The Columbian Exchange Essential Questions: Questions of the Day 1. What was the Columbian Exchange? 2. What was its impact on the old and new worlds? 1. What is the Columbian 3. What are some examples of the impact of the Exchange? Columbian Exchange? 2. How did the Columbian Exchange affect society? The Columbian Exchange What was the Columbian Exchange? Impact on Native Americans Most significant event in the Colonization brought the spread of history of world ecology, disease agriculture, and culture Europeans brought measles, mumps, chicken pox, and small pox Term used to describe the widespread exchange of: Diseases devastated Native American ◦ Plants communities ◦ Animals ◦ Foods Nearly 1/3 of Hispaniola’s approximately ◦ Human populations (including 300,000 inhabitants died during slaves) Columbus’s time there ◦ Communicable diseases ◦ Ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres after 1492 By 1508 fewer than 100,000 survivors lived on the island To America, Europeans introduced crops The European disease was the ultimate conqueror of America ◦ Crops would later serve as cash crops for export by the colonists Impact on Africa Impact on Europe The Slave Trade Begins New types of food and With disease devastating the animals were brought back native workforce Europeans to Europe turned to Africa for slaves This had both positive and negative aspects: African Losses ◦ Positive because they served African slave trade devastated as a valuable source for food many African societies ◦ Negative because they Before the slave trade ended destroyed their croplands in the 1800s Africa lost at least 12 million people Plants carried back to Europe enriched nutrition in the Old World and this resulted in major population explosions Horse Old World Allowed Native Americans to shift to a nomadic lifestyle Provided new food source for Turkey New World Europeans Chicken Old World Provided new food source for New World inhabitants Tomato Staple of Italian cuisine today, New World world wide use Maize New World World’s most important cereal crop (plant with edible seeds) World staple crop; failure of Potato New World Irish crop lead to massive American migration First outbreak after 1492 Syphilis New World believed to have killed more than 5 million Europeans Smallpox Old World Devastated Native populations who were not resistant.