Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T03:45:58.038Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The Columbian Exchange

from Part Two - Trade, Exchange, and Production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

Jerry H. Bentley
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Get access

Summary

The term "The Columbian Exchange" was popularized by Alfred W. Crosby's seminal 1972 book, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, which emphasized the transfers of the diseases, plants and animals introduced as a consequence of the continuous communications between the New World-North and South America, and the Old-Europe, Asia and Africa. The Columbian Exchange begins in the first global age, starting in the mid-fifteenth century, and was dominated by Spain and Portugal until the mid-seventeenth century. The Columbian Exchange resulted in the transfer of Old World diseases to the Americas, and vice versa. The time of arrival of the diseases varied depending on the nature of the disease and the mode of transmission. Old World plants preferred by the Europeans took slow and tenuous root in the Caribbean islands. Specimens of many of the animals of the Americas were sent to Europe for display and study, but none became popular food items save for the turkey.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Alchon, Suzanne Austin, A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Benedict, Carol, Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550–2010 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Bennett, Herman L., Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Cook, Alexandra Parma, and Cook, Noble David, The Plague Files: Crisis Management in Sixteenth Century Seville (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Cook, Noble David, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Cook, Noble David Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520–1620 (Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Cook, Noble David, and Lovell, W. George (eds.), “Secret Judgments of God”: Old World Disease in Colonial America (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Cook, Sherburne Friend, and Borah, Woodrow Wilson, Essays in Population History, 3 vols. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979–82).Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W Germs, Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Ecological History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994).Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003).Google Scholar
Denevan, William M. (ed.), The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Esteva-Fabregat, Claudio, Mestizaje in Ibero-America (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Few, Martha, and Tortorici, Zeb (eds.), Centering Animals in Latin American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Foster, Nelson, and Cordell, Linda S. (eds.), Chiles to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Kiple, Kenneth F. (ed.), The African Exchange: Toward a Biological History of Black People (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Kiple, Kenneth F. (ed.), The Cambridge World History of Human Disease (Cambridge University Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lovell, W. George, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Charles C., 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).Google Scholar
McCann, James C., Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500–2000 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, John R., Caribbean, 1620–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Melville, Elinor G. K., A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin Books, 1986).Google Scholar
Newson, Linda, Life and Death in Early Colonial Ecuador (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Phillips, William D., and Phillips, Carla Rahn, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Reff, Daniel T., Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518–1764 (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Rocco, Fiammetta, The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure that Changed the World (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).Google Scholar
Sauer, Carl Ortwin, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966).Google Scholar
Sweet, James H., Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Tannahill, Reay, Food in History (New York: Stein and Day, 1973).Google Scholar
Thornton, John, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Verano, John W., and Ubelaker, Douglas H. (eds.), Disease and Demography in the Americas (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×