Disease, not cruelty, destroyed the Arawaks despite brutal exploitation.

Evidence

Alfred Crosby disputes the role of “brutality” in the destruction of native peoples. He argues: “The destruction of the Arawaks has been largely blamed on the Spanish cruelty, not only by the later Protestant historians of the ‘Black Legend’ school but also by such contemporary Spanish writers as Oviedo and Bartolome de Las Casas. Without doubt the early Spaniards brutally exploited the Indians. But it was obviously not in order to kill them off, for the early colonists had to deal with a chronic labor shortage and needed the Indians. Disease would seem to be a more logical explanation.” Crosby, op. cit., p. 45. Both the impulses of greed and the dialectic of domination have claimed for their victim the logic of need. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1902

Categorization

• QUESTION: Robinson frames the greed/cruelty debate as both impulses claiming ‘the logic of need’ — worth chasing what Robinson’s fuller critique of the disease-only explanation is.
• XREF: Connects to Jared Diamond’s Germs-Guns-and-Steel thesis on disease decimating natives and to debates in ‘1491’ by Charles Mann.