figure 1. Seeds and pericarps in their natural size and colour, 1811.
Source: W. J. Titford. Sketches for an Hortus Botanicus Americanus. London: prints for the author by C. Stower. Plate 3.  
The intercontinental exchange of crops that occurred as a consequence of European maritime expansion from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries is known as the 'Columbian Exchange'. The concept underscores the significance of Amerindian domesticates such as maize, peanuts and manioc in African food systems. Its omission of African domesticates and the ancient exchange of Old World tropical staples across the Indian Ocean does little to dispel the lingering view of Africa as a bystander of domestication history - a continent dependent on the agricultural achievements of other civilizations. This unsupportable bias is corrected by shifting attention to the role of Africa-grown food in the transatlantic slave trade.