“Rather, it strengthened the economic case for it.” “Malaria did not cause slavery,” he stresses. One of Mann’s most provocative theories is that New World slavery had as much to do with a pair of tiny organisms-the parasitic protozoan that causes malaria, and its mosquito host-as any plantation society. Nor were human beings, whether farmers or fighters, the sole agents of this exchange. It wasn’t just a case of conquistadors leaving Spain and gold flowing back: within decades, corn had become a staple crop in Africa, potatoes in Ireland, and yams in China, feeding millions-and sometimes destroying them when harvests failed, as they did in Ireland during the 1840s.

Yes, Europeans fought for and won hegemony over much of North and South America, but the unintended consequences of their arrival soon spread around the globe. Mann prefers to refer to this ongoing process as the Columbian Exchange, in recognition of the fact that history is not a one-way process of colonization and exploitation. In fact, it’s nothing less than an attempt to explain why things are the way they are, beginning with the notion that globalization, to use our contemporary term, started when the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria anchored off the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Mann modestly claims only that 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created is the follow-up to his earlier 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, but it’s a bigger book, with a broader focus.

If you ever wanted to know how the world became the world, here’s a grand place to start.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Createdīy Charles C.

1492 book mann