Movie Trailer DatabaseNumerous diseases afflicted the native peoples who had Cook goes into much detail, in subsequent chapters, tracing the spread of diseases throughout the Latin American continent and North America. According to Cook, this extinction of the Caribbean peoples set a pattern that was repeated time and time again in the Americas. Within fifty years after contact, the native people were virtually extinct. Cook begins his discussion where contact was first made: the island of Hispaniola.
Movie Trailers Coming SoonOther nations used the Black Legend to justify taking actions against the Spaniards in Europe or within their overseas territories. This was the period of the Spanish Armada and the Inquisition. The popularity of the Black Death was due, in large part, to what was occurring in Europe at the time. Cook also points out that native peoples died wherever they came into contact with Europeans, be they Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch. While not denying that there were atrocities committed by Spaniards, Cook insists that the deaths of so many native peoples cannot be attributed to the atrocities exclusively, since there were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died.
Cook maintains that contrary to the Black Legend, so popular during colonial times and ever since, Old World diseases were immensely more successful than Spanish cruelty and atrocities in the conquering and subjugation of the indigenous peoples in the Americas. In his book, Born To Die, Cook explores the role that disease played in the European conquest of the Americas.
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