The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Advanced Placement United States History Study Guide

Period 1: 1491-1607

The Columbian Exchange

View a visualization of the Columbian Exchange.

Detail from a 1682 map of North America, Novi Belgi Novaeque Angliae, by NicholaMillions of years ago, continental drift carried the Old World and New Worlds apart, splitting North and South America from Eurasia and Africa. That separation lasted so long that it fostered divergent evolution; for instance, the development of rattlesnakes on one side of the Atlantic and vipers on the other. After 1492, human voyagers in part reversed this tendency. Their artificial re-establishment of connections through the commingling of Old and New World plants, animals, and bacteria, commonly known as the Columbian Exchange, is one of the more spectacular and significant ecological events of the past millennium.

When Europeans first touched the shores of the Americas, Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice, and turnips had not traveled west across the Atlantic, and New World crops such as maize, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and manioc had not traveled east to Europe. In the Americas, there were no horses, cattle, sheep, or goats, all animals of Old World origin. Except for the llama, alpaca, dog, a few fowl, and guinea pig, the New World had no equivalents to the domesticated animals associated with the Old World, nor did it have the pathogens associated with the Old World’s dense populations of humans and such associated creatures as chickens, cattle, black rats, and Aedes egypti mosquitoes. Among these germs were those that carried smallpox, measles, chickenpox, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever.

The Columbian exchange of crops affected both the Old World and the New. Amerindian crops that have crossed oceans—for example, maize to China and the white potato to Ireland—have been stimulants to population growth in the Old World. The latter’s crops and livestock have had much the same effect in the Americas—for example, wheat in Kansas and the Pampa, and beef cattle in Texas and Brazil. The full story of the exchange is many volumes long, so for the sake of brevity and clarity let us focus on a specific region, the eastern third of the United States of America.

As might be expected, the Europeans who settled on the east coast of the United States cultivated crops like wheat and apples, which they had brought with them. European weeds, which the colonists did not cultivate and, in fact, preferred to uproot, also fared well in the New World. John Josselyn, an Englishman and amateur naturalist who visited New England twice in the seventeenth century, left us a list, “Of Such Plants as Have Sprung Up since the English Planted and Kept Cattle in New England,” which included couch grass, dandelion, shepherd’s purse, groundsel, sow thistle, and chickweeds. One of these, a plantain (Plantago major), was named “Englishman’s Foot” by the Amerindians of New England and Virginia who believed that it would grow only where the English “have trodden, and was never known before the English came into this country.” Thus, as they intentionally sowed Old World crop seeds, the European settlers were unintentionally contaminating American fields with weed seed. More importantly, they were stripping and burning forests, exposing the native minor flora to direct sunlight and to the hooves and teeth of Old World livestock. The native flora could not tolerate the stress. The imported weeds could, because they had lived with large numbers of grazing animals for thousands of years.

Cattle and horses were brought ashore in the early 1600s and found hospitable climate and terrain in North America. Horses arrived in Virginia as early as 1620 and in Massachusetts in 1629. Many wandered free with little more evidence of their connection to humanity than collars with a hook at the bottom to catch on fences as they tried to leap over them to get at crops. Fences were not for keeping livestock in, but for keeping livestock out.

Native American resistance to the Europeans was ineffective. Indigenous peoples suffered from white brutality, alcoholism, the killing and driving off of game, and the expropriation of farmland, but all these together are insufficient to explain the degree of their defeat. The crucial factor was not people, plants, or animals, but germs. The history of the United States begins with Virginia and Massachusetts, and their histories begin with epidemics of unidentified diseases. At the time of the abortive Virginia colony at Roanoke in the 1580s the nearby Amerindians “began to die quickly. The disease was so strange that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it.”[1] When the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, they did so in a village and on a coast nearly cleared of Amerindians by a recent epidemic. Thousands had “died in a great plague not long since; and pity it was and is to see so many goodly fields, and so well seated, without man to dress and manure the same.”[2]

Smallpox was the worst and the most spectacular of the infectious diseases mowing down the Native Americans. The first recorded pandemic of that disease in British North America detonated among the Algonquin of Massachusetts in the early 1630s: William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation wrote that the victims “fell down so generally of this disease as they were in the end not able to help one another, no not to make a fire nor fetch a little water to drink, nor any to bury the dead.”[3]

The missionaries and the traders who ventured into the American interior told the same appalling story about smallpox and the indigenes. In 1738 alone the epidemic destroyed half the Cherokee; in 1759 nearly half the Catawbas; in the first years of the next century two-thirds of the Omahas and perhaps half the entire population between the Missouri River and New Mexico; in 1837–1838 nearly every last one of the Mandans and perhaps half the people of the high plains.

European explorers encountered distinctively American illnesses such as Chagas Disease, but these did not have much effect on Old World populations. Venereal syphilis has also been called American, but that accusation is far from proven. Even if we add all the Old World deaths blamed on American diseases together, including those ascribed to syphilis, the total is insignificant compared to Native American losses to smallpox alone.

The export of America’s native animals has not revolutionized Old World agriculture or ecosystems as the introduction of European animals to the New World did. America’s grey squirrels and muskrats and a few others have established themselves east of the Atlantic and west of the Pacific, but that has not made much of a difference. Some of America’s domesticated animals are raised in the Old World, but turkeys have not displaced chickens and geese, and guinea pigs have proved useful in laboratories, but have not usurped rabbits in the butcher shops.

The New World’s great contribution to the Old is in crop plants. Maize, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, various squashes, chiles, and manioc have become essentials in the diets of hundreds of millions of Europeans, Africans, and Asians. Their influence on Old World peoples, like that of wheat and rice on New World peoples, goes far to explain the global population explosion of the past three centuries. The Columbian Exchange has been an indispensable factor in that demographic explosion.

All this had nothing to do with superiority or inferiority of biosystems in any absolute sense. It has to do with environmental contrasts. Amerindians were accustomed to living in one particular kind of environment, Europeans and Africans in another. When the Old World peoples came to America, they brought with them all their plants, animals, and germs, creating a kind of environment to which they were already adapted, and so they increased in number. Amerindians had not adapted to European germs, and so initially their numbers plunged. That decline has reversed in our time as Amerindian populations have adapted to the Old World’s environmental influence, but the demographic triumph of the invaders, which was the most spectacular feature of the Old World’s invasion of the New, still stands.


[1] David B. Quinn, ed. The Roanoke Voyages, 1584–1590: Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to North America (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955), 378.

[2] Edward Winslow, Nathaniel Morton, William Bradford, and Thomas Prince, New England’s Memorial (Cambridge: Allan and Farnham, 1855), 362.

[3] William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel E. Morison (New York: Knopf, 1952), 271.


Alfred W. Crosby is professor emeritus of history, geography, and American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to his seminal work on this topic, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972), he has also written America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (1989) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (1986).

 

Discussion

KBall.12 wrote 7 years 45 weeks ago

Alfred W. Crosby's theory of the Columbian Exchange being mostly having to do with evironmental contrast makes a lot of sense due to all the evidence he gives while writing this article. First,Crosby states that "The Columbian Exchange of crops affected the Old World and the New." He supports it by explaining how unintentionally the Europeans had contaminated the the Americans crops with weed seed due to their difference in their knowledge of agriculture, both the Old and New World had learned how to grow crops differently. What I think is most important is, Crosby also talks about the effect of disease in both the Old and New World. Crosby states "Native American resistence to the Europeans was ineffective" and "The crucial factor was not people,plants,or animals,but germs. In my opinion,if the Amerinidians and Europeans hadn't encountered each other,then the decline of the Amerindians would be less or none without the disease brought by the Europeans. But, Crosby gives great evidence on this by talking about how smallpox was a huge part of the decline of the indians; also in a visualization map on this very website shows and states the disease's "Movement was vastly weighted in the direction of Old to New..." To conclude, I agree with Alfred W. Crosby and what he has to say about the Columbian Exchange.

wyattdavid13@gm... wrote 5 years 46 weeks ago

It is likely true that without the so-called "Columbian Exchange" the population of Native Americans would have remained more stable. While I would submit that changes in the climate had already lead to food scarcity and increased conflict, I admit that would not have been nearly as devastating as the various pathogens brought by the Europeans.

While the tragedy of the Indians is just that, we must realize that it wasn't in vain. As the essay notes, some good did come of it, in the form of increased food production globally. Despite their loss, their legacy lives on through the fact that those who remain are alive and flourishing, with poverty globally being steadily diminished, and standards across the world being raised.

KBall.12 wrote 7 years 45 weeks ago

Alfred W. Crosby's theory of the Columbian Exchange being mostly having to do with evironmental contrast makes a lot of sense due to all the evidence he gives while writing this article. First,Crosby states that "The Columbian Exchange of crops affected the Old World and the New." He supports it by explaining how unintentionally the Europeans had contaminated the the Americans crops with weed seed due to their difference in their knowledge of agriculture, both the Old and New World had learned how to grow crops differently. What I think is most important is, Crosby also talks about the effect of disease in both the Old and New World. Crosby states "Native American resistence to the Europeans was ineffective" and "The crucial factor was not people,plants,or animals,but germs. In my opinion,if the Amerinidians and Europeans hadn't encountered each other,then the decline of the Amerindians would be less or none without the disease brought by the Europeans. But, Crosby gives great evidence on this by talking about how smallpox was a huge part of the decline of the indians; also in a visualization map on this very website shows and states the disease's "Movement was vastly weighted in the direction of Old to New..." To conclude, I agree with Alfred W. Crosby and what he has to say about the Columbian Exchange.

chelswhoelssse wrote 7 years 45 weeks ago

In this article the entire Colombian Exchange is addressed. The benefits, the effects of certain actions, etc. In this article Alfred W. Cosby address his beliefs on what he believes the most dramatic impact of the Colombian Exchange was. “The crucial factor was not people, plants, or animals, but germs.” (Cosby) Cosby believed that although there was a lot taking place with all the crops, animals, and cultures being exchanged the one aspect that created the most effects was the diseases brought from the Old World to the new one. The Native Americans were unfamiliar with these diseases they were experiencing. They had no immunity. Many of the indigenous tribes had condensed their population due to deaths caused by the smallpox disease. The Europeans also encountered some of the American’s disease but it did not have nearly as much of an effect to the Old Word’s population. I agree entirely with Cosby. I believe that disease was one aspect of the Colombian exchange that caused the most damage. “Soon after 1492, sailors inadvertently introduced these diseases — including smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus — to the Americas…Adults and children alike were stricken by wave after wave of epidemic, which produced catastrophic mortality throughout the Americas.” (J.R. McNeill) An abundant amount of Americans were affected by the arrival of the Europeans. They had no way to protect themselves. Indeed the Colombian exchange had many other things that effected both the Americans and the Europeans like crops and animals, but neither of these things had a greater effect on the lives of people from the old and new world more than the spread of disease.

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