(Re)Mapping the Columbian Exchange. Suggestions for an Updated Cartography

Abstract

Following Christopher Columbus’ voyages and the ensuing colonization of the New World by Europeans, a massive multidirectional transfer of biota, diseases, technology and humans occurred between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. This transfer, known as the Columbian Exchange, is often depicted on maps as a simplified, bidirectional, Atlantic-centred transaction between the Americas and Europe. This paper highlights the shortcomings of such cartographic depictions and posits that they impede effective teaching. We present short histories of sweet potatoes, sugarcane, maize, tomatoes and quinine and use them to illustrate the major cartographic and ideological problems of traditional Columbian Exchange maps, namely constrained geographic scope, chronological compression, non-depiction of the contemporaneous movement of important cultural, technological and biological elements, ethnocentrism and the obscuring of human consequences. Each history is accompanied by a new map of the product’s diffusion, a template for future (re)mappings of the Columbian Exchange.