Biological Transfer, Agricultural Change, and Environmental Implications of 1492

Abstract

The Columbian Exchange involved not only a transfer of germplasm between two hemispheres on an unprecedented scale, but also the readaptation of agrosystems, representing distinctive crop repertoires, risk strategies, management techniques, cuisines, and values. The European colonists brought an agrosystem to the New World that was primarily derived from the Mediterranean Basin; its success varied greatly, depending on environmental compatibility and economic or cultural competition with indigenous alternatives. Similarly, existing New World agrosystems responded to the new agronomic information by incorporating many Old World crops, sometimes with their attached management practices; both the Mexican and Andean agrosystems were hybridized, but they have successfully retained their identities up to the present. This chapter seeks to understand the actual processes of systemic change and interaction, within the Spanish colonial sphere, from ecological and historical perspectives. Indigenous adaptation of Old World germplasm apparently was overwhelmingly voluntary, in response to new agricultural, nutritional, and economic opportunities, much as the global migration of food crops has been benign, improving the quality of human life worldwide. The chapter also examines the impact of European agrotechnology on New World environments, and does not find support for the currently popular hypothesis of colonial devastation.

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