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The Columbian Exchange
I. Introduction:
A. What was the Columbian Exchange?
-Global trade routes, before and after 1492
-intercontinental movement of plants, animals, and
microbes, both intentional and unintentional
B. Significance of the Columbian Exchange?
-recent influential interpretations
-Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The
Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (1986)
-Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The
Fates of Human Societies (1999).
II. What got exchanged, what happened and who benefited?-some specifics
A. Plants
—useful exchanges in both directions;
--role of corn, potatoes in European/Asian/
and African societies especially important
--many unintentional exchanges
B. Animals
-sheep (ex. Valle del Mezquital): “ecological
release”
- horses in the Americas
- benefits and costs for Native Americans
-changing balance of power among groups
(Comanche, Sioux benefit)
C. Disease
-Old World—more infectious disease
-smallpox most important
-introduced 1518 in Hispaniola;
-1518-1528: first smallpox pandemic in New
World
-also: measles, cholera, influenza, typhoid, bubonic
plague, malaria, yellow fever
- Very high mortality among Native Americans
compared to Europeans
-no “aquired immunity” (smallpox)
-other stressors
-Natives had no practical experience with these
diseases and how to cure them
-estimating Native American mortality
-- Assessing the historical significance of disease vis-à-vis
other factors
—another example: bubonic plague in Europe
--population recovery in this case
the limits of environmental/biological factors as an
explanation for what happened in the Americas
--also need to consider: (1) European policies and
practices; (2) Native American responses
--Factors (in addition to disease) contributing to
the decline of Native populations in North
America:
1. Colonial invasions frequent, brutal
warfare
2.
Violent colonial policies including: forced
labor, enslavement, forced relocation
3. Massive immigration of European settlers,
17-19th centuries
4. Loss of subsistence resources to theft and
competition (from colonists, displaced
tribes)
III. Conclusion:
A. Hybrid Landscapes
B. “Environmental determinism” and its limits as an historical
explanation (single- versus multi-causal explanations)