What do you think?
Rate this book
Germs, Seeds and Animals:
Alfred Crosby almost alone redirected the attention of historians to ecological issues that were important precisely because they were global. In doing so, he answered those who believed that world history had become impossible as a consequence of the post-war proliferation of new historical specialities, including not only ecological history but also new social histories, areas studies, histories of mentalities and popular cultures, and studies of minorities, majorities, and ethnic groups. In the introduction to this volume, Professor Crosby recounts an intellectual path to ecological history that might stand as a rationale for world history in general. He simply decided to study the most pervasive and important aspects of human experience. By focusing on human universals like death and disease, his studies highlight the epidemic rather than the epiphenomenal.
- GenresHistory
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
150 people want to read
About the author
Alfred W. Crosby
29 books80 followersAlfred W. Crosby Jr. was Professor Emeritus of History, Geography, and American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard University and University of Helsinki.
Crosby studied at Harvard University and Boston University. He was an inter-disciplinary researcher who combined the fields of history, geography, biology and medicine. Recognizing the majority of modern-day wealth is located in Europe and the Neo-Europes, Crosby set out to investigate what historical causes are behind the disparity, investigating the biological factors that contributed to the success of Europeans in their quest to conquer the world. One of the important themes of his work was how epidemics affected the history of mankind.
As early as the 1970s, he was able to understand the impact of the 1918 flu pandemic on world history. According to Hal Rothman, a Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Crosby “added biology to the process of human exploration, coming up with explanations for events as diverse as Cortés’ conquest of Mexico and the fall of the Inca empire that made vital use of the physical essence of humanity. In 1972 he created the term "Columbian Exchange" in his book of the same name. The term has become popular among historians and journalists, such as Charles C. Mann, whose 2011 book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created expands and updates Crosby's original work. Crosby was also interested in the history of science and technology.
He wrote several books on this subject, dealing with the history of quantification, of projectile technology, and the history of the use of energy. He said that the study of history also made him a researcher of the future. He was very much interested in how humankind could make the future a better one. He has taught at Washington State University, Yale University, the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand, and twice at the University of Helsinki as a Fulbright Bicentennial Professor, most recently in 1997–98. He was appointed an academician by Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. He retired from the chair of Professor Emeritus of History, Geography, and American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. Crosby’s hobbies included birdwatching and jazz, on which topic he could lecture with great expertise. He was married to linguist Frances Karttunen.
Crosby studied at Harvard University and Boston University. He was an inter-disciplinary researcher who combined the fields of history, geography, biology and medicine. Recognizing the majority of modern-day wealth is located in Europe and the Neo-Europes, Crosby set out to investigate what historical causes are behind the disparity, investigating the biological factors that contributed to the success of Europeans in their quest to conquer the world. One of the important themes of his work was how epidemics affected the history of mankind.
As early as the 1970s, he was able to understand the impact of the 1918 flu pandemic on world history. According to Hal Rothman, a Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Crosby “added biology to the process of human exploration, coming up with explanations for events as diverse as Cortés’ conquest of Mexico and the fall of the Inca empire that made vital use of the physical essence of humanity. In 1972 he created the term "Columbian Exchange" in his book of the same name. The term has become popular among historians and journalists, such as Charles C. Mann, whose 2011 book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created expands and updates Crosby's original work. Crosby was also interested in the history of science and technology.
He wrote several books on this subject, dealing with the history of quantification, of projectile technology, and the history of the use of energy. He said that the study of history also made him a researcher of the future. He was very much interested in how humankind could make the future a better one. He has taught at Washington State University, Yale University, the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand, and twice at the University of Helsinki as a Fulbright Bicentennial Professor, most recently in 1997–98. He was appointed an academician by Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. He retired from the chair of Professor Emeritus of History, Geography, and American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. Crosby’s hobbies included birdwatching and jazz, on which topic he could lecture with great expertise. He was married to linguist Frances Karttunen.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 10, 2018
In history classes, students struggle to memorize and regurgitate the names, dates, and places essential to our glorious myth — the sacred journey that brought us to the miracle of today. For many, this parade of dusty factoids is the story they will believe for the rest of their days. What I was taught about Christopher Columbus resembled a kindergarten fairy tale — the courageous hero succeeds. Hooray!
The last 50+ years have released a flash flood of important new information. Our planet is being disemboweled by seven-point-something billion humans racing down a hell-bound path for no good reason. Alfred Crosby was an important pioneer in the field of environmental history. In his book, Germs, Seeds, and Animals, Crosby described how the Columbus voyage of 1492 detonated a global ecological catastrophe. It was a monumental event in the human saga, something like an asteroid strike.
When the Pilgrims washed ashore at Plymouth Rock in 1620, they were not immediately exterminated by Wampanoag warriors, because the tribe was nearly extinct. Smallpox got there first. Pilgrims found an empty village surrounded by cornfields full of weeds. During the first winter, half of the colonists died from malnutrition, exhaustion, and exposure. They knew almost nothing about surviving in a foreign ecosystem. Pilgrims struggled to survive on shellfish, and on corn (maize) that was bought or stolen from the Indians. It wasn’t until 1624 that they figured out how to live on their own.
Native Americans were spooked by the freaky aliens. Everyone around them was dead or dying, while none of the aliens were molested by evil spirits. Deadly diseases, especially smallpox, spread from tribe to tribe, across vast regions, well in advance of explorers and settlers. Natives could have easily exterminated the Pilgrims, but they were fearful of their horrific dark powers. Without smallpox, history could have taken a radically different path.
The Pilgrims came from a densely populated civilization that had transformed its thriving rainforest into fields, pastures, and disease-ridden cities. In Europe, smallpox had raged for centuries. Around 1500, the virus mutated into a far more virulent form, killing many children in cities near the Atlantic coast of Europe. Folks who survived to adulthood were those lucky to have unusually robust immune systems. It was these folks who carried smallpox to the New World in 1518, where it killed up to half of those infected. The virus could unintentionally be transported via a trunk of clothing. Human-to-human contact was not needed.
In an era of long distance sea travel, ships often returned to Europe with new and exciting diseases from every corner of the Old World. Many deadly diseases originated in domesticated animals, with whom Old World people often lived in close contact. A number of livestock pathogens were able to transfer to human hosts. These germs especially loved infecting dense crowds in filthy cities. Epidemics of assorted diseases bounced from region to region on a regular basis. Native Americans, who did not enslave herds of animals, had only two indigenous pathogens, Chagas’s disease and Carrion’s disease.
Spaniards documented the die-off in Mesoamerica (Aztecs) and Peru (Incas), where 90 percent of the Native Americans were dead within a century. In these cooler highland regions, folks died from temperate diseases, primarily smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and pneumonia. In the hot, wet coastal lowlands, people not only died from temperate diseases, but also tropical diseases, like malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, and amoebic dysentery. Around 1590, an observer estimated that 29 of every 30 lowland natives had perished from disease. As a special bonus, Europeans also brought chicken pox, typhus, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, cholera, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and influenza.
To this day, Old World diseases continue killing natives who come into contact with outsiders for the first time — missionaries, loggers, miners, etc. By far, the primary reason Europeans conquered the Americas was disease. I was surprised to learn that Europeans did not intend to exterminate the natives and replace them with settlers. Colonists suffered from get rich quick fever, and the fast path to wealth was to control and exploit multitudes of Indians.
Unfortunately, the native workers rapidly died from disease, malnutrition, and abuse. This labor shortage inspired a rapid expansion of the highly profitable slave trade. Africans were less vulnerable to the tropical diseases, for which white folks were helpless sitting ducks. At least ten million slaves arrived alive in America. Millions more perished before setting foot ashore. Once here, their death rate was higher than births, which kept the slave industry booming.
Old World livestock thrived in the New World. The new ecosystem had abundant vegetation, was free from Old World pathogens and parasites, and wild predators were not a serious threat. Animals grew faster and larger, and had more offspring. On the pampa of South America, where few humans lived, feral horses and cattle multiplied into huge populations — they had no buffalo to compete with.
Corn (maize) was a super-productive crop. Sowing a bushel of wheat might yield 12 to 20 bushels at harvest time. A bushel of corn might yield 200 bushels or more. Corn could be grown using simple tools and unskilled labor. It could be grown on marginal soils, required minimal weeding, and could survive several frosts. It stored well. Husks discouraged losses to birds. When mature, ears could be left on the stalk and harvested later, without risk of spoilage.
Settlers in America were far better nourished than the sickly mobs of Europe. Most lived in rural areas, in low density, which discouraged epidemics. They bred like crazy, and many of their kiddies survived to adulthood. Folks had access to abundant land for expansion. By 1775, the U.S. population was doubling every 25 years. In 1790, half of Americans were younger than 16 years old.
Meanwhile, Europeans took corn, potatoes, and treasure back to the Old World, where they blindsided almost everything. Corn became a staple in southern Europe. For many folks, it was their primary food. Because it lacks the essential nutrient niacin, many poor folks came down with pellagra. Around the world, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands died from pellagra. The simple cure was a slightly better diet.
Potatoes were widely adopted in northern Europe, where they produced far more nutrients per area than traditional grain crops, which were vulnerable to molds, fungus, and cool weather. A family of five could survive on 5 acres (2 ha) of grain, or just 1.5 acres of potatoes. Folks remained healthy on a daily diet of 11 pounds (5 kg) of potatoes and some milk (another source said 10 pounds). Potatoes contained vitamin C, so far fewer died from scurvy during winter months. Farmers could raise them on marginal soils, using only a spade. In wartime, invaders could easily steal stored grain, but buried spuds were often too much effort to swipe, so fewer farmers starved.
Gold, silver, and gems were hauled back to Europe. This provided a flash flood of new wealth, which greatly expanded the global economy. Manufactured stuff went to the New World, and resources sailed back to Europe. The wealth surge provided the capital needed to jump start the Industrial Revolution.
Because potatoes and corn were highly productive, less cropland was needed. So, many peasants were forced off the land, to make room for sheep, which generated more profit. Mobs of displaced people migrated into cities, where they provided cheap labor for industry. After the 1666 epidemic in London, the plague largely went dormant in Europe. This spurred population growth, which intensified urban filth, and provided ideal conditions for the cholera epidemic that arrived in 1829.
Aided by potatoes and corn, both Europe and America were able to harvest far more food. People were better nourished, so child mortality dropped. The population of Europe leaped from 80 million in 1492, to 180 million in 1800, and 390 million in 1900. Europe was bursting with people, and many migrated to colonies — Australia, New Zealand, southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada, and the U.S. Bottom line, world population leaped from 450 million in 1500 to 7.5 billion in 2018.
Crosby concluded that Columbus sparked “the greatest demographic catastrophe in the human record.” “The encounter may have been the most influential event on this planet since the retreat of the continental glaciers.” “Calories can make as much history as cannons — more in the long run.”
Other Crosby books I’ve reviewed are Children of the Sun, and Throwing Fire.
The last 50+ years have released a flash flood of important new information. Our planet is being disemboweled by seven-point-something billion humans racing down a hell-bound path for no good reason. Alfred Crosby was an important pioneer in the field of environmental history. In his book, Germs, Seeds, and Animals, Crosby described how the Columbus voyage of 1492 detonated a global ecological catastrophe. It was a monumental event in the human saga, something like an asteroid strike.
When the Pilgrims washed ashore at Plymouth Rock in 1620, they were not immediately exterminated by Wampanoag warriors, because the tribe was nearly extinct. Smallpox got there first. Pilgrims found an empty village surrounded by cornfields full of weeds. During the first winter, half of the colonists died from malnutrition, exhaustion, and exposure. They knew almost nothing about surviving in a foreign ecosystem. Pilgrims struggled to survive on shellfish, and on corn (maize) that was bought or stolen from the Indians. It wasn’t until 1624 that they figured out how to live on their own.
Native Americans were spooked by the freaky aliens. Everyone around them was dead or dying, while none of the aliens were molested by evil spirits. Deadly diseases, especially smallpox, spread from tribe to tribe, across vast regions, well in advance of explorers and settlers. Natives could have easily exterminated the Pilgrims, but they were fearful of their horrific dark powers. Without smallpox, history could have taken a radically different path.
The Pilgrims came from a densely populated civilization that had transformed its thriving rainforest into fields, pastures, and disease-ridden cities. In Europe, smallpox had raged for centuries. Around 1500, the virus mutated into a far more virulent form, killing many children in cities near the Atlantic coast of Europe. Folks who survived to adulthood were those lucky to have unusually robust immune systems. It was these folks who carried smallpox to the New World in 1518, where it killed up to half of those infected. The virus could unintentionally be transported via a trunk of clothing. Human-to-human contact was not needed.
In an era of long distance sea travel, ships often returned to Europe with new and exciting diseases from every corner of the Old World. Many deadly diseases originated in domesticated animals, with whom Old World people often lived in close contact. A number of livestock pathogens were able to transfer to human hosts. These germs especially loved infecting dense crowds in filthy cities. Epidemics of assorted diseases bounced from region to region on a regular basis. Native Americans, who did not enslave herds of animals, had only two indigenous pathogens, Chagas’s disease and Carrion’s disease.
Spaniards documented the die-off in Mesoamerica (Aztecs) and Peru (Incas), where 90 percent of the Native Americans were dead within a century. In these cooler highland regions, folks died from temperate diseases, primarily smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and pneumonia. In the hot, wet coastal lowlands, people not only died from temperate diseases, but also tropical diseases, like malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, and amoebic dysentery. Around 1590, an observer estimated that 29 of every 30 lowland natives had perished from disease. As a special bonus, Europeans also brought chicken pox, typhus, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, cholera, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and influenza.
To this day, Old World diseases continue killing natives who come into contact with outsiders for the first time — missionaries, loggers, miners, etc. By far, the primary reason Europeans conquered the Americas was disease. I was surprised to learn that Europeans did not intend to exterminate the natives and replace them with settlers. Colonists suffered from get rich quick fever, and the fast path to wealth was to control and exploit multitudes of Indians.
Unfortunately, the native workers rapidly died from disease, malnutrition, and abuse. This labor shortage inspired a rapid expansion of the highly profitable slave trade. Africans were less vulnerable to the tropical diseases, for which white folks were helpless sitting ducks. At least ten million slaves arrived alive in America. Millions more perished before setting foot ashore. Once here, their death rate was higher than births, which kept the slave industry booming.
Old World livestock thrived in the New World. The new ecosystem had abundant vegetation, was free from Old World pathogens and parasites, and wild predators were not a serious threat. Animals grew faster and larger, and had more offspring. On the pampa of South America, where few humans lived, feral horses and cattle multiplied into huge populations — they had no buffalo to compete with.
Corn (maize) was a super-productive crop. Sowing a bushel of wheat might yield 12 to 20 bushels at harvest time. A bushel of corn might yield 200 bushels or more. Corn could be grown using simple tools and unskilled labor. It could be grown on marginal soils, required minimal weeding, and could survive several frosts. It stored well. Husks discouraged losses to birds. When mature, ears could be left on the stalk and harvested later, without risk of spoilage.
Settlers in America were far better nourished than the sickly mobs of Europe. Most lived in rural areas, in low density, which discouraged epidemics. They bred like crazy, and many of their kiddies survived to adulthood. Folks had access to abundant land for expansion. By 1775, the U.S. population was doubling every 25 years. In 1790, half of Americans were younger than 16 years old.
Meanwhile, Europeans took corn, potatoes, and treasure back to the Old World, where they blindsided almost everything. Corn became a staple in southern Europe. For many folks, it was their primary food. Because it lacks the essential nutrient niacin, many poor folks came down with pellagra. Around the world, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands died from pellagra. The simple cure was a slightly better diet.
Potatoes were widely adopted in northern Europe, where they produced far more nutrients per area than traditional grain crops, which were vulnerable to molds, fungus, and cool weather. A family of five could survive on 5 acres (2 ha) of grain, or just 1.5 acres of potatoes. Folks remained healthy on a daily diet of 11 pounds (5 kg) of potatoes and some milk (another source said 10 pounds). Potatoes contained vitamin C, so far fewer died from scurvy during winter months. Farmers could raise them on marginal soils, using only a spade. In wartime, invaders could easily steal stored grain, but buried spuds were often too much effort to swipe, so fewer farmers starved.
Gold, silver, and gems were hauled back to Europe. This provided a flash flood of new wealth, which greatly expanded the global economy. Manufactured stuff went to the New World, and resources sailed back to Europe. The wealth surge provided the capital needed to jump start the Industrial Revolution.
Because potatoes and corn were highly productive, less cropland was needed. So, many peasants were forced off the land, to make room for sheep, which generated more profit. Mobs of displaced people migrated into cities, where they provided cheap labor for industry. After the 1666 epidemic in London, the plague largely went dormant in Europe. This spurred population growth, which intensified urban filth, and provided ideal conditions for the cholera epidemic that arrived in 1829.
Aided by potatoes and corn, both Europe and America were able to harvest far more food. People were better nourished, so child mortality dropped. The population of Europe leaped from 80 million in 1492, to 180 million in 1800, and 390 million in 1900. Europe was bursting with people, and many migrated to colonies — Australia, New Zealand, southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada, and the U.S. Bottom line, world population leaped from 450 million in 1500 to 7.5 billion in 2018.
Crosby concluded that Columbus sparked “the greatest demographic catastrophe in the human record.” “The encounter may have been the most influential event on this planet since the retreat of the continental glaciers.” “Calories can make as much history as cannons — more in the long run.”
Other Crosby books I’ve reviewed are Children of the Sun, and Throwing Fire.
August 26, 2016
A collection of fragments, works in progress and various published articles that followed /The Columbian Exchange/, and preceded or immediately followed /Ecological Imperialism/. The articles here add little to what is said more completely in those volumes. The influence of the articles on Jared Diamond's /Guns, Germs and Steel/ is unmistakable. The book is worth picking up for the introduction, which I believe was not published elsewhere. Subtitled 'Nerds versus Twits', Crosby takes up the long-recognized divide between the 'hard' and 'soft' sciences and more specifically between biology and history. With it comes his evolution of understanding of how the natural world influences human behavior and how human behavior shapes the natural world. However, if you've read /The Columbian Exchange/, /Ecological Imperialism/, or Charles Mann's /1493/, there is little to be gained from the rest of the book.
September 11, 2014
The articles themselves were well-argued and interesting, and probably warrant 4 stars. But the collection felt thrown together lazily. A lot of these articles have significant overlap, and some of it was essentially repetitive.
If I were assigning it to students of disease history, I'd probably pick the first chapter on Columbus, as the foundational reading, "God ... would destroy them, and give their country to another people...", which discussed the Encounter in New England, and "Hawaiian depopulation as a model for the Amerindian experience," which was an excellent example of argument by analogy. Those are good. But the overall series doesn't cohere well.
If I were assigning it to students of disease history, I'd probably pick the first chapter on Columbus, as the foundational reading, "God ... would destroy them, and give their country to another people...", which discussed the Encounter in New England, and "Hawaiian depopulation as a model for the Amerindian experience," which was an excellent example of argument by analogy. Those are good. But the overall series doesn't cohere well.
March 23, 2014
I am using this book as a textbook for an Honors class I am teaching this spring quarter called "Ecological Imperialism." This book is a series of articles arranged in chapters focusing on the post-Columbian ecological disasters that happened when Europeans stumbled into the New World with all their diseases and animals. I will follow these readings with having the student do field work in vacant university fields to identify what weeds are growing there.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews