Discovery of the New

World

LAH 2020, Spring 2010

• DISCOVERY – ENCOUNTER – INVASION
– COLLISION OF TWO WORLDS
• Had profound impact on the
imagination as well as on the
economies and cultures
Encounter

• collision of worlds
• an unknown continent came in
contact with European
Renaissance society
Effects
• Positive and
• negative effects
• Columbian Exchange between the Old and
New World
• Conquistadors brought back ‘exotic’ goods
(foods) that changed European diet
exchange

• Potatoes, peppers, maize, sweet

potatoes, avocados, guavas, pineapples,
and cacao (chocolate)
• Tobacco
• Other goods – jade figures, turquoise
masks, Aztec sacrificial knives (obsidian)
• Gold and silver, precious stones
From Europe

• Europeans introduced wheat,

olive oil, wine
• Animals, horse, pigs, livestock,
sheep, goats
Other aspects (negative)
• Unleashed violence, destruction, and
death on a large scale (never seen
before)
• Diseases – smallpox, measles,
typhoid, and many sexually
transmitted diseases
Impact of disease

• Unparallel in history
• Estimate – “tens of millions”
died in the sixteenth century
• Consequence of conquest and
pandemics in the aftermath
Comparison to Slavery

• Equal consequence with the

Slave trade; over the entire
period, about 11 million people
transported from Africa by force
to the New World
Encounter / Collision/
Invasion
• implied both
• a physical collision and
• a collision of mentalities,
different ways of looking at the
world, different ways of
understanding society and
humanity
Globalization and change

• Contributed to changes in our view of

history and civilization
• Effects on the economies of the world,
extending far the former European
frontiers
• Beginnings of “globalization” of
politics and economics, information
technology, and culture