4.3: Spain, Columbus, the Great Dying, and the Columbian Exchange

During the early modern period, some of the important voyages of discovery were undertaken by agents of the Spanish monarchy, starting with that of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Inspired by religious fervor as much as a practical desire for riches and fresh off the successful Reconquest, Queen Isabella agreed with Columbus’s vision of flanking the Muslim forces of the Middle East and recapturing the Holy Land as well as establishing new trade routes to Asia. The voyage was thought to be feasible. All educated people already accepted that the world was round (common knowledge since the days of ancient Greece). However, the circumference of the globe was not really clear, so no one knew how long one would have to sail west to reach the east.

Columbus had inaccurate beliefs about the distance between Europe and Asia. He based his geography on an ancient (and completely inaccurate) account by the Greek philosopher Ptolemy. Thus, he thought that Asia was not far west of Europe. Despite being disliked and distrusted by most rulers, Columbus succeeded in winning Isabella over to his vision, and she paid to outfit him with a tiny fleet. She also sent him with letters of introduction to the Great Khan, who she presumed still ruled in Asia. In August, 1492, Columbus departed with three small boats – the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria - and 90 men. They arrived in the Bahamas in October.

Figure 6.2.1: The four voyages of Columbus between 1492 and 1504. ‘Juana’ is present-day Cuba, and ‘Hispaniola’ is present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Columbus's action would be representative of the Spanish attitudes toward the Americas: brutality against the native “Indians,” attempts to convert Indians by force, intense greed for precious metals, and the introduction of pathogens against which the native people had absolutely no resistance. With Columbus, the exchanging of goods and commodities between the two hemispheres began. Historians refer to that enormous distribution of plant and animal species, as well as bacteria and viruses, as the Columbian Exchange.

From the New World, Europeans brought back corn, potatoes, tobacco, chocolate, and tomatoes, which soon flourished across Africa and Eurasia. From the Old World, Europeans imported all of the large domesticated animals - horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and sheep - as well as numerous crops like rice, wheat, sugarcane, and coffee. Indeed, potatoes would go on to reshape the demographics of all of northern Europe, since they provide a great deal of nutrition and calories and could be grown in poor, rocky soils. The poor of many European regions (Ireland, most famously) became largely dependent on potatoes for nourishment by the eighteenth century.

The single most significant biological entity to be exchanged between the hemispheres was the smallpox virus, which led to the worst epidemic in world history. Almost all diseases that affect humans are mutated strains of diseases affecting domestic animals, referred to as zoonotic diseases. In addition, all of the large animal species that can be domesticated were Eurasian in origin except llamas. Thus, Eurasians and Africans had spent thousands of years both suffering from and building up resistance to epidemics while Native Americans did not. Those epidemic pathogens arrived all at once with the European invasion of the New World that began.

Historians refer to the demographic catastrophe that accompanied the European encounter with the Americas as the Great Dying. Up to 90% of the native people of the Americas died within a few generations of Columbus’s arrival. Due largely to their use of steel weapons and horses, the Spanish and Portuguese did win some noteworthy military engagements with native forces. However, their true military advantage lay in germ warfare, something they certainly did not anticipate unleashing on their arrival. In the early 16th Century, Spanish explorers would encounter vast swaths of land abandoned by sophisticated cultures that had been decimated by disease.

Almost immediately after Columbus's return to Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain grasped the significance of his discovery and actively funded more expeditions and, soon, colonists. The Spanish crown also quickly tried to cement its hold on the New World by petitioning the pope to grant them everything across the Atlantic. After papal intervention and negotiations, the Treaty of Tordesillas gave Spain everything west of an arbitrary line 1,100 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, with everything to the east granted to the Portuguese. Practically speaking, the Portuguese concentrated their colonization efforts on Brazil, Africa, and India, while the Spanish concentrated on the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

By the 1520s, Europeans recognized that Columbus had been completely wrong about the New World being part of Asia. The term "America" was invented by Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who led two expeditions between 1497 and 1503 and was the first to grasp the immensity of the western hemisphere. He also coined the phrase "New World". Vespucci’s accounts were printed prior to Columbus's. Otherwise, the continents may have been called something different!

Europeans persisted in their quest to find a western route to Asia. The Spanish explorers and sailors sought Asia by going around the Americas, even though they were also busy conquering the great empires of the Aztecs and Incas. Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521), who commanded a small fleet of five ships funded by the Spanish crown, tried to find a western route to Asia in 1519. He succeeded in rounding South America and crossing the Pacific, but was killed by natives of the Philippines in 1521. The remnants of his fleet limped back to Spain in 1522. The Spanish would subsequently use the Philippines as the basis of their Pacific trade network, ultimately linking together Europe, the Americas, and Asia and fulfilling the original vision of a western route to Asia that had inspired Columbus’s expedition in the first place.

This map shows the various Dutch, English, French, and Spanish explorations. A key has been provided that lists the Spanish-backed explorers.

Source: Slideplayer