READ: Unit 4 Introduction: Transoceanic Interconnections 1450 to 1750

The Columbian Exchange linked the world’s great landmasses in a single, connected system. People, ideas, diseases, and species all moved, transforming global power relations, international economies, and local experiences, not always for the better.

The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.

Second read: key ideas and understanding content

Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.

By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

What motivated Europeans to explore new trade routes to Asia, and what technologies helped them?
What was the Columbian Exchange? What was exchanged?
What was the “Great Dying”?
How did the Columbian Exchange change economies?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.

At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:

The last two units have covered the development of regional trade networks from c. 1200 to 1450 CE and the growth of land-based empires from c. 1450 to 1750 CE. How did these two trends help produce the Columbian Exchange and the development of large European overseas empires?
The author explains the various ways that the Columbian Exchange reshaped politics, economics, and culture. Using the cultural developments and interactions theme, explain how the arrival of a new food might change a society. How does this answer change if you think about this through the theme of economic systems?

Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to read! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished reading.

Unit 4 Introduction: Transoceanic Connections 1450 to 1750

By Trevor Getz

From hemispheric systems to a world system

Christopher Columbus—hero or villain? In the United States today, this is a big question. Some see this man as the brave sailor who established the first sustained links between the world’s two great landmasses—Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. Born in Genoa, Columbus is generally viewed as Italian. In the nineteenth century, American politicians embraced Columbus Day (October 12) partly as a way to get Italian-Americans to vote for them

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. In 1937, the US government declared Columbus Day a federal holiday. Then, in 1991, Berkeley, California became the first of what would be many cities, counties, and states to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Many see Columbus’s arrival as the start of an era of land theft and genocide of Indigenous Americans.

One thing people on either side of the hero-villain debate would agree on is that Columbus’s journeys were a very big deal. Back in 1492, their real significance was still unclear. In the late fifteenth century, as we’ve already seen, the big story in Eurasia was the rise of vast, expanding empires that took over huge swaths of Afro-Eurasia. Of course, most of the people in this region paid little attention to either of these big stories. Their attention was focused on their own local neighborhood or community, their own farm or workshop.

Though most people remained unaware of events in distant lands, some of the few who traveled or studied the world were much more connected. For example, merchants, philosophers, and even rulers in the small states of Europe were keenly aware of the size and growth of the Ottoman and Russian empires. A few might have known about the Mughal emperors and their rivals in South Asia. An even smaller number may have even read about distant China.

European rulers couldn’t compete with the productivity and size of these great Eurasian states, but they could certainly try to trade with them. But here’s the problem: in the fifteenth century, the mighty Ottoman sultans dominated trade between Europe and other regions—both in Africa and in Asia. So some Europeans put together a range of new technologies that they learned from being part of this vast trading system. They mobilized financial innovations like banking and using checks and physical technologies like gunpowder and better sails. And they set out to trade by sea. Their first journeys were southward, towards West Africa, but eventually they went further and further, until they rounded the southern tip of Africa and reached Asia. Then some Europeans decided to sail the opposite direction, thinking they would land along the coast of Asia but they, of course, were the ones to make it to the Americas.

The Colombian Exchange

Reality check for a moment. In 1491, the best ships in the world may actually have been involved in the Indian Ocean trade, rather than in the hands of Europeans. Also, the Americas and Afro-Eurasia were already kinda “connected.” For example, small groups of Basque fishermen from Spain had already been fishing the abundant cod off the East Coast of North America. However, we can say that in 1491 Europeans did not know that the Americas were two vast continents and that there were humans living there. No one in the Americas knew Europe existed.

Interesting fact: there were no tomatoes in Italian food or potatoes in Irish food at this time. That’s because tomatoes and potatoes grew only in the Americas. Another interesting fact: there were no horses or cows in the Americas in 1491. Similarly, at that time, cassava—today one of the leading crops in sub-Saharan Africa—was found only in the Americas. Meanwhile, Ecuador is now one of the world’s leading exporters of bananas, even though in 1491 bananas were exclusively an Afro-Eurasian crop.

This all began to change after 1492—the beginning of what historian Alfred Crosby named the “Columbian Exchange.” Once the two hemispheric systems had a sustained connection, it wasn’t only crops and animals that were exchanged. People moved, too, and not always willingly. Millions of Africans and Europeans ended up in the Americas, with a large number of Africans traded into slavery. Also on the move were Afro-Eurasian diseases such as smallpox, malaria, typhoid, and cholera—all new to the Americas. These diseases would kill millions in the century that followed. Furthermore, the Columbian Exchange dramatically reshaped not just human life, but all life on Earth. As Crosby pointed out, the transfer of plant and animal species may have “caused the extinction of more species in the last four hundred years than the usual processes of evolution might kill off in a million.”

These outcomes illustrate what it means to live in a global system on many levels. We’ll look at the ecological and demographic consequences of interconnection. We’ll focus especially on the “Great Dying” of millions of indigenous people in the Americas, due primarily to the introduction of the diseases mentioned earlier. The scale of this tragedy can be difficult to comprehend, but let’s put it this way: when the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés first invaded present-day Mexico, the indigenous population was probably between 25 and 30 million people. Fifty years later, it was three million. Almost all of this depopulation was caused by disease.

We’ll also look at what this disaster meant for the people of Afro-Eurasia. For Europeans, it meant the ability to create new transoceanic empires with large scale colonies in the Americas. The resources of their American colonies enriched European empires and eventually allowed European states to access and control trade routes in the Indian Ocean. We will study the impact on Africans, millions of whom were enslaved and brought to the Americas to extract the resources that would enrich Europe. Finally, we will pay close attention to people—in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia—who fought against the new systems of colonialism and slavery.

The interconnections of all these people created the first global system of production and distribution. This system was fueled by silver, which became the great facilitator of global trade. The global silver trade, which benefited Spain, Western Europe, and China, was made possible by the forced labor of indigenous people in South American mines.

Indeed, this new global system only worked because millions of people were abducted, enslaved, and forced to work. The global economy flourished because American plantations produced vast amounts of sugar and cotton, crops that originated in Afro-Eurasia but grew well in the soil of the Americas. These plantations depended on the labor of enslaved people, at first mainly Indigenous Americans but soon large numbers of people from Africa were being forcibly relocated to meet the booming labor demand. The resulting profits made by slave traders and plantation owners helped finance scientific and technological developments that benefited European empires.

Changes and continuities

The human story was dramatically reshaped by the Columbian Exchange, the Great Dying, and the Atlantic Slave Trade. It was also significantly changed by the growing global power of western Europe. Around the world, farming, mining, and deforestation led to increased energy production. But they also altered the world’s physical landscape. Asia, which had long been the center of ideas and economic growth, began to lose some of its influence. The Atlantic slaving system devastated whole regions of Africa. They lost both population and productivity as kidnapping, war, and chaos spread across previously stable regions and countries. European states gained colonies in the newly discovered Americas and profited from the natural resources they took from these areas. We’ll look at these transformations from two perspectives in particular—one from West Africa, the other from Spanish-ruled Mexico.

As the era continued, more goods and ideas were exchanged and improved upon. New discoveries, new philosophies, and new movements emerged. As in previous eras, both local invention and the adoption of ideas from elsewhere played a big role in these innovations. Many of the new discoveries and technologies came from European states. But those European innovations were the result of the collective learning and exchanges that had taken place in Afro-Eurasia for thousands of years. Europeans were also fortunate to draw on natural resources from the Americas, often gathered by enslaved Africans.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these developments would create the conditions for a series of changes so explosive that we call them “revolutions”. But these revolutions would come at a price. The legacy of Columbus will continue to be debated. His voyages linked humanity worldwide and made our modern world possible, but the innovations we benefit from today were only achieved at great costs to people and to the environment.

Author bio

Trevor Getz is a professor of African and world history at San Francisco State University. He has been the author or editor of 11 books, including the award-winning graphic history Abina and the Important Men, and has coproduced several prize-winning documentaries. Trevor is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.

Image credits

Crops, animals, and diseases transferred between regions during the Columbian Exchange. By WHP, CC BY-NC 4.0.

“Columbus landing on Hispaniola” by Theodor de Bry, 1594. Library of Congress. http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b07443/

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