Why does the columbian exchange matter

The ancient authorities, supposed to be authoritative, had not even known about the Americas, incomplete in their knowledge. Their explanations of the world were not comprehensive and had to make room for new facts, like the sudden appearance of entirely new continents. This is a transcript from the video series Turning Points in Modern History. Watch it now, on Wondrium. The discovery of Columbus became the lasting archetype of a stunning encounter which was not what Columbus had set out for.

That was an example of serendipity, meaning finding something other than what someone is looking for. Serendip or Ceylon lay in the Portuguese part of the world as carved up by the Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain, so that was in fact part of what the Iberian kingdoms were dividing among themselves.

In the Persian fairytale, the three princes of Serendip always made unexpected discoveries, which was called serendipity. Columbus may not have reached the Asia of his dreams, but he did find serendipity. Columbus was not the only one to be enchanted by dreams of the East. Continuing his yearning for the riches of Asia, a whole new group of merchant adventurers organized into the English East India Company likewise sought the East.

The travel between the Old and the New World was a huge environmental turning point, called the Columbian Exchange. It was important because it resulted in the mixing of people, deadly diseases that devastated the Native American population, crops, animals, goods, and trade flows. The Potato was new and a very productive crop from the Andes which became a staple of European agriculture , doubling its food supply.

It impacted the world when disaster struck from , with potato blight, creating a famine. The scale insects sucked juices from plants and stems. They had no natural enemies, so their populations grew greatly. The scale insects became a food source for fire ants. With a virtually unlimited food source, the fire ant population grew greatly.

This proved to be dangerous to the settlers. It reminds the reader that Mann is approaching his topic from a scientific perspective, being careful to alert readers to what is proven and what is not. This helps to establish him as a writer we can trust. What document from the s seems to confirm this unintended effect? Bartolome de Las Casas wrote of a sudden infestation of fire ants in and What was the unintended effect to settlers of the introduction of plantains to Hispaniola?

Although they had plantains to eat, they also had to deal with fire ants. As a result, they abandoned their homes. How does Mann combine 16th and 20th century evidence? He uses 20th century science to explain a 16th century eye-witness account. Here Mann gives a specific example of unintended consequences. Natives and newcomers interacted in unexpected ways, creating biological bedlam. When Spanish colonists imported African plantains [a tropical plant that resembles a banana] in , the Harvard entomologist Edward O.

Wilson has proposed, they also imported scale insects, small creatures with tough, waxy coats that suck the juices from plant roots and stems. About a dozen banana-infesting scale insects are known in Africa.

In Hispaniola, Wilson argued, these insects had no natural enemies. A big increase in scale insects would have led to a big increase in fire ants. So far this is informed speculation. What happened in and is not. But what the Spaniards saw was S. Excerpt 3 Close Reading Questions What is the thesis of this excerpt? What evidence does Mann use to develop this thesis? Why did the Spanish conduct a census of the Indians on Hispaniola in ? What did the census find regarding the Taino population?

The Spanish conducted a census in order to count the Taino so that they could be assigned to Spanish settlers as laborers. This was part of the encomienda system, whereby a Spanish settler was given a plantation as well as the labor of all the Indians who lived on that plantation.

The census-takers found that there were few Taino left, perhaps only about 26, According to the author, what two factors caused this change in population? Which cause was the most influential? The two causes were Spanish cruelty and the introduction of diseases by the Columbian Exchange. The most influential was the introduction of disease.

The third sentence in paragraph 2 of this excerpt uses a rhetorical device called asyndeton. That changed in the 19 th century. As the Americas acquired all the diseases of Europe, Asia, and Africa and as the amount of trade increased, new disease outbreaks were able to spread all over the world. The very first truly global pandemic began in , with a cholera outbreak in the Ganges delta. From India, British ships carried the cholera bacterium unknowingly around the world.

Within three years it had reached the United States. Probably half a million people died altogether, but nobody knows for sure. That pandemic put the world on notice that now a single episode could affect the entire planet.

No government did anything about it. As a result, there were five more global cholera pandemics in the 19 th century. The final epidemic lasted 20 years and overlapped with the global flu pandemic of , which killed about 50 million people. We then had regular global flu pandemics in the 20 th century, mixed with a global encephalitis pandemic 1. The diseases are different, but every single pandemic has occurred when humans in one part of the world carry the disease to another part of the world — the same way that the first smallpox epidemic was spread from Spain to Mexico in , the same way that COVID was spread from China to the rest of the world in And to this day, governments around the world have done very little about it.

CCM: A little bit. The problem of the teacher, who wants to spend a day or a week and not a lifetime on the subject is one of selection. For general orientation and the latest in details, I recommend articles in the massive The Cambridge History of Food , ed. Kenneth F. For a briefer general consideration, I must, blushing with false embarrassment, suggest my own The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of , Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, , and also, without the blushes, Otto T.

McNeill, Plagues and Peoples Readers especially interested in specific crops and animals should acquaint themselves with at least Sidney W. The Columbian exchange of infections, which is inextricably entwined with demographic history, is a matter of immense controversy. Few doubt that there were pandemics among the Amerindians post, but historians do argue about whether these propelled the native populations over the cliff into declines of ninety to one hundred percent or something far less.

Henry F. Dobyns argues for the biggest plunge, David Henige for the least, each in a barrage of publications. John W. Verano and Douglas H.