Columbian Exchange Dbq Analysis

By definition, the Columbian Exchange is described as the transatlantic flow of goods, people, and diseases, beginning with Christopher Columbus’s voyages and discovery of the New World in 1492. (Give Me Liberty!) This interpretation, however, does not give this event the acknowledgement it deserves, as the effects of this complex transaction made a significant impact of the modern history of the world. It completely shaped the world humans live in today, from the languages they speak, to the nations they live in, to the food they eat. (shmoop.com) The ideas, people, goods, and diseases spread during the Columbian Exchange diversified the world culturally, biologically, and economically.

Over five hundred years ago, the world was holding its breath as a man stood on the shores of what, he thought, were the West Indies. He had sailed with the hope of acquiring riches and fame from Asia, but instead, was met with an island full of lush, green vegetation. This island was nothing like the cosmopolitan cities of Asia, with prospering trade and opportunities for the aspiring merchant. His calculations had been wrong and now he was in new territory that was not on any map. What this man had “discovered” was a diamond in the rough and would launch a period of globalization like never before. This Italian merchant’s name would be documented in the history books centuries after his death and the process of trade he initiated between Europe, Africa, and the Americas would come to bare his name: the Columbian Exchange. The impact that this exchanged had on the world would resonate for years after as new ideas, cultures, technologies, and diseases got shared. Not one civilization was spared and the changes that ensued were numerous. The Columbian Exchange would throw an active light on Europe on the global stage and devastate previously thriving native populations, but perhaps most prominent, it increased emphasis in the differences and importance of races.

In the new world, Europeans encountered indigenous plant foods cultivated by Native Americas. These plants were potatoes, beans, corn, tobacco, and cocoa. The potato is especially important because it’s known for one of the main foods for Ireland. The European’s influenced oats and barley etc. Domesticated animals as pigs, chickens, sheep, and ox were also brought to the Americas. Horses were also brought to the new world which was a new tool for hunting and used for military.

The Columbian Exchange introduced many things into the New and Old World that changed their culture completely. Ireland is known for potatoes, but potatoes didn’t come from Ireland they came from the New World. Also, horses are one of the symbols of Native Americans, though horses were one of the domesticated animals brought to the New World. The New World eventually benefited from the European exploration to the New World with the introduction of crops, livestock, and European technology.

The Columbian Exchange was a major milestone in the diffusion of the New and Old World. Ever since Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas in 1492, his interactions with the Native Americans has changed the development of the new world. During his first trip to the Bahamas, he exchanged their cultures such as crops, animals, and diseases. The Columbian Exchange has resulted in many positive and negative effects between the New World and Europe.

Contact between Native Americans and Europeans brought changes to European societies through three ways. First, with many new resources, Europeans were able to start the Columbian Exchange. The Columbian Exchange was basically the transfer of new resources and technology from the New World to the Old World and from the Old World to the New World. Second, since new types of crops were introduced to the Europeans, these new crops improved many of the European’s diets. For an example, before potatoes were introduced to the Old World, grains and wheat were the main parts of the European diets. But, after potatoes were introduced to the European countries, potatoes became the substitutions for grain and wheat because they were convenient to cultivate.

The Columbian Exchange was a time period where the old world and the new world exchanged plants, animals, diseases, and technology. “Beginning after Columbus' discovery in 1492 the exchange lasted throughout the years of expansion

As Tindall and Shi put it, “ tribal cohesion and cultural life disintegrated, and efforts to resist European assaults collapsed” (15). The Spanish and Portuguese immediately began to enslave the surviving Indians and put them to work in mines and on sugar plantations under a system they called the, “encomienda system”. Many of the elite American Indians who survived disease did not fare any better, as their legitimacy as chiefs and religious leaders was stripped away from them. This system was meant to colonize, subjugate, and forcefully assimilate the Native Americans to cruel and harmful condition, all in the name of profit (Parker 54). Soon, however, the European empires faced a problem regarding the low amount of laborers due mainly to the smallpox epidemic. This caused the Spanish and Portuguese empires to switch from American Indian labor, to African slave labor. Bringing the African slaves to the Western hemisphere began a long history of bondage that would continue in the American continents until Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888. To add to all of that, the African slaves brought their own diseases that not even the white europeans were immune to such as, malaria, yellow fever, and cholera among others. The diminution of American Indian populations continued even after the fall of the Incan and Aztec empires. As the

Despite the intensive study of knowing how many people resided in the Americas before Columbus contact, it has been unable to reach a consensus regarding the consequences of European settlement in the decimation of native population. Considering that Alan Brinkley states “ How to balance the many achievements of European civilization in the New World after 1492 against the terrible destruction of native peoples that accompanied it is, in the end, less a historical question, perhaps, than a moral one “; In my opinion historians be addressing other issues, for instances how European encounter influence Native American’s patterns of health and disease. Furthermore, Historians should study about the consequences the past have today in the American

The author’s purpose of creating the graph is to show the devastating impact that Europeans (and the diseases they carried) had on the Native American population. This is shown in the plummet of the Native American population, as the population of non-Native Americans steadily grow on the

The introduction and spread of Old World diseases, crops and livestock shaped and affected colonization of the America in positive and negative. In our Placing Latin America book chapter two it states that the societies of the America’s were highly advanced were to be remade in a short amount of time and only retaining small bits that took centuries to establish because of the colonization of the America’s. Different areas in the America’s had different outcomes from the spread and introduction Old World diseases, crops and livestock.

Expansion to the new world was both a blessing and a curse to both Europeans and the natives of the new land. The first motive for exploring the new world to find a easier and faster way to trade with the Asian countries, but soon after two new continents were discovered it sprouted different motives from everyone. Even though everyone had their own ideas and dreams about the new world they were all ended up with a common goal, to find silver and gold and become very wealthy. Every country heard about and expected to find an unlimited amount of riches. What the Europeans weren’t expecting to find was thousands of different civilizations already living in this unexplored “new world”.

European diseases were responsible for the deaths of more than half of the Incan empire and for the passing of as much as ninety percent of the natives of coastal New England (Mann, “1491”). Such a reduction of the strength and numbers of American Indian civilization was a considerable promoting factor in European conquest of and colonization of the Americas. If Native Americans had been capable of exhibiting a more formidable immunological response to European pathogens, colonization of the Americas would have followed a vastly different path, leading to tremendous differences in the development of the New World and the Old World and their mutual relationship.

Today many critics of the Western Heritage, particularly those who focus on the United States, hold the view that the European occupation of North and South America was a conquest that callously destroyed viable cultures. Much of the enmity for that destruction falls upon the shoulders of Columbus. While it is a vast distortion to blame Columbus for all that happened, it is true that within two generations of the 1492 voyage many cultures and civilizations had been destroyed. The two most notorious campaigns of conquest, carried out by Spanish conquerors, were against the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru. More than the conquests and even the slave labor that the Spaniards impressed upon the natives, it was the European diseases that decimated the ranks of the Amerindians. Also, what is often overlooked, is that, in what has come to be known as the Columbian Exchange, Europeans brought back syphilis to their continent from the Amerindians. During the sixteenth century, this

Shortly following Columbus’s encounter with the new world in 1492, European settlers would make the long journey to North America in hopes of land, riches, and freedom. However, little did they consider the lives of the Native Americans, who had been there long before Columbus’s “discovery”, or how they would disrupt their ancient customs and way of life. Upon the arrival of the Europeans, the Native Americans were experiencing an agricultural revolution, where tribes all across the United States were becoming more sedentary, as well as developing new sources of food, clothing, and shelter. With the intrusion of the influx of Europeans, however, all of this was disrupted with their selfish and incognizant actions. The English tended to oppress Native Americans both economically and culturally by denying their potential contributions to help grow settlements in the New World. In contrast, the French developed peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with Native Americans in the establishment of the French fur trade and culturally befriended them.