Search results
Oct 4, 2011 · In 1972, Alfred W. Crosby wrote a book called The Columbian Exchange. In it, the historian tells the story of Columbus’s landing in 1492 through the ecological ramifications it had on the New ...
- Overview
- First read: preview and skimming for gist
- Second read: key ideas and understanding content
- Third read: evaluating and corroborating
- The Columbian Exchange
- The spread of disease
- From east to west
- From west to east
Christopher Columbus was no tourist. His arrival in North America led to a system of exchange that fundamentally altered the environment, economic systems, and culture across the world.
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
1.What were Indigenous communities like before the Columbian Exchange?
2.Why were Indigenous Americans so vulnerable to diseases?
3.How did epidemic diseases affect the environment and the economy?
4.What animals were domesticated by humans in the Americas, before and after the Columbian Exchange?
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
1.To what extent does this article explain the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres?
2.The author of this article argues that the “Columbian Exchange completely changed the face of the world.” Based on the evidence in this article, do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?
By Eman M. Elshaikh (adapted from Khan Academy)
Christopher Columbus was no tourist. His arrival in North America led to a system of exchange that fundamentally altered the environment, economic systems, and culture across the world.
Possibly the most dramatic, immediate impact of the Columbian Exchange was the spread of diseases. In places where the local population had no or little resistance, especially the Americas, the effect was horrific. Prior to contact, indigenous populations thrived across North and South America. There were millions of people (approximately 35-75 million)2 living in the Americas, some of whom lived in large urban areas like Tenochtitlan and Cusco, among the largest cities in the world at the time.
But most inhabitants of the Americas had little resistance to the diseases common to Afro-Eurasia. This was partly because only small groups of humans had initially crossed over from Asia, so there wasn’t much genetic diversity in the Americas. Also, they had few domesticated animals—no cows, pigs, goats, or sheep—which are the source of many human diseases, like smallpox and measles. In Afro-Eurasia, by contrast, humans had already had thousands of generations to develop resistance to those diseases.
So, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the Indigenous Americans first encountered Europeans, they also encountered smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, cholera, influenza, chicken pox, typhus, and other unpleasant illnesses. Since they had never interacted with these diseases, they had no immunity to them and were especially vulnerable.
The people already living in the Americas suffered many epidemics following contact with Europeans, and the death toll was massive. Large cities were nearly wiped out. Some communities on the Caribbean islands lost most of their people. Between 1492 and 1650, the population of Indigenous Americans decreased rapidly.
William Bradford, a governor of the Plymouth colony in present-day Massachusetts, described how smallpox spread through some Indigenous American communities around 1634:
“This spring also, those Indians that lived about their trading house there, fell sick of the small pox and died most miserably; for a sorer disease cannot befall them, they fear it more than the plague. For usually they that have this disease have them in abundance. [...] The condition of this people was so lamentable [sad] and they fell down so generally of this disease as they were in the end not able to help one another, no not to make a fire nor to fetch a little water to drink, nor any to bury the dead. But would strive as long as they could, and when they could procure [obtain] no other means to make fire, they would burn the wooden trays and dishes they ate their meat in, and their very bows and arrows. And some would crawl out on all fours to get a little water, and sometimes die by the way and not be able to get in again.”
The depopulation of the Americas, mainly through disease, made it possible for European settlers to rapidly change the territories in which they settled—often using the labor of enslaved Africans. European settlers brought many plants and animals from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. It’s important to note that before all this, the only domesticated animals in Indigenous American communities were llamas and alpacas and some small animals. There were no other large mammals in the Americas that were suitable for domestication. Europeans brought horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, among others. These animals changed agricultural practices and transportation.
Horses had a huge effect on the Indigenous American economies and culture. Buffalo hunting became far more efficient when done on horseback. Cattle became important in Indigenous American society for meat, tallow, hide, and transportation.
To support their own settlements, Europeans also brought wheat, barley, rye, sugar, bananas, and citrus, among other crops—and this changed the economy. Wheat, in particular, thrived as a key crop and staple, and would eventually be exported in large quantities from the Americas.
Crops are for eating, but they can also be sold. As European governments, companies, and individuals raced to become wealthy in this era, many expanded their plans to include the Americas. To that purpose, European settlers organized the production of cash crops, like sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton.
High demand for some of these money-making crops led to large-scale production. But to do that you need a massive labor force, and the European solution to that problem was to import enslaved peoples. Labor systems like the encomienda and other forms of forced labor were common at this time. Encomienda was part of the colonial Spanish legal system used to control the Indigenous American labor force, and it was a form of enslavement. But the deaths of millions of Indigenous Americans from diseases introduced by the Europeans caused a labor shortage locally. Europeans dealt with that problem by forcibly bringing enslaved people from West Africa to the Americas to work on plantations. Over the next few hundred years, more than twelve million enslaved people were brought to the Americas through the Atlantic slave trade system.
Sugar was the most important cash crop grown in the Americas. It made great money, but took a lot of labor to produce it. The Spanish crown even required that sugarcane be grown before approving land grants. Sugarcane thrived in the Spanish colony of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic, today). Hispaniola and the other Caribbean islands became the centers of sugar production. Because so much labor was needed, these places also became centers of forced labor systems such as the slave trade. You will learn more about the plantation complex and the slave trade later in this era.
While plants from the “Old World” (Afro-Eurasia) may not have significantly changed the diets of Indigenous Americans, crops from the “New World” (the Americas, so not new to the indigenous peoples) revolutionized cuisines in the “Old World”. It is difficult to imagine Italian food without tomatoes, Indian food without chili peppers, or Irish food without potatoes. Yet, before the Columbian Exchange, none of these crops were known in Europe, Asia, or Africa. A historical look at changing food cultures like these is a good way to understand the processes of production, distribution, and exchange.
Plants from the Americas transformed life in Europe, Asia, and Africa. They not only changed cuisine and culture but resulted in major economic and environmental shifts. This is because many of the new crops, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava, were calorically rich and quickly became staple crops.
Potatoes and other crops from the Americas did well even in rough environmental conditions. Land no one thought was very useful could suddenly be used to grow these new crops. The potato, for example, thrived even in the freezing temperatures of northwestern Europe. It became a common food of the people in places like Ireland. It led to massive population growth and increasing urbanization.
The Columbian Exchange completely changed the face of the world. Patterns of production and distribution shifted, as millions of people moved from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas, both willingly and forcibly. Goods—many of which were produced in the Americas by African and indigenous peoples—were distributed around the world. These goods were being circulated in ever-broader networks, creating webs of exchange that shape the world we live in today.
As people moved from east to west, they formed new communities in the Americas, many of which were organized by new systems of labor. At the same time, existing communities in the Americas were displaced or devastated by disease.
[Notes]
Jun 21, 2023 · The Columbian Exchange was a significant event in the history of the world that occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers traveled to America. This exchange was a transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (North and South ...
- Shawn Thornton
People also ask
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Why was the Columbian Exchange important?
How did the Columbian Exchange change the world?
When was Columbian Exchange first used?
The Columbian Exchange. As Europeans traversed the Atlantic, they brought with them plants, animals, and diseases that changed lives and landscapes on both sides of the ocean. These two-way exchanges between the Americas and Europe/Africa are known collectively as the Columbian Exchange. Figure 1.
The Columbian Exchange — the interchange of plants, animals, disease, and technology sparked by Columbus’s voyages to the New World — marked a critical point in history. It allowed ecologies and cultures that had previously been separated by oceans to mix in new and unpredictable ways. It was an interconnected web of events with immediate ...
The Columbian Exchange or Grand Exchange refers to the widespread transfer of animals, plants, culture, human populations, communicable diseases, technology and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to European colonization and trade (including African/American slave trade) after Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage.
The columbian Exchange. The discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492 initiated what is now known as the Columbian Exchange. This was a significant period of cultural and environmental exchanges between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (North and South America). This exchange involved people, plants ...
