What was the Columbian Exchange, and what impact did it have on the Americas and Afro-Eurasia?

The Age of Exploration was a period of European global exploration in the fifteenth century through the seventeenth century. Explorers like Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and Hernan Cortes discovered land that Europeans had previously not known about, which they called the “New World.” This “New World” was what is today known as the Americas.

This period of discovery led to interactions between Europeans and people already living in the “New World.” The interchange of culture, technology, plants, animals, and diseases between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas is known as the Columbian Exchange. For instance, Afro-Eurasia brought over many species of plants like sugarcane. This transformed the Americas because it stimulated the slave trade there. The New World also introduced Afro-Eurasia to many crops, like maize, beans, squashes, potatoes, chiles, and tomatoes. These are sustaining crops that fueled population growth and economic expansion in Afro-Eurasia. Afro-Eurasia also brought over animals, like horses, which allowed Indigenous people to travel longer distances than they could before.

One of the most destructive aspects of the Columbian Exchange, and arguably the greatest impact on the Americas, was the transfer of diseases. Indigenous people living in the Americas had never been exposed to European diseases like smallpox and dysentery, and many of them died.

What was the Columbian Exchange's impact on American civilizations?

The main effect of the Columbian Exchange on the civilizations of the New World was to destroy them.  The Columbian Exchange weakened American civilizations severely.  Because these civilizations were so badly weakened, the Europeans were easily able to destroy them or at least conquer and subjugate them.

The main way in which the Columbian Exchange did this was through germs.  The Europeans who came to the Americas brought with them germs for contagious diseases such as smallpox.  These diseases were completely nonexistent in the New World so the people of the New World had no immunity to them.  When faced with infectious diseases to which they had no resistance, the people of the New World died in tremendous numbers.  Because so many of their people died, these civilizations were terribly weakened.  Because they were so badly weakened, it was easy for people like the Spanish Conquistadors to come in and conquer them.  These European conquerors either subjugated the people (as with the Spanish in Mexico and Peru) or destroyed them (as the English and then the Americans did in North America).

In this way, we can see that the Columbian Exchange had a disastrous effect on the civilizations of the New World.