The Columbian Exchange:
Biological
and Cultural Consequences
of 1492

By Alfred Crosby

Christopher Columbus and the Great Age of Discovery
HIST 351  ~  Fall 2010

Preface to the 2003 Edition

What does Crosby think are the mistakes he made in the 1972 edition of The Columbian Exchange?

Chapter One:
The Contrasts

1. What did early European visitors notice about the plants and animals of the Americas?

2. How did the animals of North and South America compare with those of the Eastern Hemisphere and with each other?

3. How did Europeans explain the differences between American plants and animals and those of the Eastern Hemisphere?

4. What were the European theories about whether the Americas and the Eastern Hemispheres were connected or not?

5. How did the Native Americans compare with the other peoples in the world?

 
Terms

• Philip L. Sclater
• Isaac de La Peyrere
• preadamites
• Monogeneticism
• Polygeneticism
• Joseph de Acosta
• Comte de Buffon

Chapter Two:
Conquistador y Pestilincia

1. Why were the diseases of the Eastern Hemisphere so much more deadly to the native peoples of the Americas?

2. How did European diseases affect the populations of the native peoples of the Americas?

3. When did small pox first appear in the Americas and how did it affect the conquest of the natives?

4. How did European diseases affect the leaders and the political elites of the native peoples?

 
Term

• Huayna Capac

Chapter Three:
Old World Plants and Animals
in the New World

1. What two American food plants did the Spanish have to eat when European foods were not available and why?

2. What Old World plant was grown very successfully in the Americas and how did it get there?

3. How did wheat and grapes grow in the Americas?

4. How did the Native Americans accept European food plants?

5. How did European domesticated animals adapt to the Americas and which of the animals contributed the most to the conquest and why?

6. Describe the role and importance of cattle herding and sheep herding in the Spanish Americas.

7. What were some of the failures and problems caused by Europeans bringing Old World animals to the Americas?

8. Which Old World animals became important to Native Americans and why?

9. What were the benefits and the problems caused by the introduction of Old World plants and animals into the Americas?

Chapter Four:
The Early History of Syphilis:
A Reappraisal

1. What is the evidence that syphilis was a new disease in the Europe of 1493?

2. What is the evidence for the Columbian theory of the origins of syphilis?

3. What is the Unitarian theory of the origins of syphilis and what is the evidence that supports it?

4. How does Crosby describe the spread of syphilis after 1493 and how the disease evolved up to 1610?

5. How did sixteenth-century Europeans attempt to treat the disease of syphilis?

6. How did the arrival of syphilis change European society?

 
Terms

• Columbian Theory
• Unitarian Theory
• Ulrich von Hutten
• Ruy Diaz de Isla
• Treponematosis
• Jean Astruc
• Guaiacum

Chapter Five:
New World Foods
and Old World Demography

1. What does Crosby give as the reasons for the rapid increase in world population after 1650 and what does he consider to be the most important and why?

2. Want were the five most important American food crops and what were their advantages as new sources of food?

3. Describe how and when maize and potatoes spread into Europe and how they were used.

4. Why were American food plants able to be easily transplanted to Africa? What was their impact on the African populations and its societies?

5. Which American food plants became important in different parts of South and East Asia and why?

 
Terms

• Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov

Chapter Six:
The Columbian Exchange Continues

1. Describe how the Columbian Exchange of plants and animals has continued to the present.

2. How has human migration been part of the Columbian Exchange?

3. What does Crosby see as the great problem caused by the Columbian Exchange?

Christopher Columbus and the Great Age of Discovery
HIST 351  ~  Fall 2010