ABSTRACT
One criticism of history is that historians all too often study it in isolation, failing to take advantage of models and evidence from scholars in other disciplines. This is not a charge that can be laid at the door of Alfred Crosby. His book The Columbian Exchange not only incorporates the results of wide reading in the hard sciences, anthropology and geography, but also stands as one of the foundation stones of the study of environmental history.
In this sense, Crosby's defining work is undoubtedly a fine example of the critical thinking skill of creativity; it comes up with new connections that explain the European success in colonizing the New World more as the product of biological catastrophe (in the shape of the introduction of new diseases) than of the actions of men, and posits that the most important consequences were not political – the establishment of new empires – but cultural and culinary; the population of China tripled, for example, as the result of the introduction of new world crops. Few new hypotheses have proved as stimulating or influential.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
section 1|17 pages
Influences
module 1|4 pages
The Author and the Historical Context
module 2|4 pages
Academic Context
module 3|4 pages
The Problem
module 4|4 pages
The Author’s Contribution
section 2|17 pages
Ideas
module 5|4 pages
Main Ideas
module 6|4 pages
Secondary Ideas
module 7|4 pages
Achievement
module 8|4 pages
Place in the Author’s Work
section 3|17 pages
Impact
module 9|4 pages
The First Responses
module 10|4 pages
The Evolving Debate
module 11|4 pages
Impact and Influence Today
module 12|4 pages
Where Next?