Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the Americas created new pathways of exchange between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas—for better or for worse. These exchanges gave the Irish potatoes and the Italians tomatoes, but also led to diseases and invasive species that decimated populations in the Americas. Overall, the global population rose, but for many communities in this region, the Columbian Exchange was a disaster.

This article introduces the Columbian Exchange: its effects on the population, environment, and labor after 1492. It’s your first deep look at the first global age, so it will be central to your response to the Unit Problem: “How did economic developments and new transoceanic connections affect social structures in different parts of the world from c. 1450 to 1750 CE?” The article highlights similarities and differences between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia before and after the Columbian Exchange, allowing you to analyze and compare its uneven effects.

Think about the following question as you read the article: To what extent does this article explain the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres? Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What were Indigenous communities like before the Columbian Exchange?
2. Why were Indigenous Americans so vulnerable to diseases?
3. How did epidemic diseases affect the environment and the economy?
4. What animals were domesticated by humans in the Americas, before and after the Columbian Exchange?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. To what extent does this article explain the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres?
2. The author of this article argues that the “Columbian Exchange completely changed the face of the world.” Based on the evidence in this article, do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

This activity will provide you with an active demonstration of the global interconnectedness that exists in the world today, with a specific focus on exchange networks and economic systems. Beginning the activity with a demonstration of our globalized world today and using relevant items from your daily lives will give you some context with which you can better analyze world connections that existed in previous time periods.

Contextualization, CCOT
This activity will help you contextualize the world that we live in today, but also the world in 1450 and 1750. You’ll also practice establishing patterns of continuity and change over time, and developing hypotheses for reasons for these changes.

Your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Our Interconnected World worksheet and provide you with directions for how this activity is structured. Your job is to use the narratives in the worksheet to illustrate how interconnected our world is today by tracing the production and distribution of three goods that you probably use or encounter on a daily basis. You’ll then use the yarn your teacher will supply to trace the steps in the production and distribution of these products across networks of exchange.

As your teacher walks through the narratives for each of the products, think about how these products get into your hands. Where was the product manufactured? Where were the components of the product created? Where did the natural resources used in the product originate?

At the end of the activity, think about how many of these connections existed between consumers and producers and distributors 50 or 100 years ago, during your grandparents’ lifetimes or even your great-grandparents’ lifetimes. There are three rounds to this activity. Each round will highlight some of the key goods that were traded across exchange networks during three time periods: 1450, 1750, and today. Finally, you’ll answer the questions in Part 4 of the worksheet. Be prepared to share your answers and reasoning with your class.

John Green explores the impact of the Columbian Exchange, tracing the monumental effects of the movement of diseases, plants, animals, and people across the globe. From totally new cuisines to demographic devastation and then explosion, the Columbian Exchange changed populations, cultures, labor, and the environment. But John Green poses the question: Did it leave us better off?

This video focuses on the major changes that happened after 1492, which will help you tackle the Unit Problem: “How did economic developments and new transoceanic connections affect social structures in different parts of the world from c. 1450 to 1750?” You’ll be able to build on what you learned in earlier articles about the Columbian Exchange, and you’ll deepen your understanding of how the population and the environment changed in different regions. This information will help you compare across different contexts, and it will also help you understand how the uneven effects of the Columbian Exchange have shaped our present world.

Think about the following prompt as you watch the video: Using evidence from the video, describe some of the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. You will be asked to respond to this prompt again at the end of the video.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What effects did the Columbian Exchange have on the global biological landscape?
2. What were the demographic effects of the Columbian Exchange in the Americas?
3. In what context were Europeans able to take over Aztec and Inca lands?
4. How did animals from Afro-Eurasia impact the Americas?
5. Out of the four categories discussed—disease, animals, plants, and people—which had the biggest effect on Afro-Eurasia, according to John Green? What were some of those cultural and demographic effects?
6. Initially, the Columbian Exchange led to the decimation of the population of the Americas, mostly as a result of disease. How did this pattern of demographic decline change over time?
7. What were the principal global effects of the Columbian Exchange?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Using evidence from the video, describe some of the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
2. While the Columbian Exchange arguably made the world more similar and connected, its effects were unevenly felt in different parts of the globe. Use evidence from this video to respond to the Unit Problem: “How did economic developments and new transoceanic connections affect social structures in different parts of the world from c. 1450 to 1750?”
3. At the end of the video, John Green poses the question: “Are longer, healthier lives for more humans worth the sacrifice of an impoverished biosphere? And most importantly, how will your conclusions about those questions shape the way that you live your life?” How might the patterns and trends presented in the video have importance for other studies, later history, or your life more generally?

In this activity, you’ll continue to develop your sourcing skills by analyzing two primary source documents, written from different perspectives, about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. You’ll assess the reliability of a source by examining how the historical context and purpose of a source impacts credibility. This information will help the historian determine how to use—or not use—the document to help them tell the story of a particular historical period.

Claim testing
Claim testing is an integral part of sourcing. In order to evaluate a source, we must use intuition, logic, authority, and evidence to analyze the document in order to understand the historical context and purpose of the source.

Since this activity is your introduction to using the Sourcing Tool for a historical document, your teacher will guide you through the process. In this activity, you’ll read two primary source excerpts, complete the Sourcing Tool focusing on historical context and purpose, and craft a response to a prompt. (Note that the source excerpts and the Sourcing Tool are included with the Sourcing – Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire worksheet.)

Before you get started, think about why you should even bother with sourcing. Sourcing helps us understand the past by analyzing the evidence that people or societies left behind. Sometimes, this evidence is limited and as a result, we have to draw conclusions by carefully evaluating sources and artifacts. Other times, there is a lot of evidence or there are sources to help us explain a historical event or process. But even if we have lots of source material, we still have to analyze the sources to understand their different points of view and perspectives. Sometimes people refer to different points of view as author bias. But we should remember that all primary source material has some bias—we all have lenses through which we view the world, and those viewpoints can help us better understand the point someone is trying to convey. In history, this can help us construct a clearer account of the past.

In this case, you’re going to read primary source documents as a class so you can answer these questions: What were the motivations of the Spanish conquerors? And what were the responses of the Indigenous peoples to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire?

Turn to the excerpts (included in the worksheet) and review them as a class, and then see if you can come up with answers to these questions based on what you’ve read. This may be hard to do—and that’s OK! You are going to answer the same questions again later, but only after you’ve sourced the document like a historian would. Now, turn to the Sourcing Tool and really focus on the Historical Context and Purpose rows. Go through the worksheet with your class, and then revisit the questions:

What were the motivations of the Spanish conquerors? And what were the responses of the Indigenous peoples to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire?

Think about how you might have read this text differently, or had a different perspective, after your first reading. Then, discuss the following questions with your class: Would you have a different perspective if you hadn’t gone through this sourcing process? Would you have fully understood this text without knowing the historical context in which it was written? How does knowing about the purpose for the texts give you a fuller picture of these texts’ significance?

Finally, your teacher will break the class up into small groups of three to four students. Work with your group to answer the questions in the Why? (Importance) row of the tool. Your teacher will collect your worksheets to evaluate your sourcing skills.

Plants play a major role in world history, and the plants that moved as a result of the Columbian Exchange are a great example. After 1492, plants moved across new channels, and they had monumental effects on populations, the environment, and economic systems, decisively changing the face of the planet.

The Unit Problem for this unit asks you to evaluate continuity and change over time. This article will give you evidence you can use to think about this question. Specifically, this article provides information on how the transfer of plants across the Atlantic impacted the populations and environments of different regions. You’ll build on this information in later articles and videos in this lesson.

Think about the following question as you read the article: What evidence does this article provide to explain the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres? Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What’s the difference between staple crops and cash crops? What different effects did they have?
2. How did European plantation owners maximize profits?
3. In what ways did European colonists impact exchange networks and the global production and distribution of goods?
4. How did European use of crops and animals affect the environment in the Americas?
5. What effect did the introduction of the potato have on European populations? How did this change over time?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. What evidence does this article provide to explain the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the Eastern and Western Hemispheres?
2. In the article, the author cites Crosby’s argument that the most important change brought about by the European conquests was not political but biological. With the information you currently have, do you find the author’s argument convincing? Why or why not?

After Spanish conquistadors sacked the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, they tried to convert the Aztec and other indigenous peoples in the region. Missionaries soon followed the conquistadors. The Spanish used a variety of strategies to speed up conversion, both forcing people to convert and providing incentives to encourage them to do so. Indigenous people both violently resisted and accepted the new religion. But there was a lot of ground in between these two choices. And as more people converted, more elements of indigenous religion and culture blended with Catholicism. The effects of this blending are still felt in Mexican and global Catholicism today.

This article uses the cultural developments and interactions theme to reflect on the cultural aspects of the Columbian Exchange. By providing you evidence at the local and regional level, it will prepare you to respond to the Unit Problem and understand how the global connections forged after 1500 changed communities and reshaped cultures on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Think about the following question as you read the article: How did cultural factors affect society from 1450 to 1750? Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between Spanish conquistadors and missionaries?
2. What were some reasons the Spanish were so eager to get people to convert?
3. What were some strategies used by the Spanish to try to convert the indigenous population?
4. What were some things that motivated some Aztecs to convert?
5. How is the Lady of Guadalupe an example of religious syncretism, according to the author?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. How did cultural factors affect society from 1450 to 1750?
2. This article focuses on how religious syncretism shaped cultures. What are some ways that cultural developments and interactions likely played a role in the conversion of Mesoamerican indigenous communities?
3. This article makes the point that the Columbian Exchange wasn’t just a biological exchange but also a cultural exchange. Can you think of any ways that the biological exchange of plants, animals, and people also created cultural shifts in different parts of the world?

In this activity, you have an opportunity to be creative while considering the biological impact of the Columbian Exchange. By creating menus related to what was available on each side of the world and how this availability grew once the world zones connected, you will have a more concrete sense of how an everyday activity like eating was so drastically changed by globalization.

In this activity, you will create a café menu that represents different world zones and uses what was available in each zone, both before and after the Columbian Exchange.

In the article “Crops that Grew the World,” you learned about the biological impact of the Columbian Exchange. In the article “The Columbian Exchange,” you learned more about the details of what came from each world zone, the massive impact of the spread of disease, and a bit about how the movement of plants and animals impacted people, the environment, and economic systems. In this activity, you’re going to zoom in and think more about the everyday lives of people—in particular, what those people ate.

Imagine that you are restaurant owners getting ready to open The World Zone Café. This café will not only serve delicious food, but will teach people about the origins of flora and fauna (plants and animals), and how the movement of these plants and animals changed people’s lives. To do this, you are going to create a small café menu with two appetizers, two entrées (main dishes), and two desserts. Two of the menu items must be made from ONLY plants and animals available in the Americas; two items must be made from ONLY plants and animals available in Afro-Eurasia; and two items must include ingredients from BOTH world zones. You can use the infographic from the article “The Columbian Exchange” to remind yourself of which plants and animals originated from which area.

Once you’ve created your menu, be prepared to share your meal ideas with the class. Do the things you enjoy eating most originate in the Americas or Afro-Eurasia, or do they mostly come from both places? How might your meals (and traditions associated with them) be different today if the world zones had not connected in this way? Also, do you think connecting the world zones was worth it, keeping in mind the legacy of destruction in the wake of Columbus’s explorations? Finally, if you could have a meal from any of the menus in class, which one would you choose and why?