Additional resources for this issue of History Now Age of Exploration The Columbian Exchange Native Americans Jamestown Magellan New Netherland

Columbian Exchange

Books:

Alfred Crosby coined the popular name for the complicated process by which Europeans and indigenous peoples in the Americas introduced each other to their own cultures, diseases, implements, crops, and animals in his 1972 book:

The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consquences of 1492 . Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1972.

You may also want to read his later books:

Germs, Seeds & Animals: Studies in Ecological History. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. A collection of essays appearing originally between 1976 and 1993.

Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Crosby ’s work has been followed by many other authors who have surveyed the general question of the Columbian Exchange. Here are some recent examples:

Axtell, James. Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Nobles, Gregory H. American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997. This collection of primary sources will serve you well for all aspects of the Columbian Exchange.

Many of the printed resources I’ve listed for “General” purposes (especially anthologies of narratives) and for Richter’s essay on the native “discovery” of Europe will serve you well in dealing with the Columbian Exchange.

This is an easily available reprint of John Josselyn’s observations:

Josselyn John, (Lindholdt, Paul J., ed.) Colonial Traveler: A Critical Edition of Two Voyages to New-England. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988.

If your students are interested in the broader environmental impact of European discovery and settlement on the American landscape, take a look at:

Merchant, Carolyn. The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Whitney, Gordon Graham. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America, 1500 to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

This provides an excellent survey of the importation of European farm animals to the Americas:

Anderson , Virginia DeJohn. Creatures Of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Here are some book length studies of the impact of contact with Europeans on the health of Native American nations:

Boyd, Robert T. The Coming Of The Spirit Of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline Among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

Chaplin, Joyce E. Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Cook, Noble David. Born To Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Mancall, Peter C. Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America. Ithaca: Cornell, 1995.

The exchange of agricultural products across the Atlantic is addressed in:

Hurt, R. Douglas. Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1987.

Salaman, Redcliffe N. The History and Social Influence of the Potato. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Warman, Arturo. Corn & Capitalism: How A Botanical Bastard Grew To Global Dominance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Websites:

Answers.com has a very good essay on Crosby’s concept of the Columbian Exchange and the history of plants within this transfer from their “Food and Culture” Encyclopedia:

http://www.answers.com/topic/columbian-exchange

The National Humanities Center at Research Triangle, North Carolina, has an excellent page on resources for the Columbian Exchange and other examples of the impact of early European encounters with Western Hemisphere peoples, plants, and environment. You’ll find an essay by Crosby on the subject along with his suggestions for “Guiding Student Discussion”:

http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/nattrans
/ntecoindian/essays/columbian.htm

The “Columbus and the Age of Discovery” website at Millersville ( Pennsylvania) University offers a database of articles on the Columbian Exchange:

http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus

Some of the essays are idiosyncratic, but the collection includes James Axtell’s excellent essay on recent scholarship relating to Columbus and early encounters from the William and Mary Quarterly (October 1995). Part Four focuses on the Columbian Exchange:

http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/
data/rev/AXTELL-4.HTML

The Mariners Museum site has very good classroom materials on the “Great Exchange”:

http://www.mariner.org/educationalad/ageofex/

Finally, if you can’t find a print edition of John Josselyn’s Account of Two Voyages, go to the Wisconsin Historical Society’s wonderful website “American Journeys: Eyewitness accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement”: