THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE AND THE REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

It is difficult to think about modern American food without including hamburgers and hotdogs. It is also difficult to think about popular American history without cowboys mounted on horseback tending herds of cattle. However, before the arrival of Columbus in 1492 there were no cattle or pigs in America to provide beef and pork for hamburgers and hotdogs. There was no wheat to make hamburger and hotdog buns. There were no horses for cowboys or Indians to ride. The European settlers brought with them cattle, pigs, horses, wheat, and many other plants and animals that became the foundation for modern food and agriculture in the Western Hemisphere. It is also difficult to think about modern Mexican food without including rice, tacos filled with meat, ferried beans in animal fat, cheese in enchiladas, and sugar, cinnamon, and milk in chocolate. However, Mexico in 1492 had none of these ingredients. The massive transplantation of plants and animals across the Atlantic Ocean in both directions has been called the Columbian Exchange (Crosby 1972). It has been described as the greatest human intervention in nature since the invention of agriculture (Fernandez-Armesto 2002: 165), and it has had an enormous effect on the Americas and the entire world. The Columbian Exchange altered the kind of food Americans and Mexicans eat, the kind of agricultural products produced in both countries, and the entire pattern of world economic growth. This article will concentrate on the effects of the Columbian Exchange, but the exchange of plants and animals was part of a broader process of trade, migration, investment, colonization, and exchange of ideas that followed the voyages of discovery by Columbus and others. The same Old World plants and animals were introduced to the two regions that would become the United States and Mexico, but the effects in the two countries were substantially different. (1) The United States was the poorer neighbor in 1492, but it became relatively richer. The purpose of this article is to show how differences in institutional development affected responses to the same opportunities. I shall concentrate on developments in the United States and Mexico, but the Canadian experience was similar to the U.S. response, and the response in the rest of Latin America was similar to the Mexican response (Cole et al. 2005). What Products Were Exchanged? Columbus's discovery favored all naval powers located on the Atlantic Coast of Europe, but England took greater advantage of the opportunity than Spain, Portugal, France, and other Atlantic nations. Both New and Old Worlds gained from the Columbian Exchange, but the New World gained more because its plant and animal species had been less diverse. The number of cultivable plants in America doubled or tripled as a result of the Columbian Exchange (Crosby 1972: 107). Europe and the Americas were once connected, but after separation their plants and animals evolved separately. Large animals that once roamed the Americas had become extinct centuries earlier, and by 1492 dogs and llamas were the largest domesticated animals. In addition to cattle, pigs, and wheat, the New World received chickens, sheep, donkeys, rice, oats, barley, rye, onions, garlic, lettuce, cabbage, bananas, and more (Crosby 1972). Before Columbus there was no coffee, cream, or sugar in America. Coffee was transplanted from the Canary Islands to Martinique and later to Latin America. In addition to bringing new crops and animals, Europeans brought technology that included iron tools and wheels. They also increased agricultural productivity by planting native American crops, such as cotton, tobacco, and potatoes, in more favorable locations in the New World. Potatoes were native to the Andes in South America, but they were slow in moving to North America. The slow movement of potatoes to North America is an example of Diamond's proposition that agricultural innovations move East-West faster than North-South. …

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