The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (104 page)

10.
Marvin Harris,
Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (New York: Vintage, 1980), pp. 333–340.

11.
Juan Antonio Llorente, general secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, estimated that 31,912 were executed, from 1480 to 1808. Will Durant,
The Reformation: A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin, 1300–1564 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), p. 215.

12.
Gibbons, "Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt."

13.
Peter Hessler, "The New Story of China's Ancient Past,"
National Geographic, July 2003.

14.
Keen,
Aztec Image in Western Thought, pp. 96–97.

15.
Cocker,
Rivers of Blood, p. 47; Harris,
Cannibals and Kings, p. 159.

16.
Cook and Borah cited in Harner, "Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice."

17.
William Prescott,
History of the Conquest of Mexico, Montezuma ed. (London: Lippincott, 1904; originally published 1843), p. 94.

18.
Keen,
Aztec Image in Western Thought, p. 256.

19.
Harner, "Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice."

Atlantic Slave Trade

1.
My estimate is based on various percentages cited in this chapter. The total death toll for the trans-Atlantic slave trade would seem to be something like 14 to 18 million, which is the sum of 10 million to 12 million deaths in Africa (half the total captured), plus 1 million to 2 million deaths on the ocean (10 to 15 percent of the number who were transported), plus 3 million to 4 million deaths in the first year in America (one-third of those who arrived). This translates into a very rough guess that three slaves died for every two slaves transported across the ocean.

A few other estimates of total deaths:

Stannard,
American Holocaust
, pp. 151, 317: 30 million to 60 million.

Rummel,
Statistics of Democide
, http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB2.1A.GIF: 13,667,000.

Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean
, p. 128: 8 million died in order to bring 4 million slaves to the Caribbean.

Drescher, "Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust," pp. 66–67: 6 million.

2.
Meltzer,
Slavery, vol. 2, p. 2.

3.
Thomas,
Slave Trade, pp. 373–379.

4.
Hochschild,
Bury the Chains, p. 31.

5.
Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 127.

6.
Stannard,
American Holocaust, p. 317; Hochschild,
Bury the Chains, p. 31 (50 percent died in forced marches and barracoons); Lloyd,
Navy and the Slave Trade, p. 118 (50 percent, citing Buxton).

7.
Alexander Falconbridge,
An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London: J. Phillips, 1788), p. 18.

8.
Thomas,
Slave Trade, caption to illustration 75.

9.
Olaudah Equiano,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Boston: Knapp, 1837), pp. 43–44.

10.
Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 127.

11.
Thomas,
Slave Trade, p. 416.

12.
Ibid., p. 417.

13.
Ibid., p. 804; Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 123.

14.
Philip Curtin's
Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969) is probably the most important study of shipping statistics. He estimates that 11.8 million slaves embarked and 9.4 million arrived. Other authorities: Davidson,
Africa in History, p. 208 (10 million to 12 million); Hochschild,
Bury the Chains, p. 32 (11 million left, 9.6 million arrived); Meltzer,
Slavery, vol. 2, p. 51 (10 million were imported, citing Philip D. Curtin; the older estimates of 15 million to 20 million were "flimsy guesses"); Stannard,
American Holocaust, p. 317 (12 million to 15 million survived); Thomas,
Slave Trade, p. 804 (13 million left African ports, and 11,328,000 arrived in America).

15.
Davidson,
Africa in History, p. 215 (10 to 15 percent); Meltzer,
Slavery, vol. 2, p. 50 (12.5 percent died in transit in the 1700s); Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 127 (13 percent); Stannard,
American Holocaust, p. 317 (10 percent); Thomas,
Slave Trade, p. 424 (9 percent reasonable estimate for eighteenth century).

16.
Hochschild,
Bury the Chains, p. 32; Thomas,
Slave Trade, p. 709.

17.
Thomas,
Slave Trade, pp. 310–311.

18.
James A. McMillin,
The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783–1810 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), p. 61.

19.
Hochschild,
Bury the Chains, p. 63 (one-third died in the first three years); Meltzer,
Slavery, vol. 2, p. 50 (4 to 5 percent died waiting in the harbor, 33 percent died being seasoned); Stannard,
American Holocaust, p. 317 (half died in seasoning).

20.
Hochschild,
Bury the Chains, pp. 63–66.

21.
Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, pp. 124, 138.

22.
Thomas,
Slave Trade, p. 805.

23.
Jordan,
White Man's Burden, pp. 52–68.

24.
John P. Jackson and Nadine M. Weidman,
Race, Racism, and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), pp. 24–27; Jordan,
White Man's Burden.

25.
Drescher, "Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust," p. 72.

26.
Mary Turner,
Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787–1834 (Kingston, Jamaica: Press University of the West Indies, 1998), pp. 8–9.

27.
Lloyd,
Navy and the Slave Trade, p. 118.

28.
James Walvin,
Black Ivory (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), p. 265.

29.
McEvedy,
Penguin Atlas of African History, p. 97.

30.
Randall M. Miller and John David Smith,
Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), p. 594.

Conquest of the Americas

1.
Columbus, trans. Markham,
Journal of Christopher Columbus, p. 38.

2.
Ibid., p. 135.

3.
Zinn,
People's History of the United States, p. 1.

4.
Columbus, trans. Markham,
Journal of Christopher Columbus, p. 51.

5.
Meltzer,
Slavery, vol. 2, p. 6.

6.
Zinn,
People's History of the United States.

7.
Cocker,
Rivers of Blood, pp. 34, 63–65.

8.
Meltzer,
Slavery, vol. 2, p. 6.

9.
Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, pp. 26–27.

10.
"Unearthing Evidence of a Caribbean Massacre,"
Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1997.

11.
Rogozinski,
Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 31.

12.
Ibid., p. 30.

13.
Cocker,
Rivers of Blood, p. 27.

14.
Hanson,
Carnage and Culture, pp. 173–176; Cocker,
Rivers of Blood, pp. 53–60.

15.
Cocker,
Rivers of Blood, pp. 94–95.

16.
Becky Branford, "History Echoes in the Mines of Potosi," BBC News Online, October 18, 2004,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740134.stm
. Estimates of the number who died at Potosi go as high as 8 million; however, that comes to 20,000 mine-related deaths per year, from 1549 to 1949, in a community whose population peaked at 200,000 and fell to half that once the mines were played out. That's at least 10 percent dying every year for nearly half a millennium. Even the Gulag had difficulty being that deadly, so I doubt these high estimates.

17.
Thornton,
American Indian Holocaust and Survival, p. 69.

18.
Zinn,
People's History of the United States, pp. 14–15.

19.
Osborn,
Wild Frontier, p. 243.

20.
Ibid., p. 139.

21.
Ibid., p. 156.

22.
Utley and Washburn,
Indian Wars, pp. 126–127.

23.
Ibid., p. 129.

24.
Thornton,
American Indian Holocaust and Survival, p. 118.

25.
Utley and Washburn,
Indian Wars, p. 203.

26.
Osborn,
Wild Frontier, p. 217.

27.
Ibid., p. 225.

28.
Ibid., p. 240.

29.
Ribeiro, "Indigenous Cultures and Languages in Brazil."

30.
Stephen T. Katz, "Uniqueness: The Historical Dimension," in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed.,
Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), p. 21.

31.
Quoted in Kiernan,
Blood and Soil, p. 227.

32.
Stannard,
American Holocaust, p. 58.

33.
Loewen,
Lies My Teacher Told Me, p. 82. The first sentence is quoting Karen Kupperman.

34.
Diamond,
Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 78.

35.
Stannard,
American Holocaust, p. 107. I also need to point out that 100,000 is much higher than most scholars would estimate for the original population anyway.