1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Mann, Charles C.Summary: Reveals how the voyages of Columbus reintroduced plants and animals that had been separated millions of years earlier, documenting how the ensuing exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas fostered a European rise, decimated imperial China and rendered Manila and Mexico City the center of the world for two centuries.
Booklist Reviews
From the same mold as Mann's popular and critical success, 1491 (2005), this tome surveys up-to-date scholarship on the ramifications of Columbus' voyage. Eschewing condemnation or exaltation, Mann aims to explain all that was exchanged during the centuries in which ships connected continents. Diseases, pests, plants, people, and silver are the major transports into which he delves, and he presents them in their scientific, geographic, economic, and historical aspects. Where academic debates persist (e.g., over how slavery became established in America, about what rendered China ravenous for Spanish silver), Mann advocates his view of the particulars, supported by his on-site reportage from places significant in his accounts, such as Manila and Columbus' first settlement. Shaping a sprawl of information, he emphasizes how homogenization was unleashed by transoceanic trade, as is illustrated most minutely in discussions of the potato, the rubber tree, and mixed-race societies. With its theme of globalization, Mann's survey should interest not only history readers but also those concerned about the environmental and social impacts of contemporary world commerce.
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