The Columbian

Exchange Topic 9.10B

My goal as a student today is to make
sure that...
● I can map the exchange of crops and animals and the spread of
diseases across the world during the Columbian exchange.

Focus Questions to consider:

● What three continents made up the “Triangle Trade” of the

Columbian Exchange?
● What are some examples of specific crops, animals, and diseases
that Europeans brought with them to the New World?
● What are some examples of specific crops and goods that were
introduced to the Europeans by Native Americans in the New
World?
● How were Europeans able to successfully achieve their goals of
colonization?
What is Columbian Exchange?
● The widespread exchange of plants,
animals, foods, human populations
(including slaves), diseases, and ideas
between the Eastern and Western
hemispheres that occurred after 1492 when
Christopher Columbus' first voyage
launched an era of large-scale contact
between the Old and the New World.
 How It Started:

● European leaders sponsored expeditions abroad, starting in

late 15th century, in hope that explorers would find wealth and
new lands.
● The Portuguese were the earliest participants in what became
known as the Age of Exploration.
● Impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was
long, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to
avoid.
● Portuguese explorers avoided these problems by sailing
south along the West African coast.
● Columbus had a different idea: instead of going all the way
around the massive African continent to get to Asia, Why not
just sail west across the Atlantic Ocean?
● He believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia
should be not only possible, but comparatively easy via an as-
yet undiscovered Northwest Passage.
● His plan was rejected in Portugal and England.
● In 1492, Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella
of Castile offered Columbus’ a contract that promised he could
keep 10 percent of whatever riches he found, along with a
noble title and the governorship of any lands he should
encounter.
● October 12 1492, Columbus’ expedition first sighted
American land, in the Bahamas, later that month,
Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was
mainland China, and in December the expedition landed
on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan.
● Columbus and his crew encountered the Taíno people,
whom he first described in his letters as "naked as the
day they were born."
● Columbus returns to Spain in March 1493. He brings
back gold, spices, and “Indian” captives. He was
received with the highest honors by the Spanish court,
given the title “admiral of the ocean sea,” and was
quickly granted another voyage.
His second voyage was by far his biggest following. It consisted
of a large fleet of 17 ships with 1,500 colonists aboard.
They leave Spain in September 1493, and get to Hispaniola by
november. All the men Columbus left there were found
slaughtered by the natives, and he founded a second colony.
Columbus returned to Spain in June 1496. This time he was
greeted less warmly, as the yield from the second voyage had
fallen well short of its costs.
Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, stayed greedy for the riches of
the East, agreed to a smaller third voyage where they instructed
Columbus to find a strait to India.
● Columbus and his crew end up landing in Trinidad and later traveled to
Venezuela where they soon realized they were in another continent.
● Columbus, a deeply religious man, decided after careful thought that
Venezuela was the outer regions of the Garden of Eden.
● When Columbus eventually returns to Hispaniola, he found that
conditions on the island had deteriorated under the rule of his brothers,
Diego and Bartholomew. Columbus’ efforts to restore order were
marked by brutality, and his rule came to be deeply resented by both
the colonists and the native Taino chiefs.
● In 1500, Spanish chief justice Francisco de Bobadilla arrived at
Hispaniola, sent by Isabella and Ferdinand to investigate complaints,
and Columbus and his brothers were sent back to Spain in chains.
● He was immediately released upon his return, and Ferdinand and
Isabella agreed to finance a fourth voyage, in which he was to
search for the earthly paradise and the realms of gold said to lie
nearby. He was also to continue looking for a passage to India.
● May 1502, Columbus leaves Spain for his fourth and final voyage
to the New World.
● First returning to Hispaniola, against his patrons’ wishes, he then
explored the coast of Central America looking for a strait and for
gold.
● Attempting to return to Hispaniola, his ships, in poor condition,
had to be beached on Jamaica. Columbus and his men were
marooned and he was a castaway on Jamaica for a year before
a rescue ship arrived.
Effects
● Before 1492, Native Americans Hosted none of the infectious diseases that
had long caused great and continual trouble to Europeans and Africans.
● In the centuries after 1492, these infections rose as epidemics among
Native American populations.
● The impact was most severe in the Caribbean, where by 1600 Native
American populations on most islands had plummeted by more than 99
percent. Across the Americas, populations fell by 50 percent to 95 percent
by 1650.
● The disease component of the Columbian Exchange was decidedly one-
sided. However, it is likely that syphilis evolved in the Americas and spread
elsewhere beginning in the 1490s.
● The animal component of the Columbian Exchange was slightly
less one-sided. Europeans brought Horses, pigs, cattle, goats,
sheep, and several other species which adapted readily to
conditions in the Americas.
● With the new animals, Native Americans acquired new sources of
hides, wool, and animal protein. Horses and oxen also offered a
new source of traction, making plowing feasible in the Americas
for the first time and improving transportation possibilities through
wheeled vehicles like a Horse led carriage.
● On horseback, Native Americans could hunt bison more
rewardingly, boosting food supplies until the 1870s, when bison
populations dwindled.
● When it came to crops, The Americas’ farmers’ gifts to other
continents included corn (maize), potatoes, cassava, and
sweet potatoes, together with secondary food crops such as
tomatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, squashes, pineapples, and
chili peppers.
● Tobacco, one of humankind’s most important drugs, is another
gift of the Americas, one that by now has probably killed far
more people in Eurasia and Africa than Eurasian and African
diseases killed in the Americas.
● Some of these crops had revolutionary consequences in Africa
and Eurasia. Corn had the biggest impact, altering agriculture
in Asia, Europe, and Africa. It also served as livestock feed, for
pigs in particular.
● Today, Corn is the most important food on the African continent as a
whole. Its drought resistance especially recommended it in the many
regions of Africa with unreliable rainfall.
● Previously, without long-lasting foods, Africans found it harder to build
states and harder still to project military power over large spaces. In
the moist tropical forests of western and west-central Africa, where
humidity worked against food hoarding, new and larger states
emerged on the basis of corn agriculture in the 17th century.
● The advantages of corn proved especially significant for Europeans in
the slave trade, which increased dramatically after 1600. Slaves
needed food on their long walks across the Sahara to North Africa or
to the Atlantic coast en route to the Americas. Corn further eased the
slave trade’s logistical challenges.
● Eurasian and African crops had an equally profound influence on the
history of the American hemisphere. Until the mid-19th century, when most
of slavery was abolished, “drug crops” such as sugar and coffee proved the
most important plant introductions to the Americas. Together with tobacco
and cotton, they formed the heart of a plantation complex that accounted
for the vast majority of the Atlantic slave trade.
● The Atlantic slave trade was a very large part of the Columbian Exchange.
About 10 million Africans arrived in the Americas on European boats as
slaves. The journey that enslaved Africans took from parts of Africa to
America is commonly known as the middle passage.
● Today, millions of people in North America and South America, including
the vast majority of the populations in the countries of the Caribbean, are
descended from these Africans brought to the New World by Europeans.
● The Atlantic Slave trade was a critical component to the Columbian
Exchange because Slave labor developed many European colonies into
longstanding successful territories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwMcRljS3SM