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Transfer and spread
Maize, so much more easily grown than the cereals and needing no machinery or draught animals, was transferred by Europeans all over their world before 1600. Once the problem of wild animals was solved maize followed cassava into West Africa and it can be claimed that maize fed the demographic explosion from 100 million in 1900 to 700 million in 2000. The American imports, cassava and maize, became much more important than the African native plants, the millets and sorghum.
In the Orient maize arrived from Mexico via the Spanish convoys from Acapulco to the Philippines, and it was grown widely where the land or the water supply was unsuitable for rice. In the Mediterranean, maize was sown widely within a generation of Columbus' first voyage in 1492, and in the more advanced Western Europe, it tended to be used for animal feed, while in the Balkans and especially in Romania, the natives lived on maize and exported the wheat they grew. In Italy, maize was associated with southern poverty (and pellagra).
It is likely that the Portuguese introduced maize to West Africa and to Santiago, Cape Verde Islands between 1535 and 1550. In addition to loading slaves in West Africa for the West Indian islands or the mainland, the native black merchants provided the ships with the necessary staple food, maize, to feed the slaves for a voyage that might last 60-70 days. The maize on board was fed in the form of gruel.
The Portuguese probably also introduced maize to East Africa, to Zanzibar in the mid-1600s, to Réunion in 1690 and Mozambique in 1750. Maize was unknown in Uganda in 1861-62 when the first European colonists arrived there, nor was it widely used in East Africa at that time. However, by 1900 maize had become the staple grain of most of sub-Saharan Africa.
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