Introduction to the Columbian Exchange (Revised)

The History of the Americans

In recognition of the holiday(s),* this is a revision of one of the podcast’s earliest episodes, Introduction to the Columbian Exchange. The “Columbian Exchange” refers to the interhemispheric transmission of diseases, food crops, populations, cultures, and technologies in the years after Columbus’s famous First Voyage. The term was invented in 1972 by the famous biological historian Alfred W. Crosby Jr. of the University of Texas at Austin. The original episode focuses on the impact of diseases and crops that moved from one hemisphere to the other following 1492. It is replete with interesting factoids!

The revisions include thoughts on the human consequences, including to the indigenous peoples of the Americans and Africans swept up in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how we might think about it now.

*I think you know what I’m saying here. To each his own.

Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)

Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition

Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650

Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas”

University of Zurich, “Syphilis May Have Spread Through Europe Before Columbus”