There has never been any indication of a single native disease that functioned like the epidemic diseases of the old world on the continent, and the Pre-Columbian Americas didn't have the domesticated animals necessary for them to arise. They didn't exist.
this is going to take an enormous shock if Americans are immune to disease.
Perhaps we might see the historical "empire of the weak" that emerged with respect to Africa and Asia in the 16th through 18th centuries, where Europeans maintained small outposts on the strength of their seapower alone.
And with independent American state societies, Europeans might well potentially have additional naval competitors besides the Ottomans.
This is very chronocentric thinking.
It's shocking to us, because we know there is no reason for immunity.
Europeans will just be more inclined to think that the Foutain Of Youth really exists or whatever.
This is one of the better predictions in this tread so far. Relations will be more like the East Indies, India and China.
American societies will fare better, but let's not think that immunity would somehow magically transform them into advanced civilizations.
Also, out of all the technologies that could be adopted, naval construction and navigation are about the very last, as being the most dependent on very specialised skills and craftmanship.
Hantaviruses also aren't transmissible between humans except through saliva (which occurs so rarely that a large chunk of the recorded transmission incidents involved a dentist.) They're a family with epidemic potential, but they're also nothing like the diseases of the old world, as their primary means of transmission is direct contact with rodent droppings or aerosolization of rodent urine and feces. You can and do get an epidemic of Hantavirus, but it's not going to behave at all like Measles or Smallpox, and can't rack up the same body count even under ideal conditions.This is incorrect. Hantaviruses are one family of epidemic diseases that is native to the Americas, and infectious diseases appear to have been quite common in the Americas judging from the frequency of osteological signs of infection.
1. Europeans would probably have a harder time sustaining the supremacist beliefs associated with colonization if they were manifestly and overtly inferior by way of vulnerability to disease. They would probably categorize this in supernatural ways, but they would still be building this on the material base of "inferiority".
2. Technological flows were historically very rapid. Chilies spreading across the Pacific in a decade, the Mexica and Inka learning how to fight cannon and cavalry within a few years of contact, the spread of gunsmithing knowledge into inland North America. The main limiting factor would be the relatively land-oriented outlook the existing states mostly had.
Hantaviruses also aren't transmissible between humans except through saliva (which occurs so rarely that a large chunk of the recorded transmission incidents involved a dentist.) They're a family with epidemic potential, but they're also nothing like the diseases of the old world, as their primary means of transmission is direct contact with rodent droppings or aerosolization of rodent urine and feces. You can and do get an epidemic of Hantavirus, but it's not going to behave at all like Measles or Smallpox, and can't rack up the same body count even under ideal conditions.
You are correct that most disease in the Americas was chronic however. But that's still some parasites, some Treponema diseases and like HPV.
First, I'd be a bit more sanguine than you about the capacity of the racist mind to turn everything into a justification for supremacy, even positive (or "positive") traits (or "traits): "The Jew is good at money. The Negro has a good sense of rhythm. The Red Man has a hearty constitution, thus showing that God meant for him to be the ideal slave."
Second, Europeans were totally unaware of the real, global effects of the diseases. They didn't know about and didn't expect the effects that we now know about. Most of it happened in what was the white spots of the map for them at the time.
Historiographically, the idea of the Columbian Exchange resulting in decimating pandemics is very recent. No older than post-WW2. To discover it, you need a) sufficient understanding of epidemiology, late 19th at the earliest, more like early 20 th century b) sufficient understanding of New World archaeology (and hence demographics), for which scientifically modern methods and techniques are necessary, post-war. This is for expert knowledge mind you, I don't think it came into the general public awareness until after the Civil Rights Movement, so like the 70s or 80s, when narratives about "the Red Man vanishing just as the natural order of things" became replaced by others with more consciousness of their plights and sufferings, of which the epidemics were a part. I wouldn't be surprised if the 500th anniversary of Columbus in 1992 played a major part in increasing and popularising awareness of the decimating effects of the Columbian exchange pandemics.
The immunity would be noticed as a peculiar trait of the locals among others, probably generating much scholary discussions and popular stereotypes, but with all sorts of descriptive and normative interpretations. Some would see it as a sign of innocence closer to Eden, some as proof of their devilish ways, some would attribute it to an effect of the geography of the new world, others to the unique native blood, the lack of certain miasmas in the Americas, the four humours being better balanced under the western constellations, etcetera, etcetera.
What is certain is that there would be many. What is uncertain is which ones would become accepted, and/or popular. Which ones would also change over time. Not only due to the general evolution of ideas, but also depending on the exact relationships between the old and new worlds.
I feel you're not quite realising how much naval technology was the very most advanced that was produced in Europe. Cathedrals come close maybe? A galleon is a marvel of engineering. The equivalent today of aircraft carriers. You needed master craftmen in all sorts of trade. All the different sorts timbers, oak of course for the hull, but also at least half a dozen to a dozen of different wood sorts, larch, fir, linden, pine, cedar, each type for specific uses, masts, different types of rigging, etc. Just like today not every country can have an automobile or aviation industry, only certain regions in Europe had the necessary shipwrights etc to build boats capable of transoceanic journeys. For the navigation, you needed what was bleeding edge science about astronomy, cartography, trigonometry, mathematics, often kept secret in the same way that today's states keep secrets about radar stealth or rocket surgery. This is rather different than just gunsmithing (although there would be mostly imports of better quality arms from Europe, see the Kingdom of Kongo for a model)
For a long time, it was the only superior really technology that made colonialism possible. The mastery of the sea allowed colonial powers to always have a venue of retreat, and to supply garrisons and forces across the sea. On land, their military might was hardly better than the most advanced locals, like in India or China.
This is why there is two very distinct phases in colonialism, the first one from the 16th to 18th century, where transoceanic capabilities was the primary thing that made it possible, and the second in the 19th where the industrial revolution gave massive force multipliers that made possible defeating forces larger than one or two order of magnitudes, the era of "Whatever happens, we have got/The Maxim gun, and they have not". So instead of the cunning manipulations and divide et impera of the EIC and VOC in India and the East Indies, or establishing coastal forts that had little projection power in the interior, they could now blast there way through and Scramble For Africa.
Which I've actually read previously. Did you get it off r/askhistorians? Because I'm the person who actually linked it in a comment. It also doesn't negate my point that there was no functional equivalent to the epidemic diseases of the old world, and neither does a survey of remains. There's a big difference between anemia and a staph infection killing someone (or Syphilis and Pinta for that matter) and an actual set of endemic and epidemic diseases that actually forces the development of quarantine protocols or that kills a few hundred thousand people annually.
As I understand it, "Europeans are manifestly and overtly inferior to the natives by way of vulnerability to disease" was exactly the situation in Africa; part of the reason Africa was the big source of slaves for Caribbean and American sugar and cotton plantations was that Africans had better immunity to the tropical diseases the existed in the Caribbean and the American South, and the reason inland Africa wasn't conquered until the late nineteenth century was that the tropical diseases made it an extremely hostile environment for Europeans. It isn't hard to develop a racist ideology against a physically superior out-group: just claim that they're physically superior but intellectually and/or morally inferior. Indeed, I get the impression this is exactly the sort of attitude a lot of white racists actually have toward black people; belief that black people are naturally better athletes and so on coexists with beliefs that black people are intellectually and morally inferior. The two beliefs actually fit well together if you look at what white racists think about black people: the common white racist belief is that black people are Orc-like brutish subhuman ape-thugs who want to steal your wallet, rape your wife, beat you up for sadistic thrills, and spend all day snorting crack they bought with the welfare check that your hard-earned tax dollars went into; in the context of that mythology any supposed physical superiority just makes them seem more threatening and feeds into the idea that they're primitive animal-like beings whose main advantage is their natural brute strength.1. Europeans would probably have a harder time sustaining the supremacist beliefs associated with colonization if they were manifestly and overtly inferior by way of vulnerability to disease. They would probably categorize this in supernatural ways, but they would still be building this on the material base of "inferiority".
The biggest potential obstacle I see to defensive modernization of American cultures is that CONUS nations might have had a low population density because they used low-intensity agriculture that didn't need much effort, and if so they might find the idea of adopting higher-intensity agriculture unattractive. If so, they might gradually become minorities in their own homelands as European farmers who are used to more labor-intensive farming methods that can support much higher populations colonize the place.2. Technological flows were historically very rapid. Chilies spreading across the Pacific in a decade, the Mexica and Inka learning how to fight cannon and cavalry within a few years of contact, the spread of gunsmithing knowledge into inland North America. The main limiting factor would be the relatively land-oriented outlook the existing states mostly had.