The Columbian Exchange — the bi-directional transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds after 1492 — is inseparable from the slave trade. Enslaved Africans were the agricultural labour that cultivated the New World crops that transformed Old World food; they brought Old World crops to the New World that transformed American food; and the specific routes of the slave trade determined which crops moved where and how quickly. Understanding the Columbian Exchange through the lens of the slave trade reveals the human agency behind what is often presented as a natural, impersonal process.
The specific crops that moved through the slave trade and the humans who moved them.
WEST AFRICAN CULINARY TRADITION — DEEP EXTRACTION