69 pages • 2 hours read
Charles C. Mann1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaPart 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Europe in the World”
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary: “The Agro-Industrial Complex”
Chapter 6 reveals the ways in which the Columbian Exchange affected global agriculture. It opens with the humble potato, a crop as important to human history as maize or sugarcane. The potato was first domesticated in the Andes. Native Andean peoples ate what was once a toxic tuber; they neutralized its toxins by dipping the cooked potato in a mixture of clay and water. Andean societies were highly developed with great highways and agricultural technologies such as raised fields and agricultural terraces which controlled erosion. The Spanish brought potatoes to Europe via the Columbian Exchange. Europeans were dubious at first about potatoes, unfamiliar with a cultivation process utilizing tubers. However, potatoes soon became an important part of European culture.
Growing seasons had become shorter because of the Little Ice Age. Potatoes were an answer to this agricultural difficulty because they could be planted and ready to harvest in a short period of time. Potatoes provided the answer to the Prussian famine of 1744 and improved Norway’s mortality rates. Most famously, potatoes provided sustenance for Ireland, preventing deaths from famine, and contributing to a population growth of 7 million people in two centuries.
As European farming became the norm—planting single crops in large, plowed fields—the need for fertilizer increased. This way of farming depleted soil of nutrients, and guano from the Chincha Islands provided a solution. Traders noticed the Indigenous practice of using guano to improve yields. Harvesting the guano, however, was tedious and disgusting work. Investors tried hiring criminals and shipping enslaved Africans to the Chincha Islands but found little success. Some tricked Chinese workers, telling them they could work as indentured servants in California’s gold fields and shipping them to the Chincha Islands instead. The use of guano led to other fertilizers, including nonorganic, manufactured fertilizers. Before the introduction of maize and potatoes, as well as fertilizers, to Europe, living conditions were extremely poor.
Exporting goods led to the distribution of pests and microorganisms. P. infestans, also known as blight, hitched a ride from Peru to Europe, wiping through European potato crops. After blight was spotted in Ireland in 1845, it took two months to destroy 50% of potato crops, transforming Ireland into a “post-apocalyptic landscape” of starvation (286). Modern agricultural practices which replaced traditional Irish practices that closely resembled the wacho of Andean societies made crops more susceptible to blight. Shipments also brought Murphy’s beetles, also known as the Colorado potato beetle. Insect plagues swept the globe, and many believed they found the answer in manufactured insecticides. These chemicals created an unsustainable system upon which the world is still reliant. As each insect species develops resistance, chemical producers push out new insecticides to replace the old ones.
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary: “Black Gold”
This chapter focuses on a singular plant, the rubber tree. Known for producing a milky substance called latex, rubber trees cover miles of the southern tip of China and Laos. Mann describes visiting rubber tree forests in southern China, struck by the lack of plant variety, animals, and insects. Spanish colonists first encountered rubber while watching Indigenous peoples play games using balls made from rubber. In the Amazon, Indigenous peoples liberally used latex from rubber trees to waterproof their clothing and pipes. Europeans eagerly attempted to create products from latex but found it to be susceptible to temperature change. Charles Goodyear, a complex figure characterized by his propensity for amassing debt, devoted much of his life to figuring out how to create temperature-resistant rubber.
Over time, rubber grew in popularity and price, and supply could not meet demand. Producers developed inhumane and unsustainable practices to capitalize on this highly sought-after product. Standard practice was to cut down the trees to collect as much latex as possible from each plant. This meant that new areas were precious, and the labor-intensive process required many hands—both hired and forced. In a quest to produce a tropical plantation to take advantage of the Columbian Exchange, Henry Alexander Wickham, at the expense of his family and personal life, smuggled seventy thousand rubber-tree seeds from Brazil and shipped them to England.
Mann explores the paradox of the Columbian Exchange: it created ecological and humanitarian disaster while also advancing culture and creating population growth. Just as the transplant of the potato both saved lives and created environmental problems, the introduction of rubber into human life created ecological disaster and advanced human technologies. The introduction of rubber trees to southern China eradicated plant and animal life and contributed to huge environmental changes. At the same time, rubber trees are so necessary that potential leaf blight puts human life at risk, an occurrence that Mann asserts will happen as a continuing result of the Columbian Exchange.
Part 3 Analysis
The Columbian Exchange brought Europe into every corner of the world, solidifying the age of the Homogenocene. As a result, one could travel to China, South America, North America, Ireland, Thailand, or any other corner of the world and find similar crops and similar farming practices. Europe spread its ideas and farming practices and rapid rates, making the global landscape look more and more indistinguishable. The development of rubber transformed China’s forests, destroying wildlife, plants, and insects. In fact, farming across the globe changed as European practices were implemented, having major effects. The agro-industrial complex emphasizes profits through “improved crops, high-intensity fertilizers, and factory-made pesticides” (253). Potatoes traveled across the world from South America through Spanish trade, and Peruvian guano became indispensable in fertilizing large- and small-scale farms. Irish farmers were encouraged to abandon “lazy-beds,” their traditional agricultural method, and introduce monocultural farming, making their crops more likely to succumb to blight and other diseases.
The humanitarian costs of this evolutionary shift are significant. While potatoes ended famine in Europe, dependence upon potatoes for survival became problematic when the Columbian Exchange brought potato blight to European countries. The Irish potato famine caused a million or more fatalities. Mann describes the results of the famine, a consequence of potato blight, as transforming Ireland into a “post-apocalyptic landscape.” Hundreds of thousands of Irish men, women, and children fled the country. Guano brought from the Andes led to the enslavement of Indigenous, Chinese, and African peoples to mine the profitable dung. Guano miners reported working up to twenty hours a day and losing two-thirds of their pay for room and board in dilapidated huts. Many died by suicide. The use of guano across the globe developed a dependence upon fertilizer which continues today.
Mann reveals the interconnectedness of everything because of the Columbian Exchange. Potatoes became so important to European culture that French royalty wore potato blossoms and lavished guests with all-potato meals. Because of the success of the potato in Europe, Europeans were better nourished and less susceptible to disease. The population soared. The Columbian Exchange first introduced potatoes to the world and then took them away by the introduction of insects and disease brought by ships via trade. Agro-industrial practices brought through the exchange created systems in which these insects and diseases could thrive. Because agro-industrial practices ushered in the potato beetle, boll weevil, and many other destructive insects, inorganic pesticides were invented, and farmers were encouraged to use them liberally. The dependence upon pesticides continues; as insects develop tolerance to each pesticide, a new one enters the market to take its place, and the cycle continues.
