strannard american holocaust

American Holocaust 57-95

Life in Medieval Europe

The picture of European life during the Middle Ages that Stannard paints is truly horrific. It is probable that most people living today have absolutely no idea how fortunate they are to have been born now rather than four of five centuries ago, especially on the European Continent. Famine, disease, abject poverty, violent death by crime or torturous persecution were par for the course and one or more affected nearly everybody. Without sanitation systems of any kind, it was common to find roadside ditches filled with human excrement as these served as public restrooms. Clean water supplies were rare and most people never bathed even once in their entire lives. Rotting corpses of the poor filled open pits until they held enough bodies to be filled in and covered.

Outside of the wealthiest classes, the average person lived in perpetual hunger and disease. Routine fluctuations in the average price of grains, meats, and other food staples typically resulted in the deaths of thousands by starvation. Even those who were not actually starving suffered continually, for years at a time, from chronic diseases and from loathsome infections and other ailments for which there no cure. Meanwhile, the relatively few wealthy gorged themselves with utter disregard for the poor.

Crime and violence were everywhere and affected the poor and the rich alike. For the poor, that meant being at the mercy of hordes of marauding thieves and looters who preyed on defenseless peasant populations. Alternatively, they were also subject to the murderous paranoia of their own masses based on accusations of being witches; either that, or they were unfortunate enough to be members of persecuted religious groups, such as Jews. For the rich, it meant having to hire armed protection to guard against being attacked and robbed anytime they left the safety of their homes, or their castles, as the case may be.

The Spanish Holocaust Perpetrated in South America

Stannard presents an image of the Spanish Conquistadors (and others) that makes it difficult to even imagine considering Columbus, Cortes, et al., any kind of "heroes" after whom seas, city streets and thoroughfares, or high schools should be named in their honor today. The traditional view of these 15th century explorers is that they were brave sailors who braved the risks and difficulties of oceanic travel and who "discovered" new lands in distant places. In truth, they were horribly brutal, homicidal tyrants who actually were responsible for more atrocities than the worst modern-day examples of dictators and perpetrators of crimes against humanity.