During the long 15th century, from approximately 1492 to 1607, population shifts in the Atlantic basin reshaped societies in the Old World and in the Western Hemisphere.
It is impossible to put precise figures on the number of people who inhabited the Atlantic basin at the time of Christopher Columbus’s initial crossing of the ocean. No society possessed the kinds of sophisticated tools necessary to make accurate estimates of the size of the local population, and many peoples kept no real count of the number of men, women, and children residing in particular communities. As a result, scholars have had to devise methods to estimate how many people lived in a given locale at a certain time and then use those figures to measure the rate of population growth or decline over time. To estimate the number of individuals in a Native American community, for example, demographers and anthropologists have used the number of people, usually men in arms, identified in early European travel accounts. They then take that number and multiply it by some figure to deduce an estimate of the total population. Because the populations of many indigenous groups shifted before anyone actually saw a European, scholars also make inferences about population size based on groups’ economies: Communities that practiced agriculture tended to be larger than those that relied on hunting, and people who inhabited fertile river valleys often had more substantial populations than did groups who inhabited more arid regions. Historical demographers have used any kinds of records they can find to estimate populations in the Old World. They thus turn to tax lists and the records of baptisms and burials and to the number of slaves imprisoned on ships heading from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. From myriad pieces of information, scholars have assembled rough estimates of population trends. None of their figures are as precise as those to be found in a modern-day census, but the numbers at least provide a starting point for understanding the ebb and flow of populations in particular places.
Putting aside the detailed estimates for specific communities or nations, scholars have identified two fundamental trends for the 16th century. First, the population of the Western Hemisphere declined as a result of the spread of infectious diseases that arrived as a result of the Columbian Exchange. Second, no population was particularly stable. Contrary to an age-old notion that peoples in Europe and Africa inhabited traditional communities where individuals tended to spend their entire lives, newer research reveals enormous domestic population movements. As the historian Bernard Bailyn has suggested for Europe for the period after 1607, the “peopling of British
North America was an extension outward and an expansion in scale of domestic mobility in the lands of the immigrants’ origins, and the transatlantic flow must be understood within the context of these domestic mobility patterns.” The same notion applies to the earlier period as well and to places beyond the boundaries of Europe.
The decline in numbers of indigenous peoples in the Americas is perhaps the most frightening and dramatic demographic trend for the 16th century. Before 1492 the peoples of the Western Hemisphere tended to be healthy. To be sure, some diseases, including some caused by nutritional deficiencies, afflicted Native peoples. Hence, while corn agriculture provided abundant food, overreliance on maize could lead to diseases (such as pellagra) with debilitating health consequences. Nevertheless, infectious diseases tended to be rare. The lack of contagions can be explained in various ways. First, the original peopling of the Americas took place between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, when the Bering Strait was frozen and groups of people from East Asia walked from modern-day Russia into Alaska and then dispersed from there. As these peoples moved inland, those who traveled to the south found conditions ideal for agriculture, and the initial abundance of food allowed populations to grow. However, just as important was the fact that these original migrants tended to be healthy, because only able-bodied people could have made the trek across the land bridge. Further, although some Native American peoples developed cities, especially in Mexico, the majority tended to live in dispersed communities. As epidemiologists have explained, smaller communities tend to be poor breeding places for the pathogens that cause infectious diseases because the human populations in them are not large enough to sustain the diseases over time. From a demographic perspective this residential strategy contributed to the increase of populations by reducing the threats that these people might otherwise have encountered. Finally, most Native American peoples kept no domesticated livestock, another protection against diseases often associated with close human-to-animal contact.
But the phenomena that helped with the initial increase in population for indigenous peoples in the Americas also provided the ideal conditions for any imported diseases to wreak havoc. Thus, while scholars continue to disagree about the population of the Western Hemisphere before 1492, there is no doubt that the number of Native peoples shrank when Europeans inadvertently introduced diseases to peoples who had had no opportunity to develop immunities to ward off their dangers.
Ever since the first systematic estimates for the Western Hemisphere began to appear in 1924, scholars have argued that the population of this part of the globe before Europeans arrived ranged between a low of 8.4 million and a high of 75 million. Whatever the exact numbers, all agree on the trend: The arrival of infectious diseases led to a decrease in population by perhaps as much as 90 percent from 1492 to 1800, with much of the decline taking place before 1700. The catastrophe struck different peoples at different times. Some indigenous populations, including many of the Native peoples in the Caribbean whom Columbus encountered, disappeared, as did some groups on the mainland, including the Carolina Algonquian at Roanoke described by Thomas Harriot and John White. The disappearance of an entire group did not necessarily mean that every individual died. Rather, as historians now believe, demographic catastrophe led to the weakening of particular communities, and those who believed they could no longer maintain their settlements migrated outward, usually to other like-minded indigenous peoples. Thus, the Natchez, who at one point were among the most dominant groups in the lower Mississippi Valley, disappeared as a distinct entity, a fate sealed by a military defeat at the hands of the French in 1731 but invariably begun with the spread of infectious diseases such as smallpox. However, individuals who were Natchez did not all perish at once. Instead, they joined other indigenous communities, part of a trend that continued well beyond 1607.
Unlike the Americas, the continents of Europe and Africa did not suffer from the same kind of population loss because individuals had already built up resistance to some potentially lethal diseases. Of course, the slave trade robbed Africa of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children during the 16th century. According to one estimate, British and Portuguese slave traders hauled approximately 266,000 individuals across the Atlantic Ocean during the 16th century. That trade followed an earlier commerce that took Africans to the East in what the historian Ronald Segal has termed “the other black diaspora.” From the mid-seventh century until the end of the 16th century, perhaps 4.82 million Africans traveled across the Sahara bound for destinations outside the continent, many of them sold during the peak period of this commerce in the 10th and 11th centuries. During the 16th century this eastern slave trade led to the forced relocation of approximately 5,500 individuals each year, a total of more than 500,000 people for the century. Still, despite the horrendous demographic consequences of this vile trade in human beings, the introduction of new food crops into Africa from the Americas, notably manioc and maize, quite possibly increased the population, thereby making the demographic consequences of the slave trade less obvious. Thus, the population of Africa, which was perhaps 85 million in 1500, possibly reached 90 million a century later, although the lack of precise data makes such an estimate especially imprecise.
According to one scholar, the population of sub-Saharan Africa grew from 79 million in 1500 to 95 million in 1750, in addition to another 5 million in northern Africa by the mid-18th century.
In Europe, by contrast, populations across the continent grew, often at a fevered pace, during the 16th century. In part, this demographic increase constituted a final stage in the long-term recovery from the notorious pandemic of plague known as the Black Death that killed at least one-third of all Europeans during the mid-14th century (and killed even more people farther north, where famine often followed in the wake of pestilence). Population increase could also be attributed to increased cultivation of available land and an improvement in diet, especially with the arrival of American foodstuffs.
In the age of Columbus, the population of Europe stood at approximately 60 to 70 million. By applying modern-day geographical boundaries, it is possible to measure the rough distribution of this population. There were approximately 15 million people in France, 10 million in Italy, 5 million in the British Isles, between 6.5 million and 10 million in Spain, and lesser numbers in other nations. By the end of the century, Europe’s population stood at perhaps 90 million, demonstrating far more rapid demographic growth than was experienced elsewhere in the Atlantic basin during this time.
Continental estimates, however useful, tend to mask local variations, as is evident in the estimates of population for England, arguably the most thoroughly studied place in the world during the early modern period. The population of England increased from approximately 2,774,000 individuals in 1541 to 3,271,000 in 1571 and to 4,110,000 in 1601. According to the most detailed estimate, the population of England in 1606—the year before the founding of Jamestown—stood at 4,253,325, but while the overall trend was positive (in a demographic sense), fluctuations nonetheless occurred. Disease still hit periodically, of course, and years of inadequate rainfall or some other natural calamity could produce an agricultural disaster that diminished the rate of population increase. Even during England’s rapid demographic increase, the population of the country declined by almost 175,000 from 1551 to 1556, although it immediately recovered, and the nation experienced no further serious declines until the years of plague and fire in the 1660s.
From a demographic perspective Europeans fared best in the Atlantic world during the century following 1492. That result is not surprising given the fact that the Columbian Exchange brought the greatest benefits to Europeans. Africans, although they did not apparently suffer from the same kinds of disease-related mortality as Native Americans, also fared well during the 16th century, at least in the sense that the population of the continent grew.
However, here again the overall positive trend masks the horrors of the slave trade. Without that noxious commerce, Africa’s population would have been even greater, although problems of overpopulation in the modern world suggest that growth is not always positive. Without doubt, those who fared the worst in the shifting demography of the Atlantic basin were the indigenous peoples of the Americans, who succumbed in large numbers to imported diseases. Native American populations reached their nadir in 1800 or so, and since then have climbed steadily back toward the precontact numbers. That fact demonstrates the importance of assessing population trends from the long term.
Further reading: Nicholas Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration, 1500-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); John D. Durand, “Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation,” Population and Development Review 3 (1977): 253-296; David Eltis, “Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., LVIII (2001): 17-46; Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History (New York: Facts On File, 1978); Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001); John W. Verano and Douglas H. Ubelaker, eds., Disease and Demography in the Americas (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992); E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541-1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
Porres, St. Martin de (1575-1639) first African-American saint
St. Martin de Porres, the son of an African woman and a Spanish man, was the first person of mixed African and European heritage to be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church.
Born in Lima, Peru, Martin began life at a disadvantage. As a child of mixed race in the hierarchical society of Latin America, his opportunities were limited, especially because his father, Don Juan de Porres, neither married his mother, Ana Velazquez, nor formally recognized his two children by her. Because membership in the Dominicans was forbidden to blacks, Indians, and their descendants, Martin was unable to join the order as a friar but was accepted as a donado, or servant. Martin served in this capacity for nine years. He showed such piety, dedication, and devotion to the poor that the order made an exception and admitted him as a lay brother in 1603.
As a friar Martin was known for his ability to heal and care for the sick and the suffering. He helped establish an orphanage and hospital and was responsible for distributing food to the poor. He also worked among African slaves in Peru.
St. Martin died in 1639 at the age of 60. Although he lived in a hierarchical society divided by color, he worked among the poor and suffering of all races. Because of this aspect of his work, the Catholic Church recognizes him as the patron saint of social justice and race relations.
Further reading: Carlos Parra, “Porres, San Martin de,” in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, eds. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 1,540-1,541; “Porres, Martin de,” in Dictionary of the Saints, John J. Delaney (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 477; “St. Martin de Porres,” in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol. 11, November, new full edition, rev. by Sarah Fawcett Thomas (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995), 11-20.
—Martha K. Robinson
World History
