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Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. By Noble David Cook. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xiii + 248 pp., preface, introduction, map, illustration, tables, bibliography, index. $54.95 cloth.)
Few topics in the area of colonial Latin American history have remained as perennially controversial as native depopulation. Noble David Cook's Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650 focuses on the role of epidemics in relation to the catastrophic population loss concomitant with the European conquest of the Americas. While largely synthetic, Cook does not cite primary sources; rather, he mostly analyzes and discusses secondary works (his own previous studies included). His monograph proves essential to those seeking familiarity with the complex and often difficult to comprehend topic of depopulation.
Divided into five compact and smoothly written chapters, Born to Die focuses on but does not limit itself to the study of disease as a major contributing factor to native depopulation. Rather than simply narrate the ravages of introduced diseases such as influenza and smallpox, Cook provides a crisp discussion of such related topics as problems in quantifying the precolonial native population; the mechanisms whereby European diseases came to infect natives; the paths traveled by disease pathogens; the role of disease as an auxiliary in conquest; and native reactions to the epidemics. In the end the...