What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?

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The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange was the transatlantic trade of crops, technology, and culture between the Americas and Europe, Africa, and Asia.

What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
The ships La Niña, La Pinta, and La Santa María made Columbus' first voyage across the Atlantic.

Exchange of Goods

When Europeans came to the Americas, they brought some things that were new to the Native Americans, such as wheat, cows, horses, firearms, wheels, laws, languages, and customs.

Europeans returning from the Americas brought back many new items to Europe, like peanuts, pineapples, tomatoes, potatoes, cocoa, and tobacco.

Goods moving from the New World to the Old World

  • Food: corn, potatoes, beans, cocoa beans
  • Precious metals: gold, silver
  • Tobacco

Goods moving from the Old World to the New World

  • Food: wheat, sugar, rice, coffee beans
  • Livestock: horses, cows, pigs
  • Diseases: smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus
What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
See larger version of the trade map here.

Here's a more comprehensive list:

Items traded from the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia

  • Tobacco
  • Sweet Potato
  • Avocado
  • Peppers
  • Peanut
  • Potato
  • Tomato
  • Corn
  • Beans
  • Vanilla
  • Pumpkin
  • Turkey
  • Squash
  • Pineapple

Items traded from Europe, Africa and Asia to the Americas

  • Produce:
    • Turnip
    • Peach
    • Olive
    • Banana
    • Honeybees
    • Sugar Cane
    • Citrus Fruits
    • Coffee Bean
    • Grape
    • Pear
    • Onion
  • Disease:
    • Smallpox
    • Influenza
    • Typhus
    • Measles
    • Malaria
    • Diphtheria
    • Whooping Cough
  • Livestock:
    • Cattle
    • Sheep
    • Pig
    • Horse
  • Grains:
    • Wheat
    • Rice
    • Barley
    • Oats

Native Americans Devastated

Any benefits brought to the Native Americans by the arrival of the Europeans were far outweighed by the misery that came with them. Native Americans were used as forced labor before slaves were brought from Africa.

Furthermore, diseases (such as smallpox, typhus, and measles) spread rapidly, devastating entire Native American populations.

What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
Aztecs suffering from the smallpox, as depicted in the 16th century Florentine Codex.

Triangular Trade

The triangular trade was trade that occurred between the Americas, Europe, and Africa.

What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
See larger version of triangular trade map 1 here.

Plantations and Enslaved Africans

Plantations were large farms that produced crops for sale (also known as "cash crops"). Plantations required a large numbers of workers to labor long hours.

What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
See larger version of triangular trade map 2 here.

The first enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas in 1517. The Europeans constructed a cruel system to supply slaves, who were regarded as property, to the Americas.

The Middle Passage

As part of the triangular trade system, the Middle Passage was the terrifying journey enslaved Africans made across the ocean in the hull of a slave ship. They were involuntarily taken from their homeland and forced into slavery in the Americas.

What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
See larger version of the interior plans of a slave ship here.

This is a close-up of the previous picture. Can you see how close the people were on the slave ships? It was a miserable trip from Africa and many did not survive.

What was the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas Europe and Africa?
See larger version of the slave ship close-up here.

class="margin_top50">Cause and Effects of the Columbian Exchange

The Causes:

  • A desire to accumulate wealth
  • A rebirth of a spirit of inquiry
  • Improved seafaring technology

Led To:

  • Europeans exploring the Americas

Which Caused:

  • The exchange of goods and ideas between Europe and the Americas
  • The devastation of Native American populations by European diseases
  • The participation of European countries in the West African slave trade

How did the Columbian Exchange impact Europe Africa and the Americas?

New food and fiber crops were introduced to Eurasia and Africa, improving diets and fomenting trade there. In addition, the Columbian Exchange vastly expanded the scope of production of some popular drugs, bringing the pleasures — and consequences — of coffee, sugar, and tobacco use to many millions of people.

What effects did the Columbian Exchange have on the Americas?

The impact was most severe in the Caribbean, where by 1600 Native American populations on most islands had plummeted by more than 99 percent. Across the Americas, populations fell by 50 percent to 95 percent by 1650. The disease component of the Columbian Exchange was decidedly one-sided.

What was the Columbian Exchange What effects did it have for both the Americas and Europe?

Christopher Columbus introduced horses, sugar plants, and disease to the New World, while facilitating the introduction of New World commodities like sugar, tobacco, chocolate, and potatoes to the Old World. The process by which commodities, people, and diseases crossed the Atlantic is known as the Columbian Exchange.