CLA: Global REM

This resource consists of texts and images dealing with the Columbian Exchange. Its goals is to evaluate the mixed consequences of the Columbian Exchange by examining two of its most infamous elements: small pox and chocolate.

Introduction

The “Columbian Exchange" is the term used to describe the complex biological and ecological consequences of European voyages to the Americas starting in the late fifteenth century. These early explorations ignited an unparalleled quantity of exchange in plants, animals, people, and diseases across the Atlantic and had an enormous and mixed affect on the world’s human populations and the natural environment. Food, such as wheat and grapes, and animals such as horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens made their way from Europe to the Americas. Crops indigenous to the Americas, including maize, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, manioc, papayas, cacao, avocados, tobacco, and pineapples were transplanted to parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa and became important elements in many cultures' foodways. Most devastating perhaps was the uneven global circulation of pathogens. Europeans transferred deadly diseases to the indigenous populations of the Americas, whose immune systems were ill-prepared to ward off imported diseases like smallpox. Such contagions produced widespread epidemics though the Americas, contributing to a precipitous decline in the indigenous population. While the total number of deaths attributable to European diseases remains in dispute, scholars estimate that over 100 million people perished from European diseases imported to the Americans and Pacific Islands between 1500 and 1800.

The following sources provide evidence of the complex outcomes of the Columbian Exchange. The first resource is a drawing by Spanish missionary and Aztec archeologist Father Bernardino de Sahagún from the mid sixteenth century that depicts small pox victims at different stages of the disease. Historians estimate that over the sixteenth century, infectious diseases may have reduced the number of people belonging to the Aztec civilization in present day Mexico from around 17 million to 1.3 million. The second source is an excerpt from Sahagún's Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex that describes the role of smallpox in the defeat of the Aztec by the Spaniards. The third source is an excerpt from a mid-seventeenth century treatise written on chocolate and the cacao plant (from which chocolate derives) by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, a Spanish physician. Indigenous to Mesoamerica, natives introduced the cocoa plant to the Spanish. Soon chocolate become a popular drink throughout Europe.

Sources

Source One:

Citation: Bernardino de Sahagún, Fray. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, c. 1575-1580, edited and translated by James Lockhart in We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Source Two:

Excerpts for classroom use.
Florentine Codex, date.

Citation: Bernardino de Sahagún, Fray. Florentine Codex. Quoted in James Lockhart. We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. Repertorium Columbianum: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.

Source Three:

Excerpts for classroom use.

Citation: Colmenero de Ledesma, Antonio. A Curious TREATISE OF THE NATURE and QUALITY OF CHOCOLATE, Done into English from the Original Spanish. In Philippe Sylvestre Dufour. The manner of making of coffee, tea, and chocolate as it is used in most parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with their virtues/ newly done out of French and Spanish. Printed for William Crook at the Green Dragon without Temple Bar near De|vereux Court, 1685 102-111. EEBO: Early English Books Online. http://eebo.chadwyck.com.floyd.lib.umn.edu/home (accessed Aug. 23, 2008).

Discussion Questions

(1) According to the first two documents, what role did small pox play in the defeat of the Aztecs? What do we learn about the disease from the two accounts?

(2) What ingredients in addition to cacao were used to make chocolate? How did methods of preparation and consumption differ among the indigenous, Spanish, and other Europeans? How does the document portray the native population?

(3) Evaluate the sources together to think about whether the Columbian Exchange was a mutually beneficial exchange. Who profited from the flow of pathogens and food goods? Provide examples of current debates over fair exchange in discussions of global trade today.

Suggested Readings

Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport: Greenwood Pub. Co, 1972.

Richards, John F. The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Posted by Elizabeth Zanoni at 1:04 PM | Permalink

This resource consists of historical documents about Chinese coolies imported to Cuba during the 19th century. Its goal is to highlight the human experience during the coolie trade and to encourage critical thinking about how the coolie trade and coolies were portrayed and discussed internationally.

Introduction

The “coolie trade" refers to the importation of Asian contract laborers (especially Chinese and Indians) under force or deception during the 19th century. It emerged during the “gradual abolition" of slavery in the early 19th century, and coolies were exploited as substitutes for slave labor. The British were the first to experiment with this infamous form of labor migration when they imported 200 Chinese to Trinidad in 1806, the time when the British ended the slave trade. By 1838, some 25,000 East Indians had been exported to the new British East African colony of Mauritius. While Indian coolies were mainly transported inside British colonies, 250,000 to 500,000 Chinese coolies were imported during 1847-1874 to various British, French, Dutch and Spanish colonies in the Americas, Africa and Southeast Asia. During this twenty-seven year period, about 125,000 Chinese coolies were sent to Cuba. They were predominantly men from southern China exported via Macao (then a Portuguese colony). Eighty percent or more were sent directly to sugar plantations. Coolies worked and lived no better than slaves, having insufficient food, lacking promised medical care, working long hours, and suffering physical torture. The merciless coolie trade caused scandal in contemporary international media and was criticized as a new form of slavery. In 1855, England withdrew its ships carrying Chinese coolie laborers to Cuba and Peru; in 1856, Peru followed suit and made the coolie trade illegal; in 1862, the United States banned the coolie trade in a law issued by President Lincoln; around 1874 the Portuguese also ended the coolie trade via Macao under international pressure. While having long viewed Chinese abroad as “abandoned people" and having been largely impotent in confronting western powers, the late Qing government took a rather firm stand after the mid-19th century to protect its overseas subjects. In 1877, a Sino-Spanish Treaty provided that the Chinese then under contract in Cuba had their contracts terminated, and Chinese consuls were named to protect Chinese residing in Cuba.

The following sources are about the experiences of Chinese coolie laborers in Cuba and how the coolie trade was discussed internationally. Source one includes excerpts from a report submitted by a Chinese commission sent to Cuba in 1874 to investigate the mistreatment of Chinese laborers. In less than two months, the Cuban Commission collected 1,176 depositions and 85 petitions supported by 1,665 signatures, all vividly demonstrating the miserable lives of Chinese coolies in Cuba. Source two is a New York Times article in 1860 that advocates for United States governmental actions against the coolie trade and compares the coolie trade with Chinese migration to the United States.

Sources

Source One
Excerpts for classroom use.

Citation: The Cuba Commission Report: A Hidden History of the Chinese in Cuba, The Original English-Language Text of 1876. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Source Two
Excerpts for classroom use.

Citation: “The American Coolie-Trade." New York Times, April 21, 1860, sec. 4.

Discussion Questions

(1) According to their own testimonies, how did Chinese coolies come to Cuba? How were they treated in Cuba?

(2) According to the New York Times article, why should the United States act against the participation of United States merchants in the coolie trade?

(3) How did the New York Times article differentiate coolies to Cuba from Chinese immigrants in the US? Read the two sources together, what can we see about the different portrayals and the ambiguous position of Chinese labor migrants in different local contexts (such as their racial status, interracial marriage, cultural characteristics and economic value)?

Suggested Readings:

Christopher, Emma, Cassandra Pybus, and Marcus Buford Rediker. Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. "Chinese Coolie Labour in Cuba in the Nineteenth Century: Free Labour or Neo-slavery?" Slavery and Abolition 14, no.1 (April 1993): 67–83.

Irick, Robert L. Ch’ing Policy toward the Coolie Trade: 1847-1878. Taipei: Chinese Materials Center, 1982.

Jung, Moon-Ho. "Outlawing "Coolies": Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of Emancipation." American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (September 2005): 677-701.

Lai, Walton Look. Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

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