Exploring the Tragic Consequences of the European Colonization of the Americas: An Analysis of the American Holocaust

Leric ashe: American Holocaust or books related to the Native American should be required reading. The carnage or genocide, on the inflicted erased thousands of years of culture. We have lost so much which makes us, all less. Hispaniola, had a population of 8,000,00, in 1496. By 1535 they were extinct. Equivalent to N.Y. city today. Spanish and British. One looking for gold, the latter imposing European values, to steal land. But what was most fascinating, the religious hypocrisy. To kill, enslave, torture in the name of God. Who snatches babies from their mother, and feeds them to dogs, hanging natives from a gibber, and burned alive, brand enslaved women's faces every time they are resold ? The British and Spanish were the "Very ministers of Hell".

United States on Nov 19, 2023

Markus: 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...

Germany on May 18, 2023

paul: 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.

United States on Mar 10, 2023

Ranjith: Never knew human beings can be so brutal till I read this. Shocking to read the ways in which natives were killed by white, European christians.

India on Sep 24, 2022

Harinder Jadwani: To understand the world we live in, the conquest of the Americas with the wiping out of perhaps 95% of the more than 100 million people that populated the Americas, not just by disease but by brutal, genocidal butchery - in 'British America' as an end in itself because that is what freed up North America for the Europeans; and in 'Latin America' for the economic purpose of looting the continent's gold and silver mined by the tens of millions worked to death in the mines by the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors. But in either case - genocide - which has been largely erased from official Western memory with falsehoods and deceit. The Nazis have long been castigated for the wiping out of 6 million Jews. Little is said about the far more brutal murder of nearly 100 million 'Red Indians' by Spain, Portugal, Britain....

Canada on May 29, 2019

The Godfather: 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...

United States on Oct 23, 2018

S Wood: 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...

United Kingdom on Oct 10, 2015

a. m.: Un'opera fondamentale per comprendere non solo come la conquista delle Americhe da parte degli europei ha portato allo sterminio di intere civiltà ma anche per capire le motivazioni che sono alla radice dei fatti storici.

Italy on Aug 02, 2015

AlanWarner: 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...

United States on Jul 05, 2015