ultimately became such a popular staple food
that future waves of colonists brought pota-
toes with them to North America. Peanuts and
cassava (also called manioc) would become
staple crops in Africa. For Europeans, the
Americas became a major source of cotton,
which had previously been available as a trade
commodity imported from Asia.
In addition to such foods that now provide
basic nutrition to peoples around the world,
the Americas provided many others that add
variety to people’s diets: nuts such as the
brazil nut, cashew, pecan, and walnut; berries
such as the blackberry, blueberry, cranberry,
gooseberry, raspberry, and strawberry; and
many other plants, including the chili pepper,
guava, Jerusalem artichoke, papaya, sugar
maple, sunflower, and vanilla. Two of the most
significant New World crops were inedible but
had great economic impact: By 1800, tobacco
had become one of the most profitable plants
in the world, while in the 20th century chicle
became the basis of the vast market in chew-
ing gum.AFRICA IN THE
NEW WORLD
Much injustice, though, would surround the
introduction of some crops to the New World.
The fortunes made bycultivating and ship-
ping sugar, rice, tobacco, and cotton encour-
aged the growth of a slave trade that changed
the course of history in Africa, as well as
Europe and the Americas.
When Columbus first sailed west in 1492,
the European “slave trade” consisted prima-
rily of Portuguese slavers who had been
enslaving West Africans and shipping them to
sugar-producing areas such as the Canary
Islands and Madeira since the 1440s. In the
Americas, the immediately controversial issue
of slavery at first related to Native peoples of
the Caribbean being shipped against their will
to Spain. Columbus himself was reprimanded
for shipping Carib prisoners for use as slaves.
Within a generation, however, the population
of the Caribbean was so reduced by European
diseases and war that a new labor source was
sought to replace the vanished Arawak and
Carib. Spanish royal opposition to slavery
quickly disappeared after the death of Queen
Isabella in 1506—the first African slaves were
shipped to Spain’s American colonies four
years later.
The practice of slavery existed in the Amer-
icas before Columbus’s arrival, notably in
Maya, Aztec, and Inca societies. The new
European slave trade, however, expanded itThe New World in 1800 B 179
Tobacco, the plant in this 18th-century drawing,
was indigenous to the Americas and became an
important export.(National Archives of Canada)