The coming of Columbus to the Americas would
inaugurate a series of biological, economic, and ecological transformations unlike
any previously experienced in human history. Much has been written about the
social, cultural, and political transformations which cannot be imagined
without the bridging of the new and old worlds. Yet what Charles Mann argues in
1493, the companion piece to his 1491, is that the previously
underappreciated aspects of what Alfred Crosby termed “the Columbian Exchange” had
further reaching consequences in altering the social-ecological world
co-inhabited by humans and nonhumans. What we would term “globalization” first
took flight in the transportation of different biological entities across the
oceans.
Because we are linked together with the ecology of
our world, human actions must also be viewed ecologically. Such is what Michel
Serres termed the basis for our potential natural contract. Mann examines the
implications of changing social and ecological relationships as they were
transformed by the linking together of the old and the new world. This is a
mighty task to address comprehensively – perhaps more than can be reasonably
expected from one volume. The book is wide-ranging, to say the least, and Mann
introduces some novel and necessary concepts for how we envision both our past
and present. Most incisively the question arises: can we justifiably say that
Europe, Europeans, or European culture dominated one side of the Columbian
Exchange? Would it mean to suggest such a judgment? Too often, it seems, we
assume that Europe expanded to fill the world. What if our assessments are
misguided and the meaning of the West was irrevocably altered through contact?
What would the implications then be? Mann’s book is too discursive to properly
treat any certain aspect of such wide-ranging transformations. Nevertheless, it
synthesizes a great deal of information and provides much food for thought.
