Columbian Exchange
The
Columbian Exchange (also sometimes known as
The Grand Exchange) has been one of the significant events in the history of world
ecology,
agriculture, and
culture. The term is used to describe the enormous widespread exchange of
agricultural goods,
livestock,
slave labor,
communicable diseases, and ideas between the
Eastern and
Western Hemispheres that occurred after
1492. That year,
Christopher Columbus' first voyage launched an era of large-scale contact between the
Old and the
New World that resulted in this ecological revolution: hence the name
"Columbian" Exchange.
This exchange of plants and animals transformed
European,
American,
African, and
Asian ways of life. Foods that had never been seen before by some peoples became staples, as new
growing regions opened up for crops. For example, before 1492, no
potatoes were grown outside of
South America. By the
1800s,
Ireland was so dependent on the potato that a disease-based crop led to the devastating
Irish Potato Famine. The first European import, the
horse, changed the lives of many
Native American tribes on the
Great Plains, allowing them to shift to a
nomadic lifestyle based on hunting
bison on horseback.
Tomato sauce, made from New World tomatoes, became an
Italian trademark, while
coffee from Africa and
sugarcane from Asia became the main crops of extensive
Latin American
plantations. Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no
oranges in
Florida, no
bananas in
Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no zuchini in Italy, no pineapples in Hawaii, no
rubber trees in Africa, no
cattle in
Texas, no
burros in
Mexico, no
chile peppers in
Thailand, no
cigarettes in
France and no
chocolate in
Switzerland. Even the
dandelion was brought to America by Europeans for use as an herb. Before regular communication had been established between the two hemispheres, the varieties of domesticated animals and infectious diseases were both strikingly larger in the Old World than in the New. This led, in part, to the devastating effects of Old World diseases on Native American populations. The
smallpox epidemics probably resulted in the highest death toll for Native Americans. (See article:
Population history of American indigenous peoples)
Scarcely any society on earth remained unaffected by this global ecological exchange. Since the voyages of Columbus and his successors, no
kitchen or
garden has ever been the same.
Articles
*
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact*
DomesticationGuns, Germs, and SteelLists
*
List of domesticated plants*
List of domesticated animals*
List of vegetables*
List of herbs*
List of fruitThe Columbian Exchange: Plants, Animals, and Disease between the Old and New Worlds by Alfred W. Crosby
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart by Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, et al.
