Overview

There is a popular children’s poem about Christopher Columbus. The poem goes, “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Columbus was an Italian explorer. Today, we know other Europeans reached North America before Columbus. Why are Columbus’ voyages so important?

Christopher Columbus’ arrival in North America connected people all over the world. Those connections still exist today. Products, people, ideas, and microbes¹ were exchanged all over the world. This is often called the Columbian Exchange.

The Columbian Exchange created new global networks of trade and exchange. It also changed communities in the Americas. The Columbian Exchange also changed the way people produced and distributed goods. This included the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.

Diseases also spread during the Columbian Exchange. In the Americas, millions died from disease, causing populations to decline. The environment and business were affected by the loss in population.

The spread of disease

The Columbian Exchange brought European diseases to the Americas. Smallpox was one of those diseases. Before the Europeans came, there were between 35 million and 75 million² indigenous people in the Americas. Some regions had huge cities like Tenochtitlan and Cusco. Millions of indigenous people died from European diseases.

Most people in the Americas could not fight off Afro-Eurasian diseases. There were three main reasons for this. There wasn’t as much genetic diversity in the Americas. Indigenous Americans had few domesticated animals, which are the source of many diseases. That meant Indigenous Americans did not have immunities that those in Afro-Eurasia had built up for centuries.

Disease affected both the environment and businesses. With fewer people around, forests grew back. There were fewer workers. That need for workers led to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. The slave trade brought diseases like malaria to the Americas from Africa.

From east to west

Diseases caused the population of the Americas to decrease. European settlers came to the area. These settlers brought many plants and animals from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. The domesticated animals in Indigenous American communities were mainly llamas and alpacas. There were no other large mammals in the Americas that could be domesticated.

Europeans brought horses, cattle, and pigs, among others. These animals changed farming and transportation. Horses helped Indigenous Americans hunt buffalo. They used cattle for meat, hide, and transportation. Europeans also brought wheat, sugar, and other crops. These crops changed business in the Americas.

Crops are for eating. However, some crops are grown to make money. These are called cash crops. Many Europeans wanted to get rich by selling cash crops grown in the Americas. Sugar, coffee, and cotton were important crash crops.

Europeans began growing huge amounts of cash crops to make more money. However, they needed more workers to grow the crops. Many indigenous people, who were often enslaved, had died from disease. Europeans needed other workers. They began bringing enslaved peoples from West Africa to the Americas.

Europeans brought more than twelve million enslaved people to the Americas. You will learn more about the slave trade later in this era.

From west to east

Europeans brought many plants from Afro-Eurasia (the “Old World”). These plants did not change the diets of Indigenous Americans much. However, plants from the Americas (the “New World”, to the Europeans) transformed life in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Plants changed food and culture all over the world. Imagine Italian food without tomatoes. Before the Columbian Exchange, tomatoes only existed in the Americas.

New plants changed many Afro-Eurasian societies. New crops such as potatoes and maize could feed people easily. They were also easier to grow in difficult environments. Europeans began growing more of them. In Ireland, potatoes helped bring more food to the Irish people. This caused the population and cities to grow.

The Columbian Exchange completely changed the world. People began producing and distributing goods differently. Millions of people came from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas to make products. Some came by choice, but many others arrived by force. These products were sold around the world. Goods continued to move around growing trade networks. These networks created the exchange networks that shape the world we live in today.

People moved from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. They formed new communities in the Americas. Many of those communities were organized by new systems of labor, like slavery. At the same time, existing communities in the Americas were devastated by disease. Others had to move away.

1 Microbes are living things too small to be seen with the naked eye. They’re in the air, and they’re crawling all over you right now. Don’t panic, because most are harmless or even good for you. The bad ones can carry diseases through bacteria and viruses. The people, plants, and animals that were moved around during the Columbian Exchange unknowingly brought new microbes to places that had no defenses against them.

2 Population estimates for the Americas before the arrival of Europeans vary a great deal. This is mainly due to the fact that there were no written records of population at this time. Some historians estimate the population could have been as high as 112 million while others claim that it could be as low as 8 million. These differences are further addressed in the article later in this lesson: “The Disastrous Effects of Increased Global Interactions”.