american-holocaust

222 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTwas devouring all that was of most value in its conquered New Worldterritories--the fabulous wealth in people, culture, and precious metals thathad so excited the European imagination in the heady era that immediatelyfollowed Columbus's return from his first voyage. The number of indigenouspeople in the Caribbean and Meso- and South America in 1492 probablyhad been at least equal to that of all Europe, including Russia, at thetime. Not much more than a century later it was barely equal to that ofEngland. Entire rich and elaborate and ancient cultures had been erasedfrom the face of the earth. And by 1650 the amount of silver coming outof the Americas was down to far less than half of what it was only fiftyyears earlier, while gold output had fallen below 10 percent of what it hadbeen. 71 For a century and more the Spanish presence in the Americas hadbeen the equivalent of a horde of ravenous locusts, leaving little but barrennessbehind them.And still, despite so many years of such incredible plunder, Spain itselfremained an economic disaster. The treasure it had imported from theIndies, Mexico, and Peru only paid brief visits to the Iberian peninsulabefore ending up in the coffers of Spain's northerly European creditors. Inretrospect, the foundations thus were laid for the "underdevelopment" ofLatin America as a modern Third World region. The pattern was the samein other places: wherever the path of Western conquest led, if there werevast available natural and human resources that easily could be taken andused, they were--but the end result was, at best, short-term economic growthin the area of colonization, as opposed to long-term economic development.72The story of British conquest and colonization in North America is, ineconomic terms, almost precisely the opposite of Spain's experience to thesouth. In the north, without a cornucopia of treasure to devour and peopleto exploit, the English were forced to engage in endeavors that led to longtermdevelopment rather than short-term growth, particularly in New England.Far fewer native people greeted the British explorers and coloniststhan had welcomed the Spanish, in part because the population of thecontinent north of Mexico had always been smaller and less densely settled,and in part because by the time British colonists arrived Europeandiseases had had more time to spread and destroy large numbers of Indiansin Virginia, New England, and beyond. These regions also containednothing even remotely comparable to the exportable mineral wealth theSpanish had found in the areas they invaded. The most the notthern dimeshad to offer in this regard was fish. To be sure, in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies the English imported huge amounts of cod from America'sNorth Atlantic waters, and later tobacco and furs were brought in. 73But fish, tobacco, and furs were not the same as gold or silver.Nevertheless, despite the very dissimilar economic and native demographicsituations they found, the British wasted little time in exterminat-