Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [130]
Nothing would ever be the same. Columbus could not have guessed that the most lasting and irreversible effects of his voyages would transcend his quest for empire and trade; instead, he inadvertently transformed the global environment. More than Christianity, or slavery, or gold, or any of the other forces with which Columbus and Spain grappled, this two-way transmission between the Old World and the New World brought about changes larger than they could have imagined. The transformation was wide-ranging, cataclysmic, and enduring. And it would take years, decades, centuries for the effects of this two-way transmission to unfold.
This slow-moving spectacle is known as the Columbian Exchange, first identified by Alfred Crosby, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, in 1972. Within a couple of decades, Crosby’s insights gave rise to a new way of considering the Columbian legacy. “When Europeans first touched the shores of the Americas,” he wrote, “Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice, and turnips had not traveled west across the Atlantic, and New World crops such as maize, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and manioc had not traveled east to Europe.” These vast differences extended to animal life as well. “In the Americas, there were no horses, cattle, sheep or goats.” They were all “animals of Old World origin.” In fact, with few exceptions, the New World had no domesticated animals, no chickens, and no cattle until the coming of Columbus. And when they did arrive, their presence changed the hunting, eating, and ultimately the migratory habits and tribal structures of the Indians who made use of them for food, labor, and companionship.
Their effects percolated through the culture in ways that the Spaniards could not have imagined. Take the horses that Columbus brought along with him, for instance. At first, they terrified the Indians, who had never seen beasts such as these. In time, the horses spread north, transforming Indian life. “The horse gave the Indian the speed and stamina needed to take advantage of the opportunity to harvest the immense quantities of food represented by the buffalo herds of North America and the herds of wild cattle that propagated so rapidly in the grasslands of both Americas,” Crosby observed. There were still more unexpected consequences. “The Indians stopped farming; the work was hard, boring, and unrewarding, compared with nomadic life.” So the Indians mounted their steeds and roamed the pampas, killing more animals than ever before as they went, more animals than they needed for themselves and their families. The Indian on horseback could increase and multiply. Greater numbers of Indians led to a growing division between rich and poor, to social stratification, and to slavery. As Crosby put it, “the egalitarianism of poverty began to disappear.”
So the animals brought by Europeans were not an unmixed blessing. Along with them—and with the associated black rats and sinister Aedes aegypti mosquitoes—came deadly disease: smallpox, measles, chicken pox, influenza, yellow fever, and dengue fever. These pathogens infiltrated the New World, leaving destruction and suffering in their wake. The human animal also brought its pathogens, including syphilis.
Syphilis is the most commonly cited example of disease transmission between the Old World and the New for which Columbus’s voyages are held responsible, but there is little consensus about which way the venereal diseases traveled. Did the Indians infect the Spaniards, or was it the other way around? Accounts of syphilis arising spontaneously on both continents further complicated the question of how the disease spread. Clearly some of Columbus’s crew suffered from syphilislike symptoms, as Dr. Chanca noted. But did they acquire the disease by mingling with Indian women, or did they bring the disease with them and transmit it to their unsuspecting victims? Or were different strains passed back and forth? This notorious aspect of the Columbian Exchange remains unanswered.
On a more positive side of the ledger, the Columbian Exchange