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1493: Uncovering The New World Columbus Created By Charles Mann

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Charles Mann’s 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created is a very informative book that is the sequel to Mann’s, 1941: New Revolutions of the Americas before Columbus. The purpose of the book is to educate the reader on globalization, the effects after Columbus discovered the Americas, as well as to persuade the reader to interpret history a bit differently than they had previously. Through educating his audience, Mann argues about many important issues such as: global economy, trade, agriculture, environment, as well as a large section of his book is dedicated to the African slave trade. In my opinion, Mann’s argument is unbiased and he interweaves research in order to back up his claims with great detail. The book is very engaging, …show more content…

Without the Columbian Exchange, the potato never would have gotten to China, and they ultimately had devastating consequences for the ecosystems in China. This third section of the book also emphasises how the Industrial revolution was made possible by rubber and Mann goes into great detail to inform the reader about the process of the rubber industry. Rubber was extremely valuable and supply and demand never seemed to even out. The price of rubber continued to soar even as the supply increased, which usually did not …show more content…

Mann demonstrates to the reader the important role that slave trade had in developing the current United States. He explains that before the 1800s, the large majority of people who were crossing the Atlantic were in fact, African slaves. He claims, “Roughly speaking, for every European who came to the Americas, three Africans made the trip” (367). Mann also points out that slavery’s development was helped by the fact that many Africans are immune to malaria, which allowed them to successfully survive the outbreaks. This fact added plantations that were fielded by African slaves opposed to the plantations that didn’t use African slaves but local servants as the African slaves were not as likely to become sick from the diseases. Charles Mann’s 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created is an interesting, fact-filled book that is very persuasive and leaves the reader with a fresh view of history. This book has several main themes and all are argued with information to back up the claim in a non-biased manner. Charles Mann separated his ideas by chapters, within four larger sections that allowed the readers to follow his flow and understand that the chapters in each section were connected. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created is an educational and informative book that is definitely worth the

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