MENUS: The Columbian Culinary Exchange

THE COLUMBIAN CULINARY EXCHANGE

Born in Genoa in 1451, Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator who made four seminal voyages across the Atlantic Ocean hoping to discover a western sea passage to the East Indies. Instead, in 1492, he discovered America, opening the way for European exploration and colonization.

Columbus went to sea at a young age and, as a sailor, traveled widely. He was self educated, but well read. He lobbied several European monarchs to support his plan to seek a shorter route to Asia before Spanish Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand I agreed to sponsor the journey west. After a stop in the Canary Islands for restocking and repairs (The Canary Islands, while geographically part of the African continent, are legally recognized as part of Spain. During the Spanish Empire, they were the main stopover for Spanish galleons enroute to America because of the favorable easterly winds), his fleet of three ships, the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria, set off on a five week voyage that ended on the shore of a small island in the Bahamas.

The only direct evidence of contact between foreigners and native American peoples before the arrival of Columbus is a Viking settlement site in Newfoundland believed to be from about A.D. 1000; nevertheless, it is possible, and perhaps likely, that pre-Columbian contact with other voyaging cultures took place.

History suggests that these early encounters did little to change life in either the old or new worlds, while the Columbus voyages of discovery transformed them both. When Columbus first set foot on new world soil in the Bahamas in 1492 and claimed it for the Spanish crown, he was in search of a short route to Asia. Hopeful that easier access to Asian silks and spices would make him a rich man, he was slow to recognize that his landfall was not the East Indies.

His description of his first encounter with the Taino villagers who helped him salvage stores and equipment from the Santa Maria, which had foundered on a shoal, appeared friendly. He wrote, “they believed very firmly that I, with these ships and crews, came from the sky…. and in such opinion, they received me at every place where I landed, after they lost their terror. They are an affectionate people and without covetousness and apt for anything, which I certify. I believe there is no better people or land in the world. They love their neighbors as themselves and have the sweetest speech in the world and gentle, and are always smiling.”

Columbus returned to the Caribbean from Europe in 1493 with 1500 men and 17 ships laden with supplies and livestock, including horses, which would later revolutionize the lives of native people. His ark was unloaded on the island of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), which quickly became a temporary center of Spain’s new world empire. Initial explorations, or entradas, into North and South America were launched.

Despite his first glowing description of the Taino people, Columbus was accused by his contemporaries of significant brutality when he became a colonial governor. Some estimate that a third or more of natives were dead, from disease, warfare or harsh enslavement, by the end of his first two years in office. The indigenous population of the Americas overall is thought to have been reduced by 90% in the century after Columbus’s arrival as a result of disease, especially small pox, forced labor in the mines or combat. In his multi-volume biography of Columbus, Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison states that “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.” In recognition of this dismal history, in 2022 American President Joe Biden officially replaced the federal holiday Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, although as of this writing in 2023 fourteen states still do not recognize the change.

Obsessed with a desire to find a short route to the Orient, Columbus apparently went to his grave at the age of 54 convinced he had succeeded. Others disagreed. Only 15 years after Columbus first crossed the Atlantic German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller published a map showing two new continents. He called the southern one “America,” after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, a name that other map makers soon applied to both land masses. While the name “Columbia” might have been a more just choice for this supposedly new world, some argue that Columbus was denied this honor simply because he refused to recognize that a new world had been discovered. And the name that Columbus gave native people, “indios,” reinforced that refusal.

Historian Alfred W. Crosby writes that “The Colombian exchange of peoples, plants, products, diseases and ideas (was) the most important event in human history since the end of the Ice Age and in natural history since the end of the Pleistocene era.” In 1521 Hernan Cortez conquered the Aztec empire and, twelve years later, Francisco Pizarro invaded Peru and conquered the Inca; both expeditions sent gold, silver and jewels back to Spain, creating what geographer D.W. Meinig called “the real discovery of America.”

Smithsonian curator Herman J. Viola writes in After Columbus: the Smithsonian Chronicle of the North American Indians that “Spain’s support of Columbus’ quest paid off handsomely enough to restructure the economy of Europe and establish an era of overseas empires.” He continues to note that “In just over a century, Spain carved out a new world empire that extended from the Rio Grande in the north to the Rio de la Plata in the south and from La Florida in the east to California in the west – a domain 8,000 miles in length and 5,000 miles in breadth.”