Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Columbian Exchange

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. But unbeknownst to anyone, that act ushered in one of the greatest changes to humanity and the entire planet. For better and for worse, contact between the new and old worlds change cultures, civilizations, and even the Earth's environment. Learn more about the Colombian Exchange and how it affected the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is going to 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 be covering in this episode. So what I want to do here is take all of those 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 events in human history. And when I say the most important episode in human history, I'm not really exaggerating.

Starting point is 00:01:48 When Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what he thought the most important event in human history was, 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 than 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 that it was one of the most important. The totality of events I'll be discussing and have discussed in other episodes is collectively known as the Columbian Exchange. The term was coined in 1972 by Alfred Crosby,

Starting point is 00:02:25 an American historian at the University of Texas. To understand why it is so important, we need to go back in time to about 70,000 years ago. Around then, a group of humans migrated out of Africa who were the ancestors of modern-day human beings. They might not have been the first group to leave Africa, but this group was highly successful. They spread into Asia and Europe

Starting point is 00:02:49 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 through North and South America and then was eventually cut off from their distant cousins back in the old world of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Anthropologists and archaeologists might disagree about the details as I've just explained them,

Starting point is 00:03:30 but the important point for this episode is that for thousands of years, humanity was split in two. Now, to be sure, somebody in South Africa wouldn't have had contact with someone in China, but there was an uninterrupted connection between peoples. Your tribe would have had contact with a neighboring tribe, which in turn would have had contact with another neighboring tribe, and so on and so on. And 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.

Starting point is 00:04:06 The Columbian Exchange has literally affected every culture and every person on our planet. The story of the Colombian Exchange has really little to do with Christopher Columbus himself. He just happened to be the person who started the process. Now, you might be wondering, there were Vikings that arrived in the Americas before Columbus. They briefly had a small village at Lonson Meadow in Newfoundland. Why aren't they considered the start of this process? because nothing ever happened from their arrival. Not many Vikings ever came over, and they didn't spread the word and bring anyone else over,

Starting point is 00:04:43 and there was never any large-scale exchange between the cultures. Likewise, even if theories of Chinese sailors reaching the West Coast of the Americas happens to be true, it also never led to anything. So what happened with the Columbian Exchange? Well, let's start the discussion with plants. I've covered the histories of quite a few different plants that were native to the Americas, which then found their way to the old world. Corn, aka Mays, was native to the new world and became a staple crop in Africa, parts of Europe and Asia. Today, two of the four largest

Starting point is 00:05:17 corn producers are the old world countries of China and India. Potatoes revolutionize 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're used in dishes all over the world. Cacao, which is the basis of 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 usually in Europe. Other significant crops include sweet potatoes, cassava, chili peppers, beans, peanut, squash, pumpkins, pineapples, vanilla, and tobacco. The transfer of crops was not a one-way street. Many old-world foods found their way to the

Starting point is 00:06:05 new world where many of them flourished. Wheat was an old-world food that 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 then later in North America. Sugarcane, which is native to Asia, was central to the plantation economies in Brazil and the Caribbean. Coffee, which was native to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, flourished in Brazil and Colombia.

Starting point is 00:06:35 Other significant crops that moved to the New World included bananas, citrus fruits, grapes, olives, onions, peaches, and pears. Not all the plants that crossed the ocean were wanted. It also resulted in invasive species. For example, Kudzu was originally from Asia, but spread extensively through global trade and became invasive in parts of the southeastern United States, taking over native plants.

Starting point is 00:07:00 Dandelions and clover were introduced by European settlers as medicinal or forage plants and quickly spread across North American landscapes, often out-competing native flora. These invasive species altered habitats, reduced biodiversity, and changed the ecological balance in many regions. Animals were also part of the Colombian 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 and milk and labor. Today, Brazil, the United States,

Starting point is 00:07:39 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 are actually 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.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Likewise, invasive insect species came over as well, the Mediterranean fruit fly and the European gypsy mong. are both major pests in North America. If it wasn't for the Colombian exchange, the world's agricultural system would look radically different. Perhaps the most devastating part of the Colombian 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.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza, malaria, mumps, yellow fever, whooping cough, chickenpox, and bubonic plague, all came over from the old world 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 to 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 only tend to go in one direction? It had a lot to do with the fact that the transfer of domesticated animals also tended to only go in one direction. There were simply far more animals that were domesticated in Africa, Asia, and Europe. People tended to

Starting point is 00:09:37 live closer in proximity to their animals, and many of the diseases that affected old world people made the jump from animal to human. Indigenous people in the new world didn't have as many domesticated animals as 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.

Starting point is 00:10:01 When the Europeans showed up, they brought with them everything. All at once. Plagues and pandemics would still erupt in the old world, but the populations there had some resistance. In the new world, they had absolutely nothing. There was, of course, one other major aspect of the Colombian exchange. People.

Starting point is 00:10:25 The Colombian 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 Southern United States. Today, almost every country in the Caribbean has a majority of its population

Starting point is 00:10:59 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.

Starting point is 00:11:43 Descendants of people from India make up over 40% of the population in Guyana today and over 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 Colombian Exchange was responsible for the greatest global migration in world history. The only people who weren't affected were the uncontacted peoples who lived deep in the Amazon rainforest. It's really hard to express just how much of an impact the Colombian Exchange had on the world, for better and for worse. The Colombian Exchange unquestionably represents one of the most significant events in human history.

Starting point is 00:12:31 It created the first truly global, ecological, and economic system, connecting previously isolated continents and transforming environment, societies, and cultures all over the world. 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 a hundred million people in the Americas from disease. Yet at the same time, 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 Colombian exchange demonstrates how biological, economic, and cultural exchanges can have profound and lasting impacts

Starting point is 00:13:21 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 Oaken and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Wesley Jay over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Moe Bien, extremely important, very informative. Unlike other history podcasts, no political bias is shown. It's now my favorite. Well, thanks, Wesley Jay, but you are mistaken.

Starting point is 00:13:57 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, and which case your side would be the right side and not the wrong side. side unless you start to disagree with me, in which case you two would then be on the wrong side. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it right on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Columbian Exchange

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