HOW AND WHY DID EUROPE AND THE EUROPEAN colonies that became the United States emerge as a controlling power in the world? Much of the answer lies in two revolutions, each involving a South American plant that was introduced to other parts of the world through the Columbian Exchange.

The potato originated in Peru and Bolivia. It fueled the Agricultural Revolution, which began in late-seventeenth-century Europe and changed the way people around the world produced food. The rubber tree originated in Brazil. It was an essential part of the Industrial Revolution, which took off in the early and mid-nineteenth century and changed energy use, manufacturing, warfare, and a host of other human activities everywhere on earth. Both revolutions, the agricultural and the industrial, supported the rise of the West. Both would have been dramatically different without the Columbian Exchange.