The discovery of the “New World” the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was one of the most momentous moments in world history. It went far past what we take for granted, the opening of an entire new section of the world map for European conquest. Although that is an important fact about Columbus’ historical contribution it certainly isn’t the only one. The discovery of the Americas created an Atlantic world and new forms of exchange therein. The Columbian exchange, the trading of many things from the New World to the Old – Africa and Europe – is what’s notable and must be noted here. The Columbian Exchange went much past just potatoes and chocolate, in fact it meant the transference of many things across the Atlantic; people, ideas, crops as well as diseases. This was largely driven by trade and more specifically the Atlantic slave trade which was a source of plentiful, cheap and ready available source of labor to work in the new cash crop industries of the Americas.
When we say Columbian Exchange we are referring to a particular phenonemonem which happened after Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas which drove “the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World” This process is best understood and most often thought about in the context of food that came from the Americas such as potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, pineapples and corn that traveled from this side of the Atlantic to the other and actually became staples and distinctive parts of European and Asian cuisines such as chili peppers in Southeast Asia and the potato in large stretches of northern Europe. Although this is the commonly thought of part of the Columbian Exchange it as a matter of fact was a much more complex and negative process than it is commonly acknowledged. A big factor in the exchange was driven by massive population shifts caused by contact of Europeans with populations in the New World and the requisite need for more manpower to replace the massive population losses caused by disease.
The arrival of Europeans in the Americas brought with it new challenges for the continents populations. Europeans brought to Western Hemisphere diseases that Europeans were accustomed to and in many cases had built an immunity to. The opening up of a new branch of humanity, that had been isolated from the rest of the world for so long, left the native Americans incredibly vulnerable to the diseases brought from the Europe. These diseases when they crossed the Atlantic created a situation in which the “the fatal diseases of the Old World killed more effectively in the New, and the comparatively diseases of the Old World turned killer in the New.” The impact of these diseases were so great that one claims that the population of Mexico dropped by as much as 90 percent in the sixteenth century after the arrival of the Conquistadors in 1519. The amount death in native populations caused by the widespread epidemics ultimately led to severe manpower shortages and actually made the slave trade necessary.
The Columbian exchange was about much more than just the transferring of food crops both ways across the Atlantic. It was much more than it created great dislocations of population largely thanks to something as small viruses and bacteria which the native inhabitants of the New World did not have immunity to. The death of so many Native Americans in the first centuries after contact as well as the establishment of a new form of cash crop economy that needed lots of labor to function. The solution to this was found through the forcible transportation of 10 million African slaves to work on colonial plantations. This contact of cultures, races, languages and religions created one of the most diverse parts of the entire world.
One of the most important aspects of the Columbian Exchange is probably the darkest one to mention and that was the African slave trade. The African slave trade was one of the largest ever population movements in the history of the world where “as many twelve million people were forcibly deported from Africa over three and half centuries of Atlantic slavery.” This meant that over that time span African traditions and African staple ingredients naturally traveled along with the slaves such as manioc, beans and other staples. This is unquestionably one of the most powerful legacies of Columbian Exchange and the Atlantic slave trade.
The legacy of Columbian Exchange and the world it created both in the New and the Old are one of the facts of life in the modern world. This process also created a new way of production, of plantations that raised cash crops worked by slave labor. The main products of that exchange, microbes, African slaves and cash crops ultimately shaped the populations, politics, cultures and histories of the Americas. The Columbian Exchange isn’t as simple as it seems, it was a complex process that created the Americas and makes this continent what is a place of diversity not just in its biology but also in its population. That is the legacy of the Columbian Exchange and why it remains important to this very day.
Bibliography
Carney, Judith Ann, and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff. In the shadow of slavery: Africa's botanical legacy in the Atlantic world. Univ of California Press, 2011.
Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492. Vol. 2. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003.
Grennes, Thomas. "Columbian Exchange and the Reversal of Fortune, The."Cato J. 27 (2007): 91
Juang, Richard M., and Noelle Anne Morrissette, eds. Africa and the Americas: culture, politics, and history: a multidisciplinary encyclopedia. Vol. 3. Abc-clio, 2008
Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. "The Columbian exchange: A history of disease, food, and ideas." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 2 (2010): 163-188.
