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|a Stannard writes that anywhere Europeans or white Americans ventured in the New World, the indigenous people had been subjected to either imported plagues and barbarous atrocities; this onslaught resulted in the extermination of an estimated 95 percent of the local population (Stannard, American Holocaust xii, xiv, 53-58, 77-81, 87-91, 102-109, 134-139, 202-204, and 268). Provocatively, Stannard inquires: What kind of people does such horrific things to fellow human beings? Stannard?s equally controversial reply: Christians. From the first Spanish contact with the Arawaks of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Cavalry massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s ? a span of over 4 centuries ? the native population of North and South America suffered what can only be described as an unending stream of violent acts. During those 4 centuries, the native population of the New World had seen decline of an approximately 100 million people (Stannard, American Holocaust 10-11, 21-24, 28-31, 39-40, 48, 222, and 266-268). Stannard further contends that the same European and/or white American destruction of the indigenous peoples of the Americas was, arguably, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world (Stannard, American Holocaust 57-148). Stannard starts American Holocaust with a description of the vast richness and diversity of life in the new World prior to Columbus?s arrival in 1492. In contrast to Thomas Bender?s vision of 1492, Stannard does not deny that this was the start of a form of globalization. On the contrary, Stannard argues that this was when disease went global (Stannard, American Holocaust x, xv, 10-11, 57-71, 188-207, and 258). Stannard then traces the path of genocide from the Indies, to Mexico, to Central and South America, to Florida, to Virginia, and finally to New England. The grisly tale finally ends in the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast (Stannard, American Holocaust 57-148). Examining the archive from the earliest European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, Stannard discovers the cultural foundation well laid by the closing stages of the Middle Ages for the eventual 4 centuries of massacres that would take place in the New World (Stannard, American Holocaust 149-246). While Horkheimer and Adorno contend that, the Nazi Holocaust formed the culmination of history in an excess of modernity (Schoolman, Morton; Reason and Horror 2); Stannard conversely argues that the epistemological, ideological, and religious grounding that informed the American Holocaust also informed the Jewish Holocaust ? in a sense arguing for continuity. Stannard?s continuation argument therefore alludes to the past in the present and these notions remain perilously alive today (Stannard, American Holocaust 238-246). Stannard closes by arguing that Americans continue to rationalize large-scale military involvement in Southeast Asia and the Middle East on the same epistemological and ideological premise (Stannard, American Holocaust 247-258).
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