Columbian Exchange

In this episode of the HistoryMaps Podcast, we examine the sweeping global transformations unleashed by the Columbian Exchange and the Atlantic slave trade. Following Columbus's 1492 voyage, the world became irrevocably linked through the movement of crops, animals, people, and diseases. American staples like maize and potatoes revolutionized Old World diets, while smallpox and other diseases devastated Indigenous populations in the Americas. As native labor collapsed, the Atlantic slave trade-driven by European powers and African intermediaries-brought over 12 million enslaved Africans across the ocean, fueling plantation economies and reshaping societies on both sides of the Atlantic.