We are still prickly from the recent divisive celebration of Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples Day here at wonder | wander | world. It is stunning how much we still need to decolonize ourselves to annihilate the level of ignorance and passive compliance we tend too easily towards.
So enough about Christopher Columbus - the symbolic figurehead of evil empire erroneous eradication. An on to the Columbian Exchange - the history of disease and food, ideas and ideals between what we have come to commonly refer to as the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by that same Christopher Columbus in 1492.
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| a seaport at the height of mercantilism - Claude Lorrain, Wikimedia Commons |
The crossing of the Atlantic by plants like cacao and tobacco illustrates the ways in which the discovery of the New World changed the habits and behaviors of Europeans. Europeans changed the New World in turn, not least by bringing Old World animals to the Americas.
