The Columbian Exchange was the transfer of items from the Old World, Europe and Africa, to the New World, North and South America. Italian explorer named Christopher Columbus discovered this new world in 1492. He found the new world while he was searching for a new trade route to Asia. Despite the title of “Exchange”, this was not an exclusively positive transfer between Europe and the New World. This exchange plants, animals, technology, and diseases, permanently altered both worlds positively and negatively. While few items did prove beneficial, others had significant and devastating effects, especially in the New World. While agricultural advancements positively affected the Old World, diseases left disastrous effects on the New World. Europe and Africa received several beneficial items from the New World, specifically new agricultural techniques and crops. According to Professor Ramona Shelton, “food for the poor in general, had been barely growing for the past few decades. Malnourished people have a decreased fertility rate.” After reaching the New World this changed. According to The Unfinished Nation, beans, corn, and potatoes, all become common in European Diets. This allowed poorer citizens to consume more nutritious diets, benefiting and changing the entire population. Surprisingly, these recently discovered crops from the Americas grew abundantly in Europe. This greatly improved the health of regular people. There were also unseen animals that came with back to Europe. Meat animals such as Turkeys came, as well as large animals like bears, as stated by Professor Ramona Shelton. Because of the new crops and land, the explorers were having to learn proper agriculture for the land. As The Unfinished Nation states, “the arriving white people learned from the natives updated agricultural techniques appropriate to the demands of the new land.” While the Europeans had agriculture of their own, they needed to learn how to adapt their own crops to grow proficiently in the new soil. On the other hand, the New World received a brutal impact from diseases that originated from Europe and Africa. The Native Americans faced harsh illnesses they had never experienced before. The Unfinished Nation claims
on the New World was both beneficial and destructive. An example of both was the trade of new plants and agriculture. The trade of these items worked two ways. First, new plants and ideas were shipped outside to Europe from the New World. Accounts from explorers and travelers such as Christopher Columbus and Hernando Cortez explain that the crops and animals in the New World were fulfilling and plentiful, exactly what they needed in their homelands. (Doc 1 and 2) Second, Europe brought their own agriculture and goods to the New World; things they could not live without. In an illustration from the Codex Florentino, ships of Hernando Cortez are being eagerly unloaded onto the shores of Mexico, signifying the trade from the Old World to the New. (Doc 5) The trade of such goods was important to the diet and changing society of the natives living in the New World. However, the trade was possibly more destructive than good. In Alfred Crosby’s description of plant exchange, he finds that most plants that are invasive ad destructive to the natural environment of
The Columbian Exchange that occurred in the Western Hemisphere subjected America to extensive changes that would fundamentally change the people that lived there, the people that would come to live there, and the land itself. In fact, the America that we know today has been shaped by the events that took place hundreds of years ago during the Columbian Exchange. As European people brought their culture and values to the Americas, it started to combine and mix with the cultures and values already established there, changing both Europeans and Indians in admittedly small, but significant ways. While this can be considered a positive point of the Columbian Exchange, in its entirety, the Columbian Exchange could be considered a disaster, especially for the natives that lived in America before the Europeans came to claim it. Not only did Indians suffer at the hands of European diseases that we completely foreign to them, killing off millions and changing the Indian demographic forever, but the world that they grew to be so familiar with changed around them.
The Columbian Exchange, derived from the voyages of Columbus to the Americas, was a chapter in history that connected the Old World to the New World by exchanging crops, culture, and technology. The Columbian Exchange in the Western Hemisphere resulted in extensive demographic, social, economic, and environmental changes. The arrival of Europeans to Native American land produced an intense mixture of culture and population fluctuation. Not only did this exchange affect the social aspect between the two nations, it changed the way people engaged in trade and proprietary interests, which would lead to a massive destruction and transformation of the environment.
Although Columbus's revelation of the New World to the Old World caused deadly diseases to both hemispheres, a loss of preservation of native American culture in the New World, and the unhealthy effect of tobacco in the Old World, it made an overall positive impact in lasting terms by the introduction of religion and horses and cattle in the New World and the new agriculture advancements and alpacas. The Eastern-Western hemisphere encounter was obviously positive in the Western hemisphere because of the fact that most of us here would have never been born, but the introduction of religions made a lasting impact. Most Europeans were religious and wanted to share their faith with the natives. Some people also came to escape religious
While European advantage was evident, the consequences of the transmittal of plants, animals, and diseases could not have been forseen. The Spanish conquistador Cortés advised the King of Spain to send all ships with plants and animals (Grennes 2007). This recommendation comes from the large quantities of land suitable for farming crops that were in demand in Europe, such as sugar. Crops of the New World required different soil composition, weather and growing season demands, and cultivation techniques than Old World crops. Growth of crops from the Old and New World (in many, but not all cases) complemented rather than competed with each other. This is due to the large North/South span of both
When the Europeans explored the Americas, they were introduced to new plants, foods, and animals, as well as riches and land. Foods such as corn, white and sweet potatoes, beans, tomatoes, cacao, fruits,
Columbian Exchange- The Columbian Exchange was a way exchanging new resources between the new world and the old world. This impacted Europeans and Native Americans positively with the new materials now available, like technology, plants, and animals. There were some negative effects from these exchanges too, such as diseases. Made it easier to interact with other cultures.
After Columbus made his journey to the New World in 1492, the Europeans brought a different culture to the people of the New World and took many new ideas back to the Old one, this was the time period known as the Columbian Exchange. Most of what the Europeans took from the Exchange was good, but some of what they brought was devastating to the people in the New World. Although, this time period was very brutal for the Native Americans, the Columbian Exchange resulted in the transmitting of new technologies, an increase in remedies and cures for diseases, and a growth in resources such as food that helped to improve life.
The domesticated animals that the Europeans brought carried over diseases such as small pox and measles which ultimately decimated the Native American population along with numerous animals and thus harming the ecosystem. Furthermore, after numerous crops from the New World was introduced to the Old World, there came a rising demand for those crops. This eventually led colonists to mass produce these crops in hopes of selling them for extra money. Excessive farming eventually led to deforestation for farm land along with depletion of the nutrients in American soil (Nun 174). Soil depletion then resulted in poor farming which followed starvation of the colonists and the destruction of American land. This early example shows the dangers of deforestation and poor soil that people still risk today by harming the
The transition from the Old World to the New World, commonly classified as the Columbian Exchange, was the basis of European expansionism and imperialism. In reference to previous and future endeavors in history involving expansionism and imperialism, were notoriously implemented in inhumane ways. Evidently, the Columbian Exchange, named after the founder of the New World, Christopher Columbus, was the introduction of numerous things such as: technologies, plants, animals, diseases, and cultures. As the Columbian Exchange is a significant event is history, despite the demise of numerous Native American tribes and Europeans, the Columbian Exchange is the beginning of modernization in terms of socio-economics in the Western hemisphere.
The New world gave the Old world many riches and foods. This allowed the European Culture to expand into more of an agricultural country, allowing the population to rise. Although the New world did receive an abundance of plaques and illnesses from the Old, it also gave the Old world syphilis. Giving the Europeans their first lethal sexually transmitted illness. Both the Native Americans and the Europeans had suffered from illness and disease. With the ships the Europeans had brought over the ocean they had along with them animals including horses, cows and pigs. This allowed the Natives to travel more on horseback and instead of hunting they could raise
When you are sitting in a fancy restaurant in Texas, tasting a delicious steak with a nice cup of coffee, do you know that before 1492, American people don’t even know what is beef and coffee. Nowadays, people’s diet is abundant. People in every part of the world can taste the food originated in other side of the world. This is due to one of the most significant ecological events in human history called the Columbian Exchange. According to Nunn Nathan and Qian Nancy, “the Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492” (Nathan and Nancy, 2010). It was so spectacular that has left both positive and negative impacts in each side of the world.
The Columbian Exchange is a huge exchange of goods and ideas between the old world and the new world. The old world is considered Europe, Asia and Africa and the new world is considered America. Their colonies started to trade with each other and that’s when they formed the Columbian Exchange. Many countries were involved in this trade, including China, Africa and Italy. The exchange of the new ideas, traditions, food, religion and diet changed cultures everywhere. The Natives gave and received many items. Even though Europeans and American Indians saw some similarities in each other, their words differed. The introduction of plants into the new world extended a process that had been taking place for centuries in the Old World. Trade
The Columbian Exchange “was a widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations including slaves, disease, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres (Old World and New World).” It was one of the most significant events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in all human history. Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in 1492 launched the era of large-scale contact between the Old and the New Worlds, hence the name "Columbian" Exchange. Native Americans were extremely healthy people Europeans migrated to America and bringing these diseases such as bubonic plague, chicken pox, pneumonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. Europeans were immune to the diseases whereas the natives were not since the lack of frequent exposure resulting in a lot of illness and fatal outcomes. Since it was only the NA’s getting ill Europeans showed little to no remorse saying it was “gods wrath” with a great majority of the natives suffering from the diseases the Europeans sought it to be a sign from god that they were destined to settle in this new land the land the Native Americans already resided in. despite the horrific disease that struck the Native Americans The Columbian Exchange helped reduce poverty, and provided many of the people with food brought from each of the Worlds. The people no longer had to worry about hunger that much when they found a plant that grew good for them. Both the Native Americans and the Europeans benefited from each other. The Europeans learned about the native’s deposits of gold and silver they also learned better ways to dye fabrics using plants and berries, they also taught the Europeans better ways to fish by weaving their own nets instead of trying to blast fish out of the water, they also learned new ways to hunt because they were often left with spoiled meat because they were shooting foreign animals such as buffalo so when they had to shoot them for food they often shot at random because they weren’t familiar with the animal. the Europeans they introduced sugar, livestock, and horses which soon became a very noble and sacred animal to the natives. If the Natives and
Europe had a lot of technological advances compared to the Native Americans in the “New World”. European wanted to create relationships with the Native Americans, but the only way that they could communicate was that, if they educated the Native Americans. Europeans didn’t want to teach the Native the European language just because of trade, but because they wanted to educate the Indians and also convert them to Christianity. European finds that Christianity is the highest and evolution is even better. Farming also had a great impact on health. When farming started to happen in the “New World”, it improved people’s health and also the longevity of people’s lives. The plow was then created to plow areas of farmland. Farmland yield lots of rich soil, which became crop fields, and after that they established towns. The New World contained lots of corn, potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, and many more other things; While Old World contained rice, wheat, sugar, oats, peaches, pears and many