The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition

280 Pages·2003·4.98 MB·English

by  Alfred W. Crosby Jr.

THE
COLUMBIAN
EXCHANGE
Biological and Cultural
Consequences of 1492
30th Anniversary Edition
ALFRED W. CROSBY, JR.
Forwards by J.R. McNeill and Otto von Mering
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Crosby, Alfred W.
The Columbian exchange.
(Contributions in American studies, no. 2) Bibliography: p.
1. Indians—Diseases. 2. Indians—Agriculture. 3. Medical geography—History. 4.
Geographical distribution of animals and plants. I. Title.
E98.D6C7 574.5 73–140916
ISBN 978-0-27598-073-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-31309-539-9 (ebook) Chapter 2, originally
entitled “Conquistador y Pestilencia: The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great
Indian Empires,” first published in Hispanic American Historical Review, XLVII (August 1967),
321–327.
© Duke University Press.
A large part of chapter 4 first published in American Anthropologist, LXXI (April 1969), 218–
27.
Copyright © 2003 by Alfred W. Crosby, Jr.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the author and publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73–140916
ISBN: 978-0-27598-073-3
EISBN: 978-0-31309-539-9
First published in 2003
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
P
In order to keep this title in print and available to the academic community, this edition was produced using digital reprint
technology in a relativity short print run. This would not have been attainable using traditional methods. Although the cover has
been changed from its original appearance, the text remain the same and all materials and methods used still conform to the highest
book-making standards.
TO ALL THE
RULEY GIRLS
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword by J. R. McNeill
Preface to the 2003 Edition
Foreword by Otto von Mering
Preface to the 1972 Edition
1 The Contrasts
2 Conquistador y Pestilencia
3 Old World Plants and Animals in the New World
4 The Early History of Syphilis: A Reappraisal
5 New World Foods and Old World Demography
6 The Columbian Exchange Continues
Bibliography
Bibliography to the 2003 Edition
Index
List of
Illustrations
King Ferdinand Looks Across the Atlantic
Distribution of Blood Group Gene A –
Distribution of Blood Group Gene B –
Distribution of Blood Group Gene O –
The Conquest of Mexico
Smallpox Strikes the Indians of Mexico
Preparation and Use of Guaiacum
Treponema pallidum
Durer's The Syphilitic
Sixteenth-century Drawing of Maize
Sixteenth-century Drawing of the Tomato Plant
Slaves on the Voyage to America
The Immigrants
Indians Working in the Potato Fields
Portrait of John Gerard
Irish Famine Sufferers Searching for Potatoes
Sixteenth-century Drawing of a Buffalo
Foreword
In A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, Aldo Leopold, the American
naturalist, essayist, and godfather of modern environmentalism, called for a
rewriting of history from an ecological perspective. A generation of historians
ignored him. In the social ferment and intellectual tumult of the 1960s, Alfred
W. Crosby came, by his own path, to the same conclusion as Leopold. But he
then took the further step of actually writing a book that took seriously the
importance of ecological shifts in human affairs. You hold that book in your
hands.
Leopold would have been pleased; Crosby's professional colleagues were
less than pleased. The Columbian Exchange had difficulty finding a publisher
until Greenwood published it in 1972. The reviews in scholarly journals ranged
from ungenerous to polite, and many journals did not bother to review it.
Crosby's colleagues at his own university expressed some skepticism as to
whether this was really history or not, but the book refused to go away. It dealt
in a clear, compact manner with subjects that seemed ever more important,
which helped it to find its way onto reading lists at many colleges across the
United States. It was also translated into Spanish and Italian.
My first encounter with the book came on a rainy afternoon in 1982 when I