Reddit mentions of The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition

It's very funny you say that. Here's kind of a backstory. I read 1491 a few years ago. Since then I've read a whole bunch on Colonial America, so I decided recently to re-read 1491. With knowledge of Colonial America and still scant knowledge of pre-Columbian America, 1491 was even better.

So today I was in Barnes and Noble and saw 1493 on the shelf (near 1421, lol) so I picked it up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Then I got home and started glancing through some of it and my initial reaction was, "Huh, I read this when it was called The Columbian Exhchange and had a different author."

I'm gonna read it anyway and try to set that feeling aside though because I want to give Mann the benefit of the doubt and because without reading it I don't know if that comparison is valid. 1491 was an outstanding read for me. Maybe that would change if I did decide to look into the bibliography instead, but still. We shall see. This summer is going to give me plenty of down time to explore my own interests.

Don't forget Alfred Crosby's Columbian Exchange gave one of, if not the first, biological perspectives to history in 1972. From what I understand, Guns, Germs, and Steel was more of an attempt to make history more appealing to the general public (and thus more profitable) by generalizing and sensationalizing history.

They absolutely knew that diseases could be spread from person to person because European culture had been changed permanently by the Black Death more than 100 years beforehand. If you want to read about post-Columbian smallpox specifically, read The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred Crosby. The second chapter discusses the issue explicitly. We know that the Europeans knew they were susceptible because the Europeans were the ones keeping track of how many natives were dying from the diseases. I never said that they spread disease intentionally, merely that they understood contagion. Contrary to popular belief, we weren't all just completely lost as far as medicine goes before germ theory. There were doctors back then, too, and people studied medicine.

Do I think the Europeans knew on the first expedition that they were bringing a cloud of disease with them? Of course not. However, they knew that when they got there, the epidemics started. Most of them, being there for commercial gain, didn't care much because they were mostly immune.