THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

MAX GOLDMAN

March 23, 2015

 The historical idea of the “Columbian Exchange” has in recent years emerged into a serious
field of inquiry. How so? A rather superficial Google search of this aforementioned term yields
over half a million independent results- many scholarly, some encyclopedic. Other results include
book reviews, methods of teaching the concept to children and even in YouTube videos. But what
can explain the sudden recent emergence of the Columbian Exchange as a legitimate historical
idea? I think that one can address this pressing question by considering the notion of our
expanding sense of the “specious present” in thinking about history. Thus, our historical
analytical lens is constantly expanding. Historians no longer consider the centrality crucial dates
such as “1492” or “1789” but rather have begun to think of humans as biological organisms that
share a larger narrative with fellow living organisms-flora, fauna and microorganisms included.
Thus, one way to think about this larger “ multi organismal” narrative of history is
embodied in the Columbian exchange. The term was first coined by historian Alfred W. Crosby
in the early 1970’s and embodied by his book of the same name. Crosby as a social historian was
writing during a period expanding social historical inquiry. 1 Specifically, these “young
researchers looked for a universal historical narrative in the past in unlikely places. This markedly
different perspective “through into sharp relief the standards of significance that prior generations
of historians valued, such as statesmen, diplomats, generals and intellectuals”. 2 Further, I
conclude that the history of the Columbian Exchange represents a form of “natural history”.
According to Thomas R. Dunlap, “natural history developed within the social structures of
science, which since the early 19 th century had become a respected intellectual field and
profession”.3 However, historians of the 1970’s were initially uninterested in Crosby’s work and
argued that it was not a form of history. Interestingly, GS Dunbar points out that the field of bio
history has been explored for a long time by anthropologists and geographers, but not by
historians.4 In fact, Alfred Crosby was not the first historian to write a biohistory-instead, Dunbar
points to Arthur Aiton, and a member of the “Bolton School” who anticipated Crobsy’s work

1
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History( New York,
NY: W.W. and Norton Company, Inc, 1994), 147-148.
2
Ibid.
3
Thomas R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United
States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge, UK: Press Syndicate of the University
of Cambridge, 1999), 31. Dunlap also suggests that natural history likely originated with
folkbiology, or “the local knowledge passed on from one generation to the next in the context of
daily life”.
4
J.R. McNeill. Foreword to The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences
of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby Jr (Westport: Alfred W. Crosby Jr, 2003), xi.
with his essay “The Impact of the Flora and Fauna of the New World upon the Old World during
the Sixteenth Century”.5
As already pointed out, the Columbian Exchange has emerged into the forefront
of intellectual discussion not solely in college classrooms, but also in elementary school classes.
Lynette Field and Judith Y. Singer argue that prospective teachers are commonly faced with a
dilemma caused by the “disjuncture between what they have learned in school and what they are
learning now”. 6 Standard history books inform us that explorers and Native Americans lived with
one another peacefully and learned from one another. Indians benefited most from this process as
they were primitive and needed European civilization. This narrative silences the voices of Native
Americans through war, “cold and hunger, disease and death”. 7 As a result, the authors suggest
narratives such as Seeds of Change: The Story of Cultural Exchange After 1492, Sky Dogs- which
describes the fear of the Blackfoot People upon encountering large animals and Waheenee: An
Indian Girl’s Story which describes the devastation brought to Native Americans by smallpox. 8
Since the initial publication of Crosby’s Columbian Exchange in 1972, numerous
other narratives containing themes of the Exchange followed. In this narrative, Crosby offers to
his audience a means of radically rethinking the origins of the globalized world of today-
specifically that Christopher Columbus and his successors unknowingly and likely
unintentionally brought with them diseases such as smallpox-responsible for the deaths of
approximately 25 million Aztecs and Incas, 9 (for which Native America likely responded with
Syphilis)10, plants such as sugarcane, wheat, wine, olive oil and weeds -which native Americans
found undesirable and environmentally destructive animals but introduced to Eurasians future

5
G.S. Dunbar, 1973, Review of The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural
Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby Jr (Westport: Alfred W. Crosby Jr, 1972). Dunbar
points out that although geographers and anthropologists have been active in the study of
biohistory, historians have been more reluctant because studying plants, animals, diet and disease
requires “more technical grounding than historians’ literary education can provide.

6
Lynette Field and Judith Y. Singer, “Talking with Children about the Columbian Exchange”.
Social Studies and the Young Learner Vol. 18, No. 4(2006), 24-26, 24.
7
Ibid., 24.
8
Ibid.,25-26.
9
Alfred W. Crosby Jr, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
(Westport, CT: Alfred W. Crosby Jr, 2003), 53.
10
Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food and
Ideas”, Journal of Economic Perspectives,Vol. 24, (2010), 167.
staples such as the potato and maize which enabled population expansion in Asia 11 and Europe12.
Even within Crosby’s work there is internal debate. For example, in his other major work,
Ecological Imperialism, Crosby elaborates on the notion that “Neo Europes”- geographically
located primarily in the Americas and in Australasia- were created vis a vis an ecological and
biological invasion and subsequent success of European biota-humans, plants and microbes.
However, Crosby’s most significant contribution to the field of European exploration and
colonization is “Crosby’s contention that ecological factors gave Europeans the decisive
advantage to explain their domination of the Neo Europes”. 13 There was a crucial element to the
exchange narrative I conclude is omitted from Crosby’s accounts of ecological exchange and
imperialism related to the aforementioned tendency among historians to silence voices of native
peoples. It would appear that Crosby’s narratives assume a lack of Native agency and assumes
“historical silence” when describing either the Americas or Australasia prior to contact with
Europeans and their associated “portmanteau biota”. 14
Thus, an intellectual debate of sorts ensued in the decades following the publication of
the Columbian Exchange, in part I argue to refute Crosby’s lack of native agency narrative.
Historians, such as Colin Calloway, Charles Mann, Andrew Lawler, Pekka Hamalainen and Jared
Diamond would offer differing perspectives. Specifically, Calloway and Mann suggest that
Amerindians also exploited the land. I conclude that in the case of the importance of the maize
crop to the aboriginal inhabitants of the Southwestern part of North America, maize provided an
agricultural staple that enabled pre contact Native Americans to establish relatively centralized
communities.15 Further, South Western cultivation of maize allowed the peoples of this region to
build advanced infrastructural systems and I argue even manipulate their environment by
establishing canals, dams and ditches. 16 Charles C. Mann would further point out that the
discovery of the Clovis point, a “four inch spearhead with a slightly cut in, concave tail”. 17 Also
11
Robert B. Marks, China: Its Environment and History (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers, Inc, 2012), 206.
12
William H. McNeill, “How the Potato Changed the World’s History”. Social Research, Vol.
66, No.1. (1999),67-83, 77.
13
Cynthia A. Hody, 1986, Review of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of
Europe ( New York, NY: Cambrdige University Press, 1986) by Alfred W. Crosby Jr.
14
Alfred W. Crosby Jr, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological and Ecological Expansion of
Europe, 900-1900, new Ed. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 89-90.
15
Colin G. Calloway,One Vast Winter Count (United States, University of Nebraska Press,
2003), 75.

16
Ibid., 86-87.
17
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York, NY:
Random House, 2006), 168-169.
important was the discovery of the Folsom Points, “smaller and finer in appearance” than those of
the Clovis culture.18 Lawler’s article, too, I conclude is worth noting as offering a counter
narrative to Crosby’s in giving agency to seafaring Polynesians, masters of the “current” and
capable of establishing ecological contacts with South America in bringing with them the sweet
potato to Australasia.19 Jared Diamond and Pekka Hamalainen I argue emphasize the important
role of technology( in the hands of Europeans) in facilitating the spread of European ecological
conquest20 and the impact of European animals on the ability of the peoples of the North
American Great Plains on striking fear into the hearts of Spanish colonists 21.
Other historians would argue that Crosby’s narrative on the Columbian
Exchange also does not give agency to specific Old World animal species, Caribbean slaves or
the beginnings of the environmental movement. According to Virginia Anderson, to the
burgesses of the Virginia colony cattle served as “ a cause of peace” as they gave leaders an
object with which to “hazard and loose besides their lives”. 22 Further, Anderson points out that
cows were not only adaptable and valuable animals, but also instrumental mediums through
which English culture could be spread to Native Americans. 23 Other animals, such as the tiny
mosquito, were capable of halting the advance of Europeans in Jamaica. Specifically, J.R.
McNeill states that Oliver Cromwell’s ambitious attempts to colonize and conquer Spanish
possessions were severely curtailed by the Anopheles albimanus – a “malarial” mosquito species
present in Jamaica.24 Thus, McNeill argues that the English fell into a trap of sorts- the English
led by “Venables” landed in Jamaica during a season when “An. albimanus” more inclined to

18
Mann points out that other innovations included methods that enabled the user of the Folsom
spear points to repair them-specifically, when a point broke, “the head could be loosened and slid
forward on the shaft, allowing the user to craft a new point”.
19
Andrew Lawler, “ Beyond Kon Tiki: Did Polynesians Sail to South America?”. AAAS, Vol.
328. (June 2010): 1345.

20
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York, NY: W.W.
Norton and Company, Inc, 2005), 214.

21
Pekka Hamalainen, “The Politics of Grass: European Expansion, Ecological Change and
Indigenous Power in the Southwest Borderlands”, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 67, no.
2. (2010):179.

22
Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early
America(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), 108.
23
Ibid.
24
J.R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914
(New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 102.
feed on humans.25 On the other hand, Kenneth Kiple would suggest exploring the impact of
African diseases on Native American populations rather than those from European. Specifically,
the disease known as “Yaws” left few Native American child slaves alive. 26 Although improved
treatment techniques were developed to cure the disease in most of the West Indies, in the nation
of Haiti- where the quality of life has remained stagnant since the age of slavery, yaws continues
to affect approximately half the population. 27 I argue that Richard Grove, author of Green
Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism,
1600-1860 would point out the role of the Columbian Exchange in fostering an early
environmental awareness. While the French were busy competing with the British to establish
spheres of influence in the East Indies and searching for locales in their “tropical colonies” to
grow spices,28 the “Compaignes des Indes” began to assess the “agricultural potential of
Mauritius”. Specifically, the fragility of the soil is recorded with an empirical perspective,
differing from earlier, more “unrealistic accounts of St. Helena and the surrounding soils”. 29
Having now considered the nature of the debates and various articulations of the
Columbian Exchange, I will now point out the extent to which the Exchange has been accepted as
legitimate history. As has been pointed out, Alfred Crosby initially struggled to find a publishing
company for The Columbian Exchange, yet I argue that the legacy of the idea has been one of
general acceptance. As I have pointed out, the historians I have cited present ideas that relatable
to some aspect of the Exchange. The idea of the exchange also has come to play a major role in
histories detailing of the origins of the Modern World, as well as environmental histories of
China- fields of history that I conclude could be articulated from a non “Exchange” perspective,
as articulated in Robert B. Marks’ Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological
Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century 30 and China: Its Environment and
History.31 Once again, I think it is also important to mention the significance of acceptance of the
25
Further exacerbating the effects of the Jamaican mosquito on the English was that the English
hid in low lying, “swampy coastlands”, while also sleeping outside among the nocturnal
mosquitos.
26
Kenneth F. Kiple, The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge
University Press, 1984), 21.
27
Ibid.,
28
Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the
Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1995),
171, 174.
29
Ibid.
30
Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from
the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc,
2007), 76.
31
Marks, China: Its Environment and History, 206.
Columbian Exchange in teaching- as pointed out in the Field and Singer article, it would appear
that elementary school teachers are attempting to integrate the Columbian Exchange into grade
school curriculum as well as place emphasis on the historical agency of Native Americans rather
than their relative silence.32
To conclude, I argue that historians are able to understand what is true about the
Columbian Exchange as well as history in general by evaluating empirical evidence of the
impacts of significant historical events as well as by discovering connections between past events
and today’s world. Specifically, in the case of the Exchange, Alfred Crosby supplies numerical
evidence in that detail the effects of the Exchange on the development of the modern world.
Specifically, he puts forth a chart indicating a list of “Largest World Crops in 1963”- of those
crops, potatoes ranks highest, yielding 277. 6 million metric tons of produce. 33 When discussing
the impact of Old World diseases on New World populations, Crosby also provides, where
possible, concrete empirical evidence- for example, when illustrating the effects of smallpox on
the Incas, he cites “Cieza de Leon”, who states the number of smallpox victims to be 200,000. 34
In terms of general history, I argue that the possession empirical information and exact figures of
deaths or population growth gives historians added credibility, and subsequently few social
scientists would consider historians bound by estimations or inferences. Regarding the
Columbian Exchange, historians must also identify the continuation of the concept into more
recent times. As a result of the Exchange, “there has been an enormous increase in food
production levels and human population” but at the cost of the loss of “ecological stability over
massive areas of land and erosion”. 35 The long term effects of the Exchange can also be inferred
from the relatively high numbers of European immigrants moving to places in the New World
rather than within Europe, Africa or Asia36, thus creating “giant markets for European
37
manufacturers” and a substantial profit source. For historians trying to understanding the
continuing truth of history in general, I think that one would be prudent to be able to not only
interpret historical truth by drawing upon the literary and natural archives, but also to devise
solutions to issues in the world today, whether geopolitical, socio economic or environmental.

32
Field and Singer, “Talking to Children about the Columbian Exchange”, 24, 25-26.
33
Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, 201.
34
Ibid.,53. It is important to note that obtaining any numerical figure is difficult-Crosby tells us
that most sources provide us only vague statistics such as “ many died” or “infinite thousands”.
35
Ibid., 211.
36
Ibid.,216.
37
Ibid., 217.
 Bibliography

Appleby, Joyce, Hunt, Lynn and Jacob, Margaret. Telling the Truth About History. New
York, NY: W.W. and Norton Company, Inc, 1994.

DeJohn Anderson, Virgina. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals

Transformed Early America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count. United States, University of

Nebraska Press, 2003.

Crosby Jr, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological and Ecological

Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. new Ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
2004.

Crosby Jr. Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural

Consequences of 1492.Westport, CT: Alfred W. Crosby Jr, 2003.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New
York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, 2005.

Dunbar, G.S. 1973. Review of The Columbian Exchange: Biological and

Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby Jr. Westport: Alfred W. Crosby Jr,
1972.

Dunlap, Thomas R. Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the
United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Cambridge, UK: Press Syndicate of the
University of Cambridge, 1999.

Field, Lynette and Singer, Judith Y. “Talking with Children about the Columbian
Exchange”. Social Studies and the Young Learner. Vol. 18, No. 4(2006), 24-26.

Grove, Richard H. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island

Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge
University Press, 1995.

Hamalainen, Pekka. “The Politics of Grass: European Expansion, Ecological Change and
Indigenous Power in the Southwest Borderlands”. The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 67, no.
2. (2010), 173-208.

Hody, Cynthia A. 1986, Review of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion

of Europe New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1986 by Alfred W. Crosby Jr.
 Kiple, Kenneth F. The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History. Cambridge, UK,
Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Lawler, Andrew. “ Beyond Kon Tiki: Did Polynesians Sail to South America?”. AAAS,
Vol. 328. (June 2010),1344-1347.

Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus . New York,
NY: Random House, 2006.

Marks, Robert B. China: Its Environment and History. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2012.

Marks, Robert B. The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative
from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers,
Inc, 2007.

Nunn, Nathan and Qian, Nancy. “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food
and Ideas”, Journal of Economic Perspectives,Vol. 24, (2010), 163-188.