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Columbian Exchange.mp4The Columbian Exchange_ Crash Course World History #23.mp4The Columbian Exchange_ Crash Course History of Science #16.mp4In the following questions, you will learn about the Columbian Exchange. Historians use the term "Columbian Exchange" to describe the movement of diseases, animals, plants, people, and resources between the Americas and the rest of the world.
According to the map, the Americas are made up of North America and South America. In the Columbian Exchange, diseases, animals, plants, people, and resources moved between the Americas and the rest of the world.
Where did the term "the Americas" come from?
Europeans named the Americas after an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). In Latin, his name was Americus. Can you see the similarity between "Americus" and "America"?
The Columbian Exchange started in 1492, when Europeans first began coming to the Americas in large numbers. As ships began to travel between the Americas and the rest of the world, they brought many new things with them that were part of the Columbian Exchange: plants, animals, people, and diseases.
What else was happening in the world in 1492?
The Ottoman Empire had just finished fighting a war in Eastern Europe. This Ottoman palace in present-day Turkey was completed in 1478.
The Ming Dynasty controlled the wealthiest state in the world. This religious site in present-day China was built by the Ming Dynasty in 1420.
The Songhai Empire conquered land in West Africa. In 1468, the Songhai Empire took control of this religious site in present-day Mali.
The Columbian Exchange began when a European sailor named Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492. In the 1400s, leaders in Europe wanted to trade with the Ming Dynasty in Asia, which controlled the wealthiest state in the world. However, trading with Asia was difficult and expensive.
The king and queen of Spain wanted to find an easier and less expensive way to trade with Asia. Christopher Columbus thought that he could reach Asia in a new way, by sailing around the world. So, the king and queen of Spain paid for Columbus's journey.
Christopher Columbus thought that he could travel from Europe to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean and around that side of the globe. This would give Spain a new, easier way to trade with the Ming Dynasty. But Columbus did not know that he would reach the Americas instead.
Why did Europeans want to trade in Asia?
In the 1400s, Europeans wanted to use expensive products that were made in Asia, including spices, silk, and salt.
Were Europeans the first people to explore the seas?
No! Many different societies have made long sea journeys. For example, Polynesians explored and created new communities on islands in the Pacific Ocean as early as 1500 BCE. That was more than 3,500 years ago!
Before Columbus arrived in the Americas, indigenous (in-DIJ-uh-nuhs) peoples, also called Native peoples, had already lived there for thousands of years.
This timeline shows a few of the indigenous societies that existed between 500 and 1492, when Europeans first arrived.
How can we learn about indigenous societies?
Archaeologists and historians use many different artifacts, or physical objects from the past, to learn when and how indigenous people lived before contact with Europeans:
remains of buildings
places where people were buried
pottery
sculptures
jewelry
When the Columbian Exchange began in 1492, most indigenous people in the Americas were farmers. Many lived in large, complex cities and towns. A smaller number hunted their food or gathered it from the wild.
The table describes two different indigenous societies around 1492.
Do Chumash people still live in California?
Yes! Many Chumash people still live in California today.
Beginning in 2004, groups of Chumash people have recreated one of the long trading journeys that Chumash people used to make. Chumash people use this event as a way to connect with their culture and history.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas. After he returned to Spain, the Spanish government sent more ships to the Americas and took control of large areas of land. Other European leaders saw Spain's success and sent their own ships to the Americas.
The arrows on the map below show where Europeans arrived in North America between 1500 and 1800.
Were the Americas really a "New World"?
Starting in the 1500s, Europeans called the Americas the "New World," in comparison to the "Old World" of Europe, Asia, and Africa. But the Americas weren't actually new, just new to Europeans. Indigenous peoples had already lived in the Americas for thousands of years.
Death by cow?
Domesticated animals can cause deadly diseases. So, one of the reasons that people in the rest of the world had more deadly diseases than people in the Americas is because they had more domesticated animals.
For example, smallpox, a deadly human disease that Europeans brought to the Americas, is very similar to a disease that cows have. Scientists think that the disease probably changed over time and spread from cows to humans.
Before 1492, there was very little contact between the Americas and the rest of the world. The plants, animals, and diseases in each area evolved differently.
Over many generations, farmers in the Americas and the rest of the world had domesticated plants and animals. These farmers had carefully controlled how plants and animals reproduced in order to make them better sources of food and labor. Although animals could be very helpful, they also caused diseases for the people who lived near them.
This table shows some of the important domesticated plants, domesticated animals, and diseases that existed in the Americas and the rest of the world.
ome Europeans and their animals were sick with diseases when they arrived in the Americas. Indigenous peoples had never experienced these diseases before. So, their bodies could not fight off the diseases well.
In the passage below, an indigenous writer explains the effects of a European disease in his community in what is now Guatemala. The disease passed through the writer's home in 1519. Read the passage. Then answer the question below.
The mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the king and his brothers and kinsmen. So it was that we became orphans, oh my son! So we became when we were young.
mortality: the number of people who died
kinsmen: relatives
Annals of the Cakchiquels, translated from Cakchiquel Maya by Adrian Recinos and Delia Goetz, 1953: 115-116.
Why did so many indigenous people become sick?
Many Europeans had already been exposed to the European diseases that spread in the Americas, so their bodies had learned how to fight them off. The indigenous peoples of the Americas had never been exposed to these diseases, so their bodies could not fight the diseases off. As a result, indigenous people became sick and many died. But many other indigenous people survived. Some wrote about or drew what had happened in their communities.
Diseases changed the relationship between indigenous peoples and Europeans. For example, historians believe that the effects of a deadly European disease helped the Spanish take control of the Inca Empire.
The Inca Empire was a powerful society that controlled most of the present-day countries of Peru, Ecuador, and Chile.
The events below show how the deadly European disease affected the relationship between the Inca and the Spanish.
In the 1520s, a deadly European disease spreads through the Inca Empire. The leader of the Inca and his oldest son die. So, it's not clear whom the next leader should be.
The Inca go to war with each other over whom the next leader should be. This makes the empire weaker because different parts of the empire begin to fight with each other.
The Inca government becomes weaker because of the war and disease. A new leader gains control.
The Spanish kidnap and kill the new leader and attack the Inca Empire.
Historians believe that the indigenous population in the Americas fell by 90% between 1550 and 1750. Millions of people died from diseases. But people also died from other events related to contact with Europeans.
After 1492, Europeans started sailing between the Americas and the rest of the world. They brought plants, animals, people, and diseases with them. The map below shows some examples of the routes that ships traveled and the goods and people that they brought.
Stowaways!
People brought many animals and plants on purpose so that they could use, sell, or trade them. But they also brought some plants and animals by accident!
Plants and animals that arrived on different continents by accident are also important parts of the Columbian Exchange. The images below show two animals that Europeans accidentally brought to the Americas:
Silver was one important part of the Columbian Exchange. The passage below describes how silver was discovered and traded. Read the passage. Then follow the instructions below.
In 1545, Spanish explorers found large amounts of silver in Potosí, a city in South America. The Ming Dynasty in Asia used silver as money. So, Ming traders wanted the Spanish silver.
Spanish leaders forced indigenous people to mine for the silver. Many indigenous people were hurt or died. Spanish traders then brought this silver to islands in Asia called the Philippines. They exchanged it for expensive goods from the Ming Dynasty.
Because of the silver trade, both Potosí and the Philippines became important centers for the world's wealth and trade.
The silver trade connected the Americas and Europe to Asia. Spanish and Ming traders exchanged silver and expensive goods. Some people, such as the rulers of Spain, became wealthier and more powerful because of the silver trade. However, other people, including many indigenous people, were injured or killed to produce silver.
100,000 pounds of silver!
At the end of the 1500s, silver traders began using huge galleons, or sailing ships, to bring silver from the Americas to Asia. Some historians estimate that these new ships could carry over 100,000 pounds of silver!
Plants from the Americas also traveled around the world after 1492. Over thousands of years, indigenous peoples in the Americas had carefully domesticated different plants to be high in calories, or energy. In other words, the foods they created, such as corn and potatoes, gave people more of the energy they needed to survive.
Ships brought these plants from the Americas to different places around the world. Over time, people outside of the Americas began to grow them.
The table below shows the number of calories in potatoes and wheat grown on the same amount of land.
Purple potatoes?
Potatoes were domesticated by indigenous people in the mountains of South America more than 5,000 years ago. Indigenous people carefully domesticated the potato to grow in cold, dry conditions where other plants would not survive. Some of these were bright colors.
Most potato farmers in the United States now grow brown potatoes that are white on the inside. But some people still grow colorful potatoes. Have you ever seen potatoes like these?
Beginning in 1492, European ships also brought new animals to the Americas. One of these animals was the horse. Horses eventually escaped from Europeans and reached the Great Plains of North America.
Indigenous peoples on the Great Plains hunted American bison, often known as buffalo. Horses made hunting buffalo much easier, and by the 1700s all indigenous peoples on the plains had started using them. They developed a new culture based around the buffalo.
Writing history on the Plains
Indigenous peoples on the Great Plains also used buffalo skins to record important events from their history. These documents are called winter counts. Each year, one person would add a new symbol that represented an important event from that year.
The Columbian Exchange also changed the lives of millions of people from Africa. European settlers in the Americas brought a new plant, sugarcane, that they grew and made into sugar. But making sugarcane into sugar was hard and dangerous.
Beginning in 1503, European traders began bringing enslaved people from Africa to produce sugar in the Americas. Enslaved people worked on sugar plantations, or large farms where they also lived. The trade of both sugar and enslaved people between the Americas and other parts of the world is part of the Columbian Exchange.
ere are the events in the correct order. The clues in bold help you figure out the order.
People in Africa are captured and forced into slavery.
European slave traders bring enslaved people to the Americas on deadly voyages.
Slave traders in the Americas sell enslaved people to sugar plantation owners.
Sugar plantation owners force enslaved people to do hard and dangerous work. Many enslaved people die.
Plantation owners replace enslaved people who have died with more enslaved people brought from Africa.
You have already learned that the Columbian Exchange changed the history of the world. Here are a few examples of the major events that were connected with the Columbian Exchange:
the enslavement of millions of Africans in the Americas
the conquest of the Inca Empire by the Spanish
population growth in Europe, Asia, and Africa
the increase in buffalo hunting on the Great Plains of North America
The Columbian Exchange still affects the world today. You can see some of the effects in many small events in people's daily lives.
Eating the Columbian Exchange!
One of the easiest ways that you can see the effects of the Columbian Exchange is by looking at food from around the world. Many famous foods from places around the world use ingredients that are originally from the Americas. So, the food could only be made that way because of the Columbian Exchange!
Examples of foods that use ingredients from the Americas. Have you ever eaten any of these foods?
Many curries from Asia use spicy chili peppers, which are originally from the Americas.
Food from Ireland is known for using potatoes, which are originally from the Americas.
Food from Italy is famous for using tomatoes, which are originally from the Americas.
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