Breaking Glassrnby Philip JenkinsrnObligatory HolocaustsrnI feel sorry for Afrocentrists—those weirdrnand wonderful folk who claim that civilization,rnphilosophy, and science wererndiscovered in ancient Africa, before beingrnstolen by the white man. True, membersrnof the movement are cranks, withrnnothing worthwhile to support their positions,rnbut they are no more ridiculousrnthan many other historians who dominaternthe intellectual mainstream.rnTo illustrate this, let me point to thern”American Holocaust” story that can fairlyrnbe described as scholarly orthodoxy.rnThe story goes like this: Before the Europeanrninvasion of 1492, the New Worldrnwas home to a vast population, oftenrnplaced around 100 million. Mexicornalone had 25 million people, and NewrnWorld cities dwarfed such Europeanrncommunities as Paris and Rome. Visitorsrnto the great New Mexico site of ChacornCanyon are told that the populationrnthere would actually have exceeded thatrnof medieval London. After the conquest,rna combination of brutal treatment andrnEuropean diseases caused a catastrophicrndecline in native populations —by 90rnpercent or more in many areas. The Europeanrncivilizations that emerged in thernNew World were literally built upon thernbones of tens of millions of slaughteredrnvictims. Every day of their lives, Americansrnare walking through graveyards.rnA great deal about this story should inspirernsuspicion. Eor one thing, the accountrnof European motives and behaviorrnfits too well with contemporary academicrnpolitics to be plausible. Above all, thisrnseems to be yet another of the obligatoryrnholocausts that have become so fashionablernin the creation of victiinologies. hirnthe 1940’s, the Jews suffered an appallinglyrngenuine outbreak of mass murder,rnas did other European communities,rnlike the Poles and Ukrainians. In subsequentrnyears, though, other groups haverntried to conshuct their own parallel experiences,rnalways with impressive-soundingrnnumbers, but never with anything likernthe historical evidence we can find concerningrnthe World War II era. Eeministsrnand pagans look to the tens of millions ofrnwitches supposedly killed during thern”burning times” in early modern Europe;rnAfrican-Americans cite 60 million or sornvictims murdered by the slave trade; andrnanyone wishing to discredit Americanrnhistory points to the American genocide,rnthe “Great Dying.”rnThe idea of a demographic collapse inrnthe Americas was popularized by widelyrnread historians like William McNeill,rnwhile David Stannard coined the termrn”American Holocaust” in his 1992 bookrnof that name. Though the idea hasrngained the status of a social fact, it is simplyrnwrong. The supporhng data, whichrnhad been questioned for some years,rnwere decisively discredited in a fine bookrnby David P. Henige, appropriately fitledrnNumbers From Nowhere (University ofrnOklahoma Press, 1998).rnIn order to judge the truth of “genocide”rncharges, we would need to knowrnroughly what the population of thernAmericas was in, say, 1480, and what itrnwas a century later. We are on reasonablyrnsolid ground with the later figures,rnbut pre-contact data is very hard to comernby. Before the 1940’s, most scholarsrnwould have estimated the pre-Columbianrnpopulation at around eight or tenrnmillion for the whole of North and SouthrnAmerica combined. If that is correct,rnthen the Americas certainly sufferedrnfrom European-introduced plagues, butrnthe decline in population was only a fractionrnof what we are told in the “genocide”rnstory. We are talking about two or threernmillion disease-related deaths, not 90rnmillion: a plague, not a genocide.rnSo why did anyone ever believe differently?rnIn essence, demographic historiansrnfound what appeared to be taxrnrecords for colonial Mexico, and usedrnwildly implausible multipliers to convertrnthe households recorded there into populationrnstatistics. Even if these projectionsrnwere true, they would only inflate thernpopulation of central Mexico. But therernwas a second phase, in which historiansrn(I use the word loosely) started applyingrnthe same hyperbolic principles across therncontinent. North America above the RiornGrande can plausibly be estimated tornhave had around two million people inrn1492. By the 199G’s, overheated scholarlyrnbooks were giving contact-era figures ofrnseven or ten million in North America,rnestimating a ludicrous four million in thernMississippi Valley alone.rnAt every stage, the improbability ofrnthese claims is self-evident. Just whererndid all these people live? At ChacornCanyon, which supposedly housedrn30,000 residents, there is no evidencernwhatever that the great “apartment”rnstructures were residential: Ear from beingrn”bigger than London,” Chaco wasrnbarely even a village. And any time wernfind reasonably hard data about actual Indianrnpopulations, they are astonishinglyrnsmall. Any reader of colonial historyrnknows of the vast political influencernwielded by the legendary Iroquois Confederacy,rnthat looming presence thatrnplayed English and French empires offrnagainst each other for a century. Whornwould have thought that this military juggernautrnnever mobilized more thanrn5,000 or so warriors at its height? Or thatrnthe medieval population of these tribes,rnwhich are among the best stiidied of anyrnnative community, was in the low thousands,rnnot even the tens of thousands?rnWhy, then, have scholars permittedrnthemselves to engage in such consistentrnself-delusion? The reasons, unfortunately,rnare obvious: The worse the atiocity ofrnthe conquest, the greater the guilt to bernexpiated by the modern-day descendantsrnof the conquerors. And while consciencerndemanded that we place the number ofrnvictims as high as possible, any contraryrnargument, any expression of doubt,rnwould be seen as acquiescence to genocide.rnOur standard historical view of thernColumbian era and the European contactrnwith the Americas is therefore wildlyrninaccurate, the result of politicized scholarship.rnUnfortunately, nobody seemsrnconcerned about discrediting the modern-rnday myths. Remind me: Just why dornwe pick on the crazy Afrocentrists?rnSEPTEMBER 2001/13rnrnrn