How did the introduction of cassava from the new world affect civilizations in africa?

Abstract

The Columbian Exchange had profound influences on world agriculture and population growth. The geography of world crop production is very different today than in 1492. There is hardly anywhere in the Old World where Mesoamerican maize is not of great importance, and the Andean potato become an important source of calories in Europe, Southeast Asia, and China. The South American manioc and sweet potato became critical food sources across the entire tropics. Old World wheat and rice are now widely grown across all of the Americas. Mesoamerican chili peppers very quickly became a critical component of Indian, African, and Southeast Asia cuisine. The Mesoamerican guava and the South American papaya are so prevalent across the tropics of the world that it is hard to believe they did not originate there. Not only did the Columbian exchange have a profound impact on world crop distribution, but it also had a great effect on the distribution of the world’s population. There were at least 60 million people in North, Central, and South America before the first European contact in 1492 and by the 1600s probably 56 million had died from diseases brought by the Europeans. This Great Dying and the forced removal of the indigenous people of North America, combined with the influx of migrants from Europe and slaves from Africa, generated a population in the Americas that was largely foreign in origin. While the population of the Americas dropped after the great encounter, the arrival of the American crops in the Old World likely fueled a population boom—between 1750 and 1850, the population of Europe and the world almost doubled.

References

• Braudel F (1817) Civilization and capitalism 15th – eighteenth century. Vol. 1. The structure of everyday life. The limits of the possible. Translated from French 1981. Harper and Row, New York

  Google Scholar 

• Crosby AW (1972) The Columbian Exchange; Biological and cultural consequences of 1492. Greenwood Press, Westport

  Google Scholar 

• Cusack I (2020) Ripples from the Columbian Exchange? Dublin Gastronomy Symposium. https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1190&context=dgs

• De Jong H (2016) Impact of the potato on society. Am J Potato Res 93(5):415–429

  CrossRef  Google Scholar 

• Kloppenburg JR (1988) First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology 1492–2000. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  Google Scholar 

• Koch A, Brierley C, Maslin MM, Lewis SL (2019) Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492. Quat Sci Rev 207:13–36

  CrossRef  Google Scholar 

• Langer WL (1975) American foods and Europe’s population growth 1750-1850. Journal of Social History, 8(2):51–66

  Google Scholar 

• Mann CC (2011) How the potato changed the world. Smithsonian Magazine

  Google Scholar 

• Nunn N, Qian N (2009) The potato’s contribution to population and urbanization: evidence from an historical experiment. The National Bureau of economic research. Available from: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15157. Accessed 15 Mar 2014

• Smith A (1776) An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, ed. S.M. Soares, 130. MetaLibri Digital Library, Amsterdam 2007. Available from: http://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Horticulture, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

   James F Hancock

Authors

1. James F Hancock

   You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Hancock, J.F. (2022). Five Hundred Years After the Great Encounter. In: World Agriculture Before and After 1492. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15523-9_10

Download citation

• .RIS
• .ENW
• .BIB

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15523-9_10

• Published: 12 November 2022

• Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

• Print ISBN: 978-3-031-15522-2

• Online ISBN: 978-3-031-15523-9

• eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)

Why was cassava introduced to Africa?

What is cassava used for in Africa?

How did Columbian Exchange affect the African people?

When was cassava introduced to Africa?