The Columbian Exchange was one of the most influential periods of time in American and world history. Food, plants, animals, metals and a numerous amount of diseases were all brought forth into the New and Old Worlds. The amount of goods and services that were sold and transferred during the years of the Columbian Exchange were uncalculatable. A lot of global change erected from the Columbian Exchange and with the exchange came a never ending connection between the Old and New Worlds that ran deeper than the ocean they had to travel across. There were many new cultural, social, political, and economic connections that were made between the Americas and the Caribbean to Europe, Asia, and Africa. People of different upbringings told stories. …show more content…
Christians, Muslims, Catholics, and many other religions mingled and traded, which resulted in many new ideas and ways of thinking. The biggest cultural impact was the introduction of new foods. Prior to the Columbian Exchange, the Irish did not have potatoes, Italians did not have tomatoes, Spaniards did not have peppers, the Americas did not have cattle, chicken, or pigs and the Swiss did not have any chocolate. That means, if there was no Columbian Exchange, those four countries would be without arguably their most cultural and traditional food item. Ireland would not have baked potatoes, Italy would not have pizza or spaghetti. Spain would not have their spicy foods. America would not have its signature burgers, ham, bacon, or chicken. Switzerland would not have their amazing chocolate. Ireland’s new found love of potatoes had its pros and cons. The population skyrocketed with the potato because of its high calories, and ease of growing. People were able to live longer with the help of healthier foods. Four out of ten people living in Ireland had a diet of only eating potatoes. A draw back was that all potatoes were genetically identical. So, when the potato blight hit, Ireland lost at least 40% of its entire population. That was all courtesy of the New World. The Old World, specifically Spain, introduced horses to the Americas. Horses revolutionized traveling and trading. Merchants could get through their …show more content…
With the uncalculatable amount of goods being exchanged, there is no other event in history to compare this to. The Columbian Exchange is unparalleled in the sense of the impact it had on the entire globe. The numbers of all of the grains like wheat and barley, crops like cotton an sugar, vegetables like beets and broccoli, weeds, fruits and luxuries were insane and the amount of money going back and forth was also significant with just the plants. Now if you include all the animals that were involved, horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, chickens, and turkeys, the profit rises even higher. On another topic, the amount of precious metals tripled in Europe between the years of 1500 to 1650. Zacatecas, Viceroyalty of New Spain, and Potosi, Viceroyalty of Peru, were where a significant amount of the silver was coming out of and New Granada, Viceroyalty of Granada, was where most of the gold was coming from. The Americas were regulating 181 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver. With that said, between 1600-1650, sugar production, along with cotton, indigo, and rice, was 90-95% of the economy. The impact that the Columbian Exchange had on the economy was something the world will never see
Encomiendas: An encomienda was a grant of Native American labor given to prominent European men in the Americas by the Spanish king. This grant allowed European men to extract tribute from natives in the form of labor and goods. The value of the grants was dramatically increased with the discovery of gold and silver in the Americas. The significance of this term is that although this system was eventually repartitioned, it initiated the tradition of prominent men controlling vast resources and monopolizing native labor.
The Columbian Exchange impacted Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in many ways. Some of the major components of this exchange were plants, animals, and diseases. The Native Americans was impacted because they did not have immune systems capable of handling diseases such as; small pox, the plague, and yellow fever. This resulted in the population of Native Americans being cut by at least 90% over the course of a couple hundred years and making it easier for foreigners to come in and take over. The animal that helped the Native Americans was the horse. It helped them expand and explore places other than agricultural plains like mountains. The Europeans brought back tobacco. Tabaco then lead to many deaths because of its health issues involved with the use. They also got introduced to tomatoes which people thought for a long time was not edible. Africans acquired potatoes and maize, which became a main staple in Africa.
The Columbian Exchange is a global exchange of goods and ideas between the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa) and the New World (America). When Columbus first discovered America, Spain wanted to set up colonies. Columbus found some people that he named “Indians.” They colonies started to trade with each other, and by doing do, they started the Columbian Exchange. Many countries were involved in this trade, including China, Africa and Italy. This exchange of new ideas, traditions, food, religion and diet changed cultures everywhere.
“As European adventurers traversed the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they initiated the “Columbian Exchange” of plants, animals, and diseases.”(P. 26). The Columbian Exchange refers to a period of exchanges between the New and Old Worlds. The exchange of plants, animals, diseases and more modernized technology, beginning after Columbus landing in the Americas in 1492. It lasted through the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Domesticated animals such as cattle, horses, sheep and pigs were introduced to the Americas. The Americas introduced to Europe many new crops such as potatoes, beans, squash, and maize. In time Native people learned to raise European livestock and European and Africans planted American crops. This was the positive effect of the encounter and it was largely responsible for the doubling of the world’s population in the next three hundred years. There were also many negative effects to the “Columbian Exchange” A major consequence was the spread of disease in the New World. Diseases carried by Europeans and Africans devastated the population of the Americas. As Europeans traveled through the Americas epidemics came with them. Typhus, diphtheria, malaria, influenza, cholera, and smallpox killed many of the native people. One example was
The Columbian exchange was one of the largest transfer of goods, human population, and etc between the New and Old world. These goods and other things changed the course of both world as we know it. In the Old World, new crops such as corn and potatoes were brought. These crops are able to stand harsh environment and able to grow in short amount of time. To the New World goods such as wheat, onions, and rice were brought. Also, ideas and technology were introduced to New World. However, The things coming from the Old World were contaminated with diseases that nearly wiped out the natives of New World. The people in from the Old World took advantage of the defenseless natives and enslaved them. The natives were forced into cheap and unfair labor.
On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus departed from Palos, Spain to begin his journey across the Atlantic Ocean. This was the first of many voyages that allowed him to explore a New World where he was able to discover plants, animals, cultures and resources that Europeans had never seen before. The sharing of these resources and combination of the Old and New World has come to be known as the Columbian Exchange. During these explorations, the Europeans brought diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, typhoid and bubonic plague to the New World, wiping out entire Indian populations. There were also many other populations wiped out due to complications that came from this exchange. Were these explorations and the wiping out of entire populations worth the benefits gained by the exchange?
...opened new windows to science and to all knowledge. The results of the Columbian Exchange come with mixed feelings, owing to the degree of death and slavery that such a clash of natures caused. But whatever the outcome of the two worlds "re-uniting," the Exchange was a major event in the process of discovery.
Columbian Exchange or the big exchange was a great exchange on a wide range of animals (Horses, Chickens, sheep, swine, Turkey), plants (Wheat, barley, corn, beans, tomatoes), people and culture, infectious diseases, and ideas, technology (Wheeled vehicles, iron tools, metallurgy) all these things happened between Native Americans and from Europe after the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Resulting in communication between the two cultures to initiate a number of crops that have led to the increase in population in both hemispheres, where the explorers returned to Europe loaded with corn, tomatoes, potatoes, which has become one of the main crops in Eurasia with the solutions of the eighteenth century. At the same time, the Europeans crops, cassava and peanuts to Southeast Asia with a tropical climate.
Around the late 1400s, Christopher Columbus a western European explorer accidentally discovered North America, trying to sail to Asia. Native American at this time lived in the North American continent, devoted society that rivaled the Europeans. Both cultures, the “New World”(North America) and the “Old World”(Europe) exchanged goods, which was known as the Columbian Exchange. The Columbian exchange included all varieties of exchanges such as plants, animals, culture, human population(included slaves) and ideas. Documents 1,2,4,5,6 and 8 convey the disaster that occurred after Columbus arrive and cultures traded. The Columbus Exchange both had benefits and negatives that affected both the “New World and “Old World”. The Columbian Exchange overall was a harmful event for the “New World”.
The Columbian Exchange has been called the “greatest human intervention in nature since the invention of agriculture” (Grennes 2007). The exchange of diseases, plants, and animals lead to a global cultural and economic shift throughout the Old and New Worlds following Christopher Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas in 1492. The Eastern Hemisphere saw an influx of raw materials, new staple crops, and the income from and production of growing crops that were too resource intensive for Europe and Asia. The Western Hemisphere saw large scale population shifts, massive devastation accompanying colonization, and a significant change in the ecosystem with the introduction of new, sometimes invasive, plants and animals. This 'exchange' had one of the largest impact on global human systems that man has ever seen.
The Columbian Exchange allowed the world to share its resources and discover new ways of living. It opened the doors for new discoveries, trade, and raised the economy of many countries. People throughout Europe were given the opportunity to travel to the newly discovered lands of the Americas and begin new lives.
Although the Columbian Exchange allowed for the beneficial exchange of cultures, ideas, foods, and animals around the world during the 1450-1750 time period, it also had a dark side. One detrimental result of the Columbian Exchange would be the spreading of smallpox from Europe to the New World.
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
The most important person of the Columbian Exchange should be mentioned is Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian navigator and explorer. Columbus had sailed across the Atlantic four times which supported by Isabella, the queen of Spain. As a consequence, he found the “New World” which is America,
Concluding, the significance of the Columbian exchange greatly impacted what we know of life today. The major impacts that have shaped what we know of the world today happened during the Colombian exchange. The major impacts of the Colombian exchange was Christianity that led to the rise of the Catholic Church, new food crops and domesticated animals that improved the Europeans and American living, new military technology such as weapons and horses, slavery of the natives and Africans and diseases that drastically harmed the different ethnic groups. Colombian Exchange between the old world and the new world still holds a drastic impact on the world today. If we didn’t have these influences then the world would be completely changed. Trading still continues today and has made an impact all over the world.