Changes And Continuities In The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange, beginning in 1492 with Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, was a global trading standoff between the Old World and the New World. Plants, animals, and diseases were being traded fervently between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The global and social changes made during this exchange would leave a lasting impression on the Americas in the years that followed.

The social changes that came with The Columbian Exchange is that different countries communicated with other countries to trade with. Some of countries

One of the most interesting questions to ponder: is can a link be drawn directly to show the causation of why and when countries adopted customs or habits that are now fundamental in the present day. With secondary sources, these correlations can be shown and provide statistics as proof, based upon analysis of important primary sources. The journal article The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food and Ideas is a secondary source detailing what occurred in the years after the voyage of Columbus and how both the New World and the Old World were affected during this period of colonization. An interesting perspective was given in this paper, unlike many others that describe the same topic, in which the authors chose to focus on how the Old World was affected more so than what transpired in the areas being colonized. There was an extravagant biological exchange of both crops and disease, which provided serious lifestyle changes for both Europeans and the native people of the Americas, and there were also consequences elsewhere in the world associated with the Columbus exchange in the years after its commencement. Secondary sources are also very important to historians and this is a source that is very well written, backed up by diagrams and detailed evidence found in primary sources.

The Columbian Exchange is the exchange of plants, animals, food, and diseases between Europe and the Americas. In 1492, when Christopher Columbus came to America, he saw plants and animals he had never seen before so he took them back with him to Europe. Columbus began the trade routes which had never been established between Europe and the Americas so his voyages initiated the interchange of plants between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, which doubled the food crop resources available to people on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Colombian Exchange was an extensive exchange between the eastern and western hemispheres as knows as the Old World and New World. The Colombian exchange greatly affects almost every society. It prompted both voluntary and forced migration of millions of human beings. There are both positive and negative effects that you can see from the Colombian Exchange. The Colombian Exchange explorers created contact between Europe and the Americas. The interaction with Native Americans began the exchange of animals, plants, disease, and weapons. The most significant effects that the Colombian Exchange had on the Old World and New World were its changes in agriculture, disease, culture, and its effects on ecology.

It was the year 1492, and a man by the name of Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain where he then landed in the present day Americas, sparking one of the most important events in the world, the Columbian exchange. The Columbian exchange has shaped the world to what it is today with the exchange of goods from the Old World to the New World, and vice versa. The Columbian exchange caused numerous short and long-term effects in the Americas and many other parts of the world.

The Columbian Exchange was a major milestone in the diffusion of the New and Old World. In 1492, Columbus arrived in the Bahamas(2), where he first came in contact with Native Americans. There, both exchanged their cultures such as crops, animals, metals, and germs, hence the name, Colombian Exchange. This has brought about both positive and negative effects. While some negative impacts are exemplified by the near-genocide of Amerindians, the demerits are outweighed by the benefits of this historical exchange, including the international diversity of ethnicity, and increased global population.

The Columbian Exchange is a huge exchange of goods and ideas between the old world and the new world. The old world is considered Europe, Asia and Africa and the new world is considered America. Their colonies started to trade with each other and that’s when they formed the Columbian Exchange. Many countries were involved in this trade, including China, Africa and Italy. The exchange of the new ideas, traditions, food, religion and diet changed cultures everywhere. The Natives gave and received many items. Even though Europeans and American Indians saw some similarities in each other, their words differed. The introduction of plants into the new world extended a process that had been taking place for centuries in the Old World. Trade

The Columbian Exchange took cultural diversities and made America. It introduced biological, economic and cultural impact with drastic consequences. It is considered too had changed years of evolution.

When you are sitting in a fancy restaurant in Texas, tasting a delicious steak with a nice cup of coffee, do you know that before 1492, American people don’t even know what is beef and coffee. Nowadays, people’s diet is abundant. People in every part of the world can taste the food originated in other side of the world. This is due to one of the most significant ecological events in human history called the Columbian Exchange. According to Nunn Nathan and Qian Nancy, “the Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492” (Nathan and Nancy, 2010). It was so spectacular that has left both positive and negative impacts in each side of the world.

In “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas,” the authors point out that there were two channels in the transfer of food crops. One are unknown tropical spcies from the New World, which has affected on the growth of local cuisines. They are rich in calories and improving taste and vitamin intake. Otherwise, the Old World also brought certain crops. America gave a plenty of land that helped response the high food demand, and became the main supplies for Old World markets. In this way, they unknowingly carried many Old World diseases, such as smallpox, meales, and other diseases. They were unfamiliar to the Native America and they never had developed immunity to such disease. By the early 1600’s, the population of Indians decreased nearly 90%. Furthermore, Columbus’ sailors encountered sexually with native women Indians so that they brought the deadly bacteria unwittingly back to Europe. This reason led slavery system traded from Africa for labor requirement for cotton and tobacco plantation

History has shaped every part of the various cultures and regions throughout the world. These influential historical events might have made a large impact, while other events only impacted a few regions. Some historical events can also have a positive influence on one area and a negative influence on another. A historic event that had a large impact and influence, both positive and negative, on several different regions of the world was the Columbian Exchange. In a broad sense, the Columbian Exchange can be described as a period of time where there were numerous exchanges between the new and the old worlds. Many of the items that were exchanged included both cultural and biological elements (Malone et al.). It is often stated that Christopher Columbus is responsible for starting this massive cultural exchange

This event during 1492 was a global diffusion of plants, animals, humans and diseases (Drame, Lecture notes). This system of mass immigration from and into Europe, Americas, Africa and Asia, resulting from explorations allowed for a diffusion of knowledge, language and culture as well. New foods were being produced in different places of the world such as potatoes in Ireland during 1840 and oranges in California. Wheat, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, papayas, and pineapples were available in places of the world that had never seen these animals and food before. This global diffusion did have negative consequences such as contagious diseases including plague, smallpox, measles, whooping cough and influenza. However, overall, the Columbian exchange resulted in an increase in the world's population because of a greater availability of food as well as the discovery of antibiotics and vaccines. The discovery of different

Columbian Exchange-1492, the Columbian exchange was a widespread trade that consisted of animals, disease, and new technologies

Some would say that Christopher Columbus was a devout Christian. He believed that "his was a mission that would put Christian civilization on the offensive after centuries of Muslim ascendancy" (Dor-Ner 45). Columbus' original mission was to find a western route to the Indies. But when that failed, his mission became clear: convert these new people to Christianity. Throughout this paper I will show the view of the natives by Columbus and Christendom and how these views changed over a span of fifty years.