Laura Loth: Columbian Exchange

 

Link: Columbian Exchange

I selected this article for class and for the blog because it reframed the Columbian Exchange in biohistorical terms, something that was new to me and that I was intrigued by. The article identifies the 16^th century as a watershed moment in global agricultural practices due to the movement of plants and animals during the age of exploration. While the article addresses the devastating effects of the movement of diseases during this same period, the authors focus on the less-discussed transformations of global landscapes due to the movement of various species of plants and animals to non-native terrains. They compare the age of European exploration and discovery to the global technological revolution that took place in the 19^th and 20^th centuries with new travel technologies, suggesting a type of reversal of continental drift through modern travel technology. This article still feels problematically Eurocentric to me, as we know there were Chinese explorers and Arab explorers around the same time, and this particular focus on the West seems limited. However, the age of the discovery and the Atlantic slave trade that would ensue altered the Americas (and Europe and Africa) in every way imaginable, and this article foregrounds some new ways to think about biodiversity and the profound impact of the Columbian Exchange.

Questions: While we discussed this in some depth in class, how does reframing the Columbian moment (that has typically been discussed in terms of encounters of human civilizations) as one that also transformed landscapes all over the globe transform your own thinking about the encounter?