Christopher Columbus : The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange is one of the greatest exchanges in foods, animals, plants and diseases between Europe and the Americas. In 1492 Christopher Columbus came to America. He saw things he had never seen before so then he decided to take some of them with him to Europe. He started trading routes to initiated an interchange of plants between Eastern and Western, as a result it doubled the resources of the food crop on both sides.

The Columbian Exchange, derived from the voyages of Columbus to the Americas, was a chapter in history that connected the Old World to the New World by exchanging crops, culture, and technology. The Columbian Exchange in the Western Hemisphere resulted in extensive demographic, social, economic, and environmental changes. The arrival of Europeans to Native American land produced an intense mixture of culture and population fluctuation. Not only did this exchange affect the social aspect between the two nations, it changed the way people engaged in trade and proprietary interests, which would lead to a massive destruction and transformation of the environment.

The Columbian Exchange has been called the “greatest human intervention in nature since the invention of agriculture” (Grennes 2007). The exchange of diseases, plants, and animals lead to a global cultural and economic shift throughout the Old and New Worlds following Christopher Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas in 1492. The Eastern Hemisphere saw an influx of raw materials, new staple crops, and the income from and production of growing crops that were too resource intensive for Europe and Asia. The Western Hemisphere saw large scale population shifts, massive devastation accompanying colonization, and a significant change in the ecosystem with the introduction of new, sometimes invasive, plants and animals. This 'exchange' had one

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.

In his article “The Columbian Voyages, the Columbian Exchange, and Their Historians”, Alfred W. Crosby seems to think that much of the Columbian voyages and what came out of them was detrimental to many cultures, most of all the Native Americans. Crosby brings up many institutions and ideologies to re-enforce his opinion, such as the slave trade and the conquest of many Native American

The transition from the Old World to the New World, commonly classified as the Columbian Exchange, was the basis of European expansionism and imperialism. In reference to previous and future endeavors in history involving expansionism and imperialism, were notoriously implemented in inhumane ways. Evidently, the Columbian Exchange, named after the founder of the New World, Christopher Columbus, was the introduction of numerous things such as: technologies, plants, animals, diseases, and cultures. As the Columbian Exchange is a significant event is history, despite the demise of numerous Native American tribes and Europeans, the Columbian Exchange is the beginning of modernization in terms of socio-economics in the Western hemisphere.

Until the sixteenth century, the experts in that period of time believed that it was impossible to sail west across from the Atlantic to Asia. By his adventure, Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator, proved that they were wrong. However, based on the theory that the earth was a sphere, he thought that he could reach the East Indies by sailing west. He calculated the distance from Portugal to Asia was shorter than to Congo. In fact, the real distance from Portugal to Japan was much further, over ten thousand miles. With his erroneous estimate, he planned a scheme to prove he was right. After several unsuccessful lobbying in Portugal, Spain, even in England and France, eventually, in 1492, he won financing for his journey from Spanish monarchs,

In 1492 the explorer Columbus set out on his first voyage for Spain in search of a direct water route across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to Asia. Instead though, he found the Americas. Once in the New World Columbus ran into a native people and decided to name them Indians. This accidental finding of the Americas ignited the first contact ever between the Western and Eastern hemisphere. The result of this was The Columbian Exchange in which there was a large trade of animals, plants, technology, culture, slaves, diseases, and even new religions. This exchange effected the way Europeans, Americans, Asians, and Africans lived their daily lives. The Columbian exchange was by far one of the most paramount events in the history of world technology, agriculture, culture, and ecology. In this research paper the following will be answered:

Columbus mistakenly found the New World in 1492, when sailing from Europe in hopes of sailing to Asia. He hit shore on what is now Virginia, and came in contact with the Indians, who were already settled. Columbus came with a group of colonial men and brought with him “cotton, parrots, javelins, and other things too numerous to mention,” (Doc. 1). The Indians perceived the colonial men as a different culture and welcomed them by inviting them into their religious faith, this way there would be no tension between the parties. Consequently, both parties ended up fighting over control over the land, the Indians with bows and arrows and the colonial men with swords and armor (Doc. 5).

After Columbus' 'discovery' of America in 1492, an began exchange between the 'Old World', the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, and the 'New World', the continents of what today is North America and South America. Historian Alfred Crosby called this exchange the 'Columbian Exchange'. The spread of new foods and animals benefited both the Old and New worlds, although the exchange of disease devastated the New World. Historians estimate that as many as 100 million people died as a result of the spread of diseases such as Small Pox and Influenza. This exchange changed world history and created the world that we live in today.

It should no longer come as any great surprise that Columbus was not the first to discover the Americas--Carthaginians, Vikings, and even St. Brendan may have set foot on the Western Hemisphere long before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. But none of these incidental contacts made the impact that Columbus did. Columbus and company were bound to bring more than the benefits of Christianity and double entry bookkeeping to America. His voyages started the Columbian Exchange, a hemispherical swap of peoples, plants, animals and diseases that transformed not only the world he had discovered but also the one he had left.

Christopher Columbus was an Italian Explorer,colonizer.He was one of the most outstanding navigator in human history.In 1492, Columbus sailed to the Americas for the first time. It was the beginning of the 21st century large-scale sailing, the beginning of the connection between the old continent and the new continent, and caused a great variety of ecological changes.He traveled four times across the Atlantic from 1492 to 1502 under the support of the King of Spain. Since Columbus’ discovery in 1942,the Columbian exchange began.The Columbian exchange was a biological and cultural exchanges between the old world and the New world.The exchanges of animals , diseases,plants,and technology etc, affected and transformed European and Native American’s way of life from 1492 to 1607. The plants involved in the Columbian Exchange changed both the economy and the culture of the new and old worlds.There was a lot of new plants discovered in the Americas.There were many new plants in the Americas that Europeans had never seen.The most prevalent was sugarcane.According to some information “The Columbian exchange sugarcane preparation sugarcane originates from new Guinea. It then spread to the Tropical regions of south Asia through trade routes.Sugarcane was taken by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage from the canary islands to what is now the Dominican Republic ” (Katherine Hurley).Eventually,the large scale production of sugar in the Americas was because of that.The

When building the New World, the labor that was used was due to racism and slavery. Wealthy white people would come to the Americas for opportunity while poor white indentured servants and enslaved African Americans built their colonies and worked in the fields. As time went on, people began to view certain races as more important and of a higher class than others. The New World became a heavily racist society filled with African Americans being captured and brought over to the America’s only to be worked to death. Even Indians were treated differently based off their origin and religion.

The question that is foremost in our minds is “What is the Columbian Exchange”? A historian named Alfred Crosby describes this Columbian Exchange as the exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the Americas after the arrival of Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean in 1492 It has been said that due to lack of human control during this evolutionary time in history of the continents, the Columbian Exchange greatly benefited the people of Europe and their colonies, but brought catastrophe to Native Americans.

The Americas and their people were isolated for thousands of years from the rest of the world which created for them technological barriers and biological consequences; no one yet had discovered a way to connect the American and European continents until 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain to the Americas and brought the European people and their advancements with him. They exchanged ideas, cultures, plants, animals, and diseases which became know as the Columbian Exchange. Within this exchange the two countries and their people greatly benefited and advanced from each other. The Europeans brought livestock that changed how the Indians transported and the labor that they did. The Indians introduced the Europeans to maize and potatoes