In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. Up to then, contact between the landmasses of Europe, Africa and Asia on the one side and the Americas on the other had been sporadic and intermittent, with potential Phoenician visits in antiquity and a short Viking stay in the 1000s. But the colonial system Columbus brought with him not only radically changed the face of these newly discovered continents, but altered the rest of the world as well.
What became known as the Columbian exchange saw the large scale transportation of plants and animals from one side of the globe to the other, changing landscapes and forever altering diets and human history. Economic exchanges became truly global, and plants from one continent soon became staple foods elsewhere, fostering explosions in human populations but also creating tragedy when diseases and infections affected crops that had no defenses.
Other tragedies like slavery and civil wars followed first contact, as the wealth of a continent became drained for the profits of a few. 1493 describes the impact that Columbus' so-called discovery had on the world and why we still suffer through the consequences more than 500 years later. Fans of history will appreciate the grand scope of events that led to Columbus, and, more importantly, those that then shaped the world we now life in.
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