In Our Time The Columbian Exchange
American Crops Remade Global Diets
- New World crops reshaped global cuisines and population trajectories—potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers and maize spread worldwide.
- Rebecca Earle notes potatoes from the Andes and chilies transforming Indian and Asian food cultures after introduction.
Which Diseases Drove The Collapse
- Smallpox, measles and influenza were the major Eurasian diseases that devastated indigenous Americas, with smallpox often causing 30–50% or higher mortality.
- John Lindo stresses colonial disruption (forced labor, food loss) magnified disease impacts beyond simple immunological naivety.
Livestock Caused Landscape Collapse
- European livestock exploded after introduction, causing ecological damage like erosion and desertification.
- Rebecca Earle cites Eleanor Melville’s work showing sheep grazing in central Mexico removed ground cover and triggered soil degradation.
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.
With
Rebecca Earle Professor of History at the University of Warwick
John Lindo Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University
And
Mark Maslin Professor of Earth System Science at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list
Steven R. Brechin and Seungyun Lee (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society (Routledge, 2024), especially the chapter ‘Human Impacts on the Climate Prior to the Industrial Revolution’ by Alexander Koch, Simon Lewis, Chris Brierley and Mark Maslin
Judith Carney and Richard Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (University of California Press, 2009)
EJ Collen, AS Johar, JC Teixeira and B. Llamas, ‘The Immunogenetic Impact of European Colonization in the Americas’ (Front Genet, August 2022)
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, 1972)
Rebecca Earle, ‘‘‘If You Eat Their Food . . .”: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America’ (American Historical Review 115:3, 2010)
Raymond Grew (ed.), Food in Global History (Routledge, 1999), especially ‘The Impact of New World Food Crops on the Diet and Economy of China and India, 1600-1900’ by Sucheta Mazumda
Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (Pelican, 2018)
Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, ‘The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas’ (Journal of Economic Perspectives 24:2, 2010)
Jeffrey Pilcher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Food History (Oxford University Press, 2012), especially ‘The Columbian Exchange’ by Rebecca Earle
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.