Born To Die Summary

Why did the native populations, such as the Incas and the Aztecs, appear to be, not equals to be met with military and diplomatic force, but as victims born to die in the eyes of the invading European powers? Why were they not feared, despite the extensive technological capacities of their civilizations, and the detailed political and religious theology these civilizations created? Simply put, the invading Europeans came to regard them as sick and ailing bodies of a sick and ailing body politic, born to die because of their lack of immunity to European diseases, even more than European firearms.
The book Born to Die thus presents the provoking thesis that disease was the major cause of the European power’s seemingly never-ending successes of colonial successes and conquests in Latin America, rather than these nation’s prowess in military conquest. In some cases, the nations had already been decimated even before the full military capacity of the European powers had been launched. With such a small and relatively technically ill equipped population, no contest resulted in overwhelming conquest.
Although the author of the book admits that technological military superiority on the part of the invading Europeans thus did have some impact in the tremendous
(17) Smallpox, of course, remains a fear today even in the United States, as a potential weapon for terrorists in a no-longer vaccinated population. (Lim, 2003) The reasons for its causes were unclear, but its deadly and disfiguring effects were quite plain, and although Europeans were affected by all of these ailments and often engaged in poor sanitation practices that facilitated the spread of the disease, because they were ironically used to such poor water and safety constraints, they also had developed a greater immunity than the Aztecs and the