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I finished Alfred Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange, a classic of history. Considering man as a biological entity first, the book argues that the most important changes of the Columbian Exchange were biological in nature. While considering the early European beliefs of the differences between the two hemispheres, he establishes that the two sides of the earth developed largely in isolation. Crosby then considers the effect of diseases on the Native American population, which had no history of natural immunity to the newly introduced afflictions. The next chapter examines the effects of newly introduced plants and animals, of which Crosby considers cattle to be the most important, at least in the long run. A subsequent chapter on syphilis, widely considered to be introduced to the Old World by early explorers, seems disjointed in the larger narrative, almost an interesting aside in the otherwise smooth flow. Before concluding that the exchange is still ongoing, Crosby argues that the most important change was that the Old World’s adoption of New World foods led to the world’s population explosion of recent centuries.

Underlying the text is the theme that the results of the exchange were not always positive. The trend of nature is to biological homogeneity. Man’s effect on the planet, accelerated by the Columbian Exchange, is to sacrifice long term diversity for short term gain, thus creating an impoverished gene pool.

The work is concise and scholarly, the writing best described as functional. At times the numerous examples can bog down the book, although it is brief. The book is of the utmost importance to historians. Others just need to be aware of the grand concepts so brilliantly expressed in The Columbian Exchange.