The Columbian Exchange, one of the most significant events in the history of world ecology, agriculture, and culture, describs the enormous widespread exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres that occurs after 1492.

Many new and different goods are exchanged between the two hemispheres of the Earth, and it begins a new revolution in the Americas and in Europe.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus' first voyage launches an era of large-scale contact between the Old and the New Worlds that results in this ecological revolution: hence the name "Columbian" Exchange.Before the Columbian Exchange, there are no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no tomatoes in Italy, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no cattle in Texas, no donkeys in Mexico, no chili peppers in Thailand and India, no apples in New York, no cigarettes in France, no honey in California, and no chocolate in Switzerland.

The dandelion is brought to America by Europeans for use as an herb.The Columbian Exchange greatly affects almost every society on earth, bringing destructive diseases that depopulate many cultures, and also circulating a wide variety of new crops and livestock that, in the long term, increase rather than diminish the world human population.

Maize and potatoes become very important crops in Eurasia by the 1700s.

Manioc and the peanut flourish in tropical Southeast Asian and West African soils that otherwise would not produce large yields or support large populations.