These books changed the way I see and think about our modern world. They cover what we know today about the American continent before Christopher Columbus arrived in the “New World” and the many ways the entire world was changed forever afterwards. Mostly for my own benefit I will list a bunch of the things I learned and perhaps this will encourage you to read these books as well.
I had heard before about the impact of various pathogens brought over by the Europeans, but I didn’t appreciate the scale. The exact population of the Americas is impossible to know, but there is lots of evidence for as high as 100 million people. These people had to deal with multiple waves of influenza, typhoid, small pox, yellow fever, malaria, etc. and over 50 years this probably killed over 95% of the population.
The consequences of this are mind boggling. The Indians (there doesn’t seem to be a better word for the people that lived in the Americas before Columbus) did controlled burns of the forests for thousands of years and this stopped. Without this burning, the ecosystem completely changed. Huge forests grew, herds of bison formed and the growth may even have been responsible for the mini ice age in the 1600s due to forests capturing so much CO2.
All attempted European settlements failed until the Indians were wiped out. There are so many stories of how ill prepared the settlers were for life in America. It wasn’t until they weren’t in direct competition with the Indians that settlement had a chance of succeeding. Also the weakened Indian tribes often formed alliances with the settlers in their own conflicts. These alliances never worked out for the Indians as the Europeans once established would systematically wipe out the Indians.
The Americas contained ecosystems completely isolated from the rest of the world. As the world became a single global ecosystem there were many winners and losers. America didn’t have worms which is one of the reasons the controlled burns were so critical. Now worms are everywhere and the way they break down biological material has profound consequences for the native plants.
The Americas contained three plants that changed the world: tomatoes, corn and potatoes. It is hard to imagine cuisine today without tomatoes and to think that something as “universal” as spaghetti and tomato sauce is a very recent phenomenon. Corn is the backbone of our industrial agriculture feeding cattle and converted to corn syrup and various other food additives. The potato alone has been attributed to have allowed the human population to grow by billions. Impossible to imagine our society without these plants, not to mention chocolate or tobacco.
The early settlers often remarked at how healthy the Indians looked. Turns out the Indians ate a diet of corn, beans and squash that was nutritionally superior to the European diet of wheat and meat. The Indians didn’t have any pack or domesticated animals. That means all farming was done by hand and all communications had to be walked. The Europeans mistook that lack of visible farms as sign that the land was “unused”. But without oxen to pull plows giant farms aren’t feasible and the Indians had very different forms of farming and hunting. Even in the Amazon, there are strange super fertile regions that contains millions of pottery shards mixed in with the soil. We still don’t understand how this works or was possible.
After the Incas were defeated and enslaved, the Spanish found a silver mine in the Andes that had been mined by the Incas. The ore was very pure and plentiful and soon the silver was moving around the world. It was supposed to go directly back to Spain to fund various wars.Some enterprising Spanish sailors realized they could run the silver across the Pacific, trade with the Chinese for silks and spices, cross the Pacific, Mexico, the Atlantic and make a fortune. Almost two thirds of the silver went to China and even the one third to Spain was enough to trigger massive inflation in both countries. This inflation was the proximate trigger of various regime changes.
The industrial revolution requires three things: steel, oil and rubber. I underappreciated the critical role that rubber plays in all the gaskets, seals and tires that are part of modern machines. The rubber/latex tree is still a core part of our economy and now grows all over the world. Rubber tree farms cause all kinds of ecological disasters and the rubber boom of the late 1800s also caused massive economic upheaval. It is another example of a natural product for which we haven’t been able to make an economical substitute.
I was not aware of the link between malaria and slavery. Malaria was so deadly to Europeans and Indians that settlement in the Americas was almost a death sentence. It was because the Africans had more natural immunity the malaria that drove much of the Atlantic slave trade. Many African slaves were in fact prisoners of war between African tribes and so many slaves had military training. Unsurprisingly many escaped their slavery and formed “free” communities. One incredible example is a state in modern day Brazil that survived for almost 90 years. It was strategically placed on a cliff side with access to water, etc. The populace was trained and they were able to resist many attacks. It is such an amazing story that I hope it becomes a movie some day.
This is just a fraction of the incredible history of the Americas that I am so grateful to have been able to learn about. Highly recommended.