When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he marked the prelude of the Columbian Exchange of people, animals, plants, foods, and diseases that gradually shaped the Americas.
The 15th century was when the Age of Exploration (or Age of Discovery) began. It was a period during which seafarers from a number of European countries explored new lands in the Americas, Africa, and Asia to colonize and conquer.
Colombus first arrived in the New World under the flag of Spain on behalf of King Ferdinand II of Aragon. The actual exchange began in the aftermath of the Italian explorer’s voyages, later accelerating with the European colonization of the Americas.
The term Columbian Exchange was coined by historian Alfred Crosby in the 1970s. It described the massive interchange between the newly found Americas and Europe and was a long series of events that opened new horizons for humankind. It expanded its scope, shaping the world in numerous ways.
It was also the exchange of ideas and religious beliefs that molded new societies. The Columbian Exchange extended farther than Europe or the Americas. It was impactful in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific as well, culminating in modern day globalization a few centuries later.
However, the arrival of the European settlers under Columbus transferred Old World diseases to the New World. Among the dangers were smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, chickenpox, typhus, and influenza. Later, the transatlantic slave trade brought hepatitis B, malaria, and yellow fever. Native populations were decimated by disease outbreaks which allowed the new settlers to conquer the indigenous populations more easily.
The benefits of the Columbian Exchange
Following the Italian explorer’s first successful voyage to the Americas, he returned to the Caribbean in 1493, bringing 17 ships and more than one thousand Spaniards to explore further and expand an earlier settlement established on present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
More importantly, the ships carried hundreds of domesticated animals, including sheep, cows, goats, horses, and pigs for purposes of sustenance and transportation. The cows, horses, and pigs had the greatest, immediate effect, as the animals had plenty of land to multiply, and farming flourished within the next decades.
The European settlers also brought seeds and plant cuttings to grow crops such as wheat, barley, grapes, and coffee. They introduced the metal plow with which they used to cultivate wheat, olives, and grapevines in order to produce bread, olives, and wine, staples of the Spanish diet.
The subsequent establishment of sugar, rice, and later tobacco and cotton plantations formed a new basis for wealth and trade for the settlers.
What they brought back to Europe were foods that the indigenous people ate, such as maize (corn), potatoes, beans, tomatoes, cacao, chili peppers, peanuts, vanilla, and pineapple. The food staples of the New World, such as potato and cacao, became popular in Europe and gradually changed the dietary habits of the Old World.
The introduction of potato to the Europeans was extremely important as it ended centuries-old cycles of malnourishment and famine, leading to higher population growth in Europe. As for cacao, after the introduction of vanilla and sugar to the bitter powder, a new staple was created in Europe: chocolate.
Moreover, by the 1530s, tobacco, smoked and inhaled by Native Americans, became a very valuable cash crop for Europe.
Disease spread among indigenous peoples
Along with the people, plants, and animals of the Old World came their diseases. That was the downside of the Columbus Exchange. From the start, the pigs aboard Columbus’ ships immediately spread swine flu, which sickened Columbus and other Europeans and proved deadly to the native Taino population of Hispaniola, killing about two thirds of them.
Then it was smallpox, measles, influenza, chickenpox, bubonic plague, typhus, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and malaria that spread to mainland Central America and beyond. The diseases killed great percentages of Native Americans who lacked immunity to these diseases.
Although it is impossible to know the exact impact of Old World diseases on the Indigenous populations of the Americas, historians have estimated that between 80 and 95 percent of them died within the first 100 to 150 years after the arrival of Columbus. The devastation exceeded that of even the Black Death in 14th century Europe.
The Columbian Exchange brought yet another deadly disease, though this time, from the Americas to Europe and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. On their return home, European sailors brought syphilis to Europe. Although less deadly, the disease was known to have caused great social disruption throughout the Old World.
Treponema pallidum is a bacteria that causes syphilis, which shares a genetic link with a tropical disease known as yaws, found in a remote region of Guyana.
The first known outbreak of venereal syphilis occurred in 1495, among the troops led by France’s King Charles VIII in an invasion of Naples. The disease soon spread across Europe. It caused symptoms such as genital ulcers, rashes, tumors, severe pain and dementia, and was often fatal.
The need for laborers
Once settled, the Europeans of the New World began cultivating the vast lands. Hence, they needed laborers to work on the farms. To satisfy their need for extra hands, especially on the expanding cash crop plantations, the Europeans turned to Africa.
That was the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, representing the largest forced migration of people in human history. Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than Indigenous populations and poor European servants.
Historians estimate that between the 16th to the 19th centuries, slave traders transported nearly 12 to 20 million enslaved Africans to the Americas. Of this number, approximately 10.7 million disembarked alive in the Americas. During the 18th century alone, approximately 6.5 million enslaved persons were transported to the Americas. This forced migration deprived the African continent of some of its healthiest and most able men and women.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations of the southern Atlantic coast from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.
The various exchanges between the 17th and the 18th centuries became known as the triangular trade in which the Americas supplied the Old World with raw materials, Europe transformed those raw materials into finished goods which were traded to Africa and back to the Americas, while Africa supplied slaves to fulfill labor needs in the New World.
Overall, Europeans benefited the most from the Columbian Exchange and the triangular trade. During this time, the gold and silver of the Americas was shipped to the coffers of European treasuries. At the same time, however, this led to increased trade and food production across the globe.
Food items from Africa and the New World increased the life expectancy of people in Europe. Crops, such as tobacco, further fueled commerce and boosted economies.
The United States celebration of Columbus Day
Columbus Day is a holiday observed in the United States on the second Monday in October to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Americas on October 12, 1492. In 1937, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day an annual national holiday. Monday was chosen so that workers could enjoy a long weekend.
Over the years, Italian Americans celebrate Columbus Day taking up the cause of honoring the achievements of Columbus, who was a native of Genoa.
In recent years, Columbus Day celebrations are controversial in certain US communities or cities because the settlement of Europeans in the Americas led to the deaths of a large proportion of the Indigenous peoples. Some argue that this was a direct result of Columbus’ actions and that the Columbian Exchange was generally disastrous for native peoples.
Indigenous activists and their supporters have protested the holiday, arguing that it ignores the points of view of American Indians in the United States, and they have advocated for Indigenous Peoples’ Day to be celebrated instead. Gradually, it has become increasingly popular either in place of or in addition to Columbus Day. In 2021, Joe Biden became the first US President to officially recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a national holiday.
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
