• 1493

  • Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
  • By: Charles C. Mann
  • Narrated by: Robertson Dean
  • Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (2,090 ratings)

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1493  By  cover art

1493

By: Charles C. Mann
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
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Publisher's summary

From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

©2011 Charles C. Mann (P)2011 Random House Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

“Charles Mann expertly shows how the complex, interconnected ecological and economic consequences of the European discovery of the Americas shaped many unexpected aspects of the modern world. This is an example of the best kind of history book: one that changes the way you look at the world, even as it informs and entertains.” (Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses)

“In 1491 Charles Mann brilliantly described the Americas on the eve of Columbus’s voyage. Now in 1493 he tells how the world was changed forever by the movement of foods, metals, plants, people and diseases between the ‘New World’ and both Europe and China. His book is readable and well-written, based on his usual broad research, travels and interviews. A fascinating and important topic, admirably told.” (John Hemming, author of Tree of Rivers)

“In the wake of his groundbreaking book 1491 Charles Mann has once again produced a brilliant and riveting work that will forever change the way we see the world. Mann shows how the ecological collision of Europe and the Americas transformed virtually every aspect of human history. Beautifully written, and packed with startling research, 1493 is a monumental achievement." (David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z)

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Dry and tedious

Any additional comments?

Expected big things from this book. I'm a fan of historical writing but this was too dry for me. I plodded through it but it was a chore. You really need to have a passion for this subject to be captivated here.

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Globalization has a very long history

What did you love best about 1493?

The information about the "Columbian Exchange" in all its complexity is presented in interesting and well-documented detail.

Who was your favorite character and why?

n/a This is a work of historical and geographical analysis, synthesis, and interpretation.

Which scene was your favorite?

n/a

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No--although I look forward to listening each time I pick it up.

Any additional comments?

As non-fiction goes, this book is easy to follow and remember. There is a fair amount of repetition but that aids the listener; references to future chapters are helpful.
I have been quoting information I have learned and have recommended this book to others since the day I began to listen to it.

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Around the World One and a Half Times

After reading this author’s 1491 – a book on pre-Columbian America – I downloaded an unabridged audio of this volume. Again – a fascinating story of the world becoming intertwined, with people, plants and germs moving from one continent to another, with massive consequences for everyone involved and their descendants. Again – an utter lack of author’s self-control as he goes off on one tangent after another. Some of those digressions are quite interesting, for the example a long one on the Irish potato famine, but hey! – it was over 300 years after Columbus. Your book is not called ‘interesting stories I’ve heard that pop into my mind.’

To me, a great example of a book of this genre is The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding. Robert Hughes moved his story forward at a good clip, with multiple vignettes quickly returning to the main channel. He pulled it off beautifully, while this author did not. I still recommend his book, just do not get it on audio because with a regular book it is easier to skip its huge number of irrelevant bits.

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Not as Good But Interesting

Not as good as 1491, this is a very eclectic book. The author does a deep dive on all sorts of atrocities of colonialism. It is story of greed as the great motivator of humanity. The parts I was most fascinated by were the enormous number of slave escapes, revolts and independent, successful Maroon communities. Where did that first Maroon group on the Central American isthmus come from? If you have time to meander through this book, it will leave you with lots to think about.

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The Birth of Globalization

It was not on purpose that I read this immediately after reading “Venice - A New History,” but it was fortunate. And, it fits well in the next book that I’ve just started reading, “From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History,” but I’ll review that later when I’ve finished it. Even if you didn’t look at the subtitle, you would guess that this is talking about what changed after Columbus discovered the Americas for Spain but you’d probably be thinking of the Americas. This book goes far beyond that. 

I should say from the start that Charles Mann isn’t writing either to glorify Columbus’ “discovery” or to portray the evil of it. What Mann shows is the momentous changes that took place starting at this time, and the changes that he is most focused on are the unplanned, unexpected, and unforeseen changes, many of whom were not understood until long afterwards. That’s what makes this book different. He’s not out to prove that Columbus’ voyages were good or bad. When I was reading some introductions as I was trying to decide whether to buy the book, I read some criticism stating that he didn’t deal with all the evils of colonialism, conquering, and devastation that followed, but after reading the book, I realize that this was because it was outside his purpose. Certainly he has to mention things like Cortez’ brutal conquest of Tenochtitlan, but the book is not trying to prove how terrible this was. 

To sum things up in a very brief statement, it’s not about the invasion of conquerors. It’s about what that brought. The one that’s most visible is the migration and mixing of people all over the globe that has continued to this day, but even more time is spent on those that came along for the ride, some brought purposely and other accidentally, the plants, animals, parasites, bacteria, viruses, fungi, and even ideas that changed the world in ways that no one could have predicted both for better and for worse. For all the talk about globalization today, globalization goes back to 1493.  

He starts his book in his garden in Massachusetts where he goes plant by plant and finds that almost none are native to where they are being grown. They all come from Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and almost everywhere else in the world. He ends the book walking through a family garden plot in a Philippine village where both gardes have many of the same plants, none of which are native to the Philippines. Mann calls this era that we live in the “Homogenocene,” the Age of Homogeneity. 

I read this with interest because I’ve always thought it interesting to realize that, for so many places, that “native” ingredient for their “local” cuisine is actually an “alien” species. Imagine Ireland, Germany, or Russia without potatoes, Italy without tomatoes, South China without hot chili peppers, Mexico without cheese. When I first came to Taiwan, I found that roasted corn was a favorite food and sweet potatoes were everywhere (non-native). And there were things I had not seen in America. But, there were lots of things that were not available, things that I missed. Over the last 40 years, that has continued to change. I remember when my father was visiting 35 years ago and came home with an avocado that he bought from a street vendor. The vendor was trying to explain what it was to everyone and was giving out samples and shocked to find someone who already knew what it was. Now, almost everything is available and much grown locally even more obscure things like okra. And many of those things strange to me then are now available in American supermarkets. 

This by itself is not really new and already has a name, “the Columbian Exchange.” But Mann says that only when we start to look at this more closely can we begin to really understand contemporary globalization. The age that took off in 1493 brought tremendous change to the world and changed history in more ways than we realize. And not just the events that students have to memorize in school. It brought enormous economic and technological gains both from the exchange of ideas but also with the discovery of new plants, animals, and minerals. However, it also brought huge ecological and social costs.

The book is mostly chronological taking us all the way up to 2011 and it is not just about the Americas but ranges all over the globe and covers a huge number of topics from biology to history to economics to politics. And yet Mann takes this complicated story and manages to make it both engaging and clear without making it overly simplistic and trite. 

There were some things that I already knew but never imagined the effects that those things had on our world or understood how they came about. The Incas, Aztecs, and Mayas had an intricate system of roads that were well maintained and much better than roads in Europe at the time. But they were not designed for wheeled vehicles. Why? It’s not that they were too primitive. They had wheels and used them for certain things but there no animals large enough and strong enough to make a vehicle a practical mode of transportation. 

There were a ton of things that I learned. I didn’t know that the potato had come along just in time to allow European population to grow because it was such a balanced nutrition rich food and broke the cycle of famine, that is until the great potato blight struck, which was partly because all potatoes in Europe had come from just 2 or 3 varieties of the hundreds of varieties available in its native area. And that China’s population had been stunted for centuries because it had run out of the flat land with plenty of water needed for rice cultivation when Spanish and Portuguese traders brought maize (corn) and the sweet potato that would grown on drier land and mountain slopes along its population to again grow and spread far beyond the fertile areas of the coast and the northern plains. At the same time, the rapid clearing of forests led to tremendous erosion and silting of the rivers producing floods that killed millions and led to repeated famines. 

I didn’t know that malaria was not native to the Americas, but even more that malaria was endemic in the southeastern part of England before the industrial age. I had no idea that the earthworm is an alien species brought from Europe and that its arrival greatly changed the geography of the Eastern United States, especially in the Chesapeake Bay area. We are often focused on the Spaniards lust for gold, but it was actually silver that had the greates influence on the world. So much was imported into Spain, and silver was the basis for its currency, that its value plummeted to the point where Spain struggled to pay its debts. And, Spain took it to Asia just as China, whose currency was also based on silver, was desperately search for a new source as its mines had run out and Japan was unable to provide the quantities that it needed. Spanish silver contributed to propping up that empire and bringing them closer into the world markets without the costly Silk Road and all the middlemen along the way. 

Mann spends a good bit of time on the market struggle and the success of the concept of free trade, but also that this same concept is one of the factors that also led to the growth in the Atlantic slave trade. He notes that Africans have a greater resistance to both Malaria and Yellow Fever (both alien to the Americas before) and that in the beginning many Africans were brought to the Caribbean and South America as something more like indentured servants working alongside whites. But when it was found that they tended to survive longer they became more valuable and in the Caribbean it quickly devolved into slavery. And the number of Africans brought to the Americas was astounding.  Mann states that between 1500 and 1840, “11.7 million captive Africans left for the Americas.” In the same period of time, “3.4 million Europeans emigrated.” Mann sees the slave plantation as a forerunner of industrialism with its “mechanism” of agriculture, though with slaves as the machines. He also notes that the products that they produced–sugar, tobacco, and coffee–where the first true mass market products. 

Though it’s basically chronological, because this wave spread around the world in an orderly fashion, the book also is divided into four major sections. The Atlantic section starts in 1493 and introduces us to the effects of tobacco and malaria. From there he follows Spanish ships who move across the Pacific all the way to Asia, finally reaching Columbus’ original goal of the Indies and bringing with them silver and corn, but also with the result of increasing piracy. Then he moves back to Europe with potatoes, chilis, tomatoes, and rubber, and notes that the industrial revolution would not have been possible without the latter. Then he moves to Africa for a discussion of race and slave rebellions. 

An interesting cultural was his discussion of Mexico City, which he describes as “the first urban complex in which a majority of the inhabitants had been born across an ocean.” But, one story will illustrate how he brings in the smallest detail that so aptly illustrates his points all throughout the book. He mentions the man there who helped build the first church in the New World. The man was Juan Garrido and he had been an African slave, Muslim-born, who became a trusted confidant of Cortes and who became a Catholic Christian, a conquistador alongside Cortez, married an indigenous Christian woman, settled down and built a church. That, by itself, tells us a lot about this time of chaos, of cultural mixing, of opportunity, and of the absence or racial strictures. 

Mann does engage in some speculation. He notes that about 70 years before Columbus, there was a Chinese explorer name Zheng He who sailed with a fleet of massive ships that were more than 4 times the size of Columbus’ largest ship. He sailed all the way around India to the east coast of Africa and his voyages are documented not just by the Chinese but in other local histories as well. China was the strongest of the world powers at the time and they did indirectly trade with Europe through Arab middlemen and the Silk Road, but we not very interested in what Europe had for sale. Africa was rich in exotic woods, ivory, medicinal herbs, and spices. Zheng He had at least 300 such ships at his disposal. In the last part of the 1400s, China began to look inward, feeling very self-sufficient. But, what if Zheng He had sailed on around Africa up to Europe, or what if he had sailed across the Pacific to “discover” America first. It might have been China who introduced corn, sweet potatoes, tobacco, coffee, and chocolate to the world. Maybe the Chinese would have developed into more of a free-trade capitalist economy. 

It’s hard to imagine beyond that, but the point is that in 1493, something changed that was irreversible. That doesn’t mean that everything that happened afterward was set in stone. It just means that it could not possibly be the same. And, even more, it meant that there were many things that this event would bring that would not be under the control of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella or any of those leaders who came afterwards. Columbus’ voyage made the world global and the genie is now out of the bottle. Many things happened deliberately but much more happened that no one planned. Disease was an even greater killer than all the conquistadors put together and all those of other nations who came afterwards. People can build up some immunity to disease and that immunity grows over the centuries. Mann notes of the Americas immediately after 1493, "When the Europeans came over, it was as if all the deaths over the millennium caused by these diseases were compressed into 150 years in the Americas. The result was to wipe out between two-thirds and 90 percent of the people in the Americas. It was the worst demographic disaster in history." It was not planned. And it continues with non-native pests like kudzu in the American south to rabbits in Australia. But that’s just what’s obvious. Without globalism we would not have had the modern world we live in but there were also unexpected consequences as well. And Mann has to be among the best descriptions of this that I could possibly imagine. A great book.

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Excellent Historical Read

I enjoy all types of history. This book is well constructed for given perspectives that are overlooked or are not not considered by most. One of my favourite books.

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Outstanding view and revelations

Great history and discovery of peoples I did not know about and the incredible change wrought 500 years ago by global trade

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Chapters

The chapters of the book did not match the audio text. It was very hard to find convenient stopping places. All chapter cut offs were seemingly random, with one paragraph going on in the next chapter on the same chapter. could have been done better.

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White-splaining

White-splaining that oppression isn't racial because it's economic. Not at all the approach to the subject of post-Columbus America I was expecting given that its companion book would supposedly be about Native American society in 1491.

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Great perspective on human impact globally from a historical viewpoint.

Well researched, non-political, fresh perspectives, uses the latest data. Recounts the more destructive parts of the story in a non sensationalized way.

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