American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

Este fabuloso libro es un despertar a lo encontré en muchos libros qué he leído anteriormente. El autor David E. Stannard hizo un excelente trabajo de investigación para obtener la cantidad de hechos relacionados a la invasión europea a este hermoso continente. SI fue el Primer HOLOCAUSTO en estas tierras ricas en cultura y arte

Probably the best book I have ever read on the subject. Unlike most books written by college professors who love to give their opinion, tell ya how it is, Stannard lets the actual notes of the past speak for themselves. Also probably the best sourced book I have ever read (and I have read many). It can be a bit of a tough read, horror show that our history is but itʼs mandatory knowledge. Without spoiling it, the book is laid out in a most unexpected but awesome way that really nails it. It gets into the WTF were these people thing in a most thorough way. VERY VERY well thought through. I thought it ended in a bit of an odd spot (time), but iʼm sure that was intentional. Should be in every high school classroom in America.

Normally when the word extinct is used it is in reference to animals but after reading this book this term can legitimately be used to describe what happened to the original citizens of America the American Indians. Christopher Columbus and his minions (I refuse to call them soldiers) savagely murdered and killed countless numbers of these Indians, a vivid example of this is given on page 83 " One favorite sport of the conquistadors was "dogging." Traveling as they did with packs of armored wolfhounds and mastiffs that were on a diet of human flesh and were trained to disembowel Indians, the Spanish used the dogs to terrorize slaves and to entertain the troops. An entire book Dogs of the Conquest, has been published recently, detailing the exploits of these animals as they accompanied their masters throughout the course of the Spanish depredations. "A properly fleshed dog," these authors say, "could pursue a 'savage' as zealously and effectively as a deer or a boar.... To many of the conquerors, the Indian was merely another savage animal, and the dogs were trained to pursue and rip apart their human quarry with the same zest as they felt when hunting wild beasts." And also on pages 83-84 "Just as the Spanish soldiers seem to have particularly enjoyed testing the sharpness of their yard-long rapier blades on the bodies of Indian children, so their dogs seemed to find the soft bodies of infants especially tasty, and thus the accounts of the invading conquistadors and the padres who traveled with them are filled with detailed descriptions of young Indian children routinely taken from their parents and fed to the hungry animals. Men who could take pleasure in this sort of thing had little trouble with less sensitive matters, such as the sacking and burning of entire cities and towns, and the destruction of books and tablets containing millennia of accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and religious belief."After page 146 there's an illustrated unnumbered section titled Genocide the first nine pages of this section contain pictures of how the Spanish tortured and killed Indian women and children as stated on the second page of this section "[The Spaniards] took babies from their mothers' breasts, grabbing them by the feet and smashing their heads against rocks...They built a long gibbet, low enough for the toes to touch the ground and prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles. Then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive."Not to be outdone the good old American cavalry also engaged in its' fair share of savage murder and killing as can be seen from the bottom of page126 to the top of page 127 "They turned their guns, Hotchkiss guns, etc., upon the women who were in the lodges standing under a flag of truce, and of course as soon as they were fired upon they fled....There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce, and the women and children of course were strewn all along the circular village until they were dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing, and that was especially a very sad sight. The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed." I personally do not celebrate Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day this book is ample proof and evidence as to why these two days should be set aside as a time for mourning not celebration, if you want your children to have a true understanding of American history then I strongly urge you to buy this book and have it as part of your home library.

Feels strange saying that I love a book that is as disturbing as this one is but I love that it's well-written and documented and it exposes some horrendous events in the history of the Americas as well as the world. Americans may well point fingers at the Nazis (and deservedly so) but it's a case of people in glass houses throwing stones. There is no question as to the repulsiveness and inhumanity of the genocide and mass murders perpetrated in Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia, and in a host of African nations, to name a few; but in our own not too distant past similar atrocities were perpetrated on the native populations of the Americas by the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and colonists/Americans. While the inhumanity elsewhere in the world is touched upon to show where the mindset of this barbarity likely originated, the focus is on the impact in the Americas -- North, South, and Central. The book contains graphic, disturbing descriptions of the cruelty done to the natives by men who have long been esteemed for their alleged contributions in history. Most notably Christopher Columbus. In my time in grade school, he and the many other conquistadors and explorers were portrayed and men of courage and integrity. This book paints a different picture of them as greedy, bloodthirsty, remorseless killers of peoples who they considered inhuman or subhuman. More troubling is Christianity's participation in these actions. Not to blame Christianity for initiating it but to indict it for condoning and even commending the events. Peaceful races of people minding their own business, living in communities well planned and constructed and advanced for their time, and who welcomed the interlopers were obliterated them. Much of the death and destruction was caused by the introduction of European diseases such as smallpox that killed tens of millions but a large part was also caused by actions of odious proportions. Entire civilizations such as the Aztec and the Inca and the Arawak whose artifacts have since been admired and sought after were wiped off the face of the earth. Tens of millions of people slaughtered. Men, women, children butchered. In numbers likely to exceed those of the aforementioned genocides combined. The purpose being to acquire their lands and their riches. Considered to be no more than animals needed to be exterminated. This is our history.This book should be required reading for everyone. The graphic descriptions of the savagery should cause outrage not only for the acts themselves but for a cultures that has covered up their crimes for centuries. And the holocaust has not ended yet.

This book discribes what the native first nations people had suffered 500 yrs. ago after the invaders came to their land. The monsterous genocide of a peaceful peoples. Attack dogs specially bred to tear apart and eat the men, women, babies; old and young. The savages projecting upon the good. Sad...

Most of us already know to some extent that it was bad - but nowhere near this bad. Read it and be shocked, though perhaps not surprised at the evil of which humans are capable. A sad irony is that, had their culture the one to prevail, we may not now be facing ecological catastrophe.

Dieses Buch gehört sicherlich zu den interessantesten, die ich über die Geschichte der indigenen Bewohner der Amerikas bisher gelesen habe. Der Autor beschreibt best informiert und schlüssig auch die Basis und die Ursachen für diesen 1492 begonnenen und immer noch andauernden Genozid an den amerikanischen Ureinwohnern.Mich beeindruckt, dass er sich nicht hinter Zahlen versteckt, sondern auch meist Einzelbeispiele stellvertretend für Epochen oder Grundeinstellungen anführt. Viele zeitgenössische Quellen werden zitiert, was den allgemeinen Eindruck und die Glaubwürdigkeit vertieft.Während aktuellere Publikationen, z.B. „The Conquest of Texas“ Genozid zu Ethnozid degradiert oder „An American Genocide“, ein super Buch, sich noch oft hinter Zahlen versteckt, sich mit dem Anerkennen des aufgrund der Tatsachen offensichtlichen universellen Genozids auch in den USA noch nicht ganz anfreunden können, ist David E. Stannard in seiner Konklusion eindeutig.Auch nach der Deklaration der UN-Konvention kann man zu keinem anderen Schluss kommen.Dass in manchen Ländern Zentral- und Südamerikas als spanisch-portugiesisches Erbe auch direkte Gewalt immer noch ein großes Thema ist, ist traurig genug, aber in ganz Amerika wird leider weiterhin versucht, die Indigenen ihrer Kultur, ihrer Gemeinschaft und ihrer Identität zu berauben. Dieses Buch sollte Standardwerk und Diskussionsgrundlage in allen Schulen sein.

In many ways this is a very interesting book, though it could easily have been half the size. Stannard has the tendency to make lists and enumerations, which e.g. results in pages filled with names of pre-columbian tribes living in the Americas.Be that as it may, this book makes for interesting, albeit discomforting, reading. Stannard makes a case for the suggestion that the eradication of the people living in the western hemisphere following the Time of Conquest en Discovery is actually one of gravest crimes against humanity ever betrayed. He supports this claim by first (in the first part of the book) sketching the situation of the Americas prior to discovery, employing archaeological and anthropological evidence.In the second part of the book, he describes the actual holocaust that has taken place in the four centuries between 1500 (Columbus, Cortès) and 1900 (Sand Creek, Little Bighorn), the echoes of which can be seen even today. This is, of course, the most discomforting part, thought the examples and stories are a bit cherry-picked. The text would greatly benefit from a more structural and chronological approach, as well as from graphs, images and maps.In the third and last part of the book, Stannard analyses the cultural and sociological background of the western perpetrators of the holocaust, going as far back as the origins of Christianity. Even though this is an sich very interesting to read, it is not part of the American Holocaust per se. This last part would merit a study on its own, perhaps in tandem with Goldhagen's study of Hitler's Willing Executioners, which was published a few year after this work.The book features a good index and literature list, as well as some pictures. These pictures are, however, not of the quality which we should expect of Oxford UP, being too vague and having too little contrast.

David Stannard's "American Holocaust", aptly published during the ahistorical hoo-hah that marked the 500th year since Columbus "discovered" the Americas, takes as its subject the genocidal destruction of the Native Americans in north, south and central America in the aftermath of the western European invasion.The book is split into three parts, the first and shortest of which provides remarkable insight into the great variety of indigenous peoples that populated the continent on the eve of being invaded by the Europeans. The second part is a description of various atrocities that occurred subsequent to 1492, by the Spannish and English, and the devestating effect of European diseases on the indigenous population. The final part looks into what it was, within European culture, religion and institutions that allowed, condoned, celebrated and facilitated this genocide; comparison is also made with future genocides, and its hardly a suprise to learn that Hitler was an admirer of what the British and subsequently the United States achieved vis-a-vis the Native Americans, and referred to Jews, Slavs and others he was slaughtering on a industrial scale at industrial speed as "Red Indians".Overall "American Holocaust" is a remarkable achievement; it's well researched, well written and with particular regard to the third part, well argued. The picture of the numerous vibrant and vital human societies in the Americas pre-1492 is vividly presented to the reader. Stannard deals with the question of the diseases the Europeans inadvertently brought with them (though eventually a few enterprising pioneers of Biological warfare hit on the idea of giving Native Americans blankets which had previously been used by small pox victims) for which Native Americans had no immunity. My own feeling is that apologists for the American Holocaust use this as an alibi for the genocide- it just kinda happened... nothing to do with me mate. Stannard cites ample evidence that the good Christians from Europe viewed it as a gift from God that aided their efforts to colonise the Americas; for some Spanish Catholics (perhaps because they needed Indians for labour in the gold and silver mines, the largest of which at Potosì was the Auschwitz of its day) losing their indigenous labourers was viewed as a punishment from God for their own religious shortcomings! But the colonisers didn't just view the diseases that carried away millions upon millions of the Natives as a gift. The hostility, violence, massacres, displacement and brutal labouring conditions that they visited upon the Natives increased the already appaling death rate, and even those Native groups left undisturbed to recover from the deadly European diseases were subsequently destroyed and displaced by European violence alone.A short review can hardly give a sense of the scope and quality of this work that I'd thoroughly recommend reading, especially by those who are sceptical or even offended by the use of the term Holocaust for other victims apart from the Jews (and Slavs, gypsies, etc) subjected to the horrific and murderous extermination policies of the Nazis during World War 2.Other books of interest would include Dee Browns classic history of the United States late 19th century war against the Great Plains Indians  Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee ; Ronald Wrights  Stolen Continents  focuses on telling the story of several communities of Native Americans and their confrontations with the Europeans at specific points in time during the five centuries after 1492. For anyone wishing to go off on a slight tangent Domenico Losurdo's  Liberalism: A Counter-History  shows the dark side of Liberalism, and more than a few Liberals were cheerleaders for the genocide against Native Americans. Bury My Heart At Wounded KneeStolen ContinentsLiberalism: A Counter-History

This is an excellent and essential, yet harrowing, read about the Holocaust endured by the native peoples of the Americas.The book is in two parts. Part one establishes the facts of genocide. The documented acts including from the memoirs of the Spanish, British and American perpetrators. This includes their self declared intent as expressed in ideological terms and the extent to which actions were societal, individual, collective and state and governmental policy.Part two seeks to explain why such monumental genocide occured and goes all the way back to Aristotle to trace the roots of genocidal ideas in Western civilisaton and, especially, how these evolved in Christianity into concepts of Holy War, righteous slaughter, divine right to land, the idea that pestilence was divinely inspired and how these justified policies of deiberate extermination of native Americans. All this furnished with incriminating quotes from Spanish priests, English puritan ministers and American politicians.Stannard believes that racism is inherent in Western culture and ideas and makes the best case I have yet seen that racism was an idea that predated New World slavery. However, I think a better counter-case is made by Robin Blackburn in 'The Making of New World Slavery'.I'd thoroughly recommend Stannard's book as a feast of horrific history combined with well argued and provocative intellectual insight.

Blew my socks away. I always knew Humans were destructive beasts but this was a slaughter on biblical scale. Wish this was taught in American Schools.