When reading “The American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World” by David E. Stannard I was horrified at the living conditions of Europe in the fifteenth through seventeenth century. Epidemic outbreaks of plague and smallpox frequently comb the area. Every twenty-five to thirty years the Europe was engulfed in great epidemics. In a span of several months, more than 80,000 Londoners had died from plague. As time went by the plague had materialize again and again, the Black Death had returned. Famine, too, was common. J.H. Elliott had once said about the sixteenth century ”the rich ate, and ate to excess, watched by a thousand hungry eyes as they consumed their gargantuan meals. The rest of the population starved." The slightest
