The first European contact in 1492 started an influx of communicable diseases into the Caribbean. Diseases originating in the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) came to the New World (the Americas) for the first time, resulting in demographic and sociopolitical changes due to the Columbian Exchange from the late 15th century onwards. The Indigenous peoples of the Americas had little immunity to the predominantly Old World diseases, resulting in significant loss of life and contributing to their enslavement and exploitation perpetrated by the European colonists.
Infectious diseases
Before the first wave of European colonization, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean are thought to have lived with infrequent epidemic diseases, brought about by limited contact between tribes. This left them socially and biologically unprepared when the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and his crew introduced several infectious diseases, including typhus, smallpox, influenza, whooping cough, and measles following his 1492 voyage to the Americas. Because the Indigenous societies of the Americas were not used to the diseases as European nations were at the time, there was no system in place to care for the sick. The pigs aboard Columbus’ ships in 1493 immediately spread swine flu, which sickened Columbus and other Europeans and proved deadly to the native Taino population on Hispaniola, who had no prior exposure to the virus. In Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Lesser Antilles, 90% of the Native population may have died within a half-century. On a second voyage to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, the fleet of Christopher Columbus carries domestic cattle infected with an influenza virus that sweeps through the Taíno. Epidemics kill countless numbers and spread to Cuba and Florida along Taíno trade routes.
Smallpox is among the most notable of diseases in the Columbian Exchange due to the high number of deaths and impact on life for Indigenous societies. The disease was carried over from Europe, where it had been endemic for over seven hundred years. The virus was introduced to the Isle of Santo Domingo by the Cristóbal Cólon, which docked at La Isabela on 10 December 1493, carrying about 2,000 Spanish passengers. Despite the general poor health of the colony, Columbus returned in 1494 and found that the Native American population had been affected by disease even more catastrophically than Isabela's first settlers were. By 1506, only a third of the native population remained. The Taíno population before European contact is estimated to have been between 60,000 and 8 million people, and the entire nation was virtually extinct 50 years after contact, which has primarily been attributed to the infectious diseases. led to a decline in the Amerindian population. Because the Indigenous societies, including the Taínos, were unfamiliar with the diseases, they were unprepared to deal with the social consequences. Until 1800 the population rose as slaves arrived from West Africa. Because there was already an established European colonial presence in Africa at the time, the enslaved Africans were less vulnerable to disease than the Taíno people on Hispaniola. However, they came carrying their own diseases, including malaria. At the time, malaria was endemic both in Europe and Africa, though more prevalent in the latter continent. Many of the African-born enslaved people had genetic protections against malaria that Indigenous enslaved people did not.