The Columbian Exchange

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Columbian Exchange: New Ideas and Goods

Summary:

The Columbian Exchange was a pivotal event involving the transfer of plants, animals, and ideas between the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. It introduced crops like corn, potatoes, and tomatoes to the Old World, while bringing grains, livestock, and sugar cane to the New World. This exchange significantly impacted global diets and economies, reducing famines and altering societies. However, it also spread diseases like smallpox, devastating indigenous populations, and intensified the transatlantic slave trade. Cultural exchanges included the introduction of Western religion and private property concepts to the Americas.

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What goods were exchanged during the Columbian Exchange?

The Columbian Exchange involved the transfer of American plants and animals and the products made from them to Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as the transfer of European, Asian, and African plants and animals to America.

Among the most important American contributions to the Columbian Exchange were potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, chocolate, maize, and cassava root, which became a staple food in Africa. While the Columbian Exchange is best known for benefitting the European economy, it benefitted Africa and Asia as well. It led to a considerable expansion in the global food base, and this, in turn, substantially diminished the frequency of famines in the entire Old World and facilitated steadier population growth.

Among the most important Old World contributions to the Columbian Exchange were grains, such as barley, rye, and wheat; livestock, particularly cattle, horses, pigs, goats, and sheep; and sugar cane and coffee. These importations dramatically changed the way of life and economy in the Americas. For example, they led to explosive growth in cattle husbandry in Spanish America, and soon the Spanish American colonies became the main exporter of hides to Europe. The appearance of horses in the Great Plains transformed the habits and society of Native Americans there, as they began to use horses for hunting and transportation. The development of sugar cane and coffee plantations in Cuba, Brazil, and the Caribbean led to an enormous demand for slaves and shaped the development of the Transatlantic slave trade. More than 70 percent of the people crossing the Atlantic from the Old World to America before 1800 were black slaves.

The Columbian Exchange also included the exchange of bacterial and viral pools. Tens of millions of Native Americans died from European diseases, such as small pox. These devastating diseases were among the most powerful factors facilitating the European conquest of America. It is also quite possible that syphilis may have come to Europe and Asia from America, although this remains a matter of scholarly debate.

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What new ideas did the Columbian Exchange introduce?

The Columbian Exchange was the interchange of ideas, raw materials, and cultures between the Old and New Worlds following the arrival of large numbers of Europeans in the New World in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. The Europeans introduced new ideas to the New World, and the people of the New World also introduced ideas to the Europeans.

Among the ideas brought by Europeans was that of western religion, including Catholicism, which was brought by Spaniards to the Americas. The Spaniards believed that they were saving the souls of the native people; in return, they forced natives to work for them on large plantations in a system of coerced labor.

The Europeans also brought the idea of private property to the New World. The natives did not have the private ownership of property, and they exchanged their idea of communal ownership with the Europeans. Christopher Columbus himself wrote about how people native to the Caribbean freely shared what they had and did not attempt to keep their property or possessions to themselves but shared them freely with the Europeans. The idea of owning one's own property was foreign to the natives, and they were unprepared for the way in which Europeans attempted to take away their goods and property.

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What were the most important items exchanged during the Columbian Exchange?

For the natives of the Americas, there were very important things both good and bad that came to them in the Columbian Exchange.  On the good side, there were horses.  Horses changed the lives of groups of Native Americans such as the Plains Indians.  On the incredibly damaging side, there were infectious diseases.  These might be the most consequential things that went either way given that they devastated that Native American population.

The people from the Old World essentially got the good side of the bargain.  Most of the things that went from the New World to the Old were new kinds of foods.  Most importantly, the Columbian Exchange brought corn (maize), tomatoes, and potatoes to the Old World.

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