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Those readers who follow our posts already know that at the end of the fifteenth century, Christopher Columbus managed to convince the royal family of Spain equip the expedition in search of a sea route to India. The expedition was quite modest, so the trophies brought were not distinguished by abundance and variety. However, cocoa beans, hammock, turkey, tobacco, red hot peppers and much more have become firmly established in the everyday life of Europe and the entire “old” world. However, there were compelling reasons that allowed Alfred Crosby to consider the exchange between the continents to be quite equivalent, and not to consider what was happening as an overstocking of Europe with gifts from the New World to unilaterally. Moreover, the flow of goods from the Old World turned out to be more solid, faster and better organized. Crosby called it the "Columbus Exchange".
What could the Old World offer to the New as counter discoveries that allowed Crosby to consider everything that happened as an exchange between peoples? What did such ancient events mean then and what do they mean today for modern man? I will try to describe the “external” side of this exchange, visible to everyone, and at the same time reveal the behind-the-scenes, let’s say, “internal” component of these connections between the Old and New Worlds.
So, let's begin: first of all, we will present the traditional view of the Columbus exchange
As is known, the ships that plied delivered plants and animals in both directions. It is impossible to list the entire list, but it roughly looks like this: artichokes, watermelons, peas, cabbage, hemp, onions, coffee, almonds, cucumbers, olives, rice, rye and wheat, beets, came from Europe to America. sugar cane, apples and asparagus. In the opposite direction: avocado, pineapple, peanuts, vanilla, cocoa, hot red pepper, potato, tomato, cashew, sunflower and beans.
Now about animals: Sheep, donkeys, cows, cats and dogs, horses, pigs, rabbits and chickens were transported from Europe to America. Back: turkey, llama, alpaca, muskrat, nutria and guinea pig. Perhaps something in this list will surprise you: for example, many people believe that coffee and cocoa grow on neighboring trees, that peas and beans are the same thing, and that a llama is the same camel, only with wool. If you thought so, then in all these cases you were wrong by an entire “continent”, but our notes will not become a platform for argument, just take my word for it: all this is the result of centuries of exchange. Some things caught on quickly, but some didn’t.
You have probably already noticed that in the field of plants there is an approximate equality of contributions from the parties, and in the field of animals Europe is much better represented. The fact is that in America the situation was as follows: a well-developed Agriculture and a wealth of all kinds of cultures, but from the animal world, only fish and birds were in abundance in America. The merchant Michele de Cuneo, sent to the New World for observations, wrote in his diary about the local residents: “These are cold people, not sensual. And the reason for this may be that they are not eating well.” He meant precisely that it was difficult to find meat, cheese, sausages, wine, and olive oil in America, and the Spaniards in those days considered fish food for fasting days or for the poor. Fishing was treated with fear and contempt.
There was an exchange in both directions, but to call it equivalent would be inaccurate: the ships belonged to white people, and they decided how to fill the holds in both directions. The opinions of the Indian tribes were not taken into account. Therefore, it is not surprising that the very first ships began to take into account the needs of the Spaniards who settled in America, who wanted the usual bread made from wheat, meat products, olive oil and wine.
What was Columbus really looking for on the other side of the world? The arrival of the “white” man in America
This chapter does not seem entirely appropriate now, because today we are interested in what was transported to the New World, and not vice versa, but we cannot do without it: I have already explained that they were transported in both directions, but essentially the same people controlled the process people, white gentlemen from Spain, Portugal, Holland, England and Italy. That is, it is important to understand what they wanted from the New World. The official version is that Columbus wanted to reach India with its riches, mainly in the form of spices. In fact, most likely, spices were a priority only for the Portuguese and a little for the Dutch. The Portuguese did have a slight "spice craze" (Fernando Braudel's term). The Castilian nobility rather dreamed of fame, gold and jewelry. The Italians and Genoese were looking for new trade markets and land for establishing various industries. And they were all looking for expansion of their possessions, new coats of arms and increased influence. In particular, everyone was attracted by the opportunity to bypass the Muslims and go behind their rear. And, of course, the interests of the church must also be taken into account: the spread Christian faith no one canceled.
Now we will draw the first and unexpected conclusion from all of the above: the main thing that the Old World brought to the New was the “white man” himself, the European. This was the main difference from the first discovery of America by the Vikings: they did not intend to consider America as a new place for their settlement or work. Therefore, no “new Vikings” arose, although individual villages did exist. But the Europeans immediately settled new lands and began trade and production projects. Therefore, they had urgent needs for what they were used to. In addition, where the Europeans quickly managed to get rich (for example, from silver mining in Lima), they also had enormous funds to satisfy these needs. This demand was followed by the era of the "Manila galleons".
Intercontinental trade. Manila galleons
Now that logistics has become a common thing and goods are warehoused, packaged and delivered around the world with enviable speed and organization, it is difficult to imagine a world without these services. But, in fact, the world global trade invented by the Spaniards when they first established it between the three parts of the world.
The Spaniards built an amazing trade exchange between three centers: Spain in Europe, the Philippines in the East and America. The ships connected Manila and Acapulca across the Atlantic, and through Pacific Ocean they went to Europe, completing this, essentially, round-the-world route. Moreover, the needs of the New World were such that it was necessary to build giant ships capable of transporting up to 2000 tons. These ships were built at a special shipyard in Manila and were called “Manila galleons.” Such huge ships were required to transport horses, cows, luxury goods from China and food from India to America. The rich “new Spaniards” in America demanded all this, and even willingly bought slaves from Angola.
The cargo of the Manila galleon consisted of silk, gold, jewelry such as Chinese pearls, carpets, spices, etc. The galleon was huge, well equipped with cannons and almost inaccessible to pirates. The main threat for him was the danger of sinking due to storms. Therefore, the route was carefully planned for the Manila galleon, and it set sail once a year in June. This was the royal decision, and the king had his own interest, since part of the property on the ship and, moreover, part of the income from the colonies for the whole year in money and goods belonged to him. And the king decided that it was better once a year, but without mistakes. This reminded me of Stalin’s decision about young Russian cinema: as you know, Stalin decided that we would not chase Hollywood in terms of quantity: we would release only a few films a year, or even just one, but of excellent quality, in no way inferior to Hollywood. In general, the decision is controversial, but the king knows better.
As for the second part of the route, between America and Europe, the situation with pirates there was somewhat different and required a different solution: periodic caravan expeditions were equipped from several small galleons under the protection of the military fleet. Olives, wine and wheat were brought from Europe. Spain for quite a long time resisted the New Spaniards growing all this at home, hoping to replenish the treasury with exports. Another issue is that wine spoiled on the road and over time, vineyards became the norm in Mexico, Argentina and other lands.
Globalization as the main content of human development
Alfred Crosby wrote his book The Columbus Exchange in 1972. His ideas were significantly developed later in his works by journalist Charles Mann. He was primarily interested in the phenomenon that the world of humanity as a whole was divided by the conditional year 1492, and, more broadly, by the era geographical discoveries. Mann believed that the “exchanges” and mixing that arose as a result of these discoveries were much broader than just the establishment of cultural and trade ties, that is, that they were rather global, biological in nature. Entire new nations were formed, trends of globalism emerged, medicine and biology made a huge leap in development, responding to the export of imported infections and diseases. These processes affected not only the exchange between Spain and America, because in 1570 Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and Andres de Urdaneta realized the task facing Columbus and opened the western trade route to China. Before this, China's population grew very slowly. With the opening of the trade route, China received cheap grain from America and its population began to grow rapidly.
The so-called “Manila galleons” connected Asia, Africa, Europe and America with trade. The era of globalization has begun. In principle, the era of great geographical discoveries simply provided many with opportunities that they did not have before. But the desires were there before, that is, always. There is an old peasant proverb, approximately the same in meaning among most different nations: “If a peasant ate his chicken, then one of the two of them is sick.” The point is that a farmer will never eat his chicken if it can be sold. Money is always more scarce for him than food. And a person’s desires almost always outstrip his capabilities. Therefore, it is clear that the opportunities that opened up in the New World sharply accelerated the advent of what we now call the era of globalization, the formation of the bourgeois class, the development of technological progress and the construction of a consumer society. In many ways, Columbus's discovery turned out to be a turning point.
Europe gave America dogs
Sheep also came to America from the Old World
Rabbits came to America on European ships
What America received “as a burden” and through smuggling
What was imported to America was not a well thought out project. Everything developed slowly and rather spontaneously. Nevertheless, the appearance of vineyards, sugar cane plantations, horses and cows in America was quite logical, which we tried to justify logically. But some things entered America, so to speak, by smuggling. Firstly, these are diseases and infections. From Europe came: plague, smallpox, influenza, some forms of malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera. The local population, having no immunity and no medicine, suffered greatly from these diseases. The ships' holds also carried rats and weeds. For example, plantain: it quickly spread to America, and the Indians called it “the white man’s footprint.”
In the future, micro-disasters of a biological nature will occur more than once, as a result of illegal border crossings: in 1869, a silkworm butterfly will be brought to America from France, and it will suddenly begin to devour blocks of forests. In 1970, bees will be brought from Africa, which will multiply at enormous speed and begin to pose a threat to humans. There were, of course, surprises from America: Colorado beetle, a real disaster for potato fields, came from there to Europe.
Modern Americans as a result of mixed blood
We have already said that one of the main contents of the “Columbus Exchange” can be considered the exchange of people. The Indians were almost immediately brought to Europe, but they did not take root there. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, the local population was small. Secondly, it was completely unadapted to life in Europe (the Indians were sick and drank too much). Thirdly, as workers or slaves, Europe did not really need them; they had enough of their own poor people who were ready to work for pennies. And if there wasn’t enough, Africa was nearby, whose population, by the way, was about five times larger than the American one. But America itself quickly began to run out of people. People were needed to work in silver mines, on tobacco plantations, and in sugar cane harvesting. Agriculture grew, manufacturing industries grew - all this had to be serviced somehow.
Today I will not go into details of how people who came to the New World should be correctly called: slaves, migrants, contract workers. Slavery is a sad phenomenon, but it was certainly not invented by the Spaniards or the Americans, and it was not only slaves who went to America. The first to be brought were about one million Irish, whose situation was sometimes worse than that of slaves. But there were still not enough workers, so about 15 million slaves were exported from Africa. All this caused a mixture of blood, cultures and traditions. Let's define the terms: white + black = mulatto, white + Indian = mestizo, black + Indian = sambo. Since this question is important and quite entertaining, I borrowed a sign from the Big Question website:
In our review we will talk about what Columbus brought from America to Europe after his first voyage, as well as the influence of products and wealth from the New World on Europe, Africa and Asia.
The first part is about specific products and things that, as far as we know, Columbus and his crew directly brought from America on their two ships, after completing their first expedition to the New World (more precisely to the present-day Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti) in 1492 ., when he actually discovered America.
The second part of the review is about how new products and wealth from the New World influenced the then Europe, Asia and Africa.
We will also provide a map of products that came from the New World to the Old World, and vice versa. The review uses, among other things, materials from two anniversary issues of the magazine “America” published by the US government in Russian for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America (No. 6 for 1991 and No. 10 for 1992).
What did Columbus bring from America?
Christopher Columbus (Spanish)
Christopher Columbus (Spanish: Cristobal Colon).
From an old engraving.
Columbus brought six Indians from his first trip to America, as well as a hanging hammock seen among the Indians, as well as tobacco leaves, a pineapple and a turkey bird, as well as bird feathers.
Columbus brought a hammock from America
Their nets of cotton fabric, on which the Indians slept, were called hammocks. Hammock is one of the few words of the indigenous people of the Bahamas that has survived to this day.
Several decades after the discovery of America, not a single person remained alive from the indigenous population of not only the Bahamas, but all the islands of the West Indies, melancholy notes in the notes the 1993 Russian edition of the documentary work “The History of Great Travels” (created in 1870-1880 gg.), written by the well-known Jules Verne, and telling, among other things. and about the voyages of Columbus. Despite the fact that the Carib Indians remained in the continental part of South America. Returning to the issue of hammock, we note that in Spanish the word hammock sounds like hamaca (something like how it sounded among the Taino Indians - that is, the Indians of the West Indies and Haiti), hamaca means “fish net”.
Columbus, as Jules Verne writes in his documentary work mentioned above, saw a hammock on the island of Fernandina, discovered and named by him (Fernandina, now Long Island as part of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas).
“The mats on which the Indians sleep are like nets and are woven from cotton yarn,” Jules Verne quotes Spanish notes of the time about the hammock.
After the hammock reached Europe with the help of Columbus, it quickly spread to the navies of European powers. So in 1590 the hammock was officially adopted by the Royal Navy of Great Britain.
Columbus brought six Indians from America
In addition to the hammock, Columbus brought from America, after his discovery of the New World in 1492, six Indians.
Let us remember that during his first voyage, when Columbus discovered America, he visited only the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti, and then returned back to soon set off again from Spain to America. The magazine "America", published by the US government in Russian, wrote about the fate of the six Indians brought by Columbus to Spain from his first voyage in its article "Christopher Columbus and His Time", published on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America (No. 10 for 1992 .):
« What happened to the six Indians Columbus brought to Spain? They were received solemnly. Columbus organized a majestic procession to the royal palace, and Crowds gathered to look at the Indians parading through Barcelona in exotic clothes.. What the Indians thought about all this, we will never know.
In subsequent years, Columbus ruled harshly over the inhabitants of the New World, but his first recorded impression of them is full of warmth:
“Whatever you ask of them that they have, they will never refuse, but rather share with you and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts, and regardless of the value of the thing, they are invariably content with the trinket that they presented in response... I distributed to them a thousand pleasant things that I purchased so that they would love us and in the future would be converted to Christianity and would be inclined to serve Your Majesties and Castile, and try to help us, and share that with us. what they have in abundance and what we need.”
Converting them to Christianity was the highest priority. Those six whom Columbus brought to Spain were immediately baptized and given Christian names, and King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella and Infante (heir) Don Juan were their successors.
TO When Columbus set off on his second voyage to the shores of the New World in September 1493, five of them returned with him. The sixth, named Don Juan, remained at the Spanish royal court. About two years later he died,” noted America magazine.
According to sources, all six Indians brought by Columbus from his first voyage to America belonged to the Tainos. Taino is a later introduced collective name for the aboriginal Arawakan tribes that inhabited the islands of Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas and the northern Lesser Antilles to the island of Guadeloupe at the time of the discovery of America. However, in various sources It is described differently whether all these Indians were from Hispaniola (Española, as Columbus originally named the island now known as Haiti) or whether some of them were from the Bahamas, Jules Verne writes in his aforementioned documentary work “The History of Great Voyages” that "the Indians were from Hispaniola." Note that the Tainos were considered more peace-loving Indians than their neighbors from the Lesser Antilles (for example, from Guadeloupe) - the Caribs. However, the Tainos were all scarred by the wars.
Columbus wrote in his diary about the first meeting with Indians (they were from the Taino people) during the discovery of America (it is believed that this meeting took place on the island of San Salvador, also known as Watling Island, now in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas (Commonwealth of The Bahamas, more details here):
“I saw scars on many of their bodies; Explaining by signs, I asked them why they had these scars, and they explained to me in the same way that people came here from other nearby islands, and these people wanted to capture them all, but they were defending themselves. And I think, and others think, that those people came here from the mainland to capture everyone living here.”
As Jules Verne reminds us in his documentary work on Columbo's discovery of America: “ To Asik (leader) on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) asked Columbus to protect his fellow tribesmen with Spanish (firearms) from the cannibal Caribs, who often raided nearby islands and took away Indians. Columbus promised the cacique his protection (but refused to shoot at the Indians).” As the already mentioned 1993 Russian edition of the documentary work “The History of Great Travels,” written by Jules Verne, notes in the notes: “The Spaniards distorted this unusual word “Carib” for them and said “canib” instead of “Carib.” This is where the word “cannibal” comes from - cannibal. Columbus became closely acquainted with the Carib tribe during his second voyage in the fall. 1493 g ., with the discovery of the island of Guadalupe (Guadeloupe, named after one of the Spanish monasteries).
“The 16th-century Spanish chronicler Bartolomé Las Casas, in his History of the Indies, speaks of this island as follows: “The admiral ordered two boats to be sent to the shore to try to capture the island. local residents and find out from them what is possible about this land and about the people who inhabit it, and how far it is from Haiti (Hispaniola).
Two young men were brought to the admiral, and they made him understand by signs that they did not live on this island, but on another, which was called Boriquen (Puerto Rico). In all possible ways - with hands, eyes and gestures that expressed spiritual bitterness - O neither convinced the admiral that this island was inhabited by the Caribs, who took them captive and brought them from Borikén (now Puerto Rico, USA) in order to eat them, according to their custom.”
The Spaniards saw on the shore a village of thirty round wooden huts covered with palm leaves. Inside the huts there were wicker beds, which the Indians of Haiti (Hispaniola) called hammocks. When the strangers approached, the savages fled into the forest, abandoning several captives who were destined for the next cannibalistic feast. The sailors found gnawed human bones, severed arms, legs and heads in the dwellings. Apparently the inhabitants of Guadalupe were the same Caribs that the natives of Haiti (Hispaniola) had previously spoken of with horror...»
Also during Columbus's second voyage, on November 14, 1493, the squadron landed on the island of Santa Cruz (now part of the US Virgin Islands, USA). There the first face-to-face meeting of the Spaniards with the Caribs (Caribs) took place, which is described in detail by the doctor of Columbus’s second expedition, Diego Álvarez Chanca:
“Several people disembarked from the boat sent to the shore; They headed towards the village, the inhabitants of which had already managed to escape. There the Spaniards captured five or six women and several boys. Almost all of them, according to them, were captives of the Caribs, as on the island of Guadeloupe.
Just at the moment when our boat with the booty was preparing to return to the ships, a canoe (pirogue) appeared near the shore, in which there were four men, two women and a boy. Seeing the flotilla, they (the Caribs. Approx. site), struck by this spectacle, became numb with surprise and for a long time were unable to move, remaining at a distance of almost two shots from the bombard. It was then that they were noticed from the boat and from the ships. Immediately the boat headed towards them, keeping close to the shore, and they were still in a daze, looking at the ships, wondering at them and wondering in their minds what this strange thing was. They noticed the boat only when it came close to them, and therefore they could no longer escape pursuit, although they tried to do so. Our people rushed at them so quickly that they did not give them the opportunity to escape.
Seeing that they would not be able to escape, the Caribs drew their bows with great courage, and the women did not lag behind the men. I say “with great courage” because there were only six of them - four men and two women - against twenty-five of ours. They wounded two sailors, one twice in the chest, the other in the side. And they would have struck most of our people with their arrows, if the latter had not had leather and wooden shields and don’t let our boat come close to the canoe and capsize it. But even after the canoe capsized, they began to swim and wade - it was shallow in this place - and they had to work hard to capture the Caribs, since they continued to shoot with bows. Despite all this, they managed to take only one of them, mortally wounding him with a spear. The wounded man was taken to the ship."
This episode shows that the Carib Indians valued their freedom dearly and were ready to fight for it to the last drop of blood.
The Caribbean seemed "very ferocious" to the Spaniards. Unlike other Indians, they wore long hair and outlined the eyes with black paint. They covered their entire body with tattoos and tied the muscles of their arms and legs with tourniquets, which made them unusually elastic,” writes Jules Verne in the documentary work “The History of Great Travels.”
Thus, the Tainos and the Caribs were the first Indian peoples whom Columbus became acquainted with during the discovery of the New World. The Caribs now live only in mainland South America, but not in the Caribbean islands, and the Tainos are completely extinct.
Columbus brought tobacco leaves from America
In October-November 1423, during Columbus's stay on the island of San Salvador (remember, San Salvador Island, also known as Watling Island, now in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas), and then in Cuba during the continuation of the first Columbus's voyage during the discovery of America "the Spaniards were surprised by the custom of the local residents to light some leaves rolled into a tube and inhale the smoke from them. Thus, the Spaniards first encountered the use of tobacco, and then adopted this custom, and tobacco smoking spread throughout Europe "It is believed that the first person from the Old World who adopted the habit of smoking was the sailor of Columbus's flagship Rodrigo de Jerez. He, along with other Spaniards, received leaves as a gift from the Indians, presumably on the island of San Salvador on October 12 1492
During those months, Rodrigo de Jerez, the only one of the entire crew of Columbus's first expedition, became addicted to smoking tobacco. However, in 1493, the Holy Inquisition of the town of Ayamonte (now in the province of Huelva, autonomous community of Andalusia, in Spain) arrested Rodrigo de Jerez on charges of witchcraft, since only “the devil can give a person the power to emit smoke from his mouth.” Rodrigo de Jerez was imprisoned until 1500. By that time, smoking tobacco had become commonplace.
Columbus brought pineapple from America
According to some sources, Columbus brought pineapple from his first voyage during the discovery of America in 1492 - namely from Cuba. According to others, this happened at the end of Columbus’s second voyage, i.e. in 1494, after Columbus first became more familiar with pineapple, he tried this fruit in Guadeloupe. Columbus called the pineapple piña ("pine cone"), due to the pineapple's resemblance to a pine cone.
It is also said that during the return from the first expedition to discover America 1492 g . Columbus brought a live turkey bird, as well as bird feathers. But not only
Columbus's crew brought syphilis from America
Note that Columbus did not take a single woman on board his ship during his first two expeditions, in 1492 and 1493, respectively. . The magazine "America", published by the US government in Russian, wrote in its article "Christopher Columbus and His Time", published on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America (No. 10 for 1992), on this sensitive topic of syphilis brought from America by the team Columba, next. We quote:
“Is it true that sailors from Columbus’s flotilla (after his first expedition and the discovery of the New World) brought syphilis to Europe from the New World?
Indeed, the disease first became epidemic in Europe after Columbus's first expedition, when sutlers following the army of the French King Charles VII infected his soldiers during the 1494 campaign to capture the Kingdom of Naples. Several treatises from this period discuss the outbreak of this epidemic and indicate that Morbus gallicum (the French disease) was unknown in Europe until that time. Many scientists believe that syphilis first spread among women, infected by sailors from the crew of Columbus sailing to the New World.
Columbus did not touch upon this topic in his correspondence. Yes, it would have been inappropriate in his letters addressed to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. But the Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés wrote about the introduction of syphilis from the New World as an indisputable fact. IN " General history India,” published in 1535, he discusses this at some length, asserting that “until King Charles passed through that country (Italy), this infection was unprecedented in those lands. But the truth is that from the island of Haiti, or Hispaniola, this disease, as stated above, spread to Europe; it is very common among the Indians, and they know how to cure it. and they have excellent herbs, trees and plants suitable for the treatment of this and other ailments.”
This disease became known in Europe under many names, most of them attributing blame for its spread to some nationality: “French smallpox”, “German disease”, “Polish disease”. Around 1512, Girolamo Fracastoro, an Italian physician and poet, wrote a Latin poem vividly describing the introduction of the disease from the New World. He called his work “Syphilis, or Morbus gallicus,” after the hero of the poem, the young shepherd Syphilis, who incurred the wrath of the gods, which prompted the author to call this disease syphilis, by which it is known to this day,” the magazine noted “ America".
While we were talking, basically, what Columbus and his team brought directly to Europe after the discovery of America as a result of their first voyage 1492 g, a about how, in general, new products and wealth from the New World influenced the then Europe, Asia and Africa. Also below we will provide a map of products that came from the New World to the Old, and vice versa.
From Europe to America
Conquistadors in the New World. Engraving from the book "History of America". Frankfurt am Main, 1602
One day Michele da Cuneo wrote a letter to Geronimo Aimari, a representative of a Ligurian family that had taken root in Seville and other Spanish cities. However, due to an error by the scribe who copied this letter, the addressee Michele da Cuneo turned into Annari, which is why for a long time no one could find any other mention of this same Signor Geronimo, including me, until I turned to the original letter. Geronimo Aimari was a merchant who personally knew Christopher Columbus and volunteered to “sponsor” Michele da Cuneo’s journey with Columbus in exchange for Michele da Cuneo sending him interesting and preferably truthful information about America. This information was sent to the merchant on October 28, 1495.
Michele da Cuneo's account lacks the usual rhetoric praising Columbus's event and does not present America as a paradise on earth. The author describes only what he sees, and his view is not that of a humanist, but that of a merchant. I will present here some information from the letter-report of the Savonian Michele da Cuneo, as well as from the notes of Francesco Carletti, another merchant-writer who came to America a hundred years after its discovery - the information that I will need to confirm my theses .
The import of European goods to the Antilles and the American continent was greater than the import of American goods to Europe, and most importantly, it was established much faster. Christopher Columbus, already on his first voyage, discovered that the islands he had just discovered abounded in fish and birds, but were almost completely devoid of mammals. Cereals, for example corn, were not considered at all at that time, and it became clear that it would not be possible to create nutritional conditions in the New World comparable to European ones, “... in my opinion, these are cold people, not sensual, and the reason for this “Perhaps it’s because they don’t eat well...” writes Michele da Cuneo. I will also turn here to some very significant observations for me by Michele da Cuneo, significant also because they contradicted the admiring notes of those who wrote about America from rumors, or those who simply had to praise Columbus’s enterprise. Now I will cite for comparison the letter of Michele da Cuneo and the letter of Angelo Trevisan, who, although he wrote very diligently, was partly based on rumors, and partly copied from the book of Pietro Martire d'Anghier, written by him in Spain.
Angelo Trevisan
This plain is so fertile that in some gardens on the banks of the river numerous vegetables grow - radishes, lettuce, cabbage and rutabaga - and all of them ripen in sixteen days after planting, and melons, watermelons, pumpkins and other similar plants in thirty six days, and yet they taste like nowhere else in the world, and sugar cane ripens in fifteen days. They also say that if you plant a grapevine, it will produce excellent grapes in the second year. And one peasant decided to check whether it was possible to grow wheat here, and, having planted some in early February, he received ripe ears by mid-March. At the same time, the straw of this wheat was thicker, the ears were longer, and the grains were larger than ours or anywhere else.
Michele da Cuneo
On your advice, we brought with us from Spain all kinds of seeds to plant them and see which plants will grow well here and which ones will not. As a result, we discovered that melons, watermelons and pumpkins ripen well here. But other plants - for example, onions, lettuce and other vegetables that are put in salads - tolerate local conditions very poorly - they grow very small. Likewise wheat and beans: in ten days they grew, but immediately began to droop to the ground and soon dried up.
It seems to me that these two passages speak for themselves, but Michele da Cuneo adds another interesting observation: “... although the soil there is excellent and black, they have not yet found a way and time to sow anything, and the reason is the fact is that no one wants to live in those parts.”
What he writes about animals is also worthy of attention: “Since, as has already been said, there are few animals on these islands, Mr. Admiral brought the most necessary from Spain, and we found that pigs, chickens, dogs and cats multiply here with extraordinary speed, especially pigs, for these regions abound in fruits that are useful to them. But cows, horses, sheep and goats here behave the same way as here.”
On his second voyage, Columbus actually brought plants and animals from Europe with him to America, but not because he sought to unify world economy(he didn’t even understand that he was not in Asia), but simply because there was very little nutritious food on these islands. Perhaps fish, but it was considered a lean food, and therefore not very nutritious. In general, it was necessary to provide the Europeans who landed on the Caribbean islands with food similar to that to which they were accustomed, because although the Europeans were more cruel and merciless than the inhabitants of the Caribbean, from time immemorial they stopped practicing cannibalism (there were cases of cannibalism in the Caribbean often revenge on Europeans for their abuses).
Work on the plantation. Engraving from the end of the 18th century.
Having conquered Mexico and Peru, the Europeans encountered a society much more culturally advanced than the Caribbean and Arawaks. Europeans discovered there several species of deer, cats, tapirs and many other animals, such as llamas, alpacas and guanacos. In those same years, Cabral conquered Brazil for the Portuguese, and within a few years the sugar cane brought there, which at first seemed not to want to take root (maybe they simply expected too much from it), was distributed wherever possible. Entire sugar factories were imported from Europe, which, in turn, contributed to the development of the slave trade. This is a striking (and terrifying) example of economic unification. But the example is practically the only one: to it we can only add the cocoa culture and the later coffee culture, and even then the scale here was completely different.
Europeans tried to reproduce in the New World not only the cuisine traditional for their countries, but even its terminology. Pigs, bulls, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, chickens and everything else that was raised in the Old World were brought to America.
The rapid acclimatization of wheat, grapes and olives (in Peru) made it possible to recreate the ancient culinary traditions of the Mediterranean in America, rejecting local traditions with incredible ease. Nevertheless, Europeans mastered some products, such as cocoa, from which they began to make what is now called chocolate, adding cocoa butter itself and sugar from cane brought to America. This also applies to hot red pepper (which was included in almost all dishes of the Spaniards who lived in Mexico), as well as beans, sweet peppers, pineapples and other fruits.
In addition to food, Europeans brought iron and the wheel to America. This increased productivity enormously: the yield of corn, for example, which had previously been grown by plowing and fertilizing, now increased exponentially, as did the yield of potatoes.
The arrival of Europeans in America was a real disaster for the local population. After all, the people who came to them from another continent had not only more effective weapons and a social structure, but also a culture that was completely incomprehensible to the American aborigines. They carried with them diseases that became fatal for local residents, deprived of immune protection, and preached a religion that, although called the religion of love, nevertheless did not imply any tolerance. Moreover, in the name of this religion, people and entire villages were burned, that is, real genocide took place, at least in relation to the Arawaks and Caribs. Two hundred years later, the same fate will befall the peoples of North America. However, Europeans also fell ill with aboriginal diseases that were unusual for them, and then spread them throughout the world.
When, about a hundred years after Michele da Cuneo, Francesco Carletti (Florentine slave trader) visited the New World, the Spaniards were already firmly dominant there with their way of life, slightly mixed, however, with local habits. Most of the products that Carletti discovered there bore European names, sometimes even dialect ones.
When Carletti had to eat corn due to the lack of bread, he wrote: “... everything is very inconvenient here and there is not enough of everything, even the most necessary things for life, especially bread, even the most noble people cannot get it here, but instead For bread they eat what the Indians make from corn, that is, from that grain that we call Turkish grain.” This is eloquent evidence that in Tuscany at the end of the 16th century, corn was well known and was popularly called “Granturco”. From another entry by Carletti we can conclude that potatoes, for example, were still new to Europeans: “...they also eat some roots here, which are called “patatas”; They white and, being boiled or baked in ashes, acquire pleasant taste, almost like our chestnuts, and they can even be eaten instead of bread.”
Carletti also recalls that iron weapons were brought from Europe. He describes in great detail both the purchase of slaves in Africa and their sale to America, listing all the duties and inviting the reader to compare the prices of slaves in Mexico and Peru.
The way Carletti describes the alpaca shows that he was very attentive: he recognized this animal as a relative of the camel, while the Spaniards generally confused it with the ram: “In this country there are animals that carry loads and which the Spaniards, which, according to -I think, very wrongly, they call them carneros, that is, rams, but the Indians call them pacchi, and from what I myself have seen, I can say that they are very similar to small camels, except that they don’t have a hump, but they have legs, the neck and head are exactly like a camel, though the body smaller in size and, accordingly, they are less strong. Their meat is quite edible, and the Indians use their wool to make their own clothing.” I would like to quote Carletti’s book endlessly, but I will still try to summarize all of the above and thereby refute the hypothesis of the so-called “economic project”.
It is clear that when we look from today, that is, five hundred years later, we really want to think that everything that happened in those days on the American continent was part of some kind of project. But in fact, complete unification has not occurred even today. All that happened was that Europeans settled in America, many of them got rich there, some got very rich and began to order not only regular products, but also luxury items familiar to them. Gold and silver, sugar, cocoa, cotton, and slaves were exchanged between Europeans from Europe and Europeans from the Americas.
During the time of Hernán, the Cortesacastil crown prohibited the planting of vineyards and olive trees in "New Castile". The purpose of the ban is obvious, but let’s still look at what F. Carletti writes about this: “... in this country [Mexico] there is no wine, that is, grape wine, or oil. All because the King does not allow and does not want the land to be cultivated there and grapes and olives grown, as in our countries, because he wants wine and oil to be delivered there from Spain, which brings endless profit to his customs service and his vassals " However, this law did not apply to Peru, and there oil and wine were produced and exported, since “... so many grapes were harvested there that they were enough not only to satisfy the needs of the inhabitants of Peru, but also to supply Mexico and other places. .. And there is no need for all this to be brought from Spain, which requires enormous expenses and is very inconvenient, - after all, from one sea to another it is necessary to carry all this on the backs of animals in clay vessels.”
Where this was possible, for example, in Lima, the Spaniards not only reproduced the life they were accustomed to, but even made it more luxurious compared to their previous life in Spain. All the silver mined in Potosí came to Lima, where thousands of Indians worked in the mines and where the Spaniards’ desire to boast of their wealth was manifested even in the clothes of their slaves: “... but on a holiday - an amazing thing - you can see these black women, very proud , in silk clothes, in pearls and gold... But the greatest miracle is the luxury of the clothes in which the wives of the Spaniards themselves are dressed, and in general, everything they do shows their vanity.”
This intoxication with wealth sometimes forced the Spaniards, precisely for reasons of vanity, to demonstrate it with the help of African slaves. A small part of the local residents probably succumbed to this, and, having freed themselves from the Aztec yoke, they immediately came under the yoke of the Europeans. There were, of course, Indians who did not want to obey and hid in the forests or tried to somehow survive, remaining marginalized in this European society of abundance, where it was very expensive to live and where the natives were supposed to do all kinds of work that the Spaniards did not want to do . First of all, this concerned fishing, “... because the Spaniards are terribly afraid of this most despicable activity.” This attitude towards fishing has greatly damaged the gastronomic culture of the countries that were once subordinate to Spain - after all, fish is still not very popular there.
Goods from China and all regions of America, as well as slaves from Angola, were imported to Peru and Mexico. What was brought into Peru was paid for in silver mined in Potosi: “All these goods, as well as those that arrive with the Spanish fleet, are intended to satisfy the needs of the Spaniards themselves, and not the Indians, as many may think. These are not the same times as before, when the Spaniards tried to combine wealth and simplicity: when the first Spaniards came here, they mined local silver and gold in exchange for all sorts of trinkets - bells, hardware products, mirrors, various knives, glass rosaries, etc. And then they simply took possession of all the blessings here, along with the entire country and all the people, by force of arms, and are still enjoying it.”
The Indians only suffered from new diseases that were detrimental to them: “In this country, the population is rapidly decreasing in number... a lot of people are dying... as a result of a long illness, the aborigines are dying; this misfortune befalls only them, and not the Spaniards, while the Spaniards themselves treat the aborigines so badly that they are often themselves to blame for their death... And instead of paying them for their work (after all, they get food for them), the Spaniards They only say bad words to them and treat them badly. Because of this and other inhumane treatment, the Indians are dying and may soon disappear altogether, as has already happened on the island of San Domenico and on several other islands, where many people lived when Columbus discovered them, but now they are deserted and uninhabited.” .
In less than a hundred years, Potosi's mines consumed tens of thousands of people, and disease caused many more to die. The unfortunate Central Americans were treated horribly, deprived not only of their land, but also of their dignity, and they were condemned by the Inquisition for their beliefs. All this forced them to hide in the forests, and they resisted the Spaniards as long as they could, but in the end they were invariably forced to surrender. The Indians of North America, whom fate spared from the invasion of the Spaniards, suffered a worse fate. They, too, were deprived of their land and doomed to starvation by “heroes” like Buffalo Bill, who selflessly devoted himself to the systematic and skillful destruction of bison, which, by the way, was the only wealth of the Indians there and the main source of their food. It took five hundred years for Las Casas's ideas to finally gain some traction, yet abuses and destruction continue to this day: just give the example of the Amazon or Chiapas.
Be that as it may, Europeans introduced America to various types meat, wheel, plow and iron, which somewhat alleviated the hunger and hard work of those Indians who managed to survive the genocide. First of all, it was labor - after all, before that, people had to carry loads on their shoulders along difficult paths. It will take a lot of time before these peoples, who have begun to develop again, can count on real integration and the restoration of their violated dignity.
True economic integration between Europe and America became possible primarily thanks to the industrial revolution - after all, only the invention of refrigerated ships made it possible to bring Argentine meat, American cotton, Canadian grain and even pineapples and bananas to Europe. But after World War II American technology began to arrive in Europe in such quantities that the prerequisites for cultural expansion were created: and only now does it seem appropriate to talk about an attempt at such integration that European culture can turn in its favor.
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