The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby

The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 Reviews

• 
  John

  This is the classic study that has now become a key part of every American and World History class at both the high school and college levels. And he could only get the Greenwood Press in Westport, CT to publish it at first! I wonder how much money they have made off taking a chance on this book back in the 70s. This must have sold hundreds of thousands of copies to undergrads by now.
  Crazy as it seems, Crosby was really the first to lay out this argument that the most important thing about Columbus was the biological revolution he touched off. All the New World plants that took the Old World by storm (potatoes, corn, manioc) and caused huge population booms, and Old World animals, plants and diseases that wreaked havoc on the New World. Crosby includes this whole section on blood type and genetics, arguing that because Native Americans were descended from a relatively small group of migrants from Asia, they were pretty homogeneous genetically. Like 90% of Native Americans were blood type O, for example. Which meant that virgin soil epidemics of Eurasian/African diseases would be particularly devastating. Crosby also points out positives though - Native Americans in central North America and parts of South America adopted the horse really fast, and this allowed them to resist Europeans for many generations.
  Crosby also starts getting into the argument that he would flesh out later in "Ecological Imperialism" - Europeans replicated their familiar biological regime in the New World, creating Neo-Europes, except it was even better than the Old World. Less people, TONS of domesticated pigs and cattle, which meant that people who came to the Neo-Europes ate more meat than anyone else in the world. So millions of people migrate to the New World, populations boom all over the place, and the West becomes super powerful. Steaks!
  
• 
  Vicky Hunt

  Our Daily Potato
  
  

  O Creator! Lord of the ends of the earth! Oh, most merciful! Thou who givest life to all things, and hast made men that they might live, and eat and multiply. Multiply also the fruits of the earth, the papas [potatoes], and other food that thou hast made that men may not suffer from hunger and misery. – A native Peruvian prayer

  
  
  The Columbian Exchange is a well written history that is readable and fascinating, and it has a unifying idea that ties the whole book together. The author makes a key statement near the beginning of the book, which was taken by me to refer to one set of facts. It seems he intended it that way, though he was setting you up for the big reveal in the final chapter, where that factual statement is repeated. But, this time, with all the information you have been given, it is now obvious that it has a much deeper meaning. This unifying idea is really an expansion of the idea of the Columbian exchange that took place when the oceans became highways connecting the continents. So, you think you have the idea of the book all packaged up in that neat little title that not only sums the book up so well, but has become a buzzword itself to explain the whole process. But, it goes much deeper than the surface. And, I won’t spoil that for anyone who plans to read it himself. But, there are many more of the details to share from this book.
  
  

  "America is so truly “different from Europe, Asia and Africa in the living habits of its people, the forms of its animals, and, in general, in that which the earth produces, that it can well be called the new world."

  
  
  

  ”Migration of man and his maladies is the chief cause of epidemics. And when migration takes place, those creatures who have been longest in isolation suffer most, for their genetic material has been least tempered by the variety of world diseases… few of the first rank killers among the diseases are native to the Americas.”

  
  
  These immigrant diseases soon took a heavy toll, and the tribal leadership of the Americas was devastated. The survivors suffered a crisis in leadership when their leaders, such as Huayna Capac and his heirs, all died. Everyone above a certain age in many villages died. The surviving young had no one to lead them.
  
  The book travels from the Conquistadors and pestilence, to the transplanting of animals and crops to the New World. The author paints a vivid picture of the ‘biological explosion’ that took place. Horses brought by the Spanish, and arriving in the grasslands of the Llanos multiplied unbelievably fast, unlike ever before in history. They soon filled the new continent; swelling to great numbers on the temperate grasslands of the pampas in Argentina and Uruguay, and northwards into Mexico. By the time the North American settlers arrived to the Prairie grasslands that stretched from the heart of Mexico into Canada, the Native Americans had all but given up their feeble attempts to till the soil with stone tools and taken to hunting from horseback.
  
  Similar results were achieved with sheep, cattle, and pigs; none of which were native to the Americas. Though sheep didn’t as readily go wild, cattle, pigs, and even dogs and cats were soon in the wild spreading at a rapid rate in a land where they had no natural predators and food was readily available. The Europeans found the rich loam of the grasslands, which had been allowed to enrichen for centuries, a fertile resource under their plows. This technology, along with the herding power of the horse, soon transformed the landscape of the Northern and Southern Americas.
  
  Alfred Crosby then flips the tables on this Columbian exchange; recounting the evidence for and against the main three theories of the origin of Syphilis that were current at the time of writing of this book (30 years ago): The Columbian Theory, the Mutation theory, and the Unitarian theory. Syphilis was the only epidemic disease at that time that had a historically known origin point. Everything else had been with us from before recorded history, and just had re-occurrences. It hit Europe in 1493. The author points out all the evidence for the Columbian theory, such as the fact that there are no pre-Columbian Syphilitic corpses in Europe or the Old World. But, many have been found in the Americas from before Columbus.
  
  He then moves into the topic of food and shows how the population explosion began concurrently with the transplanting of New World Crops to the Old World. America had a number of crops that could grow easily in almost any soil. I enjoyed this section as much as I did the section on the biological explosion of the animals. It is fascinating to know that the foods we consider Southern home cooking are eaten here because they are native to the Americas. Maize (corn,) frijole (pinto) beans, and squash were part of the trade markets coming from Mexico and Central America into North America before Columbus. (This last fact I’d learned recently from other books that were founded on this remarkable work.)
  
  Aside from the nonfoods which the native Americans gave humanity, such as tobacco, rubber, and certain cottons; Maize, Pumpkin, Beans of many kinds, Papaya, Guava, Peanuts, Avocado, Potato, Pineapple, Sweet potato, Tomato, Manioc (also called cassava and tapioca,) Chile pepper, Squashes, and Cocoa all originated here in the ‘New World.’ Some countries, like Ireland, quickly took to potatoes to ease mass hunger. Other European countries were slower to accept this native diet. But, today Russia is the largest producer of potatoes in the world. And, manioc is a staple crop in the tropics all around the earth often in places where nothing else will grow.
  
  The lima, sieva, Rangoon, Madagascar, butter, Burma, pole, curry, kidney, French, navy, haricot, snap, string, common, and frijole bean are all American beans. American beans are especially rich in protein, as well as in oils and carbohydrates, and so they are called the ‘poor man's meat.’
  
  
  

  No large group of the human race in the Old World was quicker to adopt American food plants than the Chinese. While men who stormed Tenochtitlán with Cortés still lived, peanuts were swelling in the sandy loams near Shanghai; maize was turning fields green in south China and the sweet potato was on its way to becoming the poor man's staple in Fukien.

  
  
  

  It seems more likely that the number of human beings on this planet today would be a good deal smaller but for the horticultural skills of the neolithic American.

  
  
  What made these transplanted crops such a boon for the rest of the world is that they did not compete with crops currently being grown and could be planted in fields that would otherwise have lain fallow. This created more food, since the potato produces several times as much food per unit of land as wheat or any other grain. Babies may not come from cabbage (or potato) patches, but fed people live to adulthood to reproduce.
  
  

  ”The importance of American foods in Africa is more obvious than in any other continent of the Old World, for in no other continent, except the Americas themselves, is so great a proportion of the population so dependent on American foods. Very few of man's cultivated plants originated in Africa. Practically none of the jungle food crops are native to Africa. Nigeria, for instance, raises more manioc than any other food.”

  
  
  One last fact I found surprising was that Moldavian peasants make white lightning or moonshine as it is known here in the South using corn mash. Romanians raised wheat and maize, the former to export, the latter to eat. Maize, which pairs so well with wheat in crop rotation, enabled Romania to become one of Europe's breadbaskets. Mamaliga, a maize porridge, became and remains the Moldavian peasant's staff of life, “the principle or sole item of every meal.” And when the same peasant celebrates, he drinks spirits made from maize, even as the Tennessee mountaineer.
  
  I read this book in the Kindle format for my Fall read, a time of the year when I especially enjoy reading about the discovery of the New World. I first read of some of Alfred Crosby’s ideas in other books on environmental history, since his book is a foundational study on the topic. As much as I enjoyed Guns, Germs, and Steel and The Viral Storm, They only gave the half of the story. It was so much more enjoyable reading the full work here in Crosby’s Columbian Exchange. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in history, and in the world today, although it may be a book you will prefer to borrow from the library since it is higher priced like many textbooks. It doesn’t read at all like a textbook though. It is very simple reading, and filled with information.
  
  More quotations from the book follow:
  
  

  The fact that Kentucky bluegrass, daisies, and dandelions, to name only three out of hundreds, are Old World in origin gives one a hint of the magnitude of the change that began in 1492 and continues in the twentieth century.

  
  

  Both the horses and diseases moved through the virgin lands of America faster than did the people who had brought them to the New World.

  
  
  

  ...the Spanish-American settlers were probably consuming more meat per man than any other large group of non-nomadic people in the world. In fact, the Europeans in America have only rarely experienced famine and, taking plant and animal foods together, have possibly been the best-fed people in the world, a fact that has motivated more people to migrate to the New World than all the religious and ideological forces combined.

  
  
  

  The importation of the horse, ass, and ox brought about a revolution in the quantity of power available to man in the New World similar to that which Watt's steam engine brought to late eighteenth-century Europe.

  
  
  

  The ox and plow combination enabled a few men to cultivate very large areas of land—extensive cultivation—which became more and more important as the Indian population declined and with it the quantities of foodstuffs produced by the techniques of intensive cultivation.

  
  
  

  It is quite likely that soil erosion in the New World accelerated after the arrival of the Europeans.

  
  
  

  ...when the hoarded riches of the grasslands were gone, the increase of the herds halted or proceeded at a pace now more arithmetical than geometrical.

  
  
  

  This wild oscillation of the balance of nature happens again whenever an area previously isolated is opened to the rest of the world. But possibly it will never be repeated in as spectacular a fashion as in the Americas in the first post-Columbian century, not unless there is, one day, an exchange of life forms between planets.
• 
  Mark Bowles

  A. Summary: This book examines the way that the world has changed since the Columbus voyage. The approach is “anthropomedical” emphasizing the biological and social consequences. The thesis is that the most important consequence was biological (decimation of a people, introduction of new plant and animal life (including Africans and Europeans) to America). His conclusion is that this Columbian exchange has left us with not a richer but a more impoverished genetic pool
  B. Disease consequences
  1. The isolation of America from the rest of the world (after the fall of the Bering Strait) placed it in a vulnerable position for infectious diseases.
  2. Conquistadors brought smallpox with them that decimated Mexico.
  3. Syphilis: 2 theories of introduction
  a) Columbian theory: Columbus brought it back to Europe from a Caribbean Island
  b) Unitarian theory: Syphilis always existed but manifested in different cultural forms.
  c) There is no resolution between these theories but there were devastating social consequences
  d) People became wary of strangers, public baths died out, as did the common drinking cup and the kiss in greeting. Relations between men and women suffered as suspicion became a component of sex.
  C. Demographic consequences (New World influences Old World)
  1. The most single impressive biological development in this millennium is the post-Columbian population growth
  2. Human population doubled from 1650 to 1850
  3. The American food sources contributed to this with the introduction of maize, potato, tomato, peanuts, and beans
  4. This contributed to population growth in all parts of the world
  D. The introduction of old world plants and animals (Old World influences New World)
  1. This introduction was one of the greatest biological revolutions of all time
  2. Food: included banana, sugar, wheat, and wine
  3. Plants: Kentucky blue grass, daises, dandelions
  4. Animals: Horse, pigs, cattle, sheep, and unintentionally rats
  5. The plants and food did not influence the Indians diet but he did make great use of the new livestock
  6. Today it is impossible to find a field with all indigenous North American plants growing
  
• 
  Gina

  This is thoroughly soaked in patriarchy. It was written in 1972, so that isn't a shock. The writing style isn't bad and the research is not terrible, if a little lacking in specialty. (Crosby acknowledges this at the start, though I am not sure he fully grasps the pitfalls.) However, there are so many authors who have dealt with related topics better - Walter Rodney, Jared Diamond, Charles Mann - and knowing that makes Crosby very frustrating. To be fair, all of those better writers have probably read Crosby, but that may be a reason that I didn't need to.
• 
  Dan Allosso

  For environmental historians, Alfred Crosby's The Columbian Exchange is one of those books that must be read. Although the book is now 43 years old and contains some outdated information (for example, Crosby based much of his argument on blood types because DNA analysis wasn’t yet available), the basic idea has stood the test of time. Crosby’s thesis is summed up in the title, which has entered the language as a short-hand descriptor for the idea that “the most important changes brought about by the Columbian voyages were biological in nature.” There’s pretty widespread agreement on the significance of biological change after European contact with the Americas, although not all the people who use Crosby’s term agree with him that the interaction of the old world and the new “has left us with not a richer but a more impoverished genetic pool” (xiv, 219). I've been using a reading from this book in my EnvHist class the past couple of years. I may be changing to a passage from 1491 next time, but I still think The Columbian Exchange is a founding text of Environmental History.
  
  More:
  http://danallosso.me/2015/09/07/the-c...
• 
  Cell

  本書年代相當久遠，1972年出版至今已經快50年了。從30週年紀念版的作者序來看，原來當時還沒確認害死恐龍的兇手啊
  
  本書的主題有：
  　歐洲人帶到美洲的細菌對原住民的殺傷力
  　帶到美洲的動植物（主要是動物）對生態的影響
  　梅毒的起源（我猜修訂版的內容是多加了梅毒不是哥倫布帶回來的說法）
  　帶到舊世界的動植物（主要是農作物）一路傳到日本的過程
  
  也由於出版以久，很多內容已經變人別人立論的立足點了
  讀過《
  槍炮、病菌與鋼鐵》的人，可能不太需要回頭看這本吧
  
  --
  作者在說明細菌被帶到美洲之前，先提到整個美洲的原住民的基因一致性很高
  但沒將這二件事連結在一起
  不知是作者認為講這樣大家就懂了，還是作者沒認為有關聯
  
  --
  本書翻的蠻順的，但錯字……
  A行血型、B行、O行
  波里尼西亞
  莫三鼻克
  孟拉加
  波利維亞
  卡洛里執→卡路里值
  厄百多爾→厄瓜多（我猜的啦，畢竟句子前後都是南美國名）
  佛得角群島→維德角群島
  貝寧→貝南
  亞森松 Asunción→亞松森
  愛樂坡 Aleppo→阿勒坡(頗)
  
  這已經是讀完，才決定要整理出的部分
  大多數是錯在國名���現存國名的譯名應該是沒啥爭議吧
  書本最後的中英對照表還另有缺字的問題
  這不是已經是貓頭鷹的第三版了嗎
• 
  Sean Chick

  This book changed my perspective on history, moving me away from the personal and popular as dominant and keeping in mind the bigger picture. Still one of the all time best.
• 
  Nathanael Dardano

  omg syphilis
• 
  Adam Orford

  Reviewing Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive, William Cooper called it “seminal rather than definitive.” The same can be said for Crosby’s amazing and deeply incomplete Columbian Exchange. As a seminal work of environmental history, and for identifying the contribution that knowledge of ecology could make to the study - and indeed completion - of world history, Crosby has to be celebrated. But in every other regard the book has been superseded. Even Crosby himself did better with his next book, and the explosion of scholarship and data available to inform the narrative require ignoring this work’s details in order to appreciate it.
• 
  Damen Chan

  記憶所及，我第一本篇幅越長的科普歷史讀物，便是《槍炮、病菌與鋼鐵》。今次讀的《哥倫布大交換》可說是《槍炮、病菌與鋼鐵》的姊妹作。簡單來說，本書說的是哥倫布發現新大陸美洲之後，對人類世界的深遠影響。
  
  到底影響有多大？極大，大到幾百年後的今天其影響力繼續持續。若不是哥倫布大交換的結果，我們決不可能吃到美洲出土的農物，例如薯仔，玉米等等。這些農作物到今天早已不止是美洲的獨家產品，在歐亞都極為普遍；簡單老說，大交換充實了世界各地的農作物，讓很多原本已到生產樽頸的國家得已突破，將新件物栽種在不宜本土作物的土地上，結果收成大幅成長，人口又隨之上揚；而美洲本土本身沒有大形的馴化動物，歐洲移民輸入馴化動物之後，將美洲的文化與生態全面改觀。無論是作食用的豬或牛，還是運輸作戰用的馬，都在美洲的文化史寫下深刻的一筆；但對本土動物卻是��場災難：外來物種鮮有天敵，結果就將本土物種趕到滅絕。
  
  又為何美洲本土的土著無力對抗歐洲人的「侵略」呢？與其說是科技與軍事力量的差距，大若說是病菌的助力。歐洲人的病菌讓美洲人一病不起，未戰先降；而本土人又未見過戰馬，首次見面時已嚇得心膽俱裂，那又何以反抗呢？
  
  歷史是一片明鏡。今天地球已沒有處女地，像哥倫布大交換等類似的事，在地球上恐怕不再發生；但他日我們的科技若強到到外星殖民，又或者外星人入侵地球，到底會有什麼結果？霍金警告我們不要接觸外星人，背後的真相又豈止是科學而已？
• 
  Bill Greer

  Read 25th anniversary edition and its still relevant
  
• 
  Madison

  Gave me a profound understanding of history and of the colonization of the Americas. I believe every highschool student in the USA should read this book.
• 
  Alex

  For all its many strengths, Alfred Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange was, for me, a read that was occasionally as subtly vexing as it was for his contemporaries at the time of its initial publication in the 1960s. This is not at all to suggest that the work was in any way indicative of a faulty scholarship on the part of its author, or that the material was methodologically problematic. The material presented was utterly enthralling, and I found myself quite engaged by the author’s garrulous tone (his “verve” to crib from McNeill’s foreword to the thirtieth anniversary edition [xiii]). Indeed, with each new revelation regarding some hitherto unexplored aspect of the moment of colonial contact between “Old” and “New” Worlds, I was ever more enticed to see how he might develop its significance.
  Yet, as engaging as it was, as provocative as it was, I would inevitably catch myself wondering, “is this really a history text?”
  This makes for what I consider to be a rather strong point of intellectual ingress with the project: how do we define a history as such? Does Crosby's preoccupation with incubation periods of smallpox (46), or the proliferation of genetic dispersal patterns of populations of type-O blood (23) disqualify the work here from reaching the rarified landscape of "history" as such?
  Still, the question is not necessarily a groundbreaking one, for again, it was one that Crosby was subject to before. We might also note that, in as far as overall usefulness is concerned, whether or not a monograph conforms to the strictures of a given discipline is much less important now than it might have been in decades past. Interdisciplinarity is something to be looked at now with favour, rather than the disdain of bygone days.
  The times and the vicissitudes of the field, it seems, have served to vindicate Crosby. McNiell's foreword highlights the ubiquity of the very phrase, "Columbian exchange" within the common parlance of the contemporary historical discourse of imperialism in the so-called "New World" (xii). What we see here is, very literally, an exemplar of the very sort of history that John Gaddis identified in his The Landscape of History, in that the work clearly demonstrates the historical nature of science (to say nothing of the "scientific" nature of history). Contextualising the presence of microscopic and vertebrate fauna, to say nothing of the biological impact of importation of various and sundry types of flora, does much to provide a fuller picture of what was going on at the time of imperial contact than simply conquistadors overpowering the indigenes. The struggle was never simply a military contest, and Crosby sets the precedent (whilst building upon the work of earlier scholars) of providing this much-needed historical addition to the grand narrative of subjugation by force of arms.
  Indeed, The Columbian Exchange presents a supplementary narrative that tells the story of a much more comprehensive subjugation of the New World by the Old. Rather than simply a tale of social and cultural systems of indigenous peoples being dominated by invading Europeans, herein we see the partial subjugation of ecosystems by foreign agents. The introduction of Old World foodstuffs, nuisance creatures, and even grasses--to say nothing of pathogens--literally set the stage for the incoming waves of colonists that would fundamentally change the continents of North and South America.
  Crosby's narrative is not completely bleak, though; the contact between worlds here is one of exchange after all. Thus, his discussion of syphilis in the chapter, "The Early History of Syphilis: A Reappraisal," in particular stood out as a fascinating contradiction of the total submission of the New World to the Old. The exchange of this disease stands in marked contrast to the smallpox pandemic that dominates a considerable portion of the earlier chapter entitled “Conquistador y Pestilencia” in terms of the implied impact of pathogen on the affected population. The fact that the discussion of a disease of the Western hemisphere afflicted the East at all, though, is an element of the history that frequently goes without commented.
  This treatment of syphilis was actually one of the book's most salient features, not only because of this comparatively under-discussed reversal of Trans-Atlantic trade in pathogenic microbes, but also because it engages directly with the most “uniquely ‘historical’” of mankind’s maladies (123). The author dissects and backtracks the disease’s possible origins, critiquing the then prominent theories of a European genesis. Following the disease eastward across the Old World by virtue of how it was named--the "French Disease" in Germany, the "German Disease" in Poland, the "Polish Disease" in Russia, and so on (124-5)--was an exceptionally clever bit of historical detective work that we might backtrack to points of disembarkation from ships in from the colonies. But Crosby is never one to simply settle on the circumstantial, and so, goes further. He positions his "reappraisal" of the genealogy of syphilis between a discourse of Euro-genesis and one of American-genesis. He challenges the notion of European origins, but presents the evidence that proponents of this theory utilise in their scholarship. The result is a comprehensive historicisation of the disease that straddles epidemiology and close readings of various documents.
  We can laud Crosby for the strength of his foreword thinking interdisciplinary approach, but as he himself admits, the work was a product of its times. Bleeding-edge though parts of it are, it still antedates some of the more significant upheavals in academia in terms of area studies and identity politics. He acknowledges the limits of his access to information regarding Africa and its role in the exchange (though he does speak to this in the conclusion), but more than that, we might ask questions regarding his work's accessibility to gendered readings of history (213).
  Also, the correction of "men/mankind" to a less gendered expression, "humanity" is well and good (xvii), but I might have liked to see how issues of gender might have factored into the discussions of syphilis. For a social disease of that nature, I was intrigued by how utterly sterile he was able to render his analysis of it; identifying the disease's neurological and physiological components in the normative male victim is one thing, but to present evidence on how the women of Europe dealt with it, and how this might or might not have influenced sexual behaviours in the "Old World" might have presented a much more comprehensive view (though the discussion of epidemics of syphilis during wartime and the social rationale for such was certainly a good start [149-50]).
  Overall, though, the work stands as a thoroughly solid text that has weathered well the slings and arrows of those who might seek to force it to conform to a more "orthodox" approach to history (whatever that might look like). As stated above, I was well and truly engaged in the reading, and gained considerable insight into the various aspects of the biology of the moment of imperial contact between Europe and America. It might not have necessarily fit to my conception of a history monograph, with its frequent forays into evolutionary biology and epidemiology; however, to have my experience with the field thus broadened, and to see actual evidence of Gaddis' claims about the similarities between history and these other fields was unequivocally a beneficial step in my growth as an historian.
• 
  Kathryn

  This book is very well written, and a great resource on the New World and Old World. It was fairly easy to read, and covered most of the main topics to be discussed in these areas. And despite its pessimistic tone, I felt it dealt with the subjects neutrally as a whole. However, I did have a few problems with it.
  
  One thing I found was that the author seems to be overly biased when it comes to the areas of religion, which I felt was rather unneeded when it came to the subject matter in this specific book. There were at least 5 pages of him ranting about how useless religion was, instead of actually examining the facts at hand, and focusing on the actual exchanges taking place. It honestly seemed like something you might find in a book about why one should be an Atheist, not a book on historical research. It was very out of place. I would have rather read about what cultural exchanges took place, instead of the author's personal feelings on god. Things such as, what Spanish tradition linger on in the New World, or what traditions (if any) did the Spaniards bring back with them to the Old World? That would have been much more interesting and helpful.
  
  Another thing was that it often dragged on with unimportant information. For instance, the entire chapter dedicated to syphilis (which is chapter 4, by the way), which focused more on it's affect in Europe, than it's effect in the New World. I found it very much unneeded information, and something that would have been better placed in a book about diseases, and not in this book itself. It also spent quite a large amount of time hypothesizing where syphilis might have originated, but then didn't really tie that in and state why it's important.
  
  Overall, the book was good. It's a good overview of the exact consequences of 1492, and the discovery. I just wish it would have been more narrow in it's execution, and contained less irrelevant thoughts and feelings, less rambling sources, and more focused analysis of what specifically was important, and how it affected not only the New World and Old World then, but also today.
• 
  YHC

  A very informative thin book about the exchange from Columbian expeditions, this book was first published 45 years ago, at that time we might not have the sophisticated devices to prove the origins of certain diseases or crops. Considering the age of this book, I still think it offered some basic important information.
  
  Horses, pigs, chickens, sheep, cows, ducks..are brought to America from old continent, Europe, so did smallpox, which kill aboriginal Indian massively. In exchange, the seemingly brought back to Europe by Columbia groups was Syphilis. however, Crosby argues that could be same kind of virus existing among Asia, Europe, Africa before 1492, but showed different symptoms through intercourse. Besides diseases, Corn, pumpkin, beans, peanuts, pineapple, potato, tomato, sweet potato, pepper, cacao are the gifts from America. We all benefit from these lovely food.
  
  Cassava was also from america to Africa, even though African claimed it's original from Africa.
  
  This book reminds me of a book i read long time ago.
  Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, it has a very thorough researches on the same period of time. My next plan is to read another similar book named:
  1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created with much bigger volume that i think it will be a more detailed info.
  
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  Pedro Woodson Ramirez

  This is one of my favorite books of history! It really helps to understand the tremendous impact that the "disvovery" of America by Europe had on both continents. Crosby highlights the importance of the biological changes associated with the discovery and conquest of America by Europe. The collapse of the big indigenous empires (Aztecs and Incas) that fought against the Spaniards was greatly facilitated by the germs that the Europeans brought to America. And the natural products which moved from America to Europe completely transformed life in that continent. It was a tremendous biological shock!
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  Garret Shields

  While there are several things in this book that have not aged well, and some glaring weaknesses, The greatest of which is it’s Eurocentrism that ignores the contributions of Africa, this is still an absolutely seminal work. It redefined scholarly approaches to this influential phenomenon. In fact, we now refer to this trans-Atlantic exchange as “the Columbian exchange.” That’s a pretty influential book!
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  Riley

  Had to read this for a class that focuses heavily on the historiography of disease, so this book serves a very specific purpose. If you are looking for a book to get a general idea of the Columbian Exchange and its impacts, there are probably a lot better, less racist ones than this book.
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  Dami

  Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, was an interesting read, I enjoyed reading this book during my history class " The Renaissance".
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  RC

  Fascinating but likely dated survey of the effects of one of the most consequential instances of cultural and biological first contact in history.
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  Patti

  Very enlightning