| The second grade version of history I remember says that Columbus was seeking a route to East Asia for the purpose of trade. Once he "discovered" the New World, the goal of the conquistadors did a 180, turning to "God, Gold, and Glory." That much is true, especially if you add "Silver" to the list, even though it does not begin with G. But Mann points out that the Europeans did not drop their goal of trading with China. Not even slightly. In fact, while the Europeans wanted precious metals for themselves, they also needed it to obtain the silk and porcelain they craved from China.
In 1493, China was technologically ahead of Europe, and the Europeans did not have much to trade that the Chinese wanted. Meanwhile, the Europeans only had an overland trade route with China that required them to go through Arab middlemen. They wanted a direct route to Asia. After finding the Americas, they still wanted it. In 1545, the Spanish discovered silver in Potosi, Bolivia. In 1570, they conquered Manila in the Philippines and established a trade with the Chinese there. The Chinese, it turned out, had a voracious appetite silver.
The Chinese need for silver stems from the massive mismanagement of monetary policy within China. Emperor after emperor could not seem to come up with a currency that did the job it was supposed to do. To beat hyperinflation, the Chinese turned to silver as money. Only problem? China doesn't have very much silver. Once the Spanish turned up in the Philippines, their problem was solved. The Spanish had seemingly endless amounts of silver, and an equally endless appetite for Chinese goods.
Bombshell #2 that Mann drops is another subject that should have been covered in history class - at least by high school, if not in second grade. Why was it that the Europeans turned to African slaves in the Americas? Why not European servants? Or indigenous slaves? The reason the indigenous wouldn't work out is obvious: they lacked immunity to European diseases and many died. Compared to a slave, an indentured servant from Europe already speaks the right language and is familiar with European cultures, plus they don't have any incentive to run away or murder their employer, as a slave might do to a master. But, it turned out, the Europeans were just as susceptible as the indigenous to malaria and yellow fever. And Africans, it turned out, were not.
Mann provides evidence that Columbus likely encountered malaria on Hispaniola (brought over by a member of his crew). He goes on to describe in detail how the Jamestown colony was a veritable death trap for British settlers. At the time, England was suffering from one variety of malaria, Plasmodium vivax, in coastal wetland areas, so it's quite likely one of the colonists brought the disease to Virginia. Of some 7000 colonists who arrived between 1607 and 1624, only a little over 1000 remained in 1624, and not because the other 6000 or so survived and returned to England or elsewhere in the Americas. Most died, and usually soon after arriving.
There are two most common varieties of malaria: Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum. The former is less deadly but also less sensitive to temperature; it can survive down to 59F. The latter is more deadly but cannot survive below 66F and is significantly slowed down at 72F. As it turns out, about 97% of people in West and Central Africa are genetically resistant to P. vivax. Some also suffer from sickle cell anemia, which provides partial immunity to P. falciparum, the more deadly type of malaria, although it causes health problems of its own. But some also have some immunity to falciparum malaria due to childhood exposure. Put that all together, and Africans are far less likely to drop dead from malaria than Europeans or native Americans. (Falciparum malaria likely arrived in Virginia in the 1680s from an African slave. p.101)
Perhaps not coincidentally, falciparum malaria became an endemic threat below the Mason-Dixon line but not above it. And, as everyone knows, African slaves were most common below the Mason-Dixon line as well. The Europeans likely did not understand the science behind African immunity to malaria, but they understood the impact on their bottom lines when one plantation's indigenous or European workforce dropped dead and another one's African slaves did not.
Another question to ask is why did the Virginia Company, who financed the Jamestown colony, keep sending colonists to their deaths? In 1610, John Rolfe (the future husband of Pocahontas) imported the Caribbean species of tobacco that was considered superior to the variety already in Virginia. By 1620, it was a major commercial success in England. The first Africans showed up in the colony in the summer of 1619. They were brought by a Dutch pirate ship and purchased by the British to use as labor in the upcoming tobacco harvest. Mann says, the "Africans may not have been slaves - their status is unclear. Nevertheless, they were not volunteers; their purchase was a landmark in the road to slavery." (p. 67)
In addition to the war and disease they brought, the British did something else to screw the Indians. In Mann's words:
In Tsenacomoco [the indigenous empire surrounding Jamestown], one recalls, families traditionally farmed their plots for a few years and then let them go fallow when yields declined. The unplanted land became common hunting or foraging grounds until needed again for farms. Because the fallow lands had already been cleared, the foreigners could readily move in and plant tobacco on them. Unlike the [indigenous], the English didn't let their tobacco fields regenerate after they were depleted. Instead, they turned them into maize fields, and then pasture for cattle and horses. Rather than cycling the land between farm and forest, in other words, the foreigners used it continuously - permanently keeping prime farmland and forage land away from the people of Tsenacomoco, pushing the Indians farther and farther away from the shore as they did. (p. 70-71)
On top of that, the colonists let loose pigs, who became feral and developed a taste for tuckahoe, "the tuber Indians relied upon when their maize harvests failed." (p. 71) Also important was the 1622 importation of honeybees. The Europeans brought them over for honey, having no idea about pollination. However, many European plants that relied on honeybees for pollination might not have thrived if the honeybees had not arrived in the Americas before they did.
Going back to the earlier discussion of slaves, Mann points out that in many parts of the Americas, particularly in malarial zones, there were more Africans than Europeans. And in some settlements, the Europeans simply fled after suffering great losses, leaving their African slaves behind. Central and South America actually had - and has to this day - many "maroon" communities of Africans and/or indigenous who fled or rebelled against the Europeans and set up their own isolated communities.
I feel like I've hardly even touched on the contents of this book, such as the strong link between slavery and sugar, the importance of the discovery of rubber and how rubber production is an ecological disaster right now in 2011, and how the introduction of tobacco to China was so disastrous because the people preferred to grow it instead of crops they could eat, and so much more. But I'm going to just leave it here and you have to read the book to find out the rest. |
