The Columbian Exchange
Read this text on the Columbian Exchange, which caused a seismic event from an environmental perspective. Diets were globally transformed as crops such as tomatoes and potatoes traveled to Europe and Asia. However, this sea change had a dark side – diseases spread into previously unexposed populations, which led to mass death in the Americas.
The Transfer of New World Foods to the Old World
The transfer of foods between the Old and New Worlds during the Columbian Exchange had important consequences for world history. Historian Alfred Crosby describes the significance of the transfer of food crops between the continents, writing: "The coming together of the continents was a prerequisite for the population explosion of the past two centuries and certainly played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. The transfer across the ocean of the staple food crops of the Old and New Worlds made possible the former."
There are two channels through which the Columbian Exchange expanded the global supply of agricultural goods. First, it introduced previously unknown species to the Old World. Many of these species – like potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava (also known as manioc) – resulted in caloric and nutritional improvements over previously existing staples.
Other crops such as tomatoes, cacao, and chili peppers were not by themselves especially rich in calories but complemented existing foods by increasing vitamin intake and improving taste. In many instances, the New World foods had an important effect on the evolution of local cuisines. Chili peppers gave rise to spicy curries in India, to paprika in Hungary, and to spicy kimchee in Korea. Tomatoes significantly altered the cuisine of Italy and other Mediterranean countries.
Second, the discovery of the Americas provided the Old World with vast quantities of relatively unpopulated land well-suited for the cultivation of certain crops that were in high demand in Old World markets. Crops such as sugar, coffee, soybeans, oranges, and bananas were all introduced to the New World, and the Americas quickly became the main suppliers of these crops globally.
Table 1: The World's Most Popular Foods in 2000. All figures are for the year 2000. Bold type indicates a New World food crop. Italics indicate an Old World crop for which more than 26 percent of current world production is in the New World (26 percent is the fraction of arable land that is located in the New World). The table does not report the consumption of oils. Among oils, the fourth most consumed oil, sunflower oil, is derived from sunflowers, a New World crop.
The extent to which foods indigenous to the New World today comprise an important portion of the world's diet is illustrated by Table 1, which reports the world's most popular foods in 2000. The first list reports foods with popularity measured by the average consumption of calories per person per day. Because this measure may overstate the popularity of high-calorie food crops, we also provide rankings based on production and land under cultivation. These are reported in the second and third lists. Foods that are indigenous to the New World are reported in bold text.
From the table, it is clear that today New World foods are an important part of our diets. Although the two most consumed crops (by any of the three measures) are Old World crops (either rice, wheat, or sugar), many of the next most important crops are from the New World. Four New World crops that make it into the top ten by two or more measures are maize, potatoes, cassava, and sweet potatoes; tomatoes rank among the top 15 by two different measures. Also high on the list are a number of additional New World foods, such as chili peppers and cacao, which despite not being consumed in large quantities, are of central importance to the cuisines of many countries.
Staple Crops: Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Maize, and Cassava
The exchange introduced a wide range of new calorically rich staple crops to the Old World – namely potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava. The primary benefit of the New World staples was that they could be grown in Old World climates that were unsuitable for the cultivation of Old World staples. Crosby writes: "The great advantage of the American food plants is that they make different demands of soils, weather and cultivation than Old World crops, and are different in the growing seasons in which they make these demands. In many cases, the American crops do not compete with Old World crops but complement them. The American plants enable the farmer to produce food from soils that, prior to 1492, were rated as useless because of their sandiness, altitude, aridity, and other factors."
This benefit of New World crops has resulted in their adoption in all parts of the world. This is shown by Table 2, which reports the top consuming countries for different New World foods. The New World crop maize has been widely adopted by a number of Old World countries, including Lesotho, Malawi, and Zambia. The average person in Lesotho consumes an astonishing 1,500 calories per day from maize. Even more widely adopted than maize is cassava. The top ten cassava-consuming countries are all from the Old World.
Although both foods do have their imperfections – for example, a diet of too much maize causes pellagra, and consumption of insufficiently processed cassava results in konzo – they provide sustenance for millions of people around the world today. The table also shows that sweet potatoes have been widely adopted in the Old World and today are most heavily consumed in the Solomon Islands, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and China.
The New World crop that arguably had the largest impact on the Old World is the potato. Because it provides an abundant supply of calories and nutrients, the potato is able to sustain life better than any other food when consumed as the sole article of the diet. Humans can actually subsist healthily on a diet of potatoes, supplemented with only milk or butter, which contain the two vitamins not provided by potatoes, vitamins A and D. This, in fact, was the typical Irish diet, which, although monotonous, was able to provide sufficient amounts of all vitamins and nutrients. The potato was also adopted as a core staple in many other parts of the World. As shown by Table 2, this nutritious crop has been so widely embraced by Old World populations that today the top consumers of potatoes are all Old World countries.
Recently, two studies have attempted to estimate empirically the benefits that arose from the introduction of the potato. Mokyr (1981) examines variation across counties in Ireland and estimates that the cultivation of the potato did spur population growth. In Nunn and Qian (2009), we also examine the effects of the potato on population growth but do so for the entire Old World. Using a difference-indifferences estimation strategy, we compare the pre-and post-adoption differences in population growth of Old World countries that could adopt the potato with Old World countries that could not.
We find that the potato had a significant positive impact on population growth, explaining 12 percent of the increase in the average population after the adoption of the potato. We also estimate the effect the potato had on urbanization, a measure that is closely correlated with GDP. We find that 47 percent of the post-adoption increase in urbanization is explained by the potato.
Table 2: Top Consuming Countries for Various New World Foods (average calories per capita per day)
We now turn to a discussion of crops that provide fewer calories. Still, we are no less important to Old World cuisines: capsicum peppers, tomatoes, cacao, and vanilla, and two less healthy New World crops, coca and tobacco.
Capsicum Peppers
The capsicum pepper originated in the areas that today are Bolivia and southern Brazil. By the arrival of the Europeans, the plant had migrated to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. Capsicum annum, which was domesticated in Mesoamerica, is the ancestor to most of the peppers commonly consumed today: the cayenne pepper, bell peppers, and the jalapeno pepper. A second variety, Capsicum frutescens, first cultivated in the Amazon basin, gives us the tabasco pepper.
By 1493, capsicum peppers had arrived in Spain and Africa. They then reached the East Indies by 1540 and India by 1542. In Hungary, paprika, the spice made from grinding dried fruits of the capsicum pepper, was first mentioned in 1569. Paprika has since been widely adopted in a variety of Hungarian dishes, including goulash, and today is the country's national spice. The capsicum has also had a significant impact on the cuisine of many other countries. In South and Southeast Asia, some form of pepper is used in the base of almost every dish (for example, curries). In China, cuisine in the southwest (like Sichuan, Guizhou, and Hunan) is defined by the use of certain chili peppers. In Korea, a side dish of spicy kimchi is consumed with every meal.
Capsicums provide several health advantages. First, they are very nutritious. By weight, they contain more vitamin A than any other food plant, and they are also rich in Vitamin B. If eaten raw, capsicums provide more vitamin C than citrus fruits. Capsicums also contain significant amounts of magnesium and iron. Chilies, of course, are not eaten in vast quantities, but for populations with traditional diets deficient in vitamins and minerals, even a small amount can be important.
Second, capsicums also aid digestion. Capsaicin, an alkaloid uniquely found in capsicums, is an irritant to the oral and gastrointestinal membranes when ingested. This causes an increase in the flow of saliva, which eases the passage of food through the mouth to the stomach and increases gastric acids, which aid in the digestion of food. If ingested in large quantities, this same alkaloid can cause oral burning, which can be removed by casein. (Since casein is most readily available from milk and yogurt, it is not surprising that many spicy diets, such as those from South Asia, pair chilies with milk and yogurt.) Finally, capsaicin is now being utilized in medicine to treat pain, respiratory disorders, shingles, toothache, and arthritis. Research into its various properties is ongoing.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a fruit that originated in South America. Botanists believe that approximately 1,000 years before the Spanish arrived in the Americas, an unidentified wild ancestor of the tomato made its way north and came to be cultivated in South and Central America. The tomato was first mentioned in European texts in 1544. Mathiolus described how tomatoes, pond d'oro (golden apple), were eaten in Italy with oil, salt, and pepper, suggesting that the first tomatoes in Europe were yellow and not red.
European cultivation became widespread in the ensuing decades in Spain, Italy, and in France. The first documented authentic recipe in Italy appeared in 1692 in an early Italian cookbook, Lo Scalco Alia Modema, by Antonio Latini. Tomatoes were brought to Asia by Spaniards who visited the Philippines in 1564. However, in China, where they were regarded as foods of the "southern barbarians," they were not cultivated until the 20th century. In North Africa, English travelers reported that Spanish tomatoes were cultivated in fields of North Barbary as early as 1671.
One of the difficulties in consuming tomatoes was that they did not preserve well. Ripe tomatoes can become putrid within days in hot climates. The canning process helped increase the shelf life of the tomato to several months, but prior to 1890, it was a costly manual process. The mechanization of canning at the turn of the 20th century significantly lowered the cost of this process and resulted in a significant increase in tomato consumption.
Tomatoes have truly become a global food. As shown in Table 2, nine of the top ten tomato-consuming countries are Old World countries. Greece consumes the most tomatoes per capita, followed by other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries. Italy, known for its use of tomato sauces with pasta and on pizza, ranks sixth on the list. Table 3 lists the top ten producers of some New and Old World foods. The top producers of tomatoes are listed in panel A of the table; eight of the top ten producers are Old World countries, with only two New World countries, Brazil and Mexico, breaking the list of top tomato producers.
Although not particularly rich in calories, tomatoes are an important source of vitamins, particularly vitamins A and C. The tomato has been so thoroughly adopted and integrated into Western diets that today, it provides more nutrients and vitamins than any other fruit or vegetable. Medical researchers have also recently discovered a number of additional health benefits from tomato consumption. Recent research has found that lycopene, a powerful antioxidant contained in cooked or canned tomatoes, has properties that may help reduce cancer. Although research is still in progress, the American Cancer Society has already begun to promote increased consumption of tomatoes as a potential method for cancer prevention.
Cacao
The Codex Mendoza – an Aztec record of administration and description of daily life, written approximately 20 years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico – documents that by the time Cortes arrived, chocolate was being cultivated by farmers in the Yucatan and was traded in large quantities throughout the Empire. Historical records indicate that Columbus first brought back specimens of cacao pods to King Ferdinand I after his second voyage to the New World. Outside of the Americas, cacao was first cultivated in 1590 by the Spanish off the coast of Africa on the island of Fernando Po. At first, it was used in expensive chocolate drinks, mainly confined to aristocratic courts. From Spain, it spread to Italy and then to France via the royal marriage of Philip Ill's daughter, Ana of Austria, with Louis XIII. In England,
Samuel Pepys, the renowned 17th-century diarist, records that chocolate drinks changed from being novelty drinks to a regular luncheon beverage of the middle class during his lifetime.
The Spanish held a monopoly on the production and trade of cacao up until the 17th century when the French began cacao production in Martinique and Saint Lucia. The Dutch also began production of cacao in Indonesia, which was the Dutch East Indies at the time. Even today, as shown by Panel A of Table 3, Indonesia remains one of the largest producers of cacao beans.
Cacao cultivation came late to mainland Africa, with Cameroon and Ghana being the first cultivators in the late 1870s and 1880s. But today, the West African countries of Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria are among the world's largest producers of cacao beans, with Cote d'Ivoire being the largest producer in the world.
While chocolate is most popularly consumed as a condiment, candy, or dessert, cacao is also a high-energy food known for lifting psychological effects. Pure chocolate, which is more than half cocoa butter, has a higher energy output per unit of weight than most other carbohydrate- or protein-rich foods. This has made it an important food for physically taxing expeditions where travelers needed to minimize the food carried. For example, in Roald Amundsen's trek to the South Pole, his men were allocated 4,560 calories per day, of which over 1,000 came from cacao.
Plain Vanilla
Vanilla was completely unknown to the Old World prior to 1492. Still, despite having little nutritional importance, it has become so widespread and so common that in English, its name is used as an adjective to refer to anything that is "plain, ordinary, or conventional." Vanilla comes from the tropical forests of eastern and southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. It is from the fruit of Vanilla planifolia, the only species of the orchid family that produces edible fruit. Neither the vanilla flower nor its fruit, which takes the shape of a long pod, naturally has any noticeable flavor or scent. Vanilla pods must be fermented to produce the chemical compound vanillin, which gives the pods their distinctive vanilla flavor and scent.
It is unclear whether vanilla was first brought back to Spain by Cortes or another Spanish traveler. In any case, it achieved popularity quickly in Spain, where factories were using it to flavor chocolate by the second half of the 16th century. Like chocolate, it was considered a luxury for the wealthy. King Phillip II was known to have drunk vanilla-flavored chocolate as a nightcap. It was also quickly adopted by aristocratic circles in other parts of Europe. Queen Elizabeth I of England was also known to have been a frequent user of vanilla products.
In the 18th century, the French began to use it widely as a flavoring for confectionaries and ice and also as a scent for perfumes and tobacco. French colonial islands began to attempt to systematically cultivate cuttings of the plant taken from the Americas. However, because of a lack of proper insects for pollination, initial attempts ended in failure. It was not until after 1836, when Belgian botanist Charles Morren was able to hand-pollinate vanilla orchids, that the French were successfully cultivating plants that flowered. As shown in Panel A of Table 3, the French colonial islands of Reunion and French Polynesia and the former colonial island of Comoros continue to be large suppliers of vanilla today. Mexico also continues to be a large producer of vanilla, although its production is exceeded by Indonesia, Madagascar, and China.
Table 3: Largest Producers of New and Old World Foods (millions of tonnes unless otherwise indicated)
Tobacco
It is believed that Native Americans began to use tobacco around the first century BCE. There is no evidence that Native Americans ever consumed tobacco recreationally. It was instead used as a hallucinogen during religious ceremonies and as a painkiller. Ramon Pane, a monk who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, gave lengthy descriptions of the custom of smoking tobacco. He described how natives inhaled smoke through a Y-shaped tube. The two ends were placed in the nostrils, and the third end over a pastille of burning leaves. Although the exact manner of smoking differed between regions within the Americas, the practice of smoking tobacco appears to have been universal.
Tobacco was quickly adopted by Europeans. At first, tobacco was regarded and consumed only as a medicine. In 1560, the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain (from whom the term "nicotine" originates), proclaimed that tobacco had a panacea of medicinal properties. In 1561, Nicot sent tobacco leaves to Catherine de Medici, the Queen of France. She was so impressed with the plant that she decreed that tobacco be called Herba Regina (the Queen's Herb). In England, tobacco was first introduced by Sir John Hawkins and his crew in the 1580s. It was chiefly used by sailors, including those employed by Sir Francis Drake. By the beginning of the 17th century, tobacco had spread to all parts of Europe.
Besides being consumed, tobacco has also been used as currency at various times. In 1619, the Virginia legislature rated high-quality tobacco at three shillings per pound and, in 1642, made it legal tender. In Maryland, nearly all business transactions, including debts, fines, and fees, were conducted in terms of tobacco. For example, fees for marriage licenses were paid in tobacco, and laws imposed fines measured in pounds of tobacco. In 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, the revolutionary government of America used tobacco as collateral for part of its loans from France. Tobacco's use as currency was not isolated to the American colonies. In Japan, Buddhist monks used tobacco seeds as a method of payment along their long pilgrimages.
In the 20th century, tobacco consumption began to increase dramatically around the time of World War I, when cigarettes were commonly called "soldier's smoke." Beginning in the 1950s, medical researchers began to discover negative health effects from smoking. In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General published a report on the health consequences of smoking titled Smoking and Health. This report was an important stimulus for the extensive antismoking campaigns that developed over the next four decades. Although smoking rates have declined in developed countries, tobacco consumption continues to rise in many less-developed countries.
As an example, in China, between 1992 and 1996 alone, per capita cigarette consumption increased by 50 percent, from 10 to 15 cigarettes per day. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco is currently the leading cause of preventable death. It is estimated that one in every ten adult deaths is due to tobacco consumption. Driven by the rising rates of smoking in developing countries, this figure is expected to worsen to one in every six adults within the next two decades.
Coca
Coca leaves are grown from bushes native to the Andes. The leaves contain alkaloids that can be extracted to produce commercial cocaine. The use of coca leaves has a long history. During the Incan Empire, they were chewed during religious rituals. Early Spanish settlers adopted this practice and brought it back to Europe. Many notable figures, such as Sigmund Freud, became regular users and active proponents of its ability to increase creativity and stamina and decrease hunger. Freud supposedly began using it after hearing of the Belgian army's experiments in giving coca extracts to its soldiers, who performed better on less food over longer periods of time. The most famous legal use of coca is undoubtedly the soft drink Coca-Cola, which initially contained marinated coca leaves. The soft drink was invented by Atlanta pharmacist Jon Pemberton as a stimulating beverage that served as a substitute for alcohol at a time when the sale of alcohol was illegal in Atlanta.
Today, cocaine is one of the most highly traded illegal substances in the world. Although the consumption of cocaine has spread to all corners of the globe, only three New World countries – Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia – produce the world's supply of coca leaves. In 2008, Colombia produced 62 percent, Peru produced 28 percent, and Bolivia produced 10 percent of the world's supply. The coca industry accounts for a significant portion of income in these countries. It is estimated that the coca leaf by itself accounts for 2.3 percent of Bolivia's gross domestic product (GDP) and 16 percent of its total agricultural production. In Colombia, a country with a much larger economy, the analogous numbers are smaller but still significant: 0.5 and 5 percent.