The Inquisition was only a part of the World Invasion as whole. There do not seem to be reliable records about the expulsion of the Moslems or Jews from Spain . Even the death toll of Native Americans is questionable primarily because there are no extensive reliable records kept by the vanquished, and the Conquerors have in interest in excusing, covering up or denying the atrocities. David Stannard, in his book the American Holocaust, maintains that 100 million Americans were killed in the European invasion of America [1] This may be high, but may not be as well. In any case the atrocity is one of the worst in world history. The thesis that the Indians were mostly killed off by disease is a common strategy of denial that continues to be popular, for the obvious reason that it exempts Americans and Europeans from facing their past and present guilt for imperialist cruelties. I am not denying that disease was a factor, but it was not the major factor. The idea that Indians were killed off primarily by disease, is part of an ideology. European ideology was the primary factor in killing the Indians. The ideology of Manifest Destiny is alive and well today, and is still justifying the European invasion.

Blaming the atrocity on disease is an old strategy, Cotton Mather and William Bradford used it in early American history. Bradford claimed after killing as many of the Indians as they could by hand and sword, that the rest died of disease and gave thanks to the "marvelous goodness and providence of God" whom he thought helped the Puritans murder off the Indians who stood in their way. The same argument that excused Bradford from his own conscience, has been recently dressed up in scientific garb and hidden under ecological concerns. Alfred Crosby writes, for instance, with barely concealed self congratulatory racism, that the "success" of Old World diseases like small pox, syphilis, and measles "provides the most spectacular example of the power of biogeographical realties that underlay the success of the European Imperialists overseas".[2] Ecology favored the imperial economics of the 'free market', just as for Mather, disease proved the Manifest Destiny of the Puritan wars against the Indian. For Mather, Manifest Destiny was engineered by god, for Crosby, microbial Manifest Destiny has replaced religious excuses.

The biological determinism expressed here is reminiscent of other forms of biological determinism used in the 19th and 20th centuries. Medical inferiority, like genetic inferiority is a convenient excuse for genocidal motivations. As if it were merely an accident of genetic fate that forced Columbus and his men to murder the Taino, made Cortes to murder the Aztecs[3], made Alvarado murder, burn, rape and kill Indians with armored dogs trained to kill and disembowel, across Northern Mexico;[4], or made De Soto hack his way through one village after another with swords and deliberately spreading disease. De Soto's murderous campaign bears easy comparison to Hitler's invasion of Eastern Europe. One can rationalize these atrocities by disease, race, or Darwinian natural selection, but the horror remains, made worse by the ethical incomprehension of the academic apologists of biological determinism and empire.

[1] Stannard, pg. 95

[2] Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism Cambridge University Press. 1986 pg. 196

[3] One of my professors has asked why I have left the Axtecs out of this paper. Actually the analysis of knowledge/power I am employing here can be applied to Aztec society quite easily. The sacrifice of up to 20,000 enemy soldiers a year by the Aztecs, according to Stannard, is obviously the result of a religious and political conception of knowledge/power that orchestrated murder into a political pattern, justified by a metaphysical system. But the Aztec sacrifices, which certainly are blameworthy, do not appear to have been genocidal, as were the European atrocities. There is a difference in the order of magnitude. I am not excusing them. But the Aztecs are an exterminated culture. My concern in this paper is primarily with the antecedents of present systems of knowledge and power. I cannot cover everything. I have also said little or nothing about the slavery of Easter Island, the brutality of the Iroquois before the creation of a democratic Confederation, or the Egyptians. I am aware of them and other atrocities and unjust systems, however. I am also aware these atrocities have been used by Europeans to excuse the far worse atrocities committed by Europeans. I do not wish to contribute to this distortion. I have indicated the contribution of Hinduism to the history of racism, and discussed the Chinese system of knowledge power in these pages. My concern is not localized to the West, but rather to indicate something of the relation of atrocity to the "highest" systems of knowledge, from Taoism to Christianity and science.

[4] Las Casas writes that Alvarado "advanced killing, ravaging, burning, robbing and destroying all the country wherever he came" and that "he and his brothers together with others have killed more than four or five million in fifteen or sixteen years, from the year 1525 until 1540". (Stannard. pg.81)