Lecture 5 - The Columbian Exchange

The Plague: Origins and Spread

• Originates in Central Asia, spread to Europeans by germ warfare

• 1347: arrives in SE Europe, spreads from there

• Mortality rates varied from 15-65%, for a continental average of 33-50%

Plague: Pathogenesis

Flea drinks rat blood that carries the bacteria → Bacteria multiply in flea’s gut → Gut clogged with bacteria → flea bites huma, regurgitates blood into open wound→

(There is a definite environmental dimension at work here also: instability in the European climate, beginning around 1300, probably contributed to the disease’s spread - note that this instability is the onset of the Little Ice Age.)

Official Reaction and Opinion

• Not divine, but disease

• Control measures generally failed, though

• Wild, crazy speculations for cures abound → esp. the “bad smell” theory

• What the academics said…(not much use)

Population and Economic Impact

• 1 in 3 (maybe as much as 1in 2) of everybody dead!

• Mortality patterns uneven, though: some areas harder hit

• Post-plague, urban areas recover quicker than the countryside

• Economic disruption nearly catastrophic

Pre-modern Methods of Combatting Disease

• Quarantine - 40 day isolation period (no real science behind it)

• Sanitation - especially the provision of clean water and the disposal of waste

• Other Measures - church bells, burning pitch, whitewash, gunfire, “posies”, thinking “good thoughts”, but not, generally, appeal to God (or the gods) for forgiveness. Help, yes; forgiveness, no

Sanitation

• “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” - an idea very common in many religious texts (including the Old Testament)

• Physical sanitation (sewers, baths, etc.) was from very early on a measure of a civilization’s, well civilization

Western Medical Science Catches up to Disease

• 1795 - Alexander Garden and Charles White identify filth as causal in some post-partum disease

• 1854 - John Snow demonstrates the link between contaminated water and cholera

• 1870s-1880s - the Chadwick Report produces noticeable improvements in sanitation

• Vaccination also played a huge role in the attenuation or elimination of certain diseases (eg Smallpox)

The Changing Face of Disease in Modern Society

• The disease that’ll probably kill you are not the ones that killed your great-great grandparents

• 1900? Strokes, heart attacks, cancers, diabetes? → all pretty much unknown

• 2000? Industrial diseases are common killers today, esp. the cancers and body imbalances (type 2 diabetes, sclerosis, hypertension) that are probably a consequence of our highly chemicalized environment

The Wright of Numbers

• World population reached 6 billion in Sept 1999 (it was only 2 billion in 1930); it reached 7 billion in Oct 2011, 8 billion in Nov 2022

• Ca. 250,000 added every day (that’s about a Halifax every day or two)

• Ca. 90 million-plus per year (a Vietnam or Philippines per year)

• In the next three years or so – a new USA population will be added to the planet…can we cope?

The Columbian Exchange

• Begins in 1492, w/Columbus’ “discovery” of the “New World”

• Massive increase in species transmission

• New species introduced into evolutionarily isolated regions; results are commonly catastrophic

• Crosby’s Columbian Exchange (1972) and Ecological Imperialism (1986)

What is the “Pristine Myth”?

Why is it important?

• Europe was conditioned by the Judeo-Christian idea of man’s dominance of nature, together with the idea of the “recovery narrative”

• Within this framework, the New World had to be

- (a) empty, or nearly empty

- (b) thoroughly wild and underdeveloped

• Why?

• Unfortunately, the pristine myth is wrong in every major regard

The Problem of Numbers - Classical Interpretation

• Within this interpretation (cf. James Mooney, of the Smithsonian, in 1910) → native population in North America is very low; Mooney calculated it to be only 1.15 million at time of contact

• Peanuts in comparison to Europe’s at the time (75-80 million), and pretty much failing in the “go forth and multiply” department

The Problem of Numbers - More Recent Interpretations

• Begins with Henry F. Dobyns’ article “Estimating Aboriginal American Population” Current Anthropology vol. 7 (1966)…which “left a crater in anthropology”

• His conclusion? The role of infectious disease was enormous - truly massive - in reducing native populations

Big Population Numbers? - Evidence

• Spaniards recorded many epidemics in the 1500s (typhus, influenza, smallpox, diphtheria, measles)

• How many people did these hit? Dobyns calculated a pre-contact population of  112 million

• Evidence of depopulation before contact? George Vancouver’s records of the Pacific Coast

• This meant that old calculations were based on LOWS, not AVERAGES

Built Civilizations in North America

• 1539: de Soto’s expedition in the SE United States – 200 horses, 600 men, 200 pigs…

• …the “well-peopled lands” through which the Spaniards passed

• 1682 – Europeans reappear (the French)…and they find emptiness

• What had happened?

• Almost certainly it was the pigs’ fault…the problem of zoonosis

Cahokia

• This was the largest American city north of the Rio Grande – maybe 50,000 people

• Who built it? Surely not “Indians”?!

• Cahokia, “Indians,” and the place of indigenous peoples in our consciousness today

Evidence from the South: a Built Environment in Amazonia

• Preamble: archaeology and the “culture wars”

• What is a built environment?

• The theory: native peoples in the Amazon were not restricted to small, H-G / semi-nomadic groups (as previously thought). Instead they transformed their environments to support population-dense, urban centers

Pre-Contact Amazonia

• Beginning in the 1980s excavations revealed many complex urban settlements; Population estimates in what are now determined to be fully agricultural societies are roughly ca. 10-20 million

• Foundation for all this? Agricultural, managed, Terra Preta soil

• Why did it take so long for this conceptual leap to develop? à archaeological limitations and, frankly, “our” view of “them” – the place of Amazonian natives in colonizing culture

Jared Diamond’s General Factors: 1. Continental Axis

For Diamond geography mattered:

1) Dictated the domesticable species available (plant and animal)

2) Dictated the ease at which the techniques of domestication spread

2. Continental Axis: Climate

Temperature gradients (thermoclines) remain pretty consistent across longitude (east-west) versus dramatic shifts across latitude (north-south)

Thus, crops that grow in Western Russia (for example) will also grow in France. But crops grown in France will NOT grow in Libya.

What are Diamond’s Proximate causes for European domination?

• It all comes down to what Diamond calls “Farmer Power” → European and Eurasian societies had domesticable grain crops (and later animals too) available to them that allowed the work of a FRACTION of the population to feed ALL of the population

• E-W continental axis allowed the crops to spread through Eurasia, but not elsewhere due to different continental axes (such as in the Americas where it is N-S)

Horses & Other Domesticable Animals

• A certain element of luck: the first domesticated horses came from Eurasia

• In the New World, there simply weren’t the right type of animals to domesticate

• Not just horses, but in draft and food animals as well, Eurasia had an edge

• These produce benefits → muscle power, nutritional value, and military power too

Some bad luck: Why not Africa?

• Africa, like the Americas, did not have the basic species capable of useful domesticity

• You cannot domesticate a zebra, for instance, even though it looks like a horse.

Another Eurasian “Advantage” from Animals: Disease

• Surplus of food = growing populations, greater population density

• greater density = living in close quarters with one another (diseases)

So: Eurasians will contact many diseases over time. More importantly, though their exposure they will also develop partial or total immunity to them