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The World Of The Columbian Exchange

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In the time before modern transportation, world exploration was a prolonged and laborious process. Despite these hardships, many countries still put a large portion of their funds and resources toward this process. This spawns the question of why countries were so willing to put forth this effort to explore lands they had yet ventured to. The underlying answer to this question is the benefits provided by trade. Trade served as enough motivation to drive the Portuguese and Spanish to sail across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as around the Indian subcontinent. This sparked the conjuncture we know today as the Columbian Exchange. This was the first event in history that truly exhibited international trade. Today, this term of international …show more content…

This capture allowed them to fund Christopher Columbus’s journey across the Atlantic Ocean. This journey began with the primary intention of uncovering a new route to China. If they wished to open trade with the Chinese, it would require a more efficient way of transport between the countries. During their trip, they made an unintended stop in what would become America. After landing, the Spanish were soon met by the natives of America. The acts they committed against the Native Americans were treacherous. In an account by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, he describes these horrors committed. In one particularly gruesome excerpt Bartolomé alleges that “they killed an infinite number of souls, and cut off the hands and noses of countless women and men, and others they threw to the savage dogs, who ate them and tore them to pieces (Casas).” As these horrors were occurring, similar activities were on the horizon in Africa. The work of the Portuguese in Africa was far from complete. They continued setting up trading stations spanning across the west coast of Africa, still with the intention of finding gold.
They would soon become interested in a new form of trade which would become much more valuable to them than gold. They eventually stumbled upon the Kingdom of Kongo beginning in the 1480’s. The state was pleased with the prospect of an alliance with Portugal and welcomed these outsiders. Initially the city accepted guns, cattle, and horses from

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