Mann vs Watts

Kurt Schreiber- W00702185

History 107- C Friday

Mann/Watts Comparative Essay

While examining a reading, it is often important to consider the author’s motives and ideals in order to better understand just what they are trying to say. This idea can be especially important when studying history or reading a historically based writing. When comparing Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and Sheldon Watts’ Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism, it is important to understand that although they both examine similar topics, they are doing so in very similar contexts. Mann’s book is charged with the idea of examining the peoples of the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans to the continent. In doing so, he touches upon different aspects of their arrival, including, at times, different diseases that they had brought to the Americas and the effects that they had on the people already there. Watt’s book takes a different approach; basically a backwards approach to some of the ideas that Mann addresses in his book: it is a book about different diseases in which he touches on what these diseases had done to different people throughout time. When examining these two author’s works, it is important to keep in mind how the central ideas of their writing influences the views that they take, the claims that they make and the way in which they see what is basically the same period in time in two different, yet connected ways.

When reading the two books, the central claims that differentiate the two authors’ ideas becomes rather clear: Mann claims that diseases acted as a ‘how’ factor in what led to the decimation of an entire group of people throughout the Americas, while Watts takes the stand that disease acted as a ‘why’ and entire group of people was cut down by the Spanish upon their arrival. Although this may seem like the same thing at first, it is important to understand the difference. Mann illustrates how...