A picture from the Florentine Codex of Nahua people sick with smallpox, brought by the Spanish
Smallpox among the Nahua, Florentine Codex, book 12, 1570s
Marked Hispaniola

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Columbian exchange

After 1492, plants, animals, people and diseases crossed the Atlantic in both directions. Potatoes, maize and tomatoes reached the rest of the world; horses, cattle, wheat and smallpox reached the Americas, where epidemics killed millions.

Date
1492 to about 1700IX · Oceans crossed
Place
Hispaniola · Seville · PotosíThe whole world
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet
Image
Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua artists, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. I1492
  2. IIPotatoes and maize go round the world
  3. IIIHorses on the plains
  4. IVSmallpox and the great dying
  5. VSugar and slavery
  6. VIChocolate, tobacco and chillies

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Christopher Columbus
  • Bartolomé de las Casas
  • Alfred W. Crosby

Objects

  • The Florentine Codex
  • Early herbals with maize

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1492 to 1700. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?