9781422280249

There is no doubting the fact that around 95 percent of the Native American population is believed to have perished within a few generations of the arrival of the first European colo- nists. This has been described by some as an act of genocide , even a holocaust, although the evidence tends to suggest an unintended human tragedy caused by an almost complete ignorance of what has been learned by modern epidemiology—the science of infection. As inheritors of a centuries-old tradition of farming and livestock keeping, Europeans were ac- customed to living at close quarters with animals and their infections. Thus they had a “con- ferred immunity” that America’s indigenous peoples, as hunter-gatherers, had never been able to acquire. However, the European colonists cannot entirely escape blame. There is strong evidence suggesting that, in the 18th century, British and French soldiers deliberately gave smallpox- infected clothing to native trading partners. Shocking as such cynicism is, the reality is that these crimes only accelerated what was already inevitable, as these hitherto isolated tribes were increasingly exposed to contact with Europeans and their germs. The first undisputed instance of deliberate biological warfare dates from 1915, when German agents are believed to have injected anthrax into American horses and mules on their way to the Western Front of World War I. The Coming of Chemical Warfare Often regarded as the first modern war, World War I (1914–1918) produced a number of tech- nological innovations. The tracked tank has probably been the most famous in the decades since. As significant in the longer term, however, was the introduction of chemical warfare in the form of what is commonly known as mustard gas, or yperite, from its first use at the Battle of Ypres in Flanders on July 12, 1917.

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