that of the many important Accidents of History, the absolute devastation wrought by old world infectious diseases on the new world must be one of the most consequential. without that massive population decline and the corollary social and political crises among indigenous societies, it's entirely possible (imo) that we don't see complete European domination of the Americas.
and if we don't see European domination of most of the Americas, everything else about world history in the past half a millenium comes into question. without that initial leg up, the powers of Western Europe likely wouldn't have been able to exert control over Africa and Asia (at least not to the same extent). without the economic engine of colonial extraction operating at the same level it did historically? how, when, where, and whether modern capitalism and industrialism develop is completely unknowable. the world we live in was created by colonialism, and global European colonialism was midwifed by a series of epidemics.
