Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange

The "Columbian Exchange"—a phrase coined by historian Alfred Crosby—

describes the interchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World

and the Americas following Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean in 1492. For

reasons beyond human control, rooted deep in the divergent evolutionary histories

of the continents, the Columbian Exchange massively benefited the people of

Europe and its colonies while bringing catastrophe to Native Americans.

Why Should I Care?

The Columbian Exchange: It's a relatively obscure concept, developed by

a relatively obscure historian. Most people have never even heard of it. Its

definition—the transmission of non-native plants, animals, and diseases from

Europe to the Americas, and vice versa, after 1492—doesn't sound very sexy. And

yet the Columbian Exchange just may be the single most important event in the

modern history of the world.

The Columbian Exchange explains why Indian nations collapsed and European

colonies thrived after Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.

The Columbian Exchange explains why European nations quickly became the

wealthiest and most powerful in the world.

The Columbian Exchange explains why Africans were sold into slavery on the far

side of the ocean to toil in fields of tobacco, sugar, and cotton.

The Columbian Exchange even explains why pasta marinara has tomato sauce.

If you don't understand the Columbian Exchange, you cannot truly understand the

forces that shape the world we live in today. You cannot understand why you

speak the language you speak, why you live in the nation you live in, or even why

you eat the food you eat.

If you don't understand the Columbian Exchange, much of what you think you

know about the history of the Americas may be wrong. Spanish soldiers did less to

defeat the Incas and Aztecs than smallpox did. Divine Providence did less to bless

the Puritan settlers of the Mayflower with good health and fortune than the

Pilgrims' own immune systems did.

In the Columbian Exchange, ecology became destiny. Powerful environmental

forces, understood by no one alive at the time and by very few people even today,

determined who would thrive and who would die. And that may be the most

shocking truth revealed to those who take the time to understand the Columbian

Exchange: we, as humans, cannot always control our own destinies. The most

important historical actors in this story are not Christopher Columbus or

Montezuma or Hernán Cortés. They are the smallpox virus, the pig, the potato, and

the kernel of corn.

Columbus: Discovery, Ecology and Conquest

In 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew of ragtag, starving, near-mutinous

sailors washed ashore in the Bahamas, "discovering" the New World and claiming

ownership of it for the Spanish monarchy. The Taino

Indians Columbus encountered—whose homeland he claimed for Spain—must

have thought he was mad, suffering delusions of grandeur.

But, as we know, Columbus's arrival was indeed the first act in a centuries-long

drama of colonization and conquest in which Europeans and their descendants

largely displaced the Taino and their fellow Indians while remaking the Western

Hemisphere in their own image.

How and why were the European colonists able to achieve such total dominance in

far-off continents? Did the Europeans' power lie in their technological superiority,

especially in weapons of war? Or was the European advantage ideological, rooted

in the aggressive expansionism of crusading Christianity or the profit motive of

entrepreneurial conquistadors? Was it simply a matter of the Europeans proving

more brutally committed to a genocidal fight to the finish?

While a case can be made for the significance of any of these factors—or all of

them—in truth the single most important factor in facilitating the European

conquest of the Americas may be found, surprisingly, in a realm beyond simple

human control: ecology.

Unequal Exchange: Food for Disease

Columbus's ships, and those of the innumerable Europeans who followed him to

America, short-circuited millions of years of divergent evolution in the two

hemispheres by rapidly introducing Old World plants, animals, and micro-

organisms into New World environments, and vice versa. This manmade reunion

of the ecologies of the hemispheres—dubbed "The Columbian Exchange" by

historian Alfred Crosby—had dramatically asymmetric consequences for the

peoples of the Old World and the New.

The New World happened to be much a healthier place than the Old before 1492,

hosting few or none of the devastating diseases that continuously plagued the

populations of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Thus, when Europeans arrived, they

generally found life in the Americas to be at least as healthy as back home. By

contrast, American Indians—never before exposed to vicious Old World pathogens

like smallpox and thus lacking any immunities to them—began dying at

apocalyptic rates. Many historians now believe that new diseases introduced after

Columbus's arrival killed off as much as 90% or more of the indigenous population

of the Americas.

The Indians' "Great Dying"—which may have killed as many as one out of every

five humans alive worldwide in the sixteenth century—ravaged not only Indian

bodies but entire Indian societies and cultures. The traumatized survivors were

often left unable to mount any effective resistance against the incursions of the

European colonists.

The Columbian Exchange became even more unbalanced with Europe's successful

appropriation of New World staple crops originally developed by Indians. The

adoption of efficient, carbohydrate-rich American crops such as corn, potatoes,

and cassava allowed Europeans and Africans to overcome chronic food shortages.

Thus, even while Native American populations were decimated by Old World

diseases, European and African populations swelled as American crops helped to

overcome Old World famine.

History as Demography

Simple demographic numbers tell the story of the Columbian Exchange most

starkly. When Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Europe's population stood at about

60 million. Most historians now believe that the population of the Americas at the

same time stood somewhere between 40 and 100 million. In other words, it is not

just possible but quite likely that American Indians outnumbered Europeans

outright. (At its peak just before the Spanish arrival, the Aztec capital city of

Tenochtitlan was more populous, cleaner, and more beautiful than Paris.)

But by 1800, after three centuries of the Columbian Exchange, Europe's population

had surged to 150 million, while that of the Americas' fell to 25 million—of which

the vast majority were descendants of European colonists or African slaves, not

American Indians.

The success of European imperialism in the Americas was underwritten by the

ecological imperialism of the Columbian Exchange. The European colonists who

would eventually found the settlements that would become the United States had a

powerful—if accidental—ally in the environment itself.

Taken from: http://www.shmoop.com/columbian-exchange/