include the devastation of the Incas by smallpox.[ citation needed ]
Colonialism is a practice by which a country controls people or areas, often by establishing colonies, generally for strategic and economic advancement. There is no clear definition of colonialism; definitions may vary depending on the use and context.
A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by the American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author Jared Diamond. In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book, and produced by the National Geographic Society, was broadcast on PBS in July 2005.
The Antonine Plague of AD 165 to 180, also known as the Plague of Galen, was the first known pandemic impacting the Roman Empire, possibly contracted and spread by soldiers who were returning from campaign in the Near East. Scholars generally believe the plague was smallpox, although measles has also been suggested, and recent genetic evidence strongly suggests that smallpox only arose much later. In AD 169 the plague may have claimed the life of the Roman emperor Lucius Verus, who was co-regnant with Marcus Aurelius. These two emperors had risen to the throne by virtue of being adopted by the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius, and as a result, their family name, Antoninus, has become associated with the pandemic.
The first European contact in 1492 started an influx of communicable diseases into the Caribbean. Diseases originating in the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) came to the New World for the first time, resulting in demographic and sociopolitical changes due to the Columbian Exchange from the late 15th century onwards. The Indigenous peoples of the Americas had little immunity to the predominantly European diseases, resulting in significant loss of life and contributing to their enslavement and exploitation perpetrated by the European colonists. Waves of enslaved Africans were brought to replace the dwindling Indigenous populations, solidifying the position of disease in triangular trade.
Population figures for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European colonization have been difficult to establish. By the end of the 20th century, most scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.
Ecological imperialism is an explanatory concept, introduced by Alfred Crosby, that points out the contribution of European biological species such as animals, plants and pathogens in the success of European colonists. Crosby wrote Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 in 1986. He used the term "Neo-Europes" to describe the places colonized and conquered by Europeans.
Societal collapse is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an adaptive system, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse, population decline or overshoot, mass migration, and sabotage by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear.
Globalization, the flow of information, goods, capital, and people across political and geographic boundaries, allows infectious diseases to rapidly spread around the world, while also allowing the alleviation of factors such as hunger and poverty, which are key determinants of global health. The spread of diseases across wide geographic scales has increased through history. Early diseases that spread from Asia to Europe were bubonic plague, influenza of various types, and similar infectious diseases.
The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic spanned 1836 through 1840 but reached its height after the spring of 1837, when an American Fur Company steamboat, the SS St. Peter, carried infected people and supplies up the Missouri River in the Midwestern United States. The disease spread rapidly to indigenous populations with no natural immunity, causing widespread illness and death across the Great Plains, especially in the Upper Missouri River watershed. More than 17,000 Indigenous people died along the Missouri River alone, with some bands becoming nearly extinct.
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making smallpox the only human disease to be eradicated.
Disease in colonial America that afflicted the early immigrant settlers was a dangerous threat to life. Some of the diseases were new and treatments were ineffective. Malaria was deadly to many new arrivals, especially in the Southern colonies. Of newly arrived able-bodied young men, over one-fourth of the Anglican missionaries died within five years of their arrival in the Carolinas. Mortality was high for infants and small children, especially for diphtheria, smallpox, yellow fever, and malaria. Most sick people turned to local healers, and used folk remedies. Others relied upon the minister-physicians, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and ministers; a few used colonial physicians trained either in Britain, or an apprenticeship in the colonies. One common treatment was blood letting. The method was crude due to a lack of knowledge about infection and disease among medical practitioners. There was little government control, regulation of medical care, or attention to public health. By the 18th century, Colonial physicians, following the models in England and Scotland, introduced modern medicine to the cities in the 18th century, and made some advances in vaccination, pathology, anatomy and pharmacology.
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. Genetic evidence suggests that the smallpox virus emerged 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Prior to that, similar ancestral viruses circulated, but possibly only in other mammals, and possibly with different symptoms. Only a few written reports dating from about 500 AD to 1000 AD are considered reliable historical descriptions of smallpox, so understanding of the disease prior to that has relied on genetics and archaeology. However, during the 2nd millennium AD, especially starting in the 16th century, reliable written reports become more common. The earliest physical evidence of smallpox is found in the Egyptian mummies of people who died some 3,000 years ago. Smallpox has had a major impact on world history, not least because indigenous populations of regions where smallpox was non-native, such as the Americas and Australia, were rapidly and greatly reduced by smallpox during periods of initial foreign contact, which helped pave the way for conquest and colonization. During the 18th century the disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five reigning monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
Although a variety of infectious diseases existed in the Americas in pre-Columbian times, the limited size of the populations, smaller number of domesticated animals with zoonotic diseases, and limited interactions between those populations hampered the transmission of communicable diseases. Eurasian infections and epidemics had major effects on Native American life in the colonial period and nineteenth century, especially.
The social history of viruses describes the influence of viruses and viral infections on human history. Epidemics caused by viruses began when human behaviour changed during the Neolithic period, around 12,000 years ago, when humans developed more densely populated agricultural communities. This allowed viruses to spread rapidly and subsequently to become endemic. Viruses of plants and livestock also increased, and as humans became dependent on agriculture and farming, diseases such as potyviruses of potatoes and rinderpest of cattle had devastating consequences.
In epidemiology, a virgin soil epidemic is an epidemic in which populations that previously were in isolation from a pathogen are immunologically unprepared upon contact with the novel pathogen. Virgin soil epidemics have occurred with European colonization, particularly when European explorers and colonists brought diseases to lands they conquered in the Americas, Australia and Pacific Islands.
The Massachusetts smallpox epidemic or colonial epidemic was a smallpox outbreak that hit Massachusetts in 1633. Smallpox outbreaks were not confined to 1633 however, and occurred nearly every ten years. Smallpox is caused by two different types of variola viruses: variola major and variola minor. The disease was hypothesized to be transmitted due to an increase in the immigration of European settlers to the region who brought Old World smallpox aboard their ships.
During the imperial period of Rome, disease was a devastating aspect of life. As the borders of the empire continuously expanded and the population steadily grew, cities in the Roman Empire were exposed to a multitude of diseases. There were a variety of potential causes of these diseases present in the highly dense and quickly growing society's way of living. The sewage systems, the public bathing houses, and the diet of citizens in Imperial Rome all contributed to the spread of disease.
Biological warfare (BW)—also known as bacteriological warfare, or germ warfare—has had a presence in popular culture for over 100 years. Public interest in it became intense during the Cold War, especially the 1960s and '70s, and continues unabated. This article comprises a list of popular culture works referencing BW or bioterrorism, but not those pertaining to natural, or unintentional, epidemics.
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