Name: The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course History of Science #16
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T02:55:18.000Z
Duration: 12 min 58 s
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Over the last four episodes, we've examined some of the stories that make up the idea

of a “revolution” in knowledge-making in Europe.

Adverbs of degree

But we can't understand this idea fully, without unpacking another one—the so called

This encompasses a lot of events that happened from 1400 through the 1600s and were driven

in part by new ideas about knowledge-making.

And the span of history that we've been taught as the “Age of Exploration” might

be better described as an exchange—the greatest exchange of people, plants, animals, diseases,

Why did European explorers seek out the New

Well for one thing, medieval European states had been too small and poor to support large

For another, they didn't have the technologies that other Eurasian cultures had.

By 1400, the compass and gunpowder had both made it from China to Europe, changing armies

In time, political power became more centralized, and states started to compete for things like

land and precious metals, and for valuable trade routes to the rich empires of China and India.

By the late 1400s, two European states in

particular began to use their massive naval might to search out trade advantages.

In 1488, Portuguese explorers became the first Europeans to sail along the coast of sub-Saharan

And in 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed to the Indian Ocean from Europe

Interesting thing is, Portuguese ships were smaller than Chinese ships at the time.

Chinese explorer Zheng He, for example, explored parts of Asia and Africa from 1405 to 1433,

with huge, four-tiered ships carrying hundreds of sailors.

But there was also a philosophical difference in exploration between the two states: most

people living around the Indian Ocean respected overlapping political boundaries.

But European states didn't recognize other states' claims to their own territories.

So it's not that the Europeans had the best ships; the difference was in how they used

The most famous European explorer, of course, set sail on behalf of Spain in—you know

the year—1492, changing the world forever.

In fact, historians call the widespread movement of people, plants, animals, germs, ideas,

and technologies between the Americas and Eurasia after 1492 “the Columbian Exchange.”

You can learn more about Christopher Columbus in a lot of other places.

For us, what matters is how knowledge moved due to the Columbian Exchange.

Now, what role did scientific thought play in these voyages?

Gunpowder and the compass were not new in 1400.

These were just relatively new to Europe.

It seems that, in this case, technology and politics spurred science.

The discipline of geography, for example, became important when it came to settling

political disputes about who had claimed what already-inhabited land.

The Portuguese crown spent tons of resources on making maps of lands that were new to them.

And the Spanish government in Seville sponsored the House of Trade in 1503 to make master-maps.

In Spain, Philip II founded the Academy of Mathematics in Madrid in 1582, where young

nobles could learn cosmography, navigation, military engineering, and what were called

“the occult sciences”: kinda like "The Citadel" from Game of Thrones crossed with Hogwarts from Harry Potter.

And, in the 1570s, Philip II sent out a scientific expedition to the Americas under Francisco

Hernández to collect geographical, botanical, and medical information.

The later colonial powers—the English, Dutch, and French—followed the Portuguese and Spanish

pattern of state support for science, focused on geography and botany.

But let's be real: the “voyages of discovery” weren't full of scientists boldly creating

These weren't nerds like Galileo and Copernicus obsessing over truth.

European powers -used knowledge creation as another tool to fight proxy wars between each

By 1800, Europeans controlled 35% of land and resources on earth.

It was as though not one but five Roman Empires had set off on a quest for world domination.

So, what kinds of things were exchanged as Europeans sailed farther?

For one, European explorers looked for new plant specimens that might have agricultural

They were also interested in animals, but plants were more important.

Few animal species in the Americas had been domesticated.

Americans did carefully manage things like ducks and vultures.

But Europeans were amazed that Americans got anything done without cows and horses.

On the flip side, edible plant diversity in the Americas matched, if not blew away, that

Can you imagine a world without corn, potatoes,

tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers, beans, tobacco, pumpkins, chocolate, avocadoes, vanilla,

What did Eurasians eat before the Columbian Exchange?

In fact, there was so much knowledge about plants coming back to European capitals that

old ideas about living things quickly started to look… old.

A few keen observers started to compare different plants, part by part.

The name to remember is Swedish natural philosopher Carl Linnaeus, who came up with a rational

system for classifying plants based on their sex parts.

How did plant specimens travel from the New World to Europe?

At first, the English, French, and Dutch relied on the Spanish and Portuguese for access.

They quickly realized that it would be more economical to set up their own exploratory

operations, and then their own colonies, including slave-powered mines and plantations.

For example, a Puritan “company of adventurers” called the Providence Island Company left

England in 1633 for the eastern coast of what is now Honduras and Nicaragua.

They went with a specific plan to find useful plants that they could sell or turn into new

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The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course History of Science #16

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