EBOOK American Holocaust:The Conquest of the New World

For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people        of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded        Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an        unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the        Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian        David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American        destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of        genocide in the history of the world.Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous        richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in        1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and        South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out        across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast.          Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people        were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting        in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he        asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer:        Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex,        race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle        Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants        launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original        inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard        contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same        ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an        ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years        has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in        Southeast Asia and the Middle East.At once sweeping in scope and meticulously        detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to        ignite intense historical and moral debate.