Overview

There is a popular children’s poem that goes “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Children have recited the poem for years while studying the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). 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 throughout 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 spread during the Columbian Exchange. In the Americas, millions died from disease, which caused populations to decline. This in turn affected the environment and businesses.

The spread of disease

One difficult result of the Columbian Exchange was the spread of European diseases like smallpox. Before the Europeans came, there were between 35 million and 75 million indigenous people² in the Americas. Some regions had large urban areas like Tenochtitlan and Cusco. These cities were some of the largest in the world. 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 outbreaks affected both the environment and businesses. Having fewer people allowed forests to grow back. There were fewer workers. The need for workers led to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, which brought diseases like malaria to the Americas from Africa.

From east to west

Diseases caused the population of the Americas to decrease. This made it possible for European settlers to changes the areas they settled. They often did this by using the labor of enslaved Africans. European 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, bananas, and other crops. These crops changed how crops were made and sold.

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

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. As a result, Europeans began bringing enslaved peoples from West Africa to the Americas.

Over the next few hundred years, more than twelve million enslaved people were brought to the Americas. You will learn more about the slave trade later in this era.

From west to east

Plants from Afro-Eurasia (the “Old World”) did not really affect the diets of Indigenous Americans. 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, there were no tomatoes in Europe, Asia, or Africa.

New plants changed many Afro-Eurasian societies. Many 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 feed the Irish people, causing 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—some by choice, others by force—to make products, which were sold around the world. These goods continued to move around growing trade networks. These networks created the exchange networks that shape the world we live in today.

As people moved from east to west, 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 or had to move.

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”.