Spain´s own naval victories?

From the battle of Lepanto to the mid-19th century.
lwd
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

Post by lwd »

hammy wrote:...
As the Invader , you dont have to have acted in a particularly brutal way to trigger this situation . ...
In the American South East the Spanish didn't come as conquers. They came as explorers and the results were still devastating.
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hammy
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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Yes . My point is that , exactly .
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

Post by Byron Angel »

Comparing the European plague to what occurred in the Americas is not altogether consistent in my mind. The plague involved a single disease. The inhabitants of pre-colonial America were simultaneously inundated with a wave of different diseases ranging from smallpox and typhus to mumps and measles, any and all of which were lethal to them due to the almost complete absence of immunities within the population.

Worth considering.


Byron
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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We must consider the social decomposition that the cultures of pre colombian America were living. Both, the aztecs and the incas were facing civil unrest and heavy opposition from the peoples they did enslaved and exploit.

The common "socialist borne" scenario that usually is given to out schoolchildren is that of naturalistic-living (eco friendly) societies that abided human pacifist principles until evil europeans came, confused them, lied to them, stole them everything and enslaved them... I tend to agree that the second part happened (and not only from the Spanish but from the rest of the Europeans too) but not with the first.

With all it´s inexactitudes and mistakes the movie "Apocalypto" from Mel Gibson is more accurate than the socialist potrait our children are having at the hands of ignorant teachers.
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RF
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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hammy wrote:
As mentioned above , we've all seen countless post-disaster survivalist Films and TV series , and I wonder If , as a result we are not now actually "rehearsed" in what to do in these situations .

There also seems to be a spread of Survivalist documentary.....
No am ount of rehearsal can prepare you for the unexpected and even if expected rehearsal can reveal that a simulated or expected occurence can't always be properly prepared for. Especially if it takes you by surprise.
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RF
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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Byron Angel wrote:Comparing the European plague to what occurred in the Americas is not altogether consistent in my mind. The plague involved a single disease. The inhabitants of pre-colonial America were simultaneously inundated with a wave of different diseases ranging from smallpox and typhus to mumps and measles, any and all of which were lethal to them due to the almost complete absence of immunities within the population.

Worth considering.
Byron
Yes it is worth considering, but my point was that a devasting disease with which there was no defence, in the case of the Black Death, only managed to kill a minority of the population. Some who caught the infection survived, and this in an age before antibiotics to fight the plague bacteiria.

Similary in the native Latin American tribes, when they were confronted with a whole host of new infections, there was a catastrophic death toll. But as predicted in Darwins' analysis of evolution, the stronger individuals survived and in time resistance to the infections did develop. Racial intermixing that happened speeded up that process.
The destruction of the social order referred to by hammy was achieved by the Spanish as an act of military conquest, the diseases followed in the wake of that conquest.
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RF
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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lwd wrote:
In the American South East the Spanish didn't come as conquers. They came as explorers and the results were still devastating.
With respect lwd, this is semantics. They came as explorers, they then conquered and annexed.

Many of the Spanish explorers came as missionaries, out to save the souls of the conquered tribes and convert them to Catholicism......
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RF
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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Karl Heidenreich wrote:We must consider the social decomposition that the cultures of pre colombian America were living. Both, the aztecs and the incas were facing civil unrest and heavy opposition from the peoples they did enslaved and exploit.

The common "socialist borne" scenario that usually is given to out schoolchildren is that of naturalistic-living (eco friendly) societies that abided human pacifist principles until evil europeans came, confused them, lied to them, stole them everything and enslaved them... I tend to agree that the second part happened (and not only from the Spanish but from the rest of the Europeans too) but not with the first.

With all it´s inexactitudes and mistakes the movie "Apocalypto" from Mel Gibson is more accurate than the socialist potrait our children are having at the hands of ignorant teachers.
There are fairly modern parallels with this - a supposedly socialist ideology practicising conquest and imperialism, even calling itself socialist - the nazis and Stalinist communism.
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RF
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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lwd wrote:It should also be noted that European countries in general had by that time incurred a severe distatste for religions that practiced human sacrafice. The Aztecs in particular generated considerable antipathy due to this and not just among the Europeans.
And the burning of ''heretics'' in England by the Tudors???
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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RF wrote: Yes it is worth considering, but my point was that a devasting disease with which there was no defence, in the case of the Black Death, only managed to kill a minority of the population. Some who caught the infection survived, and this in an age before antibiotics to fight the plague bacteiria.

Similary in the native Latin American tribes, when they were confronted with a whole host of new infections, there was a catastrophic death toll. But as predicted in Darwins' analysis of evolution, the stronger individuals survived and in time resistance to the infections did develop. Racial intermixing that happened speeded up that process.
The destruction of the social order referred to by hammy was achieved by the Spanish as an act of military conquest, the diseases followed in the wake of that conquest.

..... I accept most of your argument. I would only suggest that the diseases were first spread by initial contacts rather than as a result of outright conquest. At least that was the case with the indigenous Indian tribes of North America if I've read my American history correctly. Some academics estimate huge mortality figures - 80 pct or more in some cases - from these European diseases, throughout the Americas.
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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RF wrote:
lwd wrote:
In the American South East the Spanish didn't come as conquers. They came as explorers and the results were still devastating.
With respect lwd, this is semantics. They came as explorers, they then conquered and annexed.......
Not really. The only part of the South East that they ever conquered was Florida. Explorers traveled through the present day states of Gorgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. I forget if they got up into Tennessee as well.
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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RF wrote:
lwd wrote:It should also be noted that European countries in general had by that time incurred a severe distatste for religions that practiced human sacrafice. The Aztecs in particular generated considerable antipathy due to this and not just among the Europeans.
And the burning of ''heretics'' in England by the Tudors???
This was hardly "human sacrafice" there is/was a distinction made between killing in the name of religion (which was acceptable) and sacrificing people to gods (especially ones that were not your gods). One could also point to the inquisition, the witch trials, and the religious wars ("For God and No Quarter").
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hammy
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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Why are there no devastating plagues going in the opposite direction ? ie , back home to Europe .
There are enough Very Nasty Things in central America by way of diseases , parasites , etc , that you wouldn't want to be near , even today .
With the exception of Malaria , most probably brought in human hosts in the bloodstream from west Africa , then passed into biting anopheles mosquitos here , I cant think of any .
( usually called by its old name of "Ague" , malaria was rife in low lying wetland areas -- like where I live -- until after the First World War , and in the Netherlands .
( see the sick casualties of the British military expedition to Walcheren Island ( North bank of the Scheldt river ) during the Napoleonic War .
It used to be alleged that Venerial diseases came to Europe via returning Spanish conquistadores , but I read that this had been disproved by modern studies of some skeletal remains of Europeans who died two centuries before 1492 , the disease being present around 1300 . Apparently incidence prior to that date remained low as relatively few people lived in urban conurbations , so the spread of the disease among the general population was slower .
Maybe it was all the binge drinking that killed the bugs off ? Odd ....... .
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RF
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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I would think there were no plagues going in the opposite direction, back to Europe, for two reasons. One the bulk of the traffic was outward, at least initially, from Europe to the Americas, and secondly Europe, even Spain, has a colder climate in which the disease carrying parasites could not live. Neither does Europe have tropical ''swamplands'' we now call rainforests where such parasites could thrive.
Another possibility might be that coming from a colder climate the European settlors and the people back home had stronger immune systems.
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Re: Spain´s own naval victories?

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Most of the plagues seem to originate with organisms that start out attacking animals and jump to humans at some point. The number of human/animal interactions is obviously a strong factor in this. The "Old World" not only had a much larger population but made much greater use of domesticated animals. There was also enough comerce to mean that most diseases eventually worked their way across Eurasia. For all practicle purposes the "New World" had been isolated from the "old World" disease pool for 10,000+ years. That said there used to be in any case some proponets of sypholis (sp?) being a disease imported into the "Old World" from the Americas.
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