Trade · 1492 onwards
The Columbian Exchange
Santo Domingo, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic)
After Columbus's 1492 voyage, plants, animals and diseases crossed the Atlantic in both directions. American crops such as maize, potatoes, tomatoes, cassava, chili peppers and tobacco spread across Afro-Eurasia, while wheat, rice, sugar cane, horses, cattle, pigs and sheep transformed the Americas.
Old World diseases such as smallpox, first recorded in the Americas in 1518, together with war, enslavement and exploitation, cut the Indigenous population of the Americas (perhaps around 50 million before contact, though estimates vary widely) by an estimated 80 to 95 percent.
Why it mattered
The exchange reshaped diets, farming and populations across the world: cassava became Africa's most important food crop, while maize, potatoes and sweet potatoes fed population growth in Asia and Europe, while the peoples of the Americas suffered a demographic catastrophe.
Elsewhere
Silver flowed the other way: the Cerro Rico at Potosí (in today's Bolivia), discovered in 1545 and worked by Indigenous forced labour under the mita system, was the Spanish Empire's main source of silver until the 18th century, and some of it crossed the Pacific on the Manila galleons to buy Asian goods.
Related
- The world in 1500: Sea Roads Open chapter
- Vasco da Gama reaches India by sea previous moment · 1497–1499 CE
- Luther's Ninety-five Theses and the Reformation next moment · 1517