The Columbian Exchange

Podcast Transcript

In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the New World. He wasn’t looking for it, and, in fact, he didn’t even know it was there.

Unbeknownst to anyone, that act ushered in one of the greatest changes to humanity and to the entire planet.

For better and for worse, contact between the new and old worlds changed cultures, civilizations, and even the Earth’s environment.

Learn more about the Columbian Exchange and how it affected the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

This episode will be a summation of many different episodes that I’ve done before.

I’ve had many different episodes where I’ve discussed parts of what I’ll cover in this episode.

What I want to do here is to take all of these disparate pieces that I’ve previously covered and try to provide a coherent story about how they all fit together. I hope to show just how all of these things that I’ve previously covered when looked at in their totality, amount to one of the most, if not the most, important episodes in human history.

When I say “the most important episode in human history,” I’m not exaggerating.

When Neil Degrasse Tyson was asked what he thought was the most important event in human history, he responded that it was Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

He didn’t claim it was the best thing to have happened, more on that in a bit, but simply the most important.

Even if you don’t agree that it was the most important thing to have ever happened to our species, you’d certainly have to say it was one of the most important.

The totality of the events I’ll be discussing and have discussed in other episodes is known as the Columbian Exchange.

The term was coined in 1972 by Alfred Crosby, an American historian at the University of Texas.

To understand why it is so important, we need to go back in time about 70,000 years.

Around the, a group of humans migrated out of Africa who were the ancestors of modern-day humans. They might not have been the first group to leave Africa, but this group was successful.

They spread into Asia and Europe and eventually populated most of what we call the Old World.

For the purposes of this episode, I will use the term Old World to refer to the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and New World to refer to North and South America.

About 20,000 years ago, during the last ice age, some number of humans walked across the exposed land bridge that connected Asia and North America.

That group rapidly spread throughout North and South America and was eventually cut off from their distant cousins back in the old world of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Anthropologists and archeologists might disagree about the details, but the important point is that for thousands of years, humanity was split in two.

To be sure, someone in South Africa wouldn’t have had contact with someone in China, but there was an uninterrupted connection between people. Your tribe would have had contact with a neighboring tribe, which would have contact with a neighboring tribe, and so on.

This was true in both the New and Old Worlds.

Neither group knew about the other. Ideas, crops, animals, and diseases could spread in one half of humanity but not the other.

The Columbian Exchange has affected literally every culture and every person on the planet.

The story of the Columbian Exchange has little to do with Christopher Columbus himself. He just happened to be the person who started the process.

You might be wondering; there were Vikings that arrived in the Americas before Columbus. They briefly had a small village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.

Why are they considered the start of this process?

Because nothing ever happened from their arrival. Not many Vikings ever came over; they didn’t spread the word and bring anyone else, and there was never any large-scale exchange.

Likewise, even if theories of Chinese sailors reaching the West coast of the Americas happen to be true, it also, never led to anything.

So, what happened with the Columbian Exchange?

Let’s start with plants.

I’ve covered the histories of quite a few different plants that were native to the Americans, which then found their way to the Old World.

Corn, aka maize, was native to the new world and became a staple crop in Africa, parts of Europe, and Asia. Today, two of the four largest corn producers are the Old World countries of China and India.

Potatoes revolutionized European agriculture, especially in Ireland, Poland, and Russia, and became a core staple crop in many countries.

Tomatoes transformed Italian cuisine and later Mediterranean cooking. Today, they are used in dishes all over the world.

Cacao, which is the basis for chocolate, was initially a luxury and later became a widespread treat. Today, the largest cacao producers in the world are in Africa and Asia, and the world’s greatest chocolatiers are in Europe.

Other significant crops include sweet potatoes, manioc (cassava), chili peppers, beans, peanuts, squash, pumpkins, pineapples, vanilla, tobacco

The transfer of crops was not a one-way street. Many Old World foods found their way to the New World, where many of them flourished.

Wheat became the foundation of bread-making in the Americas. The United States and Canada are today two of the largest wheat-producing countries in the world.

Rice transformed agriculture in parts of South America and later North America.

Sugar cane, which is native to Asia, was central to plantation economies in Brazil and the Caribbean.

Coffee, native to Africa and the Arabian peninsula, flourished in Brazil and Colombia.

Other significant crops that moved to the New World include bananas, citrus fruits, grapes, olives, onions, peaches, and pears.

Not all plants that crossed the ocean were wanted. It also resulted in invasive species.

Kudzu was originally from Asia but spread extensively through global trade, and became invasive in parts of the southeastern United States, overtaking native plants. Dandelions and clover, introduced by European settlers as medicinal or forage plants, quickly spread across North American landscapes, often outcompeting native flora.

These invasive species altered habitats, reduced biodiversity, and changed the ecological balance in many regions.

Animals were also part of the Columbian Exchange, although, unlike plants, this transfer was mostly old to new.

Horses were brought to the Americas, where they transformed warfare, transportation, and hunting for Indigenous peoples and provided transportation for centuries.

Cattle were introduced as a new source of meat, milk, and labor. Today, Brazil, the United States, Mexico, and Argentina are some of the largest cattle-producing countries in the world.

Pigs provided a new protein source that reproduced quickly and also became a feral invasive species.

Sheep were brought over to supply wool and meat.

Chickens offered easily maintained sources of protein.

Honeybees were introduced for honey production and crop pollination.

There were very few animal species that moved from the New World to the Old.

Turkeys and guinea pigs were the only animals that were used for food in some regions, and they were quite minor sources of food.

Likewise, invasive insect species came over as well. The Mediterranean fruit fly and the European gypsy moth are both major pests in North America.

If it wasn’t for the Columbian Exchange, the world’s agricultural system would look radically different.

Perhaps the most devastating part of the Columbian Exchange was the diseases.

The diseases that were part of the exchange were not equally shared between the old and new world. They almost all came from the Old World and infected the people of the New World.

Smallpox, Measles, Typhus, Influenza, Malaria, Mumps, Yellow fever, Whooping cough, Chickenpox, and Bubonic plague all came over to the New World.

Indigenous populations in the Americas had no immunity to these diseases, resulting in catastrophic population declines. In some regions, mortality rates reached 80-90% within a century after first contact.

The only known disease to make its way from the New World to the Old was syphilis.

Why did diseases tend to only go in one direction?

It had a lot to do with the fact that transfer domesticated animals also tended to go in only one direction.

There were simply far more animals that were domesticated in Africa, Asia, and Europe. People there tended to live in closer proximity to their animals, and many of the diseases that affected the old world made the jump from animal to human.

Indigenous people in the New World didn’t have domesticated animals like they did in the Old World, and there wasn’t a similar level of disease transmission.

Because they didn’t have as many diseases, the people in the New World didn’t have the immunities that the people in the Old World did.

When the Europeans showed up, they brought with them……everything. All at once.

Plagues and pandemics still would erupt in the old world, but the populations there had some resistance. In the New World, they had nothing.

There was, of course, one other major aspect of the Columbian Exchange. People.

The Columbian Exchange triggered massive migrations of people across the globe, reshaping populations and societies.

One major movement was the forced migration of millions of Africans through the transatlantic slave trade. Captured and sold into slavery, Africans were transported primarily to the Americas to work on plantations producing sugar, tobacco, cotton, and other cash crops. This created large African diasporas in the Caribbean, South America, and the southern United States.

Almost every country in the Caribbean today has a majority of its population with African ancestry.

Europeans, of course, also migrated in mass numbers to the New World. European settlers, including the Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch, came to establish colonies, seek wealth, and spread Christianity.

These settlers displaced Indigenous populations and established new social and political systems.

In addition to the Great Dying, which occurred in the Americas due to disease, survivors in North America were often pushed into reservations, often far from their ancestral lands.

Later generations saw waves of immigrants from countries without colonies, such as Italy, Germany, and elsewhere.

There were also migrations from Asia, with large numbers of immigrants from China, Japan, India, and Korea. Descendents of people from India make up over 40% of the population in Guyana and 35% of the population in Trinidad and Tobago.

Many communities in the Old World were also affected by mass migrations. Some villages in Africa vanished after their populations were enslaved and shipped to the Americas.

The Columbian Exchange was responsible for the greatest global migration in history. The only people who weren’t affected were the uncontacted people who lived deep in the Amazon rainforest.

It is really hard to express just how much of an impact the Columbian Exchange had on the world, for better and for worse.

The Columbian Exchange unquestionably represents one of the most significant events in human history. It created the first truly global ecological and economic system, connecting previously isolated continents and transforming environments, societies, and cultures worldwide. This exchange laid the groundwork for many features of our modern world, from global trade networks to multicultural societies to contemporary agricultural systems.

It may have led to the deaths of 100 million people in the Americas from disease. Yet it also resulted in the spread of crops and domesticated animals that feed billions of people today.

What began with Columbus’s voyage in 1492 initiated an irreversible process of globalization that continues to shape our world today. The Columbian Exchange demonstrates how biological, economic, and cultural exchanges can have profound and lasting impacts across centuries, reminding us that events from over 500 years ago continue to influence our daily lives in countless ways today.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Today’s review comes from listener WESLEY Jay over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write.

Muy Bien

Extremely important, very informative. Unlike other history podcasts, no political bias is shown. It is now my favorite!

Thanks, WESLEY Jay! You are mistaken. This podcast does have a political bias. You see, my side is the right side, and your side is the wrong side…..unless, of course, your side is the same as my side, in which case your side is the right side and not the wrong side…..until you disagree with me and then you will be on the wrong side.

Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you, too, can have it read on the show.