cpsnahistory -- c-span history. >> john demos leads a class on the americas in the colonial era. he explores how indian, european, and african populations converged and exchanged germs, food, ideas, and cultural practices. this is about one hour and 20 minutes. prof. demos: yesterday our topic was discovery. today it's going to be plantation. but there is something else that sort of bridges the two that we should not pass over without comment. and the headline for it would be quite simply conquest. discoveryphases of

and beginning phases of plantation involved conquest of a particularly intensive sort. worldy put, the old progressively and massively conquered the new. the most famous part of this process was the spanish conquest of white regions of mexico and wideal -- -- conquest of regions of mexico and central america. along with the destruction of many of mayans, incans, and other destroyed -- and other groupings. historians have wondered how such a small group of leaders could have one out so easily -- could have won out so easily when the numerical odds went up against them. whoez, the spanish leader, conquered most of mexico in the 15 20's had only a few hundred

soldiers, while his chief opponent, the aztec emperor montezuma, had many thousands. the question is raised obviously important, the entire history of the americas what happened differently if the aztecs had succeeded in throwing cortez and his men back into the sea. but it's also a difficult question to answer. what's tragic the whole situation apart piece by pete --let's take the whole situation apart piece by piece. of the spaniards possessed major advantages in military technology. their weapons, their iron swords and armor, and above all, their much moreere effective than aztec arrows and

spears and war clubs. furthermore the spaniards had greater mobility since they were on horseback, while the aztecs were on foot. clear, theece seems spaniards waged an unplanned but utterly devastating kind of bacteriological warfare. nativeed yesterday to american vulnerability to european diseases. i will be talking about that more shortly. the main point now is that decimatedike smallpox the aztec armies, reducing not only their numbers, but also their basic morale. a third piece is pretty clear, the natives of mexico were riddled with internal dissension

and conflict. andaztecs were dominant ruled over a large empire. many of the smaller subject tribes resented aztec domination and came to see the spaniards not so much as conquerors as liberators. cortez was able to pull them in as allies to his own forces. and this was part of the way toward evening up the numbers on each side. the so, the question about spanish conquest remains. you take into account the factors of technological advantage, bacteriological will of somed the groups to help cortez, you still

don't have enough to explain the success of this tiny ragtag army of invaders operating in very unfamiliar territory. h fact, right on the enemy's ome turf with no possibility of outside support work recently. they have gone on to other kinds of explanations, which usually involves some type of cultural or psychological factors. plus or minus, when the history of this begin to the written, the stories involved simply assume that european cultures were superior

--native american cultures mentally and morally superior, smarter, stronger, more resourceful, and daring. in the same historians also assume that this kind of cultural superiority would be reflected on the battlefield in addition to various other ways. but nowadays such assumptions seen much too arrogant, and perhaps even racist. and they seem intellectually superficial as well. more recent scholars of conquest have tried to make a somewhat different case. they still point to cultural factors. but they talk most about misunderstandings and failures in communication. miss ssages that somehow their mark. here are a couple of examples.

as cortez and his army approach the aztec capital, montezuma sent out investors to greet him with a lot of fabulous gifts, silver. cortez introverted this account as a sign of -- interpreted this account is a sign of weakness, a grind persuading him to turn around and leave the country. where is an actual fact it had the opposite result. appetite for more and decreased his desk in increased his determination to stay. at another point montezuma tried to terrify the spaniards into leaving by torturing and executing, and i think cannibalizing some spanish prisoners. thought this only stiffened their resolve, since now they felt honorbound to avenge the

death of their fallen comrades. i imagine they also felt that if they did not succeed, they too would suffer the same terrible fate. were messagesese sent by the indians to the spaniards, which backfired. and completely reversed their intended purpose. also aztec messages were essentially counterproductive. for a simple traditionally aztec armies would get a loud warcry when going into battle to try and frighten the enemy. thisortez tells us practice served to reveal as depositions and enabled the spanish forces to orient themselves more effectively. offact, this newer line

cultural installation goes on even further. a much broader and deeper consideration. its advocates argue that cortez was much more alert and curious and flexible than his aztec enemies. for he was always eager unresponsive to ne informationw. supposedly for instance he was able to exploit the conflicts among different groups of indian, biggie was continually asking about them ahead of time. whereas by contrast, montezuma was quite on curious about the spaniards and therefore was inflexible in meeting the challenges they pose.

ofally there is the issue confronting otherness. something i already raised in yesterday's lecture. now i want to turn that around and pose the same question about indian attitudes toward european others. is some evidence, and we should be careful, some evidence at the mexican indians the europeans as being virtually superhuman. them as there was among andety of ancientmyths godsds about white skinned that would one day come as conquerors, and they may have seen the spaniards in something that way. easily too they could fit certain empirical facts into

this picture. the deadly power of spanish guns, the skills involved in spanish horsemanship, the size and versatility of spanish ships. all, thet important of relative advantage of spaniards in distancing the same but the neck diseases approved seven --epidemic diseases approved so devastating. all of this in short taken escott like elements. -- taken as godlike elements. theyis was the case and concluded that the spaniards , they coulde them be part of their ultimate defeat. please notice my use of the word "if." i am not completely convinced , this whole newer line of

cultural explanation of conquest, it seems to be an perhaps more sophisticated version of the old line. another way in short of declaring european cultural superiority. the aztecs made all the wrong moves. odds, theyst the were beaten. that is pretty much the just of the . -- the gist of the new line. the problem is that most of the new evidence comes from the spaniards. they left records that we can read today. if we look at the same records usefully, and if too we some imagination we can see that they do not always get it

either. let me go back for one more look to those gifts montezuma sent cortez at the upset, and cortez introverted as a sign of weakness -- cortez interpreted as a sign of weakness and fear. from montezuma's standpoint, they were a sign of strength. traditionally aztec culture the leader would express his power through magnificent acts of giftgiving, as if to say, i am much i cani am so easily give away some of what i've got to others. to put it differently, there could be a certain competence, sucha putdown implied in generous gifts of giftgiving. let me repeat, know this is entirely clear or certain that none of this is entirely clear

or certain. -- none of this is entirely clear certain. the entire situation was fraught with miscommunication. there simply had to be a lot of misunderstanding when i side with completely unfamiliar with cultural practices on the other. both sides made mistakes. perhaps it was dumb luck that the spanish mistakes proved to be less costly in the end than those of the indians. good fix onting a trickyole topic seems and difficult. how complete was the conquest anyway? what was its actual extent? how lasting was its impact? how did the concord indian groups across -- conquered

indian groups across america respond to it? take a fascinating and complex area of study and maybe never finally settled. historians in recent years have become generally quite reluctant to see conquered groups as mere victims who are just defeated and helpless to change their fate. instead, many historians nowadays look for ways in which such people resisted and limited the terms of their defeat. and even created opportunities to express their own agency. agency is another one of those trendy terms validate in academia, meaning in one way or another, the ability of any group, even the most downtrodden, to act on its own behalf.

and this approach certainly has some application to indians in face of the conquest. there is no doubt that indian groups could and did resist colonial domination beginning almost from the moment of outfield defeat. sometimes their resistance itself took a military form. there were uprisings and rebellions among the mayans and aztecs of central americas of the 16th century. in fact there were large native rebellions in south america as late as the 19th century. and without stretching things too much, you could even look at the resistance guerrilla movements in some parts of latin america in quite recent times -- el salvador, michael agra -- ia, where, colomb

a treaty was signed last week ending 50 years of conflict. most of these resistance complex composed mainly of ethnically indian people. you can look at them as just the centuriesa, by now, 5 long tradition of resistance to external conquest. there is also no doubt that native people found the 16th century onward created various kinds of indirect resistance. cultural resistance. they would continue to practice their own beliefs and customs. for example, their religious beliefs and customs in secret. they would sort of co-op the practice of christians and use them in their own way. visit latinyou america today, you cannot help but notice the pervasive

presence, not just of indian peoples, but also of indian cultural traditions. they are everywhere. and they definitely suggest some limitations in the conquest process. still after acknowledging these limitations, i think we finally ,ust recognize the immense blow the shock and trauma which the conquest became, or native .eople i want to describe two specific symbols of that trauma. in a great many latin american villages today, the little -- conquest dances as

they are some kind called. these reenactments present the original conquerors the spaniards, as winning all over again. well, the persistence of these rituals, as well as their repetition of the original outcome, suggests a continuing struggle to master the trauma of it all. a struggle that is still incomplete. my second example is that object bring to ourded to meeting today. and alas i seem to have left at home. so i will try briefly to describe it. i will start by describing how i came upon it.

i was traveling in the western highlands of guatemala a number of years ago. my daughter and i were in the town -- has anyone been to guatemala? amazing place. anyway, we were in this city, and in the larger urban market there. i noticed in one of the market stalls, a these of what looked like a very old cloth. -- a piece of what looked like very old cloth. the problem is that the market person who ran the stall, the woman was mayan -- she did not speak any spanish, so we had a hard time communicating. i really wanted to find out what this cloth was. she took me next door and her neighbor said, it is an antique, it is really old. let me describe it. i kept trying to figure it out. functionally it is what they

would call -- discovering the goes over the neck -- it is a covering the goes of the neck and shoulders. it is a small one, so i think it is for a child. row of front there is a figures woven into the cloth that are large and striding forward, kind of massively impressive. they have helmets on their heads, and the expression on their face is terrifying. and on the other side is a group of smaller figures who are essentially reeling back, recoiling as it were, with what looks like terror on their faces. i did not get the point right away. finally struggling with the language, i asked, what is this about? the word that came back was

conquest. this textile is no more than 150 years old. it goes back to the 16th century. that makes it in some ways all the more intriguing. ,50 years after the conquest that whole theme is still being worked out in this specific way. i promised tomorrow after i go home and come back, i will bring that cloth with you. i am embarrassed i don't have it here. but you will see. before i go on, i will stop and see if anyone has any questions. okay. yeah? wondered, how many forces

did the spanish have? i think it is probably several dozen. they had to be brought across the ocean. >> the second person i always wondered about, [indiscernible] what sort of help, is it that they live in a healthy paradise -- [indiscernible] >> i am coming to that and a little bit. >> hang on a minute. they want to bring you a microphone so that your words are recorded for eternity. [laughter] you talked about the cloth when you were there. talking about psychology of

colonization and remembrance of this event -- [indiscernible] -- fear, abandoned cement feeling.-- abandonment >> heiko know much about it. -- i don't know much about it. i don't there are lots of studies along those lines. my quick association to that is another time, the only time i have been to south america. i went to bolivia. that is a country that, as it tells its own history, it is defeat after defeat. first with a conquest, but then with all sorts of other people more recently. museum to the history

and it was an array of concord heroes as it were. reluctant toe generalize too much. i think there is something to it. now. want to move along plantation,ro in on that other word together with discovery as for so long served to encapsulate our understanding of the opening phase of colonial history. it too is a rather big and broad and flexible, then one might even say a blasting word with -- and one might even say a lasting word with all sorts of meeting. for those directly involved, plantation had to do with overseas settlement and colonization.

the removal of a certain number of europeans from their original homes on one side of the version to new homes on the other side. that meaning works well enough for us too. but we need also to consider this business of plantation in a much broader sense, because overseas settlement was just one huge exchange process between the old and the new. call -- what scholars called the columbian exchange. have encountered that term before. and maybe the book which carries the title, and the next few minutes will be my own summary of that book by alfred crosby called " the colombian

exchange." looking back on the years of my life in the history business, it seems to me that book is one of a very small handful of absolute with a whole direction of thinking and studying about early america changed. id'kill to have written a book like that myself. it's now many years in since the book was published, but it is still widely in print and widely used. in some ways it seems remarkably fresh. i will say too looking historiographical he, it was a vanguard from the development of a whole new subfield which did not exist before the 1970's which we refer to as environmental history. we no so much more under that rubric of environmental history. the columbian exchange was possibly the biggest headline in all in my mind about environmental history.

okay, so here is my summary of that situation. it was a process that had many different aspects, and point both ways, not just east to west, but west to east as well. before we must pause take up settlement in colony founding in a narrower sense to try and at least glimpse the full measure of this exchange. i suggest that we see it as having three different levels or dimensions. each one of them representing a significant movement of life forms in one direction or the other, or both together. the first such level, and the one that was in the short run the most decisive, was the exchange of microorganisms, disease, pathogens, everyday

germs. i want now to go into it more fully. the native peoples of the americas found themselves on the receiving end of a massive infusion of microbes, of which their bodies simply had no prior experience, and the guests which -- and against which they had no protection. the problem was nothing less than their genes. they did not have innate biological resistances. i believe the term is "an tigens." in short, they were unprotected against the whole legion of deadly diseases that in europe and in other parts of the world had been built up over many centuries and millennia.

they had diseases of their own, and resistances against those diseases, but nothing to protect them against what the so-called planters from europe would rapidly introduced to the new world. this was true for long-standing killers like smallpox. it was also true for diseases like measles, which for most europeans was a relatively mild infection, usually experienced in childhood without lasting consequences. ever had of you have now an, because there is innoculation for it.

i had measles, but was nowhere -- near death from it, as many indians centuries ago were. the underlying point here is that these two big american continents, bounded as they were by the world's two biggest ocean , had formed a kind of hothouse from a biological point of view. a hothouse in the sense that the inhabitants had lived on unusually isolated and biologically protected existence. the rest of the world, by contrast, had, for a long time, been much more interconnected and diversified, and the mixing of european and asian, and even african peoples, had led to a lot of previous exchange of microorganisms, and therefore to a much wider development of various kinds of immunities and inborn resistances. this is not to say that old world peoples could take epidemic disease in their stride . on the contrary, they periodically sickened and died in numbers that we would consider appalling.

but if a comparison is made between the old world and a new, between europeans and indians, during the. 16th and 17th of advantage is the heavily on the european side. when smallpox broke out, some portion of the population would die. maybe 1/10 or a quarter in some places, but the rest would survive. in america, when smallpox hit an indian community, just about everyone would die. long-established villages would simply disappear within a few weeks or months, and larger groups -- cultures and societies -- could be devastated within just a decade or two. even when some people were scared, there was irreparable damage to the basic fabric of community life --

some people were spared, there was irreparable damage to the basic fabric of community life. crops would be harvested, so there would be famine the next year. survivors were left to face the future without their custom leaders. shamans, traditional priests and medicine men were discredited, because they could not do anything to stop the deadly progress of events. in short, after biological devastation came massive cultural decay and disorganization. all in all i think it was a

defiesophe that almost comprehension. the only thing i can imagine that might be something like it is in our world were -- god for bid -- overtaken by all out nuclear war. remembering just now appeared -- now a period when there was a whole spate of films made about nuclear devastation. there was one in particular that made a very powerful impression on me, and it remained stuck in my mind, called "the day after," which presented an incredibly bleak portrayal of death and destruction, with a few wretched survivors stumbling around helplessly in the midst of a so-called nuclear winter.

i remember when i saw that film, i made on imaginary connection to the contact in early american history, specifically to the situation of indian people in the face of utterly devastating, newly introduced epidemic disease. the parallel is obviously not exact, but perhaps there was something like the same experience of physical helplessness in the face of overwhelming ecological assault, and something like the same collapse of basic life-sustaining morale. we do not now have a lot of detailed primary source evidence about all this, because many of the indian cultures that were most severely affected were nonliterate, and did not have written records. not to mention the fact they were sometimes wiped out so fast so as to leave almost no traces of any kind behind. sometimes, the worst of the

catastrophe would even occur before any europeans actually arrived on the scene, and could report back about it. the microbes, in short, travel out ahead of the people who originally brought them to the new world, passing with lightning like speed from one indian community to another, along trade routes or other traditional lines of contact. that is what happened with the famous kingdom of the incas and the peruvian islands, when the spanish conquistador pisaro, he found that a large part of the native population, including the emperor and his apparent, had

already died within the preceding few years from a massive smallpox epidemic. we do have at least a few contemporary accounts of these horrific events. if we move our focus up north for a moment and come up here to new england, the same process repeated itself essentially a century or so later on. we have a few descriptions. i will present one now. this comes from a reddish traveler in coastal massachusetts -- a british traveler in coastal massachusetts about an epidemic that devastated the indian population. this is just before the arrival of the pilgrims. "they died in heaps as they lay in their houses, and the living that were able to fend for themselves ran away and let them die, and left their carcasses

lying above ground without burial. and the bones around their habitations made such a spectacle after my coming into these parts, that as i traveled in the forest of massachusetts, it seems to me a newfound goal -- newfound golgotha." this is from a book -- this is from mexico, from a kind of chronicle kept by some maya indians. the maya are the source of the best writing we have run any pre-contact culture. "great was the stench of the dead. after our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, after the people fled to the fields, the dogs and vultures devoured the bodies. the mortality was terrible.

your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the king and his brothers and kinsman. so it was that we became orphans. oh my son, so we became when we were yet young. we were born to die." well, did the transfer of microbes also go the other way? was it, in short, truly an exchange? there is one apparent instance of microbial transfer going from west to east, from america back to europe.

there is one, it is important -- it is kind of notorious in its own right. venereal syphilis has long been thought to have originated in the new world, and then been taken to europe in return voyages from the first discovers perhaps even with the crew of columbus himself. please note that i say on -- an apparent transfer. this is open to a lot of controversy among historians of medicine. it is still far from being settled. syphilis has always been a disease that everyone prefers to blame on someone else. [laughter] john demos: in the 16th century's, the italians, the french disease, or as the french call it the italian disease. the british called it either the french or spanish disease.

the poles called it the russian disease. the germans call that the russian disease. middle east is called at the european disease. the japanese call that the chinese disease, and so on. maybe it should have really been called the native american disease. but as i say, the case is not really settled. we do know that american indians had it in pre-columbian times. that much is clear from the analysis of ancient skeletal remains found in gravesites in central america, remains where syphilitic regions left lasting traces on the bones of their victims. we also know that deadly outbreaks of syphilis did spread across europe starting around the year 1500. right at the time, in short, of the first new world contact. for sure, syphilis remained prevalent in europe for centuries after.

the trouble is, you can find other possible ways to explain all of this without going to the idea that the disease was brought into europe by sailors who had previously got it from sleeping around with indian women. some medical historians think, for instance, that syphilis did exist in europe from ancient times, but only in a very mild form. what happened at the start of the 16th century was a kind of spontaneous mutation, an evolutionary change in microorganism itself so as to make syphilitic illness suddenly a lot more serious and deadly than before.

microorganisms do, i guess, sometimes behave like that. they have their own histories apart from the history of their human hosts. i believe that is at least one hypothesis about the aids virus today is that it may have existed in milder or even a benign form for years, and then just recently has turned deadly. we have to leave this as a kind of question. it may be that the europeans were, in fact, sort of paid back for all of the diseases they unwittingly brought to indians by catching syphilis from the indians. then again, there could be a different story altogether. enough on this whole dismal topic of microbial exchange. i want to move now to plant life , where there are also some massive and sweeping trends to consider, and where the exchange itself was more narrowly evened up.

the discovers, the planters, all the european folks involved here wanted to bring with them to the new world their favorite foods and other kinds of staple crops. and the long run, i think i'm going to have to say they succeeded in much of what they aim for along those lines. the three most important parts of the diet of spaniards and other mediterranean peoples in the 16th century, were wheat for making bread and grapes for making wine and olives for making cooking oils and dressings. these foods could not be cultivated in all parts of spanish america.

grapevines and olive trees did not do well in mexico, and wheat cultivation was impossible in the caribbean. eventually, the spanish congress found the right sort of environment for almost every staple food they had known and cared about in the old world. for instance, peru offered an excellent setting for growing wheat, so it became a kind of bread basket for that part of the spanish empire. chile produced wines of high quality. chile was quite similar in climate and topography to spain itself. it is not surprising the transfer of old world agriculture went smoothly there.

in the more exotic, and especially tropic combinations, such as the caribbean and also the coastal low lands of central and south america, other adaptations were made. this is where areas of intense cultivation of one or another cash crop. the crops involved were sometimes native to the americas -- tobacco and cotton, for instance. sometimes, they too were transplants from the old world, such as rice and sugar and coffee. in fact, the list of these transplants becomes very long -- bananas and citrus fruits and garden vegetables of many sorts, cabbage and lettuce, cauliflower and melons, all of them

previously unknown to the western hemisphere, but cultivated across broad swatches of the americas after the early 1500's. as important as all this was, the transfer of plant life that went the other way, from america back to europe, was probably more important. the variety and the number of plant forms traveling in that direction was less, but the ones that went made a truly massive, long-term difference for world history. the big three, so to speak, were potatoes and maize and beans. each of these plants has proved remarkably hearty and adaptable to a wide variety of different environments.

each can be grown very efficiently in terms of food to land ratios, and each provides important nutrients for human. potatoes became an time the most important single food across large parts of europe, especially for peasants and other poor folks who did not have enough land or technological expertise to grow much else. in fact, potatoes are directly linked with one of the biggest demographic turning points in all of european history. the population of europe, which seems to have remained relatively stable before about 1600, began a remarkable expansion soon thereafter. to put a few figures on the outline sheet, you can see that the numbers increase by about 250% between 1650 and 1850, and has continued to rise at nearly the same rate ever since. one of the key causes for this increase, especially in its

early phases, was an expansion of the food base, especially for potato cultivation. it was not only europe that these changes were felt. africa, too, became a major participant in the columbian exchange. i want to put a little extra emphasis on the african case, because we tend to overlook it, preoccupied as we usually are with the dramatic story of early contact between europe and america. the fact is that plant forms from the america were transferred to africa even more widely and rapidly than was the case with europe. corn, first of all, then manioc and yams and sweet potatoes and peanuts and beans and tomatoes and cocoa and squashes of many different kinds. in fact, these have long since become the major food sources for vast areas of equatorial africa. one more thing here -- from the start, the transfer of these food crops to africa was

all mixed up with the slave trade. slave dealers had to start their shifts with enough food to keep their human cargo alive for a lengthy ocean voyage, and foods like maize and yams, when you drive them out, will keep for a very long time, and therefore food that can be precisely useful in that regard. therefore, as early as the middle of the 16th century, fields of corn, yams, and manioc to be found growing all around the major trading station along the african coast. this points to yet another side of the columbian exchange -- the coercive transfer of

millions of human beings from one setting to the other under conditions of lifetime bondage.

slavery, too, belongs under the heading of the columbian exchange. even asia joined in on this process as time moved along. allow me to mention a small personal experience. a number of years ago, i visited nepal with an anthropologist friend of mine, and we toured a number of different villages, sometimes stopping for refreshment in local teahouses, or even in private homes. what turns out to be the favorite offering of food to

guests in nepali countryside? it is popcorn. not exactly like the stuff we buy in plastic bags in the supermarkets, but popcorn all the same, made by heating fresh corn over an open fire. i feel, incidentally, i'm not doing justice to to corn as a factor in modern history. it is amazingly important and wonderful plant. if somehow the world's corn supply were to be taken from us, the international economy would go bust. there would be famine in many countries, and so on. it all started with indian people here in the americas figuring out a few thousand years ago how to domesticate corn that was already growing naturally in the wild. that process of domestication was, in itself, a huge and lastingly important achievement. animals make up still another part of the larger story of the columbian exchange. with them just as with microbes, the traffic was mostly one-way -- from europe to the americas.

pigs and cows and horses were probably the most important parts of this traffic. indians had no domestic animals to speak of before the. -- before the period of discovery. over time, they would adapt each of these european animals to their traditional lifeways. whole cultures were rearranged around horses and horsemanship, for example among our own plains indians of the old west. there is an intriguing comparative contrast here, because even while indians were accepting ending corporate in -- accepting and incorporating the animals from the old world, they were by and large resisting and rejecting platforms -- plant forms from the same source. they could see the benefits that could be gained from using cattle and horses, but they did not see much in a fit in cultivating eggs like wheat or sugar or citrus fruits. sheep and chickens must also be

added to the list here of european transfers to america. finally, some unintended and unwelcome passengers in the early settler ships such as the rat. no rats on this side of the ocean before 1492.

against all this, the americans seem to have given back to europe and the rest of the world only the turkey. i cannot resist inserting another small personal memory here. many years ago, i was a volunteer in west africa, living in a fairly remote village, feeling kind of homesick and wondering what could be done to express, or at least symbolically express, my homeland. a solution was suggested by an african friend. he said "why not get a turkey which can be bought in the local village market, and take it home and fasten it up with the next thanksgiving? so he got a turkey, a live turkey, and kept it to hide our house for several months. we named it sam for uncle sam. by the time thanksgiving came, sam the turkey was more like a pet than a main course, and i

dinner was spoiled by remembering the food on our plates had up until then sort of been gobbling away in the backyard. i think we felt a bit like cannibals. for one whole summer, there was this turkey living with us out in the west african rain forest, and you could even see it as a small reminder of this whole columbian exchange. it remains only to add one obvious last element here, namely the humans. the people involved in the exchange. broadly speaking, this meant europeans coming -- some involuntarily, some eagerly -- to america. it also meant africans coming involuntarily. in fact, one of the most extreme forms of compulsion. we should acknowledge, if only in passing, that hardly any

people went the other way. it is true that at least a few indians were captured and forcibly taken back to europe, and some others were controlled -- cajoled or bribed into going. i think usually for purposes of display, like a freak show deal, or perhaps even part of a traveling circus. the overall number of these individuals, these indian individuals, their total number was miniscule. i want to conclude this discussion by trying for a kind of overview of the whole exchange business, and to grope for its larger significance and meaning. in the largest possible sense, as i commented earlier, the consequences for the european history, the transfer of valuable food crops and the possible link to a huge upward

spike in population, loomed very large indeed. and remember, as well, indirect consequences, which -- of which i spoke yesterday, the