I’m not saying they weren’t affected at all, but something like 90% of Native Americans were wiped out while places like Japan and deep parts of the African interior didn’t suffer nearly as hard, even though they previously had basically no contact with Europe.
In: 1583
Japan might not have had contact with Europe, but they did have contact with China. China, in turn, had contact with India, which had contact with Persia, which had contact with Europe. All of Eurasia is connected, so plagues were never unique to one part of this land. The bubonic plague came from Mongolia, and cholera came from India. Japan had experienced all the same plagues as Europe, the Americas hadn’t.
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Trade routes in the ancient world were extensive. Amber from the Baltics, incense from Arabia, tin from Cornwall, silk from China, spices from East Africa. Everyone was trading with their neighbors as early as 2,000 BC, and by AD 1 the Old World was pretty interconnected.
A plague outbreak in Mongolia would soon pass to China, follow the trade routes to India and Japan, hitch a ride on the caravans to the Levant and take the Roman roads to Europe and hence to Britain and south to Sub-Saharan Africa as well. Even remote villages traded to neighboring villages, who then had contact with larger towns.
These places are connected by land and short boat trip. The people of Africa, Asia and Europe have interacted for much longer than people realize.
because no populations in asia or africa were that remote.
side note do you think diseases only come from europe or something?
It’s a game of telephone. There were no truly isolated places in Asia and Africa, only places isolated *from* other places. There were no Europeans traveling to Madagascar before the 1500s, but there were European merchants traveling to Egypt, and Arabic merchants trading in both Egypt and Madagascar.
Same with Asia. Europeans would trade with Turks and Arabs, who would trade with Central Asia s, who would trade with Chinese merchants on the Silk Road. Chinese merchants would also trade in Japan, and the Japanese would trade with the Ainu in Hokkaido, who summered in Irktusk, so they would spread European germs all the way to the far corners of Siberia.
What the other comments said about Asia and Africa interacting with Europe long throughout history, so there was a lot of direct and indirect exposure on all sides already.
Adding: they did intentionally try to commit genocide on the native populations of America. Europeans used germ warfare through infected items to wipe out tribes and actively displaced the native populations to expand into the land. Disease spread because they made disease spread.
[Like the time they purposely gave small pox blankets](https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/229.html)
Japan had a more enclosed approach to trading than, let’s say, china. And even in both cases, trading had been happening for centuries. In the case of Africa, Iberian cultures were in contact for a long time (eg. Morocco and Spain), and the history of great ancient civilizations was also intertwined (eg. Greece and Egypt).
In the case of America, contact between the two continents was (arguably) never achieved before (or at least in a very long time, if we consider people like Leif Erikson). This made them way more vulnerable to illnesses from the old world. Eurasia and Africa are almost a big unified mass, but America is way further away.
Others have already pointed out that Europe, Asia, and Africa had plenty of contact and intermingling with each other. (really, Europe and Asia are geographically their own continent) But another factor is the lower prevalence of animal agriculture in the pre-Columbian Americas. A lot of diseases came about because of humans and animals living in close proximity. (and think of the waste!) People in the early Americans did have domesticated animals, but didn’t use animal agriculture to the same extent, and the species they did use didn’t seem to bring them disease. (at least, not the kinds of diseases that Old World people had)
Japan had periodic smallpox outbreaks starting in the 700s. An outbreak in 735 killed about 30% of the population. There were still smallpox outbreaks in the 19th century. An early version of variolation began in China, but never spread to Japan until after European contact.
I think there may be a bit of a misunderstanding of how these diseases work. There’s no genetic immunity to smallpox in Europe. Europeans got resistance because they were constantly exposed to it, but it was still deadly. Those born in America who weren’t exposed to it when young (typically those in rural areas) were just as susceptible as Native Americans. What made smallpox (and other diseases) so deadly in North America was a combination of a bunch of things. When there was an outbreak those who didn’t know they were infected often fled to friendly settlements. None of the adults had acquired immunity, so there was no one to farm or hunt and famines resulted. And, most importantly, European warfare and slave raids prevented the population from bouncing back. Native Americans could have withstood disease alone.
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