a global cross-over of non-human species "set in motion by Europeans' arrival in the Americas after 1492"
"Tobacco, peppers, potatoes and turkeys flowed into Eurasia; maize, rubber and chickens entered Africa; and citrus fruits, coffee, horses, donkeys and livestock travelled to the Americas"
identified by geographer Alfred W. Crosby (see his The Colombian Exchange, 1972)
"Crosby went on to argue that the global ascendance of European economies since [that time] could be accounted for by a process he called 'global imperalism'"
(see his Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 BC)