Cause And Effect Columbian Exchange

Written by: Mark Christensen, Supposition College

By the end of this department, you will:

Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period afterwards 1492

Suggested Sequencing

This narrative should be assigned to students at the beginning of their study of affiliate 1, alongside the First Contacts Narrative.

When European settlers sailed for distant places during the Renaissance, they carried a variety of items, visible and invisible. Upon arriving in the Caribbean in 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew brought with them several different trading goods. Nonetheless they likewise carried unseen biological organisms. And then did every European, African, and Native American who wittingly or unwittingly took office in the Columbian Exchange – the transfer of plants, animals, humans, cultures, germs, and ideas betwixt the Americas and the One-time Globe. The event was a biological and ideological mixing unprecedented in the history of the planet, and one that forever shaped the cultures that participated.

For tens of millions of years, the earth'south people and animals developed in relative isolation from one another. Geographic obstacles such as oceans, rainforests, and mountains prevented the interaction of different species of animals and plants and their spread to other regions. The starting time settlers of the Americas, who probably crossed the Bering Strait's ice bridge that connected modernistic-twenty-four hour period Russia and Alaska thousands of years agone, brought plants, animals, and germs with them from Eurasia. Nonetheless, scholars take speculated that the frigid climate of Siberia (the likely origin of the Native Americans) limited the variety of species. And although the Vikings made contact with the Americas effectually 1000, their impact was limited.

A large variety of new flora and fauna was introduced to the New World and the Old World in the Columbian Exchange. New World crops included maize (corn), chiles, tobacco, white and sweet potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, papaya, pineapples, squash, pumpkins, and avocados. New Earth cultures domesticated simply a few animals, including some small-dog species, guinea pigs, llamas, and a few species of fowl. Such animals were domesticated largely for their use every bit food and non equally beasts of burden. For their part, Former Globe inhabitants were busily cultivating onions, lettuce, rye, barley, rice, oats, turnips, olives, pears, peaches, citrus fruits, sugarcane, and wheat. They too domesticated animals for their use as food, including pigs, sheep, cattle, fowl, and goats. However, cows also served as beasts of burden, along with horses and donkeys. Domesticated dogs were likewise used for hunting and recreation.

The lack of domesticated animals non only hampered Native Americans development of labor-saving technologies, information technology also limited their exposure to disease organisms and thus their immunity to disease. Europeans, however, had long been exposed to the various diseases carried by animals, besides every bit others often shared through living in shut quarters in cities, including measles, cholera, bubonic plague, typhoid, flu, and smallpox.

Europeans had also traveled great distances for centuries and had been introduced to many of the globe's diseases, nigh notably bubonic plague during the Black Death. They thus gained immunity to about diseases as advances in ship applied science enabled them to travel even further during the Renaissance. The inhabitants of the New Globe did not take the same travel capabilities and lived on isolated continents where they did not encounter many diseases.

All this changed with Columbus's first voyage in 1492. When he returned to Spain a year later, Columbus brought with him half-dozen Taino natives as well equally a few species of birds and plants. The Columbian exchange was underway. On his 2d voyage, Columbus brought wheat, radishes, melons, and chickpeas to the Caribbean. His travels opened an Atlantic highway between the New and Erstwhile Worlds that never airtight and only expanded as the exchange of appurtenances increased exponentially year after year. Although Europeans exported their wheat bread, olive oil, and vino in the starting time years afterwards contact, presently wheat and other goods were beingness grown in the Americas too. Indeed, wheat remains an important staple in North and S America.

Horses, cattle, goats, chickens, sheep, and pigs as well made their New World debut in the early years of contact, to forever shape its landscapes and cultures. On the lusher grasslands of the Americas, imported populations of horses, cattle, and sheep exploded in the absence of natural predators for these animals in the New Earth. In central Mexico, native farmers who had never needed fences complained virtually the roaming livestock that frequently damaged their crops. The Mapuche of Chile integrated the equus caballus into their culture so well that they became an insurmountable force opposing the Spaniards. The introduction of horses also changed the way Native Americans hunted buffalo on the Great Plains and made them formidable warriors against other tribes.

The Atlantic highway was not ane way, and certainly the New World influenced the Old Globe. For instance, the higher caloric value of potatoes and corn brought from the Americas improved the nutrition of peasants throughout Europe, as did squash, pumpkins, and tomatoes. This, is turn, led to a net population increase in Europe. Tobacco helped sustain the economy of the showtime permanent English colony in Jamestown when smoking was introduced and became wildly popular in Europe. Chocolate also enjoyed widespread popularity throughout Europe, where elites frequently enjoyed it served hot every bit a beverage. A few diseases were also shared with Europeans, including bacterial infections such every bit syphilis, which Spanish troops from the New Globe spread across European populations when their nation went to war in Italy and elsewhere.

By contrast, Erstwhile World diseases wreaked havoc on native populations. Aztec drawings known as codices show Native Americans dying from the telltale symptoms of smallpox. With no previous exposure and no immunities, the Native American population probably declined by as much equally 90 percent in the 150 years subsequently Columbus'south kickoff voyage. The Spanish and other Europeans had no style of knowing they carried deadly microbes with them, but diseases such every bit measles, flu, typhus, malaria, diphtheria, whooping cough, and, above all, smallpox were perchance the most destructive force in the conquest of the New Globe.

Contact and conquest also led to the blending of ideas and culture. European priests and friars preached Christianity to the Native Americans, who in turn adopted and adjusted its behavior. For case, the Catholic celebration of All Souls and All Saints Day was composite with an Aztec festival honoring the dead; the resulting 24-hour interval of the Dead festivities combined elements of Spanish Catholicism and Native American beliefs to create something new. The influence of Christianity was long-lasting; Latin America became overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

People also blended in this Columbian Substitution. The Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans in the New World procreated, resulting in offspring of mixed race.

An image shows two paintings depicting groups of people of mixed ethnicities.

Throughout the colonial period, native cultures influenced Spanish settlers, producing amestizo identity. Mestizos took pride in both their pre-Columbian and their Spanish heritage and created images such as the Virgin of Guadalupe – a brown-skinned, Latin American Mary who differed from her lighter-skinned European predecessors. The Virgin of Guadalupe became the patron saint of the Americas and the well-nigh popular amongst Cosmic saints in general. In a higher place all, she remains an enduring case and prove of the Columbian Commutation.

Lookout this BRI Homework Help video on the Columbian Exchange for a review of the main ideas in this essay.

Review Questions

one. The global transfer of plants, animals, illness, and food between the Eastern and Western hemispheres during the colonization of the Americas is called the

Middle Passage
Columbian Exchange
Triangular Merchandise
Interhemisphere Exchange

2. Which of the following provides evidence of the cultural blending that occurred as a result of the Columbian Exchange?

The adoption of Aztec holidays into Spanish Catholicism
The willingness of the Spanish to larn native languages
The refusal of the Aztecs to adopt Christianity
Spanish priests' encouragement to worship the Virgin of Guadalupe

3. Which detail originated in the New World?

Carbohydrate
Smallpox
Horses
Spud

4. How did the Columbian Substitution impact Europe?

Domesticated animals from the New World greatly improved the productivity of European farms.
Europeans suffered massive causalities form New Globe diseases such as syphilis.
The higher caloric value of potatoes and corn improved the European diet.
Domesticated animals from the New World wreaked havoc in Europe, where they had no natural predators.

5. How did the Columbian Substitution affect the Americas?

Domesticated animals from the Old World greatly improved the productivity of Native Americans' farms.
Native Americans suffered massive causalities from Former World diseases such as smallpox.
The higher caloric value of crops such every bit potatoes and corn improved Native Americans' diets.
Native Americans learned to domesticate animals thank you to interactions with Europeans.

6. Which item originated in the Old World?

Sugarcane
Pumpkins
Corn
Potato

Gratis Response Questions

Compare the effects of the Columbian Exchange on North America and Europe.
Explicate why historian Alfred Crosby has described the Columbian Exchange as "Ecological imperialism."

AP Exercise Questions

"The Columbian Exchange has included man, and he has inverse the Old and New Worlds sometimes inadvertently, sometimes intentionally, often brutally. It is possible that he and the plants and animals he brings with him have acquired the extinction of more than species of life forms in the last iv hundred years than the usual processes of evolution might kill off in a one thousand thousand. . . . The Columbian Exchange has left u.s. with not a richer simply a more than impoverished genetic pool. We, all of the life on this planet, are the less for Columbus, and the impoverishment will increase."

Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492

Refer to the excerpt provided.

one. Which of the post-obit most directly supports Crosby'southward argument?

Population gain in Europe due to New Globe crops such equally the potato
Population decline in North America due to diseases such as smallpox
Mass migration of Europeans to North America in the sixteenth century, displacing Native American groups
Overgrazing by animals introduced past Europeans

2. A historian seeking to discredit Crosby's argument might employ what evidence?

The immediate and widespread adoption of Christianity in the New Globe
Native Americans' struggles with Europeans for dominance in the New Globe
Native American groups' failed adoption of European technologies
A net population gain over time due to increased availability of high-caloric foods native to the New World