1. New plants were not the only reason food supplies increased. Europeans also introduced new species of livestock—pigs, turkeys, Muscovy ducks, geese, pigeons, cats (sometimes eaten)—and new breeds of domestic animals already present—chickens, dogs (often eaten), and larger beasts like sheep and cattle (though most of them were doomed by sleeping sickness). Four European trade goods also contributed to the rise in food ouput: iron bars that enabled African smiths to turn out considerably more farm tools than before; steel-bladed machetes that made it easier to start and maintain farm plots and kitchen gardens; firearms that helped farmers protect crops from wild animals and helped hunters bag more game; and fishhooks that boosted ocean, lagoon, and river catches.

2. Spadework has of course been done. See, e.g., Mauny, R., “Notes historiques autour des principales plantes cultivées en Afrique occidentale,” BIFAN 15B (1953):684–730Google Scholar; Murdock, G. P., Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History (New York, 1959), 234–35Google Scholar; Harlan, J. R., de Wet, J. M. J., Stemler, A. B. L., eds., Origins of African Plant Domestication (The Hague, 1976), 107–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar(Shaw, T., “Early Crops in Africa: A Review of the Evidence”); 291–309Google Scholar(Purseglove, J. W., “The Origins and Migrations of Crops in Tropical Africa”); 311–56Google Scholar (D. R. Harris, “Traditional Systems of Plant Food Production and the Origins of Agriculture in West Africa”).

3. See, e.g., Thomas Nicois' 1526 list of Madeira crops in Hakluyt, Richard, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (10 vols.: London, 1927–1928), 4:31.Google Scholar

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5. Ramusio, , Navigazioni, 1: 579, 584, 587Google Scholar; Blake, J. W., ed., Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560 (2 vols.: London, 1942), 1:157–58, 162, 165–66Google Scholar (he mistranslates pretresemoli, parsley, as “bran seeds”); Fernandes, Valentim, Description de la côte occidentale d'Afrique (Sénégal au cap de Monte, archipels), tr. and ed. Monod, T., da Mota, A. Teixeira, and Mauny, R. (Bissau, 1951), 141.Google Scholar Grapes recur in early accounts but usually with the caveat that they did not grow easily or yield wine.

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155. Ibid., 137. Fernandes' editors translate milho zaburro as “sorghum.”

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164. Jones, W. O., Manioc in Africa (Palo Alto, 1959), 62.Google Scholar The earliest indirect reference to cassava in Africa may be that by the botanist C. Clusius, who wrote in 1605 that oil palm fruit (presumably he meant the oil), “after addition of some flour of a certain root,” was used by the Portuguese from São Tomé to feed slaves on the Middle Passage: quoted by Hartley, C. W. S. in The Oil Palm (London, 1969), 3.Google Scholar

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170. The first known as Bambara groundnuts or earth peas, the second as Kersting's groundnuts.

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173. In 1959 Murdock exploded a bombshell, as he put it, by suggesting that the sweet potato, though botanically a New World plant, may have reached Africa first from the east as part of his “Malaysian complex.” He pointed to evidence that it diffused westward from South America as far as New Guinea and that it is closely associated with southeast Asian plants in parts of East and Central Africa. Murdock, , Africa, 223–25.Google Scholar The bombshell proved a dud; the idea has not been accepted by the geobotanical community.

174. Ramusio, , Navigazioni, 1: 582Google Scholar; Blake, , Europeans, 1: 160–61.Google Scholar

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184. Marees, , Description, 42.Google Scholar See also Villault, , Relation, 382.Google Scholar

185. De Rome, , Brève relation, 96.Google Scholar

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195. Kingsley, , Travels, 643.Google Scholar

196. Said to be the only crop of the same species common to the Old and New Worlds before Columbus.

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198. The Italian word used by Ramusio was zucche, which could mean either pumpkins or gourds. Navigazioni, 1: 587.Google Scholar Blake translated it as pumpkins. Europeans, 1: 166.Google Scholar

199. Hakluyt, , Navigations, 7: 13, 15.Google Scholar

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209. Duncan, , Travels, 1: 122Google Scholar; Burton, , Wanderings, 2: 145.Google Scholar

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213. Müller in ibid., 230-31.

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257. To cite an extreme (and rhetorical) example, Walter Rodney lists exactly two: maize and cassava: Rodney, , How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London, 1983), 111.Google Scholar