Alchon, Suzanne Austin 1952- (Suzanne Austin)

PERSONAL:

Born July 20, 1952. Education: Duke University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, 236 John Munroe Hall, 46 W. Delaware Ave., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-2547. E-mail—salchon@udel.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, educator, historian. University of Delaware, Newark, professor.

WRITINGS:

Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Suzanne Austin Alchon is a historian with a specialty in colonial Latin America. Her written work often focuses on the interaction of disease on native populations. In her 1991 book, Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, Alchon takes a slice of Latin American life to examine the relationship between indigenous populations and the effects of disease, largely those diseases brought by Europeans during the sixteenth century. Alchon focuses her study on the north-central highlands of Ecuador and demonstrates that, while disease clearly existed prior to the advent of the European incursions, with the new pathogens that hit the shores of South America after 1500, new adaptations on the part of the local population were brought about. Prior to the European invasions, more than a million indigenous people lived in the highlands of Ecuador. The diseases they had at the time, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, and possibly typhus were harsh enough, but native treatments, including herbal medicine, helped to control such illnesses. Smallpox and measles, among other diseases brought by the Europeans, made huge inroads into this population base, killing perhaps half the people in the highlands. However, the indigenous people slowly, but eventually, adapted to the new diseases brought by the Europeans, exactly as they would also adapt to the conquest itself. Alchon draws a parallel between these two sorts of adaptation, for the natives presented a varied response to European diseases just as they did to the politico-economic demands of the Europeans. Thus, the sixteenth-century invasion of Ecuador, as well as all of Latin America, created not only a new social hierarchy and history but also a new immunological and biological one as well.

Noble David Cook, writing in Man, termed Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador "a short, tightly argued monograph, that goes far to increase our understanding of the impact of foreign disease on local society in the equatorial Andes." Cook further called the work "a valuable book for both specialist and the general reader." Further praise came from EthnoHistory contributor Daniel Reff, who found the same book "a well-documented case study of European-introduced disease and its demographic consequences in colonial Latin America." Likewise, Medical Anthropology Quarterly contributor William T. Vickers noted, "This slender book is packed with information on the history of disease in colonial Ecuador." Vickers further wrote, "Alchon does an admirable job of sifting through the material and explaining her interpretations of the data."

In her 2003 study, A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective, Alchon takes a similar look at the spread of contagion, but on a larger scale. She examines disease among the native peoples of the New World before and after 1492. Alchon contends that the huge loss of native population following the European invasions was not attributable solely to the introduction of new pathogens, a position held by many historians. Instead, she posits that the indigenous people of the New World suffered no more or less from such new diseases than did the European conquerors themselves. She credits much of the decrease in native populations not to disease, but to the effects of European colonialism. Reviewing A Pest in the Land in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Phillip L. Walker wrote that the "book provides a broad perspective on the catastrophic demographic collapse that Native Americans suffered when European colonists arrived in the New World." Walker went on to note that A Pest in the Land "is well written and would be excellent as a text for a course on Native American demographic history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1992, Murdo J. MacLeod, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 1636; February, 2004, Kenneth F. Kiple, review of A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective, pp. 142-143.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, October, 2004, David J. Robinson, review of A Pest in the Land, p. 274.

Choice, November, 1992, M.J. MacLeod, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 528.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, April, 1993, Christopher Abel, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 361.

EthnoHistory, June 22, 1993, Daniel Reff, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 486.

Hispanic American Historical Review, November, 1993, Karen M. Powers, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 694; November, 2004, Daniel W. Gade, review of A Pest in the Land, p. 717.

Isis, June, 1993, Jorge Canizares, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 383.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 1993, Rudolph Zambardino, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 194; summer 22, 2004, Alfred W. Crosby, review of A Pest in the Land, pp. 140-141.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, March, 2006, Phillip L. Walker, review of A Pest in the Land, p. 219.

Man, December, 1994, Noble David Cook, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 989.

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, March, 1994, William T. Vickers, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 123.

SciTech Book News, June, 2003, review of A Pest in the Land, p. 101.

Social Science & Medicine, June, 1994, Roberta D. Baer, review of Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador, p. 1587.