American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

After much urging from friends, I've finally read Stannard's American Holocaust. It's a captivating book that gives a background into history that has been retold and written in the favor of the conquerors but has down played and in some cases, completely looked over, the devastating effects of their enterprise on the peoples of the New World, some of which still echo today. It's a sobering account based on much research of just what the title implies, a holocaust. I think very few books take into account the diversity of the people that lived in the America's or their populations prior to Columbus. Stannard does an excellent job in painting that picture. He even acknowledges inter-tribal warfare and the existence of empires but he also points out how these stand in contrast with what these notions were in Europe at the time and how they developed differently than in America. Many cynics will say that this book is a "revisionist" history written by a "liberal" scholar. Many history "buffs" will be unsettled from the comfortable vantage point from which they view history. I challenge them to go through American Holocaust's bibliography and read these texts themselves and discern a different view point.

The book is a detailed analysis of the great brutality and massacre practiced in the Americas. Whatever the causes behind a massacre is, it is unacceptable. The book gives a whole lot of information in a novel style. The events in the book is sometimes very disgusting and unbearable. His accusation of Turks for massacring Armenians does not rely on strong evidences but rather on some books of Armenian authors. As a whole the book shows the background of the prosperity and power of todays. I strongly recommend this book to be read.

For as much real destruction ensued in the wake of the European incursions into the "New" World, by his own statistics and the causes of death, genocide WAS NOT perpetrated. Disease, NOT design receives the greatest responsibility for the demise of the vast majority of the death toll, from the Arawaks on;ex the plagues of 1545-46, 1575-6. the Europeans lacked the medical knowledge to cause or cure the same diseases among THEMSELVES. Any implication of wholesale "biological warfare" against large populations of indians is revisionism, and ignores/denigrates the suffering of Europeans who also died via contagion. The SAME diseases decimated huge populations of Europe regardless of "race", class, or gender "issues", from the middle ages through the colonial period, with the SAME socio-economic dislocations (destruction of food chains, etc), that disrupted the natives. Natives alone were not on the receiving end of plague. the Virginia Colony received at variant periods, on average the MOST immigrants..but maintained a startlingly low population..due to diseases that killed off huge numbers of settlers (ex., 1626, the white population of Virginia = 1232 since 1607; only reached as a result of 8000 settlers dying in the process). To banter the term "genocide" about like so many catch phrases, is to dull the bite it has as the heinous horror it is. Before the advent of this term, was there simply no genocide?! of course not, we simply had to look at the various causes of death for what they were;VARIOUS causes of death, and like disease, many non- discriminatory. I give the book two stars to counteract the rating bias that speaks more of the readers agenda than the books worth. I found the book itself wonderful, accurate, sans the rhetorical (in the worse sense), postmodern juggling of catch-phrases that mis-direct the facts.

American Holocaust was published in 1992 in occasion of the 500 year anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the Americas. In the midst of much celebratory scholarship praising the greatness of Euro-American history and culture, Stannard wrote a book that tells history from a very different side. It present a vivid account of the European conquest of the Americas and focuses attention on how the often celebrated conquest resulted in nothing less than a holocaust for the Indigenous peoples of the America.

The first two-thirds of the book consist in a very graphic reconstruction of HOW the colonization of the Americas took place. Stannard pulls no punches and delivers us all the horror and brutality of the European invasion in no uncertain terms. The overall effect is rather depressing, but at the same time enlightening. Reading it before a hot date, though, is not suggested since you will probably be in a bad mood for hours. The second half of the book switches gears and focuses on WHY the colonization of the Americas took place the way it did. Showing he is not afraid of controversy, in a chapter entitled "Sex, Race, and Holy War" Stannard draws a direct connection between Christianity and the genocide of Indian peoples. Stannard himself admits that this is not the only explanation for the brutality of Euro-American conquest, but he suggests religion was an important part of it, and I tend to agree with him.

Overall, the book is nothing short of amazing. Unlike most boring historical analysis, this is one that--love it or hate it--is impossible to remain indifferent to. It is very captivating and beautifully written.

The only major flaw in Stannard's work is that he tries too hard to pigeonhole all facts in a "good Indian" versus "bad European" portrait. Showing the many, many exceptions to this rule would not undermine his argument. If anything, it would help it since it is easier to be convinced by an author who is not trying at all costs to divide reality in stark black and white. Furthermore, his overall conclusions are mostly supported by the facts. Some critics focus on Stannard's exaggerated black and white portrait and use it to dismiss it his entire argument. Had Stannard been just a little more even-handed in his treatment of the subject, it would be much harder for his detractors to dismiss him out of hand. This is an extremely important counterpoint to decades of scholarship based on racism and blind nationalism.

The truth about Native American history. The first chapter "Before Columbus", describes the best times in American history, my favorite part of the book, while the rest of the book is an emotional rollercoaster through a barbaric, disgusting, hate filled reality of how this hemisphere was built into what it is today.

Graphic history of the genocidal consequences of the discovery of the New World, along with the catastrophic effects of spreading of new diseases. The latter are sometimes used to cover the former, and the picture portrayed by the author is altogether horrifying, and a challenge to the systematic amnesia constructed around the facts, which certainly outstrip the Nazi Holocaust by an order of magnitude.

After decades of being taught lies, David Stannard explains in horrific detail on how Columbus and western europeans committed the worst crime on humanity ever.
He also explains how the indegenous peoples of the americas live prior to the columbus invasion; which erases the sterotype that the Spanish came to "civilze" the indian.

American Holocaust is very well-written and tightly organized book. Stannard's scope of investigation is laudable, as he moves from ancient Greece, to medieval Europe, to the Americas. In pulling information from such a wide variety of sources, he makes a wonderfully complex yet cogent argument about the nature of the colonization of the Americas and the genocide that it required. Not dealing with simple historical facts, Stannard delves into the development of the European psyche and how this conditioned the first and subsequent contacts with the native peoples of the Americas. American Holocaust is truly a stunning work that I wish all people in this Hemisphere would read.

David Stannard reveals the awful truth of Aggression and Occupation, misnamed "Discovery" and "Settlement," in the Americas. Readers who, in the names of education and religion, have been exposed to five centuries of revisionist history should be horrified at the truth. If they aren't, it will be a testament to the effectiveness of the church, school and university propaganda to which they have been exposed. The horrors of other holocausts are not excused by recognition that the holcaust in the Americas, perpetrated by European Christians against ancient civilizations were the most horrible in the history of mankind. They continue to this day.

I've read several books on American Indians from the "discover" and conquest of the New World by Christopher Colombus and the Spanish Conquistadors, to the later arrival of the first colonists to the upper North America (USA & CANADA).

To briefly describe the dire consequences, simply realize that the hundreds of Caribbean Islands were all vastly populated by Native Indians. They were all exterminated without mercy.

Today not a single Indians is found on any of these islands. Similar massacres happened in South, Central and North America.

In its totality, 97% of this noble race ...(ranging well in the 100 millions)... was wiped out from the face of the earth. Only 3% remains today. Need I say more?

There wasn't a Greater Holocaust or a Greater Genocide of human beings in World History. No other can rightfully compare in magnitude and cruelty. Regretfully so little is said about this Holocaust.

No cameramen marched into villages to film and document the atrocities committed, no journalists or newspapers wrote about it.

None of the 20th century media existed. No monuments or parks were dedicated to it, as if man wants to bury his shame. David E. Stannard's book brings it back to our memory and assessment.

They paid dearly to sastify a lustful greed ... a pound of flesh for a pound of gold...done under the banner of Christianity. A great message of "Love thy neighbor as you love thyself" was completely igored.

That the Aztecs or Incas (The latter in a limited manner) practiced human sacrifice is immaterial in considering the behaviour of the Europeans that conquered the New World and does nothing to negate this book as a work of scholarship.

You will undoubtedly find more balanced books on the subject than this one but don't let the reviews of apologists put you off of reading it.

I am sick to death of White European Christians always being portrayed as evil villains who came to America to opress and enslave. The reverse discrimination going on in this country is astounding. No effort is made to show a balanced picture, instead whites, particularly Christians are displayed as evil. While Europeans have done bad things we have certainly contributed much to the world as well . The first universities and hospitals were created by the Catholic Church. The Renaissance produced much great art, architecture, music and literature as well as scientific discovery(no Christians don't believe the world is flat). The early church in the Roman government ended the practice of infanticide and closed down barbaric practices of gladiatorial contests. The early Christians cared for the poor and I'll and we're butchered for their faith. The first abolitionists were Christians and Christianity elevated the status of women because of Jesus teachings.
While the Native Americans were often treated unfairly by whites they were not always innocent victims. Many white people were killed and raped by Native Americans. Read the story of Mary Jemison and how her whole family was killed by Indians. The Pawnee would capture girls from other tribes and sacrifice them. I could go on but my point is that the Native Americans are always displayed as innocent victims while white European Christians are always villainized.

Almost every time someone uses the word 'holocaust' when they are not referring to the actual Holocaust between 1939 and 1945, they use it in an incorrect and sensationalistic manner, comparing the incomparible. This is no exception. It is true that millions of people died following the arrival of Europeans in the New World in 1492. However 90% of them died from Disease. This was an extraordinary number, but there is a difference between planning to murder so many and having them die for biological reasons(not being immune to disease). Indeed many of even the most cynical Spaniards were dismayed that the Indians were dying, either because they could no longer be used as slaves or because they could no longer be enslaved. It is rediculous to pretend that this was a 'holocaust' unless the black Plague that swept Europe in the 13th-14th centuries was also a holocuast.

In addition this book accuses the Europeans of 'racism' which is a patent lie. Race did not propell Europeans across the seas in 1492 and the years afterword. It is true that Europeans looked different than the indigenous people of the New World, but it is not true that this was what motivated colonization, ensalvement, war or exploitation.

Just as the rise of most empires, such as the Chinese or Ottoman, are not accused of being tied up in racism, it is comical to pretend that men like Columbus had any concept of the 19th century ideas of race. The notions are neither found in thier writings or documents and that is why none are quoted in this book. In fact many Spaniards defended the Indians, such as Bartholemew De Las Casas, but all those people are conveniently ignored here. Not a suprise.

Seth J. Frantzman

the book tells a different story, true. but it tells it with such one sided-ness that it loses almost, if not all credibility. my history classes did not romanticize the idea of conquest. it was ugly, people died. they did not focus on a native point of view, but they also did not support the conquistadors views of savages, sub-human people either. it was a stupid excuse to do what they did, but wars are not built on intelligence, they are based on greed. it compares european conquest (or greed) to the tradegies of wwii (pure hatred) and thats a far leap.

It is most appropriate that the store pairs this book with Ward Churchill's nonsense about the "holocaust" in the development of the Americas when the Europeans showed up. If your view of the "new world" before its discovery by Europeans in the 1400's is one of natives living in elysian fields, plucking daisies, peeling grapes for each other and reciting poetry to an educated civilization, you will probably like this book. If you are well read and understand that the advance of civilization over the millennia all over the globe has been mixed at best, you will laugh at most of the "findings" of this book. Stannard dismisses the savage nature of the tribal bands that populated the Northern and Southern continents, yet find no problem in savaging fairness and perspective in his romp through his selective rendition of history.

While Stannard has made a career of condemning European settlement of the Americas (yes, named after Americus Vespucci the European) he totally ignores or dismisses the dark side of the cultures that the Europeans found. One example is the Aztecs. The Aztecs built their capital city, called Tenochtitlan, in the center of enormous Lake Texcoco. (The site of modern day Mexico City, from which millions flee every year to go to the USA to live a better life.) The Aztecs believed they were the "chosen people" of Huitzilopochtli, not unlike the Jews of the "old world". But in the 1300's the Jews were not sacrificing humans and had "graduated" to goats, unlike the Aztecs. It is why Cortez was able to rely on a welcoming population of natives who for some reason or another, didn't appreciate the fact that their sons and daughters were sliced open, their beating hearts removed and offered as sacrifice to the Aztec gods on the Coyolxauhqui Stone. The stone is over ten feet in diameter and is the carved relief of a dismembered female. It is believed that this dismembered female is the Goddess Coyolxauhqui. The stone was formerly located at the base of the stairway at Templo Mayor. Its original purpose was to stop the bodies that were rolled off the sacrificial area atop Templo Mayor after their beating hearts had been removed from their chests. . While there are no official records, the number of human sacrifices in this river of human blood is believed to be in the hundreds of thousands. Remember that this is contemporaneous with the "dark ages" in Europe, which did a few executions of its own with its "auto-de-fe" of a couple dozen "heretics".

Stannard's other attacks on the development of North and South America are similarly unbalanced and unhinged. He totally ignores the findings of anthropologists and archeologists who have found substantial examples of cannibalism amongst the many tribes inhabiting the Americas during the movements all over the globe in the last several centuries. Slavery was a world-wide universal cultural norm that had existed since we climbed out of the trees. Was it bad? You betcha. But it didn't end until the Europeans said it didn't conform to advancing notions of freedom and individual liberty. Saudi Arabia finally officially ended slavery in its kingdom in 1963. But it still exists in the Sudan, and many other places today.

This is not to say that humans cannot revert to form. Just ask any survivor of the death camps in Poland, or a Tutsi who escaped a machete wielding Hutu mob, the survivors of the Balkan, Armenian, Cambodian, etc. genocides and they will all tell you that "mankind" is less than kind.

Stannard and his ilk really do not get it, and they enjoy the freedom to spread their nonsense while condemning the society that allows them a very good living at taxpayer expense.

If you are looking for a book worth reading about this topic, I suggest you find something that was written by a real scholar, and not this nonsense.

Pretty simple story: before Columbus, America was like Avatar with naked savages (oops, I mean innocent and child-like indigenous peoples) frolicking unclothed (but without shame) in the forests and the glades of paradise, while white people are the cause of all misery in the world.

This story has become Liberalism's secularized version of original sin. Yet ironically enough, not a single Liberal has every signed his house and car over to a needy indigenous person or immolated himself to atone for these terrible crimes.

Well, there's always hope for the future.

American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (1992) is Professor David Stannard's third historical book published by Oxford University Press. It is not difficult to conclude from the title what he thinks of the encounter. He indicts Columbus and European society for the mass destruction of Indian lives and culture and considers that 1492 marked the beginning of conquest bent on the elimination of native populations. Stannard insists that racism, greed, and religion drove Europeans to commit genocide.

Standing in line to charge Columbus with the institution of genocide is Stannard, who relentlessly indicts European culture and accuses Columbus of importing European bloodlust, greed, slavery, and treachery. Stannard reluctantly admits that he was "merely an especially active and dramatic embodiment of the European . . . mind and soul of his time." But he condemns the European mentality as "a religious fanatic obsessed with the conversion, conquest, or liquidation of all non-Christians" who enslaved and killed people just because they were different. In one huge generalization, Stannard labels all Europeans of the fifteenth century fanatical racists. Stannard anachronistically applies modern moral standards to historical actors, which shows lack of objectivity toward the past and reveals that he does not view Columbus as a product of his times.

To perpetuate the so-called "Black Legend," or tales of Spanish cruelty to the Indians, Stannard unearths every skeleton he can find. His book is littered with graphic accounts of the Spanish conquest written almost exclusively by conquistador-turned-Domincan friar Bartolome de Las Casas whom Stannard accepts at face value and uses to condemn the Spanish. Stannard depends on Las Casas for most of his descriptions of ill treatment and frequently uses primary sources while crediting a secondary source, which makes it difficult for readers to tell who wrote the description.

Having already concluded the true nature of all Indian-European contacts, Stannard offers weak generalizations about Spanish colonial culture to prop up his argument. His assertions that the Spanish thought god wanted the Indians dead, and that they "were only too happy to oblige their Lord and be his holy instrument" are not supported by reliable historical evidence. Stannard is cavalier in dismissing all criticism of the Black Legend, boldly declaring that the charge against it has "now largely fallen into disuse as historian after historian has shown" Casa's writings to be accurate. A closer look at his footnotes reveals that "historian after historian" really means three historians' essays published in one book in 1971. This is the type of word game Stannard uses in other cases to dismiss criticisms of the Black Legend and the use of the term "genocide."

Having discussed Stannard's characterization of the conquistadors and recalling the title of his book, it is hardly surprising that he condemns European and American treatment of Indians as "an unbroken string of genocide campaigns." In fact, he claims it was the worst case of genocide the world has ever seen. He uses "genocidal" freely and without reservation as an adjective for words like "warfare, temperament, devastation, racism" to such an extent that this reader was annoyed at being bombarded by this value-laden, mid-20th century term. Spanish cruelty is compared to the Third Reich, and colonial missions are labeled "furnaces of death." The comparisons to the Jewish Holocaust do not stop with the Spanish but are also applied to the English and Americans. Early colonial leaders become the "British equivalents of conquistadors," and Washington, Jackson, and Jefferson are directly compared to Adolf Hitler. All these rash, politically correct assertions are advanced with little, if any, historical documentation.

Stannard's American Holocaust seems disinterested in finding out the true nature of contacts, while being obsessed with proving that all contacts were devastating for Native Americans. This blatant one sidedness is exactly the type of portrayal that historian James Axtell demolishes in his book "Beyond 1492". Stannard portrays Native Americans from 1492-1992 as victims, nothing else. Land-grabbing Europeans, a stereotype Stannard perpetuates, were "part of the government's plan to drive the Indians off their land." By typecasting Native American reactions, he denies them their rightful role in shaping and contributing to American history.

Reading American Holocaust is like listening to fingernails grating across a chalkboard. While the language is easy to understand, the arguments are repetitious, annoying and over-bearing. Stannard bombards the reader with morally-loaded terms like genocide, bloodbath, slaughter, massacre, horror, and racist that tend only to cloud his arguments and turn off all except those committed to historical victimology. As each moral grenade exploded, I cringed. By the end of the book, I was emotionally drained because of the language and excessive use of graphic descriptions. James Axtell and Stannard use many of the same sources to reach very different conclusions. For instance, both use Alfred Crosby's The Columbian Exchange (1972), which is the standard source for estimates of pre-contact Indian demographics and the effects of disease on Native Americans. Stannard uses the highest figures when depicting original populations, while Axtell refuses to play the "number game."(1) In spite of this difference, both rely on Crosby to support the argument that disease played a major role in depopulation, but Stannard implies that disease was a genocidal tactic and not an accidental by-product.

As mentioned earlier, Stannard cites sources indirectly too frequently, which suggests a certain lack of skill and hints to a deception in research. He uses certain sources, like the speech where Teddy Roosevelt stated that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," without contextual analysis. Axtell meticulously explains how this famous quotation was taken completely out of context and has done more harm to "straight thinking about Indian-white relations than any number of Sand Creeks or Wounded Knees."

If anyone remembers American Holocaust, which offers little value to the serious historian, it will probably serve as an anti-role model of how historical writing sometimes panders to popular tastes. But I fear that in the mean time, many people, especially non-historians, will read his book uncritically, take his interpretation for fact, and fall prey to this type of faulty reasoning.

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(1) Page 151. Stannard's enthusiasm for numbers is apparent in his citation of 18,000,000 as the pre-1492 population north of Mexico. He claims, without evidence, that as many as 100,000,000 Indians died. In addition, he asserts that the slave trade cost at least 30,000,000 and as many as 60,000,000 lives. He cites the 1969 book, The Atlantic Slave Trade, written by the leading expert in the field, Phillip Curtin, which does not support these numbers. It seems that to prove that contact and the slave trade were detrimental, Stannard feels like he must inflate, or use implausibly high numbers.

Spanish Holocaust, maybe. American? I don't think so. By any measure of Western Civilization, the Indians had no appreciation of Western Civilization or the Judeo - Christian ethic, or the ethic by which we measure whether we are good or bad. But the Indians had no such method of measuring themselves or other Indians. In other words, though they were experiencing much pain as a result of slavery, from many Indian ethics from inhabitants of the New World, subjugating other peoples, killing them ruthlessly, sacrificing not just their people, but sacrificing your own children to whatever God you wanted to was something that you did. It was forbidden by the God of the Bible, even though many King's of Israel practiced it. It's not that what Christopher Columbus did was bad. It's that the Indians, in general, did not behave much different. They were, throughout North America, cruel to themselves, other tribes, their wives. They were in general not good, because they didn't know what good was. The only reason for writing a book like this is that we know what good is and the dignity of human life. The Indians, in general, did not. Many indigenous people living in third world countries still do not. They still may sacrifice their children to their God. Are they committing genocide. By our reasoning, yes, they are. By their reasoning, no, they are not. Because they don't know what genocide is. Every time we look at people in other countries who are suffering because they don't enjoy our standard of living, we are essentially imposing our standard of the Judeo - Christian ethic and Western Civilization on them. And so does the author in his book. The Indians living in this country before we came had no concept of owning property and so even took back property that they gave to someone, even though they received something in return. Thus we had the name Indian giver. That was a real characteristic of Indians who were not exposed to Western thinking. If someone gives me something, I will have more if I steal back what I gave to them. Made sense to them, if you don't understand the concept of giving and receiving. They treated their wives like pack animals. Read the Lewis and Clark journal. They had no concept of cause and effect, no ability to use Western Civilization to make their lives better. Was their disease passed on to them by settlers. Yes. Was Christopher Columbus cruel? Was he acting as a true Christian, or one that thinks he is unaccountable to God? Is it possible he thought that they were less than human? Probably. But what causes man to intervene in the lives of others to end or prevent suffering? Most of the hospitals established in the U.S. were established by some representative of organized religion - Jewish or Christian. Lots of Americans died to prevent any more of the Jewish Holocaust, and even more died to end slavery in the U.S. It didn't end suffering of African Americans.
I would say that what Christopher Columbus was wrong if he killed that many people and caused them to suffer that much. But he probably thought that he was accountable to no one but himself and that he was not responsible for killing that kind of human life.
If you read the history of Spain, you know that the Spanish warred against Muslims on Gibraltar. They Muslims did not behave according to Geneva Convention rules and raped and enslaved or killed people they conquered. The entire north coast of African was full of Christians and Jews before Muslims started migrating west. Most of them were killed by Muslims during the past millennia. They took U.S. Marines captive and threatened to either sell them as slaves or kill them before Thomas Jefferson intervened. The more recent misbehavior (genocide) by Serbia ( is the result of the invasion and enslavement by Muslims centuries before. Only after the dissolution of Yugoslavia were they able to take their revenge against Muslims.