The Columbian Exchange Graphic Organizer

Imagine yourself preparing for a journey. There is no guarantee that you volition always render to your native land. There is no indication or previous cognition of how long that journey will take. What do you take with you lot? Items of personal and memorial value? The nutrient y'all are familiar with cultivating and eating? Animals y'all have domesticated and empathize?

Now add one more than cistron: the destination volition also have flora, fauna, and other things yous may take never seen before or fifty-fifty knew existed. It would exist like you are inbound a strangely familiar yet conflicting world. This experience, though hypothetical to most, was all too real for the Europeans who began to explore and conquer the North and Due south American continents in the belatedly 1400s and early 1500s.

Christopher Columbus and the Colombian Exchange definition

Nearly historians begin recording the conquest, colonization, and interaction between the peoples of the Americas and Europe with the First Voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Though there is show that other European explorers may have discovered the continents before Columbus'due south voyage, it was non until after his exploits that Europe, especially Espana, retained a forceful and economic focus on what would exist called the "New World."

Columbian Exchange An engraving of a portrait of Christopher Columbus StudySmarter Fig. 1 Engraving of a portrait of Christopher Columbus

An Italian explorer and sailor, Christopher Columbus, was hired by Rex Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I of Espana to find passage to the Spice Islands in India and Asia that was non controlled or dominated by the Portuguese. Columbus, sailing w in 1492, crossed the Atlantic ocean, landing in what is now chosen the Caribbean area.

His first interactions with the Indigenous Peoples were cautious, but Columbus wanted to continue the economic exploration of the region.

Columbian Exchange Columbus landing on Hispaniola 1492 StudySmarter Fig. 2 Columbus landing on Hispaniola 1492

Upon his return to Espana, he convinced the Rex and Queen of the value of ongoing exploration of the area and engaging in trade or even conquest of the Indigenous Peoples. The trade - voluntary or involuntary- of every new institute, animal, good or merchandise, idea, and disease over the century following Colombus' first voyage is a procedure historians call The Columbian Exchange.

The Columbian Substitution: every new plant, animal, skilful or merchandise, idea, and affliction traded - voluntarily or involuntarily - between the Old World of Europe, Africa, and Asia and the New World of Northward and South America.

The commencement of the Colombian Commutation

Excluding a minor minority of outlier explorers from Europe, in that location had been very niggling to no interaction between the Peoples, flora, and fauna of the Northward and South American continents and their counterparts in Europe, Africa, and Asia since the geologic Bering Land Bridge connecting the continents submerged around ten,000 years before. The plants, animals, and human culture, therefore, adapted and evolved to their unique environments during that time.

This separation over thousands of years created genuinely unique biodiversity ranges in well-nigh all aspects of found and beast life.

I saw neither sheep nor goats nor any other creature, only I have been here a short time, one-half a day; however if there were any, I couldn't accept failed to run across them [...] there were dogs that never barked… All the trees were different than ours as day from night, and and then the fruits, the herbage, the rocks, and all things^ane

- Christopher Colombus

Effects of the Colombian Exchange

The Colombian Substitution saw the exchange of many plants, animals, spices, minerals and commodities betwixt the Quondam and the New Earth, but at that place was a darker side to it - the exchange of disease decimated a huge amount of the Indigenous populations of North and South America. Let's explore this commutation, before looking at other effects.

Columbian Exchange Columbus taking possession StudySmarter Fig. three Columbus taking possession

The Colombian Substitution and affliction

Historians have researched and investigated why Europeans could conquer the New Globe with relative ease. There are theories on armed forces and technological supremacy, diplomatic and economic superiority, and other views. All of these have supporting evidence, but none tin fully explicate how the European conquest happened and so quickly.

For case, even though Spain arrived into the territory of the Aztecs with metallic armor, cannons, horses, and armed services tactics to match, they were outnumbered by a culture that housed the nigh populous city in the world at that fourth dimension, Tenochtitlan.

Disease was a huge factor that weakened the Ethnic Peoples of Due north and South America in the face up of European conquest. Diseases carried from the Former World to the New World past the European invaders are estimated to take killed around xc% of the Ethnic Peoples in the Americas who had no immunity to the germs that had infested Europe, Asia, and Africa for centuries.

The greatest killer was smallpox, which was spread by direct human contact. The epidemic that hit the Aztec upper-case letter of Tenochtitlan in 1520 had begun on the isle of Hispaniola two years early and had spread through Mexico, Central America, and South America.
One of the reasons the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro took over the Incan Empire so quickly was that disease had annihilated their social club simply before his arrival.
Influenza, measles, and other illnesses added to the destruction of Indigenous societies.

Columbian Exchange The Cowpox Tragedy StudySmarter Fig. iv The Cowpox Tragedy

The statistics, even the conservative estimates, are staggering. When Columbus landed in Hispaniola in 1492, about i million Indigenous people resided there. Fifty years later, only 500 were all the same alive. According to some estimates, five to ten meg Indigenous people inhabited primal Mexico before Cortez and the Castilian. By the cease of the 1500s, fewer than one one thousand thousand remained.²

The exchange of disease was not one-sided however as the Europeans contracted syphilis from the Americas. The first recorded instance of syphilis in Europe occurred in Spain in 1493, shortly after Columbus' return. Although less deadly than the diseases exchanged to the Americas, syphilis was more mortiferous in the 1500s than today, and adequate treatment was unknown.

The Colombian Exchange: animals, plants and food

Though deadly and influential, the exchange of diseases was only office of a broader mutual transfer of plants and animals that resulted straight from the voyages of explorers and colonists to the New World.

The vegetable agriculture of the New World- peculiarly corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, and potatoes- was more nutritious and could be cultivated in more than pregnant quantities than those of the Erstwhile World, such every bit wheat and rye.

On the other hand, the Americas had few domesticated animals larger than dogs and llamas. Over the century, Indigenous Peoples learned to heighten and eat European domesticated animals such equally cattle, pigs, and sheep.

Europeans became accepted to planting and eating American crops. Every bit a result, the diets of both peoples inverse. One consequence is the doubling of the globe population over the next few centuries as nutrition and food product improved.

Tobacco, Sugar, and Horses

The exchange of 3 other bolt significantly changed the Europeans and Native Americans. In the Americas, Europeans discovered tobacco - smoking and chewing tobacco rapidly became popular in the Old World. Tobacco tillage later formed the basis for the first English colonies in the New World.

Columbian Exchange Cultivation of tobacco at Jamestown 1615 StudySmarter Fig. 5 Tillage of tobacco at Jamestown 1615

In the opposite management, sugarcane from Africa was imported to the New World. Flourishing in the tropical climates of South America and the Caribbean area, the expansion of this crop would lead to the mass employ of enslaved labor in the New World.

As disquisitional as these plants were, the introduction of horses was hugely impactful on certain Ethnic cultures in the New World; the Spanish brought with them the commencement horses Americans had ever seen. Some escaped or were stolen; such horses were traded north through Mexico into the Great Plains of North America, where tribes like the Apache, Comanche, Sioux, and Blackfeet somewhen made the equus caballus the focal point of their society.

Colombian Exchange map

It is of import to sympathize the variety of goods, diseases and animals exchanged between the old and new worlds. The table below outlines a range of these exchanges.

The Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia.	Europe, Asia and Africa to The Americas.
Potatoes, corn, pumpkins, tomatoes, squash.	Carrots, lettuce, cabbage, onions, soybeans.
Pineapples, avocados.	Bananas, peaches, pairs, apples, grapes, citrus fruits.
Peanuts, cashews, cacao.	Grains: wheat, rye, rice, oats, barley.
Vanilla, chilli peppers.	Olives, sugarcane.
Sunflowers, tobacco.	Weeds: crabgrass, dandelions, thistles, wild oats.
Quitine.	Diseases: bubonic plague, whooping coughing, measles, yellow fever, typhus, smallpox, influenza, diptheria.
Animalds: Turkeys.	Animals: Horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, rats, honeybees.

Columbian Exchange Voyages of Columbus StudySmarter Fig. vi Voyages of Columbus

Examination Tip!

Create a simplified version of the map above and draw images and their route beyond the Columbian exchange to visualize the goods, plants, animals, and diseases exchanged between the sometime and new world in the decades following the voyages of Christopher Columbus.

Columbian Exchange - Key takeaways

Almost historians begin recording the conquest, colonization, and interaction between the peoples of the Americas and Europe with the First Voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Excluding a small minority of outlier explorers from Europe, there was very piddling to no interaction betwixt the Indigenous peoples, flora, and fauna of North and South American continents with their counterparts in Europe, Africa, and Asia for around x,000 years. This separation created genuinely unique biodiversity ranges in almost all aspects of constitute and animal life.
Though many plants, animals, spices, and minerals were exchanged over the century post-obit Columbus's voyage, the most crucial thing was exchanged between the peoples of the New World (North and South America) and the Old World (Europe, Africa, and Asia) was disease .
Diseases carried from the Old World to the New World past the European invaders are estimated to take killed around 90% of the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas who had no immunity to the germs that had infested Europe, Asia, and Africa for centuries.
Though deadly and influential, the exchange of diseases was just office of a broader mutual transfer of plants and animals that resulted directly from the voyages of explorers and colonists to the New World.
These included: cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, llamas, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, squash, sugarcane, rice, wheat, tobacco, and thousands of others.
This exchange menstruation over a century forever changed all societies across the earth, as new markets, goods, and nutrition spurred economic and population growth.

ane. Christopher Columbus, Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus , translated by Samuel Eliot Morrison, 72-72, 84.

2. Crosby, A. Westward., McNeill, J. R., & von Mering, O. (2003). The Columbian Exchange. Praeger.