The Columbian Exchange

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form; the Americas had no cattle, bananas, sugar cane or smallpox. The lists of what was then exchanged are long and as these flora, fauna and diseases moved between continents, their impact ranged from transformation to devastation. In parts of the Americas, European viruses helped kill over 90 percent of the population. In parts of Europe, Africa and Asia populations boomed on the new American foods. Sheep from Europe grazed fertile land into deserts in some parts of the Americas, while the lowered populations in others led to local reforestation which, arguably, is linked to a particularly cold period in the Little Ice Age.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Rebecca Earle No other episodes
  Professor of History at the University of Warwick
• John Lindo No other episodes
  Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University
• Mark Maslin 3 episodes
  Professor of Earth System Science at University College London

Reading list

• Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society
  Steven R. Brechin and Seungyun Lee (ed.) (Routledge, 2024) Google Books →
• In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World
  Judith Carney and Richard Rosomoff (University of California Press, 2009) Google Books →
• The Immunogenetic Impact of European Colonization in the Americas
  EJ Collen, AS Johar, JC Teixeira and B. Llamas (Front Genet, August 2022)
• The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
  Alfred W. Crosby (Greenwood Press, 1972) Google Books →
• ''If You Eat Their Food . . .": Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America
  Rebecca Earle (American Historical Review 115:3, 2010)
• Food in Global History
  Raymond Grew (ed.) (Routledge, 1999) Google Books →
• The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene
  Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin (Pelican, 2018) Google Books →
• The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas
  Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian (Journal of Economic Perspectives 24:2, 2010)
• The Oxford Handbook of Food History
  Jeffrey Pilcher (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2012) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002rrvz

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002rrvz

Auto-category: 909.08 (World history—modern period, 1450/1500-)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. When Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492, Europe had no potatoes, no tomatoes, no sunflowers and arguably no syphilis.