The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.
The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.
IIRC, the eventual endpoint is a division of the world between Muslim and Chinese powers, with American tribes used at first as proxies and eventually developing into a unified power in their own right. It's been a while since I read it, though, so I could be misremembering.
The book The Years of Rice and Salt uses as its premise the idea that 99% of Europe's population died. I don't know how historically-plausible that is, though.
IIRC, the eventual endpoint is a division of the world between Muslim and Chinese powers, with American tribes used at first as proxies and eventually developing into a unified power in their own right. It's been a while since I read it, though, so I could be misremembering.
Not really plausible. Consider the following demographic trend: in the 16c, the Americas lost between 75% and 90% of their population, depending on whether you believe low or high counters. This involved multiple virgin soil epidemics, foreign conquest, and a population whose immune system was optimized for parasites rather than epidemics. A single outbreak of smallpox alone could kill half the population in some places, e.g. the Inca empire, but the demographic collapse of the 16c involved other diseases as well.
Killing a large majority of the population on a consistent basis requires modern techniques of genocide. Before modern genocides, we see that some wars and outbreaks killed a range of population percentages, and in a few cases they were high - e.g. the Plague killed two thirds of Tuscany, and the Thirty Years' War killed three quarters of Württemberg, but in both cases the average proportion of people killed over the entire area of effect was more like one third.
rather an idiotic assumption because the lethality of the plague in china was bigger than in europe, i do recall that there were chinese cities that saw a 90% casualty rate. if the percentage is higher in europe, then it is also going to be higher in china. also stuff like this is staying in one place. if there is isn't a population left in europe, then elsewhere it will be pretty much the same
Couldn't we have seen similar scenario of maybe 70%+ deaths in Europe had there indeed been a combination of a more virulent plague and the concurrent invasion by mongols.
With a total death rate of maybe 2/3 of the population you have a total collapse of the civilization.
Does it? Compared to the Conquistadors and other European conquerors in the Americas were the Mongols not as bad or worst even in some cases. I believe some or most historians attribute their actions to genocide.
What modern aspects did the European of the 16-18th century during the period of the majority of Native deaths have over the mongols in wrecking havoc to a population outside of disease?