Technology, Disease and Colonial Conquests, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries : : Essays Reappraising the Guns and Germs Theories / / edited by George Raudzens.

• Superior document: History of Warfare ; 2
• Author: Raudzens, George.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2001.; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2001
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: History of Warfare ; 2.; European History and Culture - Book Archive 2000-2006.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (331 pages)

The eight essays in this study reassess evidence about the plausibility of the widely accepted guns and germs theories which put forward firepower advantages and inadvertent disease importation as the two main causes of European imperial expansion overseas during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. All argue that these theories are important but oversimplified. The effectiveness of firepower and disease impacts on specific groups of New World indigenes were always conditioned by time, place, and cultural characteristics. Long range communication control was sometimes more important. Above all, motives driving invasions and conquests were often more influential than means and methodologies.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Preliminary Material / George Raudzens -- List of Figures / ditor: George Raudzens -- List of Contributors / George Raudzens -- Introduction / George Raudzens -- 1. European Overseas Expansion and the Military Revolution / Jeremy Black -- 2. Outfighting or Outpopulating? Main Reasons for Early Colonial Conquests, 1493–1788 / George Raudzens -- 3. Conflict and Synthesis: Frontier Warfare in North America, 1513–1815 / Armstrong Starkey -- 4. The Long Conquest: Collaboration by Native Andean Elites in the Colonial System, 1532–1825 / David Cahill -- 5. The Impact of Disease / Francis Brooks -- 6. Pathogens, Places and Peoples: Geographical Variations in the Impact of Disease in Early Spanish America and the Philippines / Linda Newson -- 7. The Iberian Advantage / Lawrence A. Clayton -- 8. “Black with Canoes”. Aboriginal Resistance and the Canoe: Diplomacy, Trade and Warfare in the Meeting Grounds of Northeastern North America, 1600–1821 / David McNab, Bruce W. Hodgins, and Dale S. Standen -- Back Matter -- Index / George Raudzens -- History of Warfare / Editor: George Raudzens.