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Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Name:
Date:
Mr. Carey/Mr. Clarke
Columbian Exchange
Columbian Exchange
I. Overview
3To be sure, the meeting of European and Native American cultures, starting with the “discovery” of the New World by
Christopher Columbus in 1492, were defined by violence, conquest, and bloodshed—as we saw in the Spanish-Incan
“collision” at Cajamarca. But contact between European and Native American societies gave rise to more than violence
alone. In fact, the meeting of these two cultures sparked a global transfer that historians refer to as the “Columbian
Exchange,” in which people, crops, animals, disease, cultural elements, and much more flowed back-and-forth between
the New World, which consisted of the Americas, and the Old World, which consisted of Europe, Africa, and Asia. As we
will see, the Columbian Exchange would have dramatic effects upon all major regions of the world, in the process setting
the stage for many of the critical historical developments that would follow.
Directions: Actively read and annotate the provided text on the Columbian Exchange. While you read, keep the question
below in mind. When you have finished reading, respond to this question in the “Homework” section of your AP World
History notebooks.
1.
Describe the demographic, environmental, and economic effects of the Columbian Exchange. Your response
should feature: a) at least one piece of evidence for each of the three effect types listed above, b) explanations
for how each piece of evidence connects to the effect types in question.
II. The Columbian Exchange
Chief among the consequences of the European-Native American interactions during the early
modern period was the demographic (population) collapse of Native American societies. Scholars
generally agree that the pre-Columbian1 population of the New World was substantial, perhaps 6080 million. The greatest concentration of people lived in the Aztec and Inca empires. Separation from
Old World (Africa/Eurasia) meant that Native American peoples had not built up any immunities to
Old World diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever. Therefore,
when Native American peoples came into contact with European and African diseases, they died in
huge numbers, in many cases losing up to 90 percent of their population. The peoples of the
Caribbean islands vanished within 50 years of Columbus’ arrival. Central Mexico, with a population
estimated at some 10 to 20 million before the Spanish conquest, declined to bout 1 million by 1650.
This degree of dying was the same in North America, where the Dutch and British established
1
Before
Columbus
stumbled upon
the Americas in
1492.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
territories. Native American communities referred to this widespread catastrophe as the “Great
Dying.” (1)
The sharply dropping populations of Native Americans in the Americas made further room for the
colonizing Europeans and enslaved Africans that were constantly arriving in the New World. Over the
several centuries of the early modern period and beyond, various combinations of native, European,
and African peoples created entirely new racial mixtures and societies in the Americas, largely
replacing the cultures that had existed before 1492. (2)
In these societies, Europeans and Africans brought not only their germs and their people but also
their plants and animals. Wheat, rice, sugar, grapes, and many garden vegetables and fruits, as well as
numerous weeds, took hold in the Americas, where they transformed the environment and made
possible a European diet. Even more significant were Old World animals—horses, pigs, cattle, goats,
sheep—all of which were new to the Americas. Horses in particular transformed Native American
societies, particularly in the North American West, where once-agricultural Indian groups abandoned
their crops and lived a life on the move with their horses. (3)
In the other direction, American food crops such as corn, potatoes, and cassava flowed to and spread
widely throughout the Old World, where they provided the necessary nutrition for an immense
population growth. In Europe, the calories from corn and potatoes helped push European population
from some 60 million in 1400 to 390 million in 1900. In China, corn, peanuts, and especially sweet
potatoes joined the traditional rice and wheat to spark a population explosion. In Africa, corn took
hold quickly and was used as a cheap food, driving population growth despite decreasing numbers
from the transatlantic slave trade. (4)
Beyond food crops, American stimulants such as tobacco and chocolate were soon used around the
world. Tea from China and coffee from the Islamic world flowed back to the New World as a trade-off.
Never before in human history had such a large-scale and significant diffusion of plants and animals
worked to change the environmental make-up of the planet. (5)
Furthermore, the societies that developed within the American colonies drove the processes of
globalization and reshaped the world economy of the early modern period. The silver mines of Mexico
and Peru fueled both transatlantic and transpacific commerce, encouraged Spain’s unsuccessful effort
to dominate Europe, and enabled Europeans to buy the Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain that they
wanted so badly. The plantation owners of the tropical lowland regions needed workers and found
them by the millions in Africa in the form of slaves. The Atlantic slave trade, which brought these
workers to the colonies in the Americas, and the sugar and cotton trade, which distribute the fruits of
their labor around the world, created a lasting link among Africa, Europe, and the Americas. (6)
This enormous network of communication, migration, trade, disease, and the transfer of plants and
animals, all generated by European colonial empires in the Americas, has been dubbed the
“Columbian Exchange.” It gave rise to something new in world history: the Old and New Worlds had
been connected. (7)