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Politics : Ask Michael Burke
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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (66085)8/11/1999 8:19:00 PM
From: Henry Volquardsen  Read Replies (1) of 132070
 
The Europeans did pick up one or two things -- the pox (syphilis) is first recorded in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

they picked up more than that. The Bubonic Plaque was carried to Europe on ships coming from Asia right after trade relationships started to grow. The plague was very deadly to Asians but had not been as devastating on the same scale as to Europeans. So it was similar to the European introduction of diseases to the Americas in that a meeting of separated cultures led to one being devastated by the introduction of a new disease. The difference being the Asians did not send colonists to replace the devastated populations. If they had they probably would have succeeded.

It doesn't really explain the conquest and domination of India or China, though. The conquests came for different reasons. The conquest of the Americas comes the earliest when Europe was the not very advanced. An arguement can be made that the at that stage the Europeans would not have been able to conquer the Americas without that culture having been weakened by disease. Europe was also in contact with India and China at that time and there is no question they would have been incapable of conquering either culture. The conquest of India and later China come much later when Europe has had several centuries of rapid technological advance that put it in a very superior position.
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