1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

"Charles Mann brings the message to all of us, which many people don’t know, that our food patterns are heavily influenced by trade. Today, with the whole discussion about Brexit and TTIP and trade arrangements, people often blame trade liberalisation for all the bad things happening to us. It’s good to realise that trade has been part and parcel of shaping our food culture, and, most importantly, has made it possible to accommodate local shortages. Local shortages of food or seasonality don’t need to be a problem, if you know you can eat imported food from somewhere else. It also helps to do away with too many price fluctuations or very expensive price spikes for poor people. So trade is, in many ways, very positive, even if there can be negative effects in terms of jobs. What Mann shows is that ‘the Columbian Exchange’—Columbus discovering the Americas—led to the very significant introduction of foodstuffs to the Old World (Europe and Asia) and from the Old World to the New World. The Columbian Exchange has given us our potato, and the Chinese their sweet potato. These two crops were the basis for demographic expansion in both parts of the world, because they were easy to grow, with calories and reasonable nutritional qualities. It also gave Africa many of its food crops. Apart from some local millets, all the basic food stuffs in Africa today are imported. People think about Africa being so traditional, but this is not the case. Maize is not African. Rice, wheat and sorghum are not African. Peanuts and cassava—a major staple for central Africa—are not African. Exactly, because our food, before the Columbian Exchange, came from the Middle East. There was hardly anything that was worth preparing or eating. This is why the historical perspective is so important. Also, local meant local shortages – unless you were very rich. So Charles Mann has many interesting stories about many foods, but the main message is the importance of trade and the fact that there have been massive movements of foods backwards and forwards. Yes. It was so dramatic because nobody knew about the Americas before, and it all came within a century. It is also the speed at which changes occurred. Our trade with China and India was also massive and very important, but it took place over millennia. The speed of change is also a factor that makes our anxieties greater today. It is the speed of globalisation over two or three decades that frightens everybody. One thing I should add about Mann is that not only did the Columbian Exchange bring Europe food, farm animals and guinea pigs and fowl and so on, the reverse also happened: it brought unknown bacteria and pathogens to the Americas. So it also had disastrous results there. But if you think of something typically American, from the Western frontier, it is cowboys. Yet, neither cowboys nor American Indians could have had horses until there was this exchange. From Asia. This exchange turned everything around."