I am a great fan of BBC radio 4's In Our Time.
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| Torta di patate, 2025 |
And that is what I think they will do with today's offering entitled The Columbian Exchange*, in which "Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492.
That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form; the Americas had no cattle, bananas, sugar cane or smallpox.
The lists of what was then exchanged are long and as these flora, fauna and diseases moved between continents, their impact ranged from transformation to devastation.
In parts of the Americas, European viruses helped kill over 90 percent of the population. In parts of Europe, Africa and Asia populations boomed on the new American foods. Sheep from Europe grazed fertile land into deserts in some parts, while the lowered populations in others led to local reforestation which, arguably, is linked to a particularly cold period in the Little Ice Age.
With Rebecca Earle, Professor of History at the University of Warwick, John Lindo, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, and, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science at University College London.
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production"
Leaving me just to add that there is a purpose beihnd the image of torta di patate which for four decades I have been turning out for anyone who will eat it it.
We simply called it Italian pie and its made from layers of cooked potato and mozzarella cheese and topped with tomoato sauce and of course potatoes and tomotoes feature in the story. Frivilous perhaps when set against syphilis but as the picture is mine it saves looking for a copyright free image.
Location; BBC Radio 4
Picture; torta di patate, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*The Columbian Exchange, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002rrvz
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