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Columbian exchange
Columbian exchange
The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, named for Christopher Columbus, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries. It also relates to European colonization and trade following Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.[1] Invasive species, including communicable diseases, were a byproduct of the Exchange. The changes in agriculture significantly altered and changed global populations. The most significant immediate impact of the Columbian exchange was the cultural exchanges and the transfer of people (both free and enslaved) between continents.
The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course World History #23
Published on Jun 28, 2012The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course World History #23
"John Green teaches you about the changes wrought by contact between the Old World and the New. John does this by exploring the totally awesome history book The Columbian Exchange by Alfred Crosby, Jr. After Columbus "discovered" the Americas, European conquerors, traders, and settlers brought all manner of changes to the formerly isolated continents. Disease and invasive plant and animal species remade the New World, usually in negative ways. While native people, plants, and animals were being displaced in the Americas, the rest of the world was benefitting from American imports, especially foods like maize, tomatoes, potatoes, pineapple, blueberries, sweet potatoes, and manioc. Was the Columbian Exchange a net positive? It's debatable. So debate."
https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/4cd0bd6e-ada3-4865-be62-40b3a8483342/the-columbian-exchange-crash-course-world-history-23/The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course History of Science #16
Published on Aug 6, 2018The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course History of Science #16
Over the last four episodes, we’ve examined some of the stories that make up the idea of a “revolution” in knowledge-making in Europe. But we can’t understand this idea fully, without unpacking another one—the so called Age of Exploration. This encompasses a lot of events that happened from 1400 through the 1600s and were driven in part by new ideas about knowledge-making.
The Atlantic, Simon L. Lewis, Mark A. Maslin AUG 24, 2018
"Many people think that in the thousands of years following the rise of agriculture, human societies were static. They were not. Empires rose—some flourished, then perished, while others persisted. Most people remained subsistence farmers who kept themselves, or themselves and the ruling elites, alive. Foraging as a way of life was pushed to agriculturally marginal lands. Populations grew rapidly, with estimates ranging from between 1 and 10 million people at the beginning of agriculture to between 425 and 540 million in the year 1500, around 10,000 years later.
In the 16th century, everything began to change, and change with increasing speed. .."
"In 1972, Alfred W. Crosby wrote a book called The Columbian Exchange. In it, the historian tells the story of Columbus’s landing in 1492 through the ecological ramifications it had on the New World.
At the time of publication, Crosby’s approach to history, through biology, was novel. “For historians Crosby framed a new subject,” wrote J.R. McNeil, a professor at Georgetown University, in a foreword to the book’s 30th anniversary edition. Today, The Columbian Exchange is considered a founding text in the field of environmental history.
I recently spoke with the retired professor about “Columbian Exchange”—a term that has worked its way into historians’ vernacular—and the impacts of some of the living organisms that transferred between continents, beginning in the 15th century..."
This primary source set explores positive and negative consequences of this great shift, showing both instances of exchange and resulting instances of cultural, political, ecological, and biological imperialism.
New Worlds in the Americas: Labor, Commerce, and the Columbian Exchange
New Worlds in the Americas: Labor, Commerce, and the Columbian Exchange
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Describe how Europeans solved their labor problems
Describe the theory of mercantilism and the process of commodification
Analyze the effects of the Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas
The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas
Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian
Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 24, Number 2—Spring 2010—Pages 163–188
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nunn/files/nunn_qian_jep_2010.pdf and https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.2.163
This paper provides an overview of the long-term impacts of the Columbian Exchange -- that is, the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, technologies, populations, and cultures between the New World and the Old World after Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Americas in 1492. We focus on the aspects of the exchange that have been most neglected by economic studies; namely the transfer of diseases, food crops, and knowledge between the two Worlds. We pay particular attention to the effects of the exchange on the Old World.
DIGITAL COLLECTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM
Foods of the Columbian Exchange
Foods of the Columbian Exchange
Selected Primary Sources to View Online
by Sarah Peters Kernan
How did the Columbian Exchange shape food culture in the modern world?
https://dcc.newberry.org/collections/foods-of-the-columbian-exchange
Contents
Contents
European Impressions of New World Foods
A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia
India occidentalis
Pvrchas his pilgrimes
Europeans Adopt and Adapt New Foods
Maison rustique
New Englands prospect
The American physitian, or, A treatise of the roots, plants, trees, shrubs, fruit, herbs, &c. growing in the English plantations in America
Traitez nouveaux & curieux du café, du thé et du chocolate
Exploitation of Resources and Labor
A true & exact history of the island of Barbados
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/298-1805/trenches/6524-trenches-mexico-colonization-salmonella
Archaeology
Conquistador Contagion
Conquistador Contagion
By MARLEY BROWN May/June 2018
"...The scholars would all agree that the conditions for disease in Mexico in the sixteenth century were ideal. Warinner explains that, in addition to hundreds of boats arriving in Mexico each year carrying Europeans who were often quite ill, there were also the combined effects of warfare, political upheaval, and the sudden introduction of livestock. “It’s very clear there is a high background of disease,” Warinner says. Still, she argues, such a high rate of death points to a single culprit, and she believes Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi C could be it. “We do have discrete epidemics,” she adds. “It’s not a slow burn. These are really punctuated, massive events.”"
The Columbian Exchange as a source of adaptive introgression in human populations
The Columbian Exchange as a source of adaptive introgression in human populations
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818900/
Jordan, I King. “The Columbian Exchange as a source of adaptive introgression in human populations” Biology direct vol. 11,1 17. 2 Apr. 2016, doi:10.1186/s13062-016-0121-x
Read the paper online or download it in various file formats.Background
Background
The term “Columbian Exchange” refers to the massive transfer of life between the Afro-Eurasian and American hemispheres that was precipitated by Columbus’ voyage to the New World. The Columbian Exchange is widely appreciated by historians, social scientists and economists as a major turning point that had profound and lasting effects on the trajectory of human history and development.
Presentation of the hypothesis
Presentation of the hypothesis
I propose that the Columbian Exchange should also be appreciated by biologists for its role in the creation of novel human genomes that have been shaped by rapid adaptive evolution. Specifically, I hypothesize that the process of human genome evolution stimulated by the Columbian Exchange was based in part on selective sweeps of introgressed haplotypes from ancestral populations, many of which possessed pre-evolved adaptive utility based on regional-specific fitness and health effects.
Aztec Perspective on the Conquest of Mexico // 16th cent. Florentine Codex // Primary Source
Aztec Perspective on the Conquest of Mexico // 16th cent. Florentine Codex // Primary Source
•May 16, 2020
Here we have extracts from the Florentine Codex, a fascinating but controversial text compiled by Bernadino de Sahagun in collaboration with his Nahuatl students.
In Defense of Columbus: An Exaggerated Evil
In Defense of Columbus: An Exaggerated Evil
Knowing Better
Published on Dec 10, 2017Columbus is a controversial historical figure who is widely viewed as terrible. Every year we question whether we should continue to have a day to celebrate his discovery. But as with most stories, his bad deeds have been exaggerated to make him fit the role of a villain.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered lands. Bartolomé de Las Casas (pictured above), the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, was trying to end the encomienda system in which those who now owned the land could also take the people in forced labour. Juan Gines Sepulveda, a philosopher, argued for the colonists' property rights over people, asserting that some native Americans were 'natural slaves' as defined by Aristotle. Valladolid became seen as the first open attempt by European colonists to discuss the ethics of slavery, and Las Casas became known as 'Saviour of the Indians' and an advocate for human rights, although for some time he argued that African slaves be imported to do the work in place of the native people, before repenting.
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