The Columbian Exchange was a trade network that was indisputably a major event in world history due to the exchange of ideas, crops, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the New World, making the world “smaller”; it is undeniable that had the Columbian Exchange not happened, all of our lives today would be drastically different. During 1450 to 1750 – the time period of the Columbian Exchange – the mumps, a virus that was originally discovered in Europe, was transferred from the Old World to the New; in both hemispheres, diseases were transmitted unknowingly until people started noticing the correlations between those who got sick and what might have caused them to contract it, which led to diseases being used as weapons in biological warfare, causing the indigenous peoples to die off and allowing the Europeans economic prosperity.
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...
... middle of paper ...
...hat brings us here today.
Works Cited
C, T. E., Jr. "Hippocrates Describes Mumps Followed By Orchitis." Hippocrates Describes
Mumps Followed By Orchitis. The American Academy of Pediatrics, 1967. Web. 15
Nov. 2013. .
Green, Tim. "Further Findings." Further Findings RSS. WordPress MU, n.d. Web. 15 Nov.
2013. .
Lippert, Dorothy Thompson, and Stephen J. Spignesi. Native American History for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub., 2008. Print.
Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. "The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas." Journal of Economic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Vol. 24. N.p.: n.p., 2010. 163-88. Yale. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. .
Sonneborn, Liz. A to Z of Native American Women. New York: Facts on File, 1998.
Human mobility, in terms of European transcontinental exploration and colonization, began to truly flourish after the 1400s. This travel, inspired by financial motives and justified by religious goals, resulted in the European dominance and decimation of countless cultures in both the Americas and Eurasia. While at first glance it seems as though this dominance was achieved through mainly military means - European militias, like Spanish conquistadors, rolling over native tribes with their technologically advanced weapons - the reality is significantly more complex. The Europeans, most likely unknowingly, employed another, equally deadly weapon during their exploits. With their travel, they brought with them the infectious diseases of their homelands, exposing the defenseless natives to foreign malady that their bodies had no hope of developing immunities against. Because of the nature of disease and their limited knowledge about its modes of infection, the Europeans were able to dispense highly contagious and mortal illnesses while limiting their contraction of any native ones to the new territories. In short, they were able to kill without being killed. In this way, the travel of disease in conjunction with the travel of humans in a search for exotic commodities was able to limit or even halt the development of some cultures while allowing others to flourish at exponential rates.
Columbian Exchange, which also call the Grand Exchange, is an exchange of animals, crops, pollution (European and African), culture, infectious diseases and ideology between the eastern and western hemisphere in 15th and 16th centuries. Alfred W. Crosby first proposed this concept in his book “ The Columbian Exchange”, which published in 1972.
...Lord, 4). To put this in perspective, “The 150 years after Columbus’s arrival brought a toll on human life in this [the Western] hemisphere comparable to all of the world’s losses in World War II,” (Lord, 4). In his book, Plagues and Peoples, William McNeill attributes this population reduction with the old world diseases that “swept across the hemisphere far faster than the Europeans that brought them,” (Lord, 1).
McClurken, J. M. (2009). Our people, our journey: the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
“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
Pueblo Indian. (2002, April). History of the pueblo indians (cont.). Retrieved March 12, 2003, from http://www.puebloindian.com/pueblo_history_003.htm
Dorothea M. Susag, Roots and Branches: A Resource of Native American Literatures--Themes, Lessons, and Bibliographies (1998).
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
Microbes from Europe introduced new diseases and produced devastating epidemics that swept through the native populations (Nichols 2008). The result from the diseases brought over, such as smallpox, was a demographic catastrophe that killed millions of people, weakened existing societies, and greatly aided the Spanish and Portuguese in their rapid and devastating conquest of the existing American empires (Brinkley 2014). Interaction took place with the arrival of whites and foreigners. The first and perhaps most profound result of this exchange was the imp...
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.
In his essay, “The Indians’ Old World,” Neal Salisbury examined a recent shift in the telling of Native American history in North America. Until recently, much of American history, as it pertains to Native Americans; either focused on the decimation of their societies or excluded them completely from the discussion (Salisbury 25). Salisbury also contends that American history did not simply begin with the arrival of Europeans. This event was an episode of a long path towards America’s development (Salisbury 25). In pre-colonial America, Native Americans were not primitive savages, rather a developing people that possessed extraordinary skill in agriculture, hunting, and building and exhibited elaborate cultural and religious structures.
Europeans were deemed poor candidates for slavery due to their higher mortality rates. In 17th century, the New World was going through Public Health crisis. European immigration to the New World influenced the transmission of unknown epidemic diseases in American colonies. Warm climate in American colonies also became det...
Kugel, Rebecca, and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy. Native women's history in eastern North America before 1900: a guide to research and writing. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
As early as AD 100, in Rome smallpox ravaged for 15 years, causing two thousand deaths daily. The disease spread throughout Europe, Asia and Northern Africa from the 12th through the 15th century. Colonists and explorers from E...