“To the history of kings and queens most of us learned as students has been added a recognition of the remarkable role of exchange, both ecological and economic…Columbus’s voyage did not mark the discovery of a New World, but its creation.”

I found this book fascinating. I had no idea North America didn’t have earthworms before Columbus, and that soil was brought over as ballast for ships that would return full of tobacco, nor that much of the silver mined in the New World was actually sold to China, who had collapsed their currency repeatedly for several hundred years (they were the first to introduce paper currency, due to a lack of available  metals), and so were desperate for a precious metal they could use to stabilize it.

Mann’s thesis is that Columbus’ journey marked the beginning of true globalization, not because it marked the developed world discovering the new world (which isn’t really true anyway), but because it led to a worldwide mixing of ecologies and economies. Columbus himself may have been wrong about almost everything, but his voyage still had dramatic consequences, good and bad. The whole book is excellent, containing fascinating stories such as the evolution of potatoes from a poisonous plant that could only be safely consumed when eaten with clay (which bound the poison molecules to itself and could be excreted), to a worldwide phenomenon that allowed dramatic increases in population density across Europe and China and a (temporary?) escape from the Malthusian Trap. You can still buy the poisonous varieties in South America, complete with clay dust, by the way.

Ecological globalization wasn’t the only thing that happened around 1493, of course, and Mann is good about highlighting the complexity and agency of the peoples on both sides of the Atlantic before Columbus, something that is often neglected by European historians. In some ways he seems guided more by curiosity than anything else, omitting some things to focus on others he finds more interesting. Still, the ecological changes that resulted from the increased mixing have been dramatic, in ways we don’t notice because we don’t realize they could have been different. North American forests are very different with the presence of earthworms, because they decompose underbrush; today they are destroying terraces in Southeast Asia by making them spongy.

Highly recommended. Not perfect, and with such a wide scope details can sometimes suffer, but well worth the effort.