The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations

between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher

Columbus in 1492.

The Old World—by which we mean not just Europe, but the entire Eastern Hemisphere—gained

from the Columbian Exchange in number of ways. Discoveries of new supplies of metals are perhaps the

best-known. But the Old World also gained new staple crops, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and

cassava. Less calorie-intensive foods, such as tomatoes, chili peppers, cacao, peanuts, and pineapples

were also introduced, and are now culinary centerpieces in many Old World countries, namely Italy,

Greece, and other Mediterranean countries (tomatoes), India and Korea (chili peppers), Hungary (paprika,

made from chili peppers), and Malaysia and Thailand (chili peppers, peanuts, and pineapples). Tobacco,

another New World crop, was so universally adopted that it came to be used as a substitute for currency in

many parts of the world. The exchange also drastically increased the availability of many Old World

crops, such as sugar and coffee, which were particularly well-suited for the virgin soils of the New World.

The Exchange not only brought gains, but also loses. European contact enabled the transmission

of diseases to previously isolated communities, which caused devastation far exceeding that of even the

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