2.
4 • New Worlds in the Americas: Labor, Commerce, and the Columbian Exchange 51
FIGURE 2.15 With European exploration and settlement of the New World, goods and diseases began crossing the
Atlantic Ocean in both directions. This “Columbian Exchange” soon had global implications.
Of all the commodities in the Atlantic World, sugar proved to be the most important. Indeed, sugar carried the
same economic importance as oil does today. European rivals raced to create sugar plantations in the
Americas and fought wars for control of some of the best sugar production areas. Although re_ned sugar was
available in the Old World, Europe’s harsher climate made sugarcane dif_cult to grow, and it was not plentiful.
Columbus brought sugar to Hispaniola in 1493, and the new crop was growing there by the end of the 1490s.
By the _rst decades of the 1500s, the Spanish were building sugar mills on the island. Over the next century of
colonization, Caribbean islands and most other tropical areas became centers of sugar production.
Though of secondary importance to sugar, tobacco achieved great value for Europeans as a cash crop as well.
Native peoples had been growing it for medicinal and ritual purposes for centuries before European contact,
smoking it in pipes or powdering it to use as snuff. They believed tobacco could improve concentration and
enhance wisdom. To some, its use meant achieving an entranced, altered, or divine state; entering a spiritual
place.
Tobacco was unknown in Europe before 1492, and it carried a negative stigma at _rst. The early Spanish
explorers considered natives’ use of tobacco to be proof of their savagery and, because of the _re and smoke
produced in the consumption of tobacco, evidence of the Devil’s sway in the New World. Gradually, however,
European colonists became accustomed to and even took up the habit of smoking, and they brought it across
the Atlantic. As did the Native Americans, Europeans ascribed medicinal properties to tobacco, claiming that it
could cure headaches and skin irritations. Even so, Europeans did not import tobacco in great quantities until
the 1590s. At that time, it became the _rst truly global commodity; English, French, Dutch, Spanish, and
Portuguese colonists all grew it for the world market.
Native peoples also introduced Europeans to chocolate, made from cacao seeds and used by the Aztec in
Mesoamerica as currency. Mesoamerican Natives consumed unsweetened chocolate in a drink with chili
peppers, vanilla, and a spice called achiote. This chocolate drink—xocolatl—was part of ritual ceremonies like
marriage and an everyday item for those who could afford it. Chocolate contains theobromine, a stimulant,
which may be why native people believed it brought them closer to the sacred world.
Spaniards in the New World considered drinking chocolate a vile practice; one called chocolate “the Devil’s
vomit.” In time, however, they introduced the beverage to Spain. At _rst, chocolate was available only in the
Spanish court, where the elite mixed it with sugar and other spices. Later, as its availability spread, chocolate
gained a reputation as a love potion.
