L’impatto delle piante americane sulla storia economica e sociale dell’Europa

This contribution examines the impact of European expansion between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on the exchanges of plants and animals between the Old and the New World known as the “Columbian Exchange.” This process profoundly reshaped global demographic, ecological, and economic balances, marking a decisive turning point in environmental and social history. Europe gained new food resources, though their integration into agricultural systems and consumption patterns was neither linear nor immediate, while simultaneously exporting plants, animals, and new forms of land exploitation to other continents. For Indigenous American populations, contact with Europe had largely catastrophic consequences due to epidemics and colonial exploitation; for Europe, by contrast, it became a major driver of economic, demographic, and scientific growth. Beyond high-calorie crops such as maize and potatoes, colonial commodities – including sugar, cacao, coffee, tea, tobacco, and cotton – transformed European consumption, evolving from luxury goods into items of mass demand and contributing to the decline of sumptuary legislation. European expansion also fostered intense scientific interest in extra-European nature, giving rise to “colonial botany” through expeditions, botanical gardens, and taxonomic classification, often at the expense of Indigenous knowledge and reinforcing a Eurocentric framework of scientific authority.