Columbian Exchange

Christopher Columbus and the Colombian Exchange definition

Most historians begin recording the conquest, colonization, and interaction between the peoples of the Americas and Europe with the First Voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Though there is evidence that other European explorers may have discovered the continents before Columbus’s voyage, it was not until after his exploits that Europe, especially Spain, retained a forceful and economic focus on what would be called the “New World.”

Fig. 1 Engraving of a portrait of Christopher Columbus

An Italian explorer and sailor, Christopher Columbus, was hired by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I of Spain to find passage to the Spice Islands in India and Asia that was not controlled or dominated by the Portuguese. Columbus, sailing west in 1492, crossed the Atlantic ocean, landing in what is now called the Caribbean.

His first interactions with the Indigenous Peoples were cautious, but Columbus wanted to continue the economic exploration of the region.

Fig. 2 Columbus landing on Hispaniola 1492

Upon his return to Spain, he convinced the King and Queen of the value of ongoing exploration of the area and engaging in trade or even conquest of the Indigenous Peoples. The trade - voluntary or involuntary- of every new plant, animal, good or merchandise, idea, and disease over the century following Colombus' first voyage is a process historians call The Columbian Exchange.

The beginning of the Colombian Exchange

Excluding a small minority of outlier explorers from Europe, there had been very little to no interaction between the Peoples, flora, and fauna of the North and South American continents and their counterparts in Europe, Africa, and Asia since the geologic Bering Land Bridge connecting the continents submerged around 10,000 years before. The plants, animals, and human culture, therefore, adapted and evolved to their unique environments during that time.

This separation over thousands of years created genuinely unique biodiversity ranges in almost all aspects of plant and animal life.

Effects of the Colombian Exchange

The Colombian Exchange saw the exchange of many plants, animals, spices, minerals and commodities between the Old and the New World, but there was a darker side to it - the exchange of disease decimated a huge amount of the Indigenous populations of North and South America. Let's explore this exchange, before looking at other effects.

Fig. 3 Columbus taking possession

The Colombian Exchange and disease

Historians have researched and investigated why Europeans could conquer the New World with relative ease. There are theories on military and technological supremacy, diplomatic and economic superiority, and other views. All of these have supporting evidence, but none can fully explain how the European conquest happened so quickly.

Disease was a huge factor that weakened the Indigenous Peoples of North and South America in the face of European conquest. Diseases carried from the Old World to the New World by the European invaders are estimated to have killed around 90% of the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas who had no immunity to the germs that had infested Europe, Asia, and Africa for centuries.

• The greatest killer was smallpox, which was spread by direct human contact. The epidemic that hit the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1520 had begun on the island of Hispaniola two years early and had spread through Mexico, Central America, and South America.
• One of the reasons the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro took over the Incan Empire so quickly was that disease had annihilated their society just before his arrival.
• Influenza, measles, and other illnesses added to the destruction of Indigenous societies.

Fig. 4 The Cowpox Tragedy

The statistics, even the conservative estimates, are staggering. When Columbus landed in Hispaniola in 1492, about one million Indigenous people resided there. Fifty years later, only 500 were still alive. According to some estimates, five to ten million Indigenous people inhabited central Mexico before Cortez and the Spanish. By the end of the 1500s, fewer than one million remained.²

The Colombian Exchange: animals, plants and food

Though deadly and influential, the exchange of diseases was only part of a broader mutual transfer of plants and animals that resulted directly from the voyages of explorers and colonists to the New World.

• The vegetable agriculture of the New World- especially corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, and potatoes- was more nutritious and could be cultivated in more significant quantities than those of the Old World, such as wheat and rye.

• On the other hand, the Americas had few domesticated animals larger than dogs and llamas. Over the century, Indigenous Peoples learned to raise and consume European domesticated animals such as cattle, pigs, and sheep.

Europeans became accustomed to planting and eating American crops. As a result, the diets of both peoples changed. One consequence is the doubling of the world population over the next few centuries as nutrition and food production improved.

Tobacco, Sugar, and Horses

The exchange of three other commodities significantly changed the Europeans and Native Americans. In the Americas, Europeans discovered tobacco - smoking and chewing tobacco quickly became popular in the Old World. Tobacco cultivation later formed the basis for the first English colonies in the New World.

Fig. 5 Cultivation of tobacco at Jamestown 1615

In the opposite direction, sugarcane from Africa was imported to the New World. Flourishing in the tropical climates of South America and the Caribbean, the expansion of this crop would lead to the mass use of enslaved labor in the New World.

As critical as these plants were, the introduction of horses was hugely impactful on certain Indigenous cultures in the New World; the Spanish brought with them the first horses Americans had ever seen. Some escaped or were stolen; such horses were traded north through Mexico into the Great Plains of North America, where tribes like the Apache, Comanche, Sioux, and Blackfeet eventually made the horse the focal point of their society.

Colombian Exchange map

It is important to understand the variety of goods, diseases and animals exchanged between the old and new worlds. The table below outlines a range of these exchanges.

Fig. 6 Voyages of Columbus

1. Christopher Columbus, Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, translated by Samuel Eliot Morrison, 72-72, 84.

2. Crosby, A. W., McNeill, J. R., & von Mering, O. (2003). The Columbian Exchange. Praeger.