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