They gave us tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, bell peppers, and turkeys. We gave them cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, and despair. There has been no cataclysm in history to equal the impact of the arrival of Europeans on the American continent. How is it possible that the overwhelming majority of the region from what is now Mexico to the southern reaches of what are now Argentina and Chile could fall to European conquest so quickly and so totally? Societies of dramatic complexity, highly sophisticated political and religious structures, truly remarkable capacities in mathematics and architecture and agriculture simply disintegrated. It wasn't a conquest; it was a disaster of immeasurable dimensions. Why did it happen? How did it happen? How does it influence us even today? Its roots lie deep in Europe's history. Its victims lie in America.

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