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The Columbian Exchange
In A Nutshell
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 Moctezuma or Hernán Cortés. They are
the smallpox virus, the pig, the potato, and the kernel of corn.
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The Columbian Exchange Summary & Analysis
The Big Picture: Who, What, When, Where & (Especially) Why
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 descendents 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
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Unequal Exchange: Food for Disease
Columbus's ships, and those of the innumerable Europeans who followed him to America, shortcircuited 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 descendents of
European colonists or African slaves, not American Indians.
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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.
The Columbian Exchange unleashed a variety of diseases upon the native inhabitants of Latin America.
The first wave of Spanish sailors brought with them a host of European diseases, while African slaves
would later carry tropical diseases directly from Africa to the Americas. The list of diseases inflicted upon
the New World is generally considered to comprise the following:
•amoebic dysentery
•bubonic plague
•chicken pox
•cholera
•common cold
•diphtheria
•influenza
•leprosy
•malaria
•measles
•mumps
•scarlet fever
•smallpox
•typhoid
•typhus
•whooping cough
•yaws
•yellow fever
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Environment in The Columbian Exchange
Looking at the Past Through the Lens of Environment
Continental Drift
Tectonic forces broke up the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea about 180 million years ago, sending
the Americas slowly drifting away from the continents of the Old World (Eurasia and Africa). From that
time until 1492, the plants and animals living in the two hemispheres experienced continuous, divergent
evolution. Periodic openings of the Bering Strait land bridge during Ice Ages did allow animals (humans
prominent among them) to migrate from Asia to America, but despite these occasional contacts the
human-shaped ecosystems of the two hemispheres developed very different characteristics.
New World and Old World
The people of the New World cultivated a number of highly nutritious plant species, South American
potatoes and Central American maize (a.k.a. corn) foremost among them. Thousands of years ago, the
people of southern Mexico successfully bioengineered maize from strains of inedible teosinte grass. The
Indian creation of corn, one of the world's most calorie-efficient grains, was one of the most significant
technological accomplishments of ancient man; widespread cultivation of the highly nutritious corn
eventually allowed the agriculturalists of the central Mexican plateau to support the huge, stationary
populations needed to sustain a great civilization.
The New World's wealth in produce was offset by a poverty in domesticable animals. Indians throughout
the Americas kept dogs, and the natives of the Andes tamed the llama, but no other animal species of
the Americas proved amenable to domestication. Indian hunger for meat had to be met by hunting wild
game.
In the Old World, the situation was quite different. Plant sources of carbohydrates were less robust, but
Europeans, Africans, and Asians learned to domesticate a multitude of useful animals—horses, pigs,
cows, oxen, chickens, sheep, goats, and camels, among others—which provided them with meat, milk,
clothing and transportation.
The drawback of Old World civilizations' reliance upon domesticated animals came in increased
incidence of disease. Many of the world's nastiest illnesses derive from bugs that have leapt back and
forth between people and their animals. Humans caught smallpox from their cows, influenza from their
fowl, bubonic plague from the rats who lived in their houses. By the time of Columbus, the Old World
was wracked by endemic contagions of dozens of deadly diseases, which kept life expectancies low and
infant mortality rates high. Largely due to the ravages of disease (especially bubonic plague), the
population of Europe in 1492 was lower than it had been 200 years earlier.
Crossing the "Seams of Pangaea"
Columbus' ships, ferrying people, plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the New,
instantly reconnected ecosystems that had developed in complete isolation from one another for
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millennia. According to historian Alfred Crosby, who developed the concept of the Columbian Exchange,
the voyages of Columbus and his successors re-knitted the torn "seams of Pangaea," which had ripped
apart by continental drift millions of years before. Suddenly, the separate ecologies of the Eastern and
Western Hemispheres merged into a single, worldwide, man-made ecosystem. The ecological effects
were dramatic, and—in ways entirely unforeseen and misunderstood by both Europeans and Indians at
the time—they systematically favored the peoples of the Old World in their encounters with Native
Americans.
The profoundly uneven nature of the Columbian Exchange colored all subsequent American history.
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Science & Technology in The Columbian Exchange
Looking at the Past Through the Lens of Science & Technology
Disease: The Greatest Conquistador
Technology of the European Explorers
The first response of many Amerindians to European arrival was to assume they were Gods. This was in
large part due to the relatively advanced technology of the conquistadors. The indigenous Americans
had never seen metal armor or weapons such as swords and guns. Riding horses, an animal unknown in
the Americas, the European explorers seemed to be centaurs or some other mythical creature. The
initial awe and fear of the Amerindians was capitalized on with demonstrations of firepower that kept
resistance to a minimum.
Jared Diamond, best-selling author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, popularized the notion that European
imperialism succeeded due to European advantages over other people in the areas of, well... guns,
germs, and steel. As far as colonization of the Americas is concerned, though, guns and steel were all but
immaterial. The germs alone were enough.
The word "conquistador" evokes memories of Cortés and Pizarro, but in truth the greatest
conquistadors of the New World were smallpox and influenza—not to mention typhoid, cholera,
tuberculosis, measles, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and malaria.
Every one of these diseases, endemic to the Old World, spread to the Americas after 1492 with
catastrophic effects for indigenous people there. (In return, the Americas afflicted the Old World with
only one major affliction—syphilis. And even that is in dispute; scientists and historians remain divided
on whether the disease truly originated in the New World.)
Old World diseases—lethal enough already on their continents of origin—became exponentially more
dangerous in America, where they spread as virgin-soil epidemics among native populations totally
lacking in immunities to them. (In Europe and Africa, countless children died from diseases like smallpox
and malaria; those who survived, however, built up antibodies that inoculated them against adult
infection. Since no Native Americans had ever encountered these diseases, none built up any immunity,
leaving entire populations as "virgin soil" for infection. When the diseases struck, entire communities
could be felled in a matter of days.)
Virgin-soil epidemics are among the deadliest phenomena ever experienced by humankind, and the
death toll of the pandemics unleashed in the Americas by the Columbian Exchange far exceeded that of
history's most famous virgin-soil epidemic, Europe's Black Death (an outbreak of bubonic plague in the
1340s). The cataclysmic effects of virgin-soil epidemics struck Native American societies just as they
faced the threat of European invasion, decisively reducing the natives' capability to resist colonization.
(It is worth noting that devastating smallpox pandemics struck both the Aztecs and Incas just before
their respective disastrous encounters with Cortés and Pizarro.)
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Mississippian Mystery: De Soto and La Salle
Perhaps the most arresting evidence of the consequences of virgin-soil epidemics came from the
entrada of Hernando de Soto, who led an army of conquistadors deep into the North American
mainland in 1539. De Soto hoped to find gold in the country that today comprises the southeastern
United States; he ended up leading more than 600 men and hundreds of livestock on a four-year wild
goose chase. In the end, his mission proved to be a fiasco—two-thirds of the men, including De Soto
himself, died without ever finding a trace of gold—but De Soto's expedition powerfully illustrated the
destructive force of smallpox, which apparently spread from his pigs to the people of the Mississippi
Valley. Before leaving, De Soto's men recorded their impressions of the Mississippian people—they
found dense settlements, with large villages and cities often sited within view of each other, separated
by carefully tended fields of corn. After De Soto left the country, no European returned for more than
100 years. When the French explorer La Salle canoed down the Mississippi Valley in 1682, he found very
few villages, no cities, and no fields of corn, but instead a landscape almost devoid of people and
overrun by buffalo (which De Soto had apparently never encountered).
In the 140 years that passed between the explorations of De Soto and La Salle, something transformed
the Mississippi Valley from a densely populated Indian heartland into a virtually deserted wilderness.
That something was almost certainly smallpox. The landscape encountered by La Salle was not, as he
believed, a primeval wilderness, but rather an ecosystem that had recently experienced the sudden
destruction of its keystone species—Indians. The buffalo wandered in because few Indians survived to
hunt them.
From Canada to the Tierra del Fuego, the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas suffered similar
calamities, the Columbian Exchange of diseases ravaging Indian communities and facilitating the
European takeover of the hemisphere.
Culture in The Columbian Exchange
Looking at the Past Through the Lens of Culture
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American Transplants and European Traditions
What we now consider to be the "traditional" cuisines of Europe are heavily flavored with the products
of the Columbian Exchange. Before 1492, the Italians—hard as it is to believe—ate no tomatoes. The
Irish ate no potatoes, the Spanish no peppers, the Swiss no chocolate. For tomatoes, potatoes, peppers,
and cocoa—like corn, cassava, peanuts, avocados, strawberries, pineapple, vanilla, and tobacco—are
species native to the Western Hemisphere, brought back to Europe for the first time as the literal fruits
of colonial success.
The rapid integration of American foodstuffs into European recipes was only the most obvious of the
cultural adaptations brought on by the Columbian Exchange. On both sides of the Atlantic, people
proved remarkably willing to reorganize entire social structures to make better use of previously
unknown plants and animals.
Potatoes did not exist in Europe before 1492. They first appeared in Ireland sometime in the late
sixteenth century, and very quickly the starchy tubers—high in calories, easy to cultivate, capable of rotfree storage in the ground—became the island's staple crop. The increased nutrition provided by
potatoes allowed Ireland's population to explode, from 1 million in the middle of the seventeenth
century to 8 million 200 years later. When a devastating potato blight struck the crop in the 1840s, the
result was mass starvation and an exodus of millions of desperate emigrants. The terrible consequences
of the Great Famine revealed, in tragic clarity, the incredible extent to which the potato—a favorite food
of the Incas—had become an indispensable part of Irish culture and society.
European Horses and Comanche Culture
American Indians integrated European species into their socio-cultural traditions just as easily as vice
versa. Horses were as alien to America in 1492 as potatoes were to Ireland. It did not take long,
following horses' introduction to the New World by Spanish conquistadors, for Indians to appreciate the
strange beasts' value in transportation, hunting, and warfare. The horse transformed Indian societies,
and even created new Indian nations: The Comanche emerged as a distinct tribe around 1700, breaking
away from the Shoshone in order to adopt a new nomadic lifestyle made possible only by the horse. The
Comanche, who quickly developed an unrivalled reputation for skilled horsemanship, soon came to
dominate the southern Great Plains. The horse—Europe's favorite domesticated animal—had become
an indispensable part of Comanche culture and society.
Today, nothing could seem more "traditional" than the Irish potato or the Comanche on horseback. Yet
those traditions are comparatively new, only made possible by the unprecedented ecological upheaval
of the Columbian Exchange.
Ideology in The Columbian Exchange
Looking at the Past Through the Lens of Ideology
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Ecological Imperialism Precedes English Colonization
The English colonists who founded the colonies that would eventually become the United States joined
the quest for New World empires very late in the game. The first English attempts to colonize North
America came a full century after the Spanish inaugurated the Columbian Exchange. The colonists of
Jamestown and Plymouth Plantation thus arrived in landscapes—and among peoples—already heavily
touched by the forces of ecological imperialism.
But they didn't know it.
When they arrived in America, English colonists found a landscape of great woods, abundant game, and
relatively few Indians. Their mistake was to assume that it had always been this way. The forests the
colonists mistook for primeval wilderness had in fact been more like orchards, carefully and deliberately
shaped by Indian fires to provide better sustenance for human populations. And the small nomadic
tribes the colonists mistook for the timeless inhabitants of those lands were, in fact, only the shattered
survivors of history's worst population catastrophe. European diseases, arriving in places like
Massachusetts and the Chesapeake long before permanent European settlers did, opened up the
country for successful colonization.
Epidemic Disease and Manifest Destiny
Neither Europeans nor Indians had any scientific understanding of the ecological processes that had so
profoundly shaped their encounter. Both groups understood phenomena like agricultural abundance or
epidemic disease in spiritual terms, as the respective blessings or punishments of their gods.
Thus, the undeniable facts of the European-American encounter—that Indians seemed to be wasting
away, opening bounteous lands to the newcomers from across the Atlantic—acquired deep cultural and
ideological meanings in the minds of the colonists who eventually founded the United States. Not
understanding the scientific processes at work, Anglo-Americans interpreted their ongoing good fortune
as proof of God's special endorsement of their nation.
For example, John Winthrop—Puritan elder and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—
perceived divine blessing of the colonists' venture in the Indians' Great Dying: "For the natives,"
Winthrop wrote, "they are neere all dead of Small poxe, so as the Lord hathe cleared our title to what
we possess."3 A Frenchman on La Salle's voyage down the Mississippi captured the idea even more
bluntly: "Touching these savages, there is a thing I cannot omit to remark to you, it is that it appears
visibly that God wishes that they yield their place to new peoples."4
Through generations of successful colonization—in which the descendents of Europe built some of the
world's healthiest and wealthiest societies in the lands vacated by the Indians—white Americans'
conviction that their presence in America had received a special blessing from God only grew stronger.
The cultural and ideological origins of "manifest destiny" and "American exceptionalism" can be found in
the exceptionally uneven terms of the Columbian Exchange. Only recently have we become fully aware
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that the special advantages enjoyed by Europeans in their encounter with Indians were bestowed less
by God than by ecology.
Economy in The Columbian Exchange
Looking at the Past Through the Lens of Economy
New World, New Foods
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The Columbian Exchange of foods richly improved the European (and African) diet, not only by
improving and diversifying its taste but also, in a more basic sense, by simply increasing Old World
societies' abilities to feed more people. Starvation, which had long limited population growth in Europe
and Africa, was largely overcome through the transplantation of New World foods.
Three staple crops of the Western Hemisphere—corn, potatoes, and cassava—proved to be much more
efficient sources of carbohydrates than wheat, the old European standard. An acre of land planted in
corn, potatoes, or cassava yielded twice as many calories as an acre planted in wheat. The increased
caloric output of farmers who adopted New World crops helped to fuel a surge in Old World
populations. In Ireland, for example, widespread peasant farming of the potato allowed the population
to soar from barely one million in 1670 to more than 8 million by the time of the infamous Potato Blight
of the 1840s. Cassava, a tropical root plant, thrived in the impoverished soils of equatorial Africa,
helping to support a population boom in the Congo. (Much of that new population would end up
transplanted, involuntarily, to the New World through the Atlantic slave trade.)
In the cases of both Irish potatoes and African cassava, New World plants transplanted to Old World
societies helped to sustain millions of lives—lives that were later used as reinforcements in the
European colonization of the Americas. Whether or not of their own free choice—largely not, in the case
of both Irish and Africans—millions of people nourished on American foods would eventually follow in
Columbus's footsteps to repopulate a New World whose native inhabitants had been decimated by
disease.
At the same time, the colonies the Europeans established in the New World soon became efficient
producers of not only New World crops, but Old World transplants as well. Thus did North America
become a key producer of not only corn but also wheat, while the Caribbean and South America came
to host the world's greatest plantations of Old World cash crops such as sugar and coffee.
An Expanding Tobacco Market
Queen Elizabeth I said it best when speaking to Sir Walter Raleigh regarding his tobacco plantations in
America. She stated, “I have seen many a man turn his gold into smoke, but you are the first who has
turned smoke into gold.” Tobacco in all its forms became immensely popular in Europe, creating a huge
demand that was supplied by tobacco plantations in the Americas.
World Staples That Went East to Europe:
•Tomato
•Potato
•Corn
•Bean
•Zucchini /Squash
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•Avocado
•Bell Pepper
•Chili
•Pineapple
New World Spices:
Allspice, Vanilla, Chocolate, Chili
Old World staples that went west (just a few)
•Onion
•Garlic
•Wheat
•Rice
•Carrot
•Lettuce
The Columbian Exchange of food vastly increased the health and wealth of Europeans and their colonists
in the Americas.
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
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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 descendents 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.
The Columbian Exchange unleashed a variety of diseases upon the native inhabitants of Latin America.
The first wave of Spanish sailors brought with them a host of European diseases, while African slaves
would later carry tropical diseases directly from Africa to the Americas. The list of diseases inflicted upon
the New World is generally considered to comprise the following:
•amoebic dysentery
•bubonic plague
•chicken pox
•cholera
•common cold
•diphtheria
•influenza
•leprosy
•malaria
•measles
•mumps
•scarlet fever
•smallpox
•typhoid
•typhus
•whooping cough
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•yaws
•yellow fever
The Columbian Exchange Statistics
By the Numbers
Estimated population of Europe in 1492: about 60 million
Estimated population of the Americas in 1492: 40-100 million
Estimated population of Europe in 1800: 150 million
Estimated population of the Americas in 1800: 25 million (the vast majority of whom were of European
or African descent)
Major domesticated animals in the New World in 1492: dog, llama
Major domesticated animals in the Old World in 1492: horse, cow, pig, sheep, goat, chicken, camel,
oxen, cat, dog
Major edible plants unique to the New World in 1492: maize (corn), potato, squash, cassava (manioc),
tomato, bell pepper, chili pepper, avocado, squash, pumpkin, peanut, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry,
blueberry, pineapple, tobacco
Major edible plants unique to the Old World in 1492: wheat, oats, barley, lettuce, onion, garlic, banana,
orange, lemon, peach, sugarcane, coffee, tea
Estimated number of Incas killed by smallpox between 1525 and 1532, when Francisco Pizarro
conquered the empire: More than 200,000
Estimated proportion of the Aztec population of Tenochtitlan infected by smallpox in 1520, one year
before Hernán Cortés conquered the empire: 50%
Key People of the Columbian Exchange
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Christopher Columbus in The Columbian Exchange
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was a navigator and explorer whose famous 1492 voyage from Spain
to the West Indies marked the beginning of successful European colonization of the Americas. On 12
October 1492, Columbus and his crews aboard the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria made landfall in the
Bahamas. Upon his return to Spain, news of the explorer's discoveries captivated Europe. Though
Columbus was not the first European to discover the Americas, his four voyages helped open transAtlantic navigation and facilitated European conquest of the New World. He made three subsequent
journeys to the New World, "discovering" many islands in the Caribbean and mapping the coast of
Central and South America.
Columbus was the initiator and namesake of the Columbian Exchange—the rapid exchange of plants,
animals, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds that began with Columbus's journeys. The
uneven biological and ecological impacts of the Columbian Exchange largely accounted for the divergent
fates of Indians, Europeans, and even Africans after 1492. Thus, the impact of Columbus extended far
beyond his "discoveries" of new lands.
Francisco Pizarro in The Columbian Exchange
Francisco Pizarro (1475-1541) was one of the most successful Spanish conquistadors. In 1532, Pizarro
led a small force of Spanish soldiers and conquered the mighty Inca Empire. He then founded the
Spanish colony of Peru, ruling former Inca territories there until he was assassinated by followers of a
rival conquistador in 1541.
The ecological processes of the Columbian Exchange gave Pizarro a vital advantage in his conquest of
the Inca Empire. A catastrophic smallpox outbreak in 1525 killed nearly a quarter million Inca, including
the emperor and many of his most powerful aides and generals, leading to a power struggle among the
survivors that devolved into civil war. When Pizarro invaded a few years later, he faced much less
resistance than he would have prior to the epidemic.
Hernán Cortés in The Columbian Exchange
Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was perhaps the most famous of the Spanish conquistadors, the conqueror
of the mighty Aztec Empire of Central America. From 1519 to 1521, Cortés commanded the small
Spanish expedition that eventually captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, allowing Cortés to take
over as governor of Mexico. His willful disregard for authority pitted him against his superiors in Cuba
and in Spain, and although his exploits were legendary and quite profitable, he died an embittered man
in 1547.
Without the advantageous impacts of the Columbian Exchange, Cortés's conquest of the Aztecs would
have been impossible. In 1520, smallpox—a European disease for which the Aztecs had no immunities—
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ravaged the population of Tenochtitlan, infecting as much as half the population. The smallpox
pandemic fatally weakened the Aztecs, allowing Cortés to prevail one year later.
Hernando de Soto in The Columbian Exchange
Hernando de Soto (1496-1542) was a Spanish conquistador who led a disastrous expedition of conquest
into the North American interior between 1539 and 1542. De Soto, who hoped to follow in the footsteps
of Cortés and Pizarro, failed in his hunt for gold on the North American mainland. After leading his men
on a fruitless three-year search throughout much of what now makes up the southeastern United
States, De Soto died on the banks of the Mississippi River. His men fled back to Mexico.
While De Soto's journey of conquest was an unmitigated failure, it was nevertheless historically
significant. During his travels, De Soto encountered a densely populated and culturally sophisticated
Indian civilization in the Mississippi Valley. However, De Soto (and his men and livestock) introduced
new diseases to the region that subsequently destroyed those Indian populations. By the time
Europeans returned to the area again in the late seventeenth century, the Mississippi Valley appeared to
be a depopulated wilderness.
John Winthrop in The Columbian Exchange
John Winthrop (c. 1587-1649) was a devoutly religious Puritan elder who led a large migration of
Puritans from England to America in 1629 and became the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony
one year later. He was probably the most powerful figure in New England in the first half of the
seventeenth century.
Like all Puritan colonists, Winthrop observed (but did not fully understand) the incredible susceptibility
of nearby Indians to European diseases like smallpox. While smallpox repeatedly struck both settlers and
Indians in colonial Massachusetts, the Indians died at much higher rates. Winthrop interpreted the
disease-driven Indian holocaust—which weakened Indian resistance to colonial rule and opened up new
lands for colonial expansion—as proof of God's special blessing of the Puritan settlement.
The Columbian Exchange Terms
Columbian Exchange
The rapid exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres after 1492.
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Conquistador, Conquistadors, Conquistadores
From the Spanish conquistar (to conquer) this was the name given to the armies that first
conquered Latin America for Spain. They were not part of any professional army, although
many had military experience and training. Though their numbers were small, they used
fear, intimidation and advanced military technology to defeat their enemies. Many of them
became immensely wealthy and their descendants became the ruling class in South
America.
Spanish for "conqueror," the conquistadores were adventurers who sought to conquer
Indian nations and capture lands and treasures for Spain in the early years of European
colonization of the Americas. Among the most famous conquistadores are Hernán Cortés
(who defeated the Aztec) and Francisco Pizarro (who defeated the Inca).
Virgin-soil Epidemic, Virgin-soil Epidemics
An outbreak of a deadly disease among a population that has never before been exposed to
it. Virgin-soil epidemics are among the most deadly events in human history, because the
people who suffer them have no immunities or antibodies to the new diseases attacking
their communities.
Manifest Destiny
The concept, popular in the nineteenth century, that the United States was ordained by God
to conquer the entire North American continent.
This phrase was first coined in 1845 by those who advocated the annexation of Texas.
Thereafter it became the calling card for western expansion and, ultimately, a rallying cry
for those who sought to justify American imperialism.
First used by those who supported the annexation of Texas in 1845, the term later justified
American settlement of the Great Plains and the West (and then the broadening of the
American empire).
American ExceptionalismThe concept that the United States is unique in the world,
qualitatively different from and superior to all other advanced nations, blessed by God and
the Constitution with a singular role to play in the history of the world.
New World
A European term for the Western Hemisphere, which seemed brand new following
Columbus's "discovery," in contrast to the Old World of Europe, Africa, and Asia—all of
which had been known to Europeans for centuries.
Old World
A European term for the Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Africa, and Asia), which was familiar
to Europeans long before the "discovery" of the so-called New World (the Americas) in
1492.
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Divergent Evolution
A type of evolutionary biology in which characteristics that share common evolutionary
origins grow more and more different over time.
Domesticated Animal, Domesticated Animals
Animals that have been physically or behaviorally altered to serve human masters through
many generations of human control. Domesticated animals include many types of farm
animals as well as pets.
Staple Crops
The primary source of nourishment in a traditional diet. Different societies have had
different staple crops at different times; the staple crop of the Aztec Empire was corn, while
the staple crop of the Irish peasantry was the potato.
Tectonic Forces
The geologic theory of plate tectonics explains the slow drift of the continents across the
earth's lithosphere through millions of years.
Ecosystem, Ecosystems
An interdependent system comprised of a community of living things interacting with their
environment. Humans tend to heavily shape the ecosystems they live in.
Life ExpectancyThe number of years an individual in a particular society is expected to
live, as indicated by socio-economic statistics. Life expectancy is frequently used as a
measure of the relative healthfulness of a particular society.
Infant MortalityThe death rate of children in the first year of life.
Cassava, Manioc
A tropical root plant native to South America. Cassava, also known as manioc, is rare in its
ability to thrive even in nutrient-poor tropical soils. In the wake of the Columbian Exchange,
the cassava root was exported to Africa, where it became a staple crop able to sustain large
populations that otherwise would not have been able to find enough calories to support
themselves. Cassava remains a vital food source even today; it is estimated to be the
world's third largest source of carbohydrates for human consumption.
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