You show, as usual, that for some people prejudices sometimes are more powerful than facts. Cuba in 1959, the biggest of the Antilles Islands, had 6.5 million inhabitants. The Caribbean islands could not sustain 7 million inhabitants in 1492. Scholars on the mater asserted that an indigenous population of less than a million for all of the Caribbean would still be a relatively dense population, given the technology and resources of the region in the late fifteenth century. Probably one-half of these inhabitants would have been on the large island of Hispaniola, about 50,000 in Cuba, and far fewer than that in Jamaica. Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad all had fairly concentrated, if not large, populations.
Most of the deaths of the Indians were the result of deceases, specially the smallpox, for which then Aborigines of America did not have antibodies. Naturally, your knowledge in this matter is as limited as is biased. The Spaniards brought together with the Churches and the Gospel, schools and hospitals where Indians and Blacks were treated as well as the Spaniards. Catholic Spain established public education in America 300 years before the English did it in its territories.
In 1597 the first hospital opened in what is now the United States in Florida, which at the time was part of the Spanish dominions. In it both Indians and Blacks were treated alike with the Spaniards. “When the nineteenth century opened, there were only three medical schools in the United States, and only two general hospitals. There were at that time at least eight hospitals in the city of Mexico alone. Two of them, the San Andrés and the Hospital Real of Indians, were large. The San Andrés had 400 beds, all endowed, while the Indian Hospital cared for 350 to 400 patients. In a severe epidemic it cared for over 8,000. Humboldt gave the number of beds available as 1,100 in 1803.” (Historian Francis Kelly)
Even the poor in Hispanic America fared better than some of the peasants in Europe... “Lima, Peru, in colonial days had more hospitals than churches and averaged one hospital bed for every 101 persons, a considerably better average than Los Angels (California) has today.” (Salvador de Madariaga)
Dr. Philip Wayne Powell, Emeritus Professor of history at the University of California, in his research on the “Black Legend” titled the “Tree of Hate”, (a book that every Hispanist should read) asserts that the study of 16th century Europe clearly reveals the universal pattern of cruelty, intolerance, and inhumanity which characterized the social, religious, and economic life throughout the continent...Examples of this were the reigns of Elizabeth I of England and her successor James I which were known for their most barbarous cruelty. However, Dr. Powell affirms “that the Spain of the conquest period was a deeply civilized nation by all discernible European standards of that day, ...In jurisprudence, diplomacy, monarchical, religious and imperial concepts, and total culture, Spain was a European leader throughout the sixteen century and in much of the next.”
As Dr. Powell points out, as soon as it was available, “an enlightened Spanish government sponsored very early use of vaccination against smallpox, precisely because the disease was so dangerous to the Indian population.” The Spanish crown ordered a massive vaccination campaign of natives of America and Philippines. Along with the gospel, the Spaniards brought the western medical knowledge to America. There was never any attempt of genocide of the Indians on behalf of the Crown, to the contrary. As historian Salvador de Madariaga indicates, “the Spanish Crown constantly reiterated its paramount interest in the natives, this has been a constant feature of the regime, even in its worst days and in the worst governed parts.”
Alexander Von Humbolt, the famous Protestant naturalist who visited most this Continent mentions: “not only has the number of natives increased for a century, but also New Spain is now more inhabited in 1803 than before the arrival of the Europeans...between 1752 and 1802, in New Spain, the ratio of birth to death stood as 170 to 100, despite a number of torrid-zone plagues; for the cold or temperate part of New Spain the ratio of births to deaths was of 190 and even 200 to 100...The increase of population was simply due, says Humboldt, to an increase in prosperity.”
Dr. Powell “rightfully urges our acknowledged experts and scholars in all matters Hispanic should conduct a much more thorough assessment than heretofore of our errors or, perhaps worse yet, the partial truths, in our education about Hispanic peoples and countries. All that is required, and all that should be demanded, is accuracy of facts, elimination of invidiously erroneous comparisons, and sophisticated historical perspectives.”
According to Dr. Powell, “the American students find it disconcerting when they learn that in the Spanish American lands of Catholicism and Inquisition, a sophisticated European culture flourished, almost from the moment of the Conquest itself. This included everything from complex municipal and regional government, vast projects for Christianizing (i.e. Europeanization), and protection of even the most savage aborigines, to encouragement and successful establishment of all kinds of schools and universities, hospitals, and the production of scholars and a very respectable literature-a far more exciting and plentiful literature, by the way, than colonial English-America produced. This is to say nothing of economic and commercial activities on the grand scale. Students are invariable surprised to learn that, for all its weakness, the general system and aim was that of ‘ennoblement’ (ennoblecer) rather than destruction.”
You are crediting the books by John Calvin for what America is today more so than the contribution of any other man. That is pure hogwash and denotes how close minded and fanatic you are.
Calvin, the brutal tyrant of Geneva, burned alive those who dissented from his theological views, among them, Michael Servetus, the famous Spanish theologian and physician who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood.
The TRUTH about JOHN CALVIN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gD0AHBQI4WI
Most everything you said, once again, is not relevant as far as I am concerned. The question of 7 million is legitimate, but I did not say it was 7 million, only that some have suggested that.
When you tout some of the “good” things in Central America, all you are really doing is touting the advantage that state sponsored conquest offers in the short term. The reformers that came to America came as settlers, not conquerors. Ideals and principles vs. conquest and greed. In time that pays off.
I suggest you move to Honduras, the murder capital of the world, and start tweeting from there about the greatness that Roman Catholic Spain brought to central America.
Regarding Calvin
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390971.001.0001/acprof-9780195390971
also freeper quotes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2902922/posts
http://books.google.com/books?id=CY2FMK-LdYgC&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=quotes+John+Calvin+George+Bancroft&source=bl&ots=iy0sXvYDmI&sig=nCVfj1wPJcmsddNFd1St3gQ79Hg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oV89VJz9A4i0yASk8AE&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=quotes%20John%20Calvin%20George%20Bancroft&f=false
http://www.amazon.com/Creed-Presbyterians-Egbert-Watson-Smith/dp/1410108988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413309602&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Creed+of+Presbyterians
“You are crediting the books by John Calvin for what America is today more so than the contribution of any other man. That is pure hogwash and denotes how close minded and fanatic you are.”
LOL, that puts me in great company. President John Adams said similar. And George Bancroft sometimes called the father of American History. OR German Historian Leopold von Ranke
The fact that you would call declarations of eminent historians and a founding president of the US, close minded and fanatic is telling. More importantly it shows you really have NO CLUE as to the development of ideas that founded America(U.S.).