The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Alfred W. Crosby, Jr. (Westwood, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972).

• Columbian voyages part of a larger historical process.

• Symbolize the beginnings of a new process.
  

• Distinctive ecological & cultural zones

  - New kinds Animals

  - New kinds of Plants

  - New kinds of People
  

• Implication’s for European systems of thought

  - Monogeneticism vs. Polygeneticim

- The Requirement of 1512: God created the Earth in 4,004 b.c.e.

- Evolution and the Spread of Humans


• Biological Isolation in the America’s

• Small pox

  - 3-10% fatality rate in Europe

  - 30% in the America’s (Near 100% infection rate)

  - Psychological impact

   

  The Example of the Inca

Afro-Eurasian Plants and Animals in the America’s

Europeans success in the new world, "depended upon their ability to 'Europeanize, the flora and the fauna of the new world."

• Kentucky Bluegrass, Daisies, Dandelions
  
  
• Wheat, Grapes, Olives
  
  
  • Bananas, Coffee, Sugar
    
    
  • Cash Crops and the Plantation Complex

• Hogs and Horses
  
  
  • Cattle, Sheep, Chickens

Syphilis

• Infection from the spirochete Treponema pallidum

• May have come from the Americas
  
  
  • Three Types of Theories
    
    
    • Columbian Theories
    • Anti-Columbian Theories
    • Unitarian Theories
      
      
• Conditions for the spread of disease
  
  
  • Sailor Lifestyle
  • War
    
    
• As a social disease

Foods of the America’s and Afro-Eurasian Demographics

• Three periods of population growth at the global level
  
  
• Most important new world crops in Afro-Eurasia: Maize, Potato, Sweet Potato, Beans, and Manioc (Cassava)
  
  
• New World crops most important in Africa but…1/3 of plants raised to feed humans and animals today of American origin.
  

The Columbian Exchange Continues?

• Nutritional impact: increased food production
  
  
• Demographic impact
  
  
• Biological impact: decreased gene pool
  
  
• Intellectual impact
  
  
• Economic impact
  
  
• Cultural impact

  "There are two Europes, as there are two Africas. One on either side of the Atlantic. The European and African in America are the most blatant products of the Columbian exchange." p. 215.

• Political impact