The Columbian Exchange. Alfred Crosby
Contents | start | define | other authors | Antilles map | finish
"Similar exchanges on the monsoon winds took place between the archipelagoes of Southeast Asia and China. Champa rice, an early ripening variety, made southern China much more productive from the thirteenth century onwards and helped underwrite the prosperity and power of Song and Ming China. . . .These biological exchanges . . .helped shape the history of Eurasia and Africa as surely as the Columbian Exchange."
J. R. McNeill,
p. xiv-xv.
A map of Columbo's four voyages to the Antilles from 1492 until 1504.
"struck by the strangeness of the flora and fauna of the islands"
"That trend toward biological homogeneity is one of the most important aspects of the history of life on this planet since the retreat of the continental glaciers."
"The connection between the old and the new worlds. Which for more than ten millennia had been no more than a tenuous thing. . . became a bond as significant as the Bearing land bridge had once been."
p. 3 - 34.
More than the ships, horses, and guns,carried by the conquistadors (Spanish military leaders such as Columbus, Cortez, or Pizarro) the diseases of childhood from Europeans who came into intimate or social contact with Arawak, or Maya peoples decimated the Indian population, destroyed their social structure, undermined native religious beliefs, and rendered large populations of indigenistas (or people native to Meso-america and the Antilles) vulnerable to Spanish rule or rival European influences.
Isolation for thousand of years between Eurasia and America and a lack of domesticated livestock meant that the people native to the Antilles and the Americas had no immunity to even the simplest of European diseases such as respiratory infections. More severe diseases acquired from animals living in close proximity to humans such as smallpox (cows), chickenpox, and scarlet fever were common among Europeans–who carried immunitie–, but not Indigenistas, especially among the densely populated peoples belonging to the island Arawak cultures.
p. 35.
Octavio Paz on conquest and colonialism.
Old World Plants and Animals in the New World
His point:
Along with the conquistadors, who carried cassava cakes made of manioc in their saddle bags when they invaded Mexico from Cuba in 1517 came a series of connected activities and unintended consequences due to a variety of animal livestock; the residual effects of which was probably greater than all of the guns and horses Cortez brought with him from the Antilles to Tenochtitlan.
These auxiliaries included, horses, pigs, cattle, chickens, sheep, rats, cats and dogs. Together these introduced animals spread, destroying vegetated areas, causing erosion, and uprooting agricultural fields of the vegetarian populations of indigenous people and ultimately altered the land-use patterns of the Americas. They did this principally, but not only, by creating rancheros in Espanola before even Mexico and founding the commercial basis for the hide an tallow trade that spread from Argentina to Northern California by 1800. In addition to livestock and entire way of life based on the horse and rider was transferred to the America's affecting Creoles and Indians alike with the cultural ideals of the "hidalgo" or gentleman (on horseback), the culture of the "vaquero" (gauchos) and the haciendado (owners of haciendas) who kept cattle, horses, and sheep herds.
Europeans were already acclimated on the Antilles for a generation before unsuccessfully at first, and later successfully invading and holding the continental areas of larger more numerously populated empires of the Maya, Aztec and Inca. Once rice and sugar from Asia and coffee from Africa were introcduced on Espanola, the nucleus of a plantation economy, like those existing on the Canaraies and Cape Verde Islands was established in the Antilles. Other than Cocoa and tobacco plants that were native to the Americas, these European foodstuffs would form one basis of the plantation economy on both the islands and the tropical lowlands.
p. 64.
The Early History of Syphilis: Reappraisal
1. The Columbian thesis that this venereal disease originated in the Antilles has documentary evidence.
2. The Anti-Columbian thesis, is called unitarian theory and argues treponematosis (caused by a spirochete form of bacteria) existed in different strains in Eurasia, Africa and Europe–such as Yaws in Africa–and in a less virulent form than seen in the 1500s and 1600s, after the voyages of discovery and conquest.
3. Reconciliation approach: By mutation and intermingling of once separate strains the virulence of venereal syphilis underwent dramatic changes due to density of settlements or living conditions, prolonged warfare, and forced migration due to African slavery in the Americas.
Theme:
Isolation only exaggerated the long-term impacts of the Spain's and Portugal's occupation of the coastal and island areas of the Americas on an eve of an even larger deployment of soldiers and sailors to Italy (Naples) to defend Spain's interests there in 1501 against the invading French armies of Charles VIII. The biological germ is thus linked to the cultural norms (morals) of a particular period and the social disruption caused by (politics) wars and occupation of enemy territory by very large armies.
pp. 132-164-.
New World Foods and Old World Demography
Without food stuffs from the Caribbean and the Americas, Eurasian populations would not have:
1. avoided famines that came cyclically with crop failures or worn out soils.
2. sustained populations that grew in numbers so quickly with respect to migration and density of settlement.
3. had ample food for livestock to thrive and even expand ranges to the detriment of native species.
4. allowed for crop rotation that increased the yields on fields with otherwise exhausted soils.
5. the "alimentary trinity" of maize, beans and potatoes brought about dramatic changes in diets and cuisine worldwide.
6. produced more calories per land area (hectares or acres) and time expended when growing new world foodstuffs.
Thesis:
The Eurasian and African populations eventually grew (1600s - 1700s) and exploded in size (1800s) once the Amerindian or food crops indigenous to the Americas was introduced to Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.
"It seems more likely that the number of human beings on this planet today would be a good deal smaller but for the horticultural skills of the neolithic American."
p. 202
pp. 165-207.
The Columbian Exchange continues
 |
Crosby's Conclusions: "The Columbian exchange has left us with not a richer but a more impoverished genetic pool. We, all of the life on this planet, are less for Columbus, and the impoverishment will increase. p. 219 "The . . .
exchange continues & will continue." p. 211 |
| Colombian and Venezuelan borderlands where crude oil is found. |
"The source of the earliest migration of Old World peoples to the New World"
p. 213
The greatest transoceanic
migration in all human history began, at first a freshet in the"
[when and from where to where?]
p. 214
"the Columbian Exchange has created markets for Europe without which she would have been and would now be a very different and much poorer region of the earth, and poverty a palpably heavier burden on the connubial propensities of young adults."
p. 218.
homogeneity -- or sameness, the process of homogenizing or making differences much less extreme than before a process of amalgamation occurs. A condition wherein extreme, or noticeable differences become less obvious or even disappear.
Civilization & its relation to the biosphere
MEANING
Political fragmentation, in large part, grew out of Spanish colonization from 1493 to 1565 because of the inherent provinciality of Iberian nationalities, the need for more new colonists from Spain who often did not bring their families, and the necessity of Portuguese sailors and navigators.
The Conquest succeeded as much from fortunate circumstances as it did due to the complementary attributes of native Amerindian plants, European livestock, a differential vulnerability to disease, and the remarkable capacity of American foodstuffs to spark a European population explosion after 1522. All of these complementary attributes of Columbian exchange has led Crosby to suggest that the repopulating of the Americas by African and Eurasian nationalities after 1500 is one example of ecological imperialism. Biology and culture conspired to make a significant revolution in world history and the Caribbean region was the site of that revolution's nativity.
The Caribbean was the crucible of change in the Americas and the world. It is the disembarkation point for the eventual subjection of the indigenous people including the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca empires whose people remain on the land today, and the commercial gateway of a trade in people, minerals, goods and services that enriched Europe for four centuries.
"From the very beginning of its history in the late fifteenth century there has been various confusion concerning the definition, both geographical and cultural of the Caribbean region."
Gordon K. Lewis , Main Currents in Caribbean Thought, pp. ix,x,1.
Alfred W. Crosby, Germs, Seeds and Animals
Sydney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
W. E. B. Dubois, The NegroJamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
Terms | Glossary | Word webs | Basic vocabulary | Advanced Vocabulary | Antonyms | Synonyms | Etymology | Concepts
| reliable web sites | | Research home |
Timeline | A sense of place | Access to Foreign Press | Ancient Greek idea of Airs, waters, and places
Study Guide: Nature, History & Place in the Caribbean by J. Siry.
related Site indices | Population Index | Science Index | Global Warming Index | Nature Index
