Environmental Historian: An Interview with Alfred W. Crosby

Alfred W. Crosby is the author of such influential works as The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1973). He lives in retirement on Nantucket Island with his wife Frances Karttunen, noted in her own right for important works in linguistics and history. In September, 2013, I had the opportunity to carry on a long conversation with Crosby about his work, American Studies, and the future for environmental history. Crosby suffers from Parkinson’s disease. His mind is sharp and his insights are keen. The Columbian exchange is the phenomenon of the contact period in which European crops and animals were imported into the New World, while New World crops and animals were introduced into Europe.

JFS:

Recently, in 2012, the John Carter Brown Library celebrated the 40th anniversary of the publication of The Columbian Exchange by honoring you and inviting Charles Mann, author of the volumes 1491 and 1493, to present a lecture for the event. How did you come to write The Columbian Exchange?

AWC:

When I was very young, Columbus appealed to me for the same reasons as did Superman, the comic-strip hero. As I grew up I began to think of Christopher not as a generic hero but a special kind of hero, one of the maritime variety. What had push-pulled him across the ocean? I grew up in Yankee-Irish New England with some classmates speaking Italian as comfortably (or as uncomfortably) as they did English. I grew up with Hitler and Mao Tsetung careening through the evening news broadcasts. I grew up with rockets vaulting the English Channel, then rockets on their way to the moon and Mars. Columbus stumbling on an unexpected continent seemed more suitable an object for my focus than even the all-powerful Clark Kent.

JFS:

You noted that you were born and raised in the Boston area. Tell me about your childhood and early career.

AWC:

I know little about my father. I may have met his parents but if so, I was too young to remember the occasion. My mother’s ancestry was mostly Irish, I think—a fact with which she was not entirely happy. Her father, who died when I was seven, was all Irish and I loved him without reservation. I wished and somehow still wish I was Irish-er. I grew up in the middle class in Wellesley, a rich suburb of Boston. My schooling was public until I entered Harvard.

My four years there as an undergraduate were the emptiest of my life. I was a commuter for whom Harvard was in total no more than a lecture hall at the end of a subway tunnel. We lived in Wellesley for my first year at Harvard, and then we started moving. We moved to five different towns in my four years. I had no contact with my contemporaries except on the weekends when I would take off on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and by hook or by crook I’d hitchhike or take a bus over to Wellesley where I’d play baseball or football with my old friends. At Harvard I was assigned to the commuter hall, which was in reality just a cafeteria. I’d sit around with total strangers and try to pick up a conversation, when there were much better commercial cafeterias off campus. I wish I had all that to do over again, because the opportunities available at a place like Harvard were so great.

The one Harvard faculty member with whom I made contact during my undergraduate years was Aaron Copland. I have been a lifelong jazz nut, and as a 17-year-old freshman I went to Copland during his office hours and held forth to him about jazz. He listened patiently and on one occasion asked me if I would like an ice cream cone, which I turned down in some confusion. In my own academic career, through my connections with Black History and American Studies, I have had repeatedly the opportunity to offer graduate seminars in the history of jazz at...