Visual Source: Smallpox victims from the Florentine Codex (1500s)

European Exploration, Perception of the Other, and the Columbian Exchange

How did the Columbian exchange link worlds?

The image of natives reclining on mats in blankets is from the Florentine Codex book 12 alongside the description of the smallpox epidemic in Mexico during the conquest by Cortés.

Smallpox victims from the <i>Florentine Codex</i> (1500s)

. What does the print of indigenous people on mats depict?

Those who had drunk too much alcohol and became ill.

Doctors curing native peoples of diseases.

Diseases causing epidemics among their population.

. How might this have impacted European conquest of the New World?

Watching native populations die from disease encouraged the Europeans to kill those who remained.

Even a small number of armed Europeans can subdue or destroy a people if they are suffering from epidemics.

Europeans were slow to conquer the New World because they did not want to catch these diseases that the native populations had.