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 …show more content…
With no treatment half of patients who enter the second phase die within ten to fourteen days. Similar to yellow fever, malaria was transmitted to humans through mosquito bites, causing symptoms such as fever, fatigue, and vomiting. Difficult to recognize at first malaria continues to cause yellowing of the skin, seizures, and even death; these symptoms normally begin after ten to fifteen days after being contracted. Malaria was brought over to early America through slavery and killed millions of people between the seventeenth and twentieth century. Throughout the growth and expansion of America there was been several disease outbreaks both endemic and epidemic such as small pox, measles, yellow fever, and malaria. Starting with the Colombian exchange and slavery these diseases were brought to the new world and spread like wildfires that devastated populations both native and nonnative. Most commonly known for the death toll on the native Americans these diseases were so costly due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate
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.
Beginning in the fifteenth century with the arrival of Columbus, natives of the Americas were infected with European diseases that proved to be deadly to the Indians. The population in northern Mexico suffered an immense decimation of 2,500,000 peoples to less than 320,000 by the end of the sixteenth century (Vargas, 30). The Spaniards’ cruel treatment of the natives aided this vast reduction in the Aztec and Mexican population, enabling the Spaniards to conquer the lands of the Aztecs and other native tribes. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards had expanded their conquests into the southwest region of what is now known as the United States of America.
“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
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?
The origins of globalization can be traced many centuries back; however the initial date remains a highly controversial issue amongst historians to this day. Nonetheless, one fact is coherent; it played a big influence during the formation of collective identity group’s legacies. In addition, European monarchs also impacted many cultural groups through their quest for imperialism during the “Age of Discovery”. The following quote does an excellent job illustrating the consequences of European expansion. “Europe’s encounter with and treatment of the world’s tribal people is, a tale of extraordinary human achievement in adversity, conferring on the victors much of the possession of the worlds resources.” To reiterate, European expansion was
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 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.
Europeans first touched the shores of America, Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice, and turnips had not moved west across the Atlantic, and New World crops such as maize, potatoes, and sweet potatoes had not traveled east to Europe. Americas, there were no livestock, all animals of Old World creation. Except for the llama, alpaca, dog, and guinea pig, the New World was not identical to the trained animals associated with the Old World, nor did it have the viruses associated with the Old World’s small populations of humans and such associated animals as chickens, cattle, black rats, and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Among these germs were those that brought smallpox, measles, chickenpox, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever. The Columbian exchange of crops affected both the Old World and the New. Amerindian crops that have crossed oceans for example, maize to China and the white potato to Ireland has been incentive to population growth in the Old World. The latter’s crops and livestock have had much the same outcome in the Americas. The full story of the trade is very long, so for the hope of shortness and sharpness let us focus on a certain area, the east...
The Columbian Exchange is the exchange of plants, animals, food, and diseases between Europe and the Americas. In 1492, when Christopher Columbus came to America, he saw plants and animals he had never seen before so he took them back with him to Europe. Columbus began the trade routes which had never been established between Europe and the Americas so his voyages initiated the interchange of plants between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, which doubled the food crop resources available to people on both sides of the Atlantic.
The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before Spanish conquest of the New World, there was no sickness or great health related issues that Natives were forced to face. That all changed, however, when European explorers, Spanish conquistadors in particular, unknowingly brought the deadly disease of smallpox into Latin America. A recollection of days before the Spanish by an Indian of the Yucatan from the book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel shows just how disease free natives were before the Spanish arrival: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” Then, after the Spanish came to the New World and spread smallpox to the natives, over 95% of them were killed. The Taino population of Hispaniola that was once estimated to be as large as 8 million went virtually extinct. Central Mexico’s population went from 15 million in 1519 to 1.5 million a century later. ...
While the Europeans were traveling to the New World, they often brought domesticated animals with them for sources of food and livestock. When animals and humans are living in close quarters together, it is very likely for exposure to germs to occur. New diseases were brought over by foreigners looking for fame and gold that killed off many of the natives in the new lands. The natives did not stand a chance against these new threats because of a lack of knowledge and supplies to cure themselves. Once the Europeans established diseases as they made land in the New World, their journey had only become easier as their competition were being wiped out from the rapid spread.
During the early 1600’s colonizing began in America and while more and more Europeans came over so did their diseases, which were uncommon to America. Some of the main diseases were measles, yellow fever and small pox, diseases Native Americans had never came in contact with and could not fight off due to the lack of genetic imm...
The mumps were used in biological warfare in order to kill off the natives – this was effective due to the fact that the indigenous people had never encountered this disease before and it resulted in the native population dropping by about 90%. The mumps is a common disease that is easily spread but has long since lost its fatal effect on humankind. Due to the easiness of spreading and contracting this disease, it traveled easily from the Old to the New World on the backs of explorers, conquistadors, colonists, and merchants. This disease wasn’t a very big issue for Europeans and Africans because most had developed an immunity to it – it was discovered in Ancient Greece by Hippocrates (American Academy of Pediatrics) – but for the natives in the Americas, it was their first time being exposed to such a disease. The Europeans noticed this at some point and started giving disease to the Native...
The Colombian Exchange was an extensive exchange between the eastern and western hemispheres as knows as the Old World and New World. The Colombian exchange greatly affects almost every society. It prompted both voluntary and forced migration of millions of human beings. There are both positive and negative effects that you can see from the Colombian Exchange. The Colombian Exchange explorers created contact between Europe and the Americas. The interaction with Native Americans began the exchange of animals, plants, disease, and weapons. The most significant effects that the Colombian Exchange had on the Old World and New World were its changes in agriculture, disease, culture, and its effects on ecology.