Secret Judgments Of God

In the wake of European expansion, disease outbreaks in the New World caused the greatest loss of life known to history. Post-contact Native American inhabitants succumbed in staggering numbers to maladies such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus, against which they had no immunity. A collection of case studies by historians, geographers, and anthropologists, "Secret Judgments of God" discusses how diseases with Old World origins devastated vulnerable native populations throughout Spanish America. In their preface to the paperback edition, the editors discuss the ongoing, often heated debate about contact population history.

 

Noble David Cook is William Bentson Professor of History at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

W. George Lovell is Professor of Geography at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and author of A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala.