What was the Columbian Exchange?

The Columbian Exchange was the exchange of organisms to and from the New and Old World that began with European explorations of the North and South American continents. Among the first, most significant, and most well-known of these voyages was the one undertaken by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. Thus, the phenomenon of transfer across the Atlantic Ocean that resulted from all European explorations of the two continents has been named after him.

The organisms that were transported in the Columbian Exchange primarily included germs, plants, animals, and humans. This exchange wrought social, cultural, economic, and political changes in both the Old World and the New World. Its impact extended to places far beyond those that were directly involved in the Exchange. 

The Columbian Exchange was among the earliest manifestations of globalization. The global redistribution of species and populations it triggered as well as their effects on human lifestyle and lifespan are responsible for the current face of the world.

Diseases of the Columbian Exchange

The Native American population is believed to have originated from the Siberian plains. They crossed over to the American continents from Russia to Alaska via the Bering Strait, which was frozen over at the time, providing an ice bridge. Global warming eventually led to the melting of that ice bridge, cutting off the two Americas from the Asian landmass and leaving the Native American populations relatively isolated. The vast spaces of the Americas also allowed various tribes and ethnicities to spread out, grow, and live without forcing much contact with each other. 

The arrival of the Europeans broke this isolation of the Native American peoples. Not only did it bring them into contact with a whole new kind of people and culture, it also exposed them to the range of microorganisms that the Europeans had unwittingly brought with them. These microbes—or germs—traveled with a speed far exceeding that of humans. In several Native tribes, the effects of European diseases preceded the actual arrival of the Europeans at the spot themselves.

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Native Americans populations lived in relative isolation - from each other, from other populations, and from most animals. This rendered them extremely vulnerable to the diseases brought by Europeans as they lacked immunity against them.

The presence of diseases such as plague, mumps, measles, and smallpox among the Eurasian populations has been attributed to their contact with animals. Eurasian cultures domesticated several different animals for various purposes that included food and transport. Their prolonged exposure to these diseases had built innate immunity in the people towards them.

The Native Americans, on the other hand, had not engaged in domesticating animal species as much. They did not have access to such a range of species, and their limited cultivation of (and/or interaction with) animals was done primarily for the purpose of feeding themselves. Thus, their limited exposure to disease-causing microbes was also relatively limited, which led to the Native American populations not needing to build up immunities towards these germs.

The sudden exposure to foreign diseases, against which the Native Americans had no cure or immunity, wreaked havoc on their population. Less than a century after the Europeans first made contact with the New World, the Native American populations had suffered a drastic decline. Several communities and ethnicities were diminished to near extinction. 

Besides directly killing people, these diseases also gave rise to wars and conflicts in the New World, further adding to the population decline. Several Native American leaders succumbed to European diseases, throwing their kingdoms into political chaos. This not only incited wars of succession, but also weakened these populations, preventing them from effectively defending their territories against attacks from other tribes and against the invasion of the European colonizers themselves. 

The impact of diseases from the Columbian Exchange was more or less one-sided. However, there is one disease that traveled from the New World to the Old that had a large-scale impact: syphilis. European sailors and soldiers who voyaged to America returned with the infection, and then participated in European wars, bringing it to other countries across the continent. It rapidly spread throughout Europe and, from it, to the rest of the Old World. Venereal syphilis was a cause of much social tumult in the Old World through the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. However, its impact pales in comparison to the depopulation caused by Old World diseases in the New World.

Migrating Food Crops During the Columbian Exchange

The interchange of another biological element across the Atlantic during the Columbian Exchange made significant far-reaching impressions around the globe: food crops. It led to a scale up in agricultural cultivation and a population explosion across the Old World, Europe and Africa in particular. In some cases, the introduction of new calorie and nutrient intensive crops also set in motion political, economic and cultural changes.

Several New World crops when brought to the Old World thrived in their new environments.

Several crops that had been brought over from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean easily took root in the new climate’s soils. This is due to the geography and history of these regions. 

Climate variation is found when one moves away from the Equator in a northern or southern direction. On the other hand, when moving along the Equator or any of the other latitudes towards the East or the West, little variation is found. Given that the New World stretches from Pole to Pole, much like the Old World, both have regions that geographically resemble each other. 

Historically, all land masses were joined into Pangea, with similar regions aligning with one another. As Pangea separated into the various continents we have today, regions with similar geography and climates moved apart along the latitudes and developed varying ecosystems, including pests and parasites.

Thus, when plants that could grow in their complementary regions across the ocean were introduced into these areas, the absence of the parasites and pests they were usually plagued by helped these crops flourish in their new locations. 

Staples transported from the New World to the Old were nutrient and calorie rich. Species included corn, potato, sweet potato, and cassava. They took to Old World soil and climate readily and thrived. Their successful cultivation made essential nutrients (especially macros, such as carbohydrates) much more readily available to the local human populations than they had previously been. A boom in population followed and, with this rise, urbanization grew along with the overall GDPs of these countries.

The calorie rich staple foods imported from the New World helped the European population grow at a rapid rate.

Potatoes had a significant effect in Europe. Countries such as Ireland adopted the crop readily, and it soon became ubiquitous in their cuisine. The significance of the tuber in Ireland became apparent when a blight destroyed potato fields, causing what is known as the Great Potato Famine. The famine killed a large chunk of the Irish population, even as another equally large, if not larger, section fled to other countries (including USA and Canada on the North American continent) to try to escape its impact. In other parts of Europe, the potato is attributed with facilitating urbanization and the Industrial Revolution. 

Corn became important in Africa. In the harsh climate of these regions, the stockpiling of food had previously not been possible as the heat would soon spoil what had not been consumed. The hardiness of corn, brought over from the New World, made long-term storage of a nutritionally valuable food grain possible. This allowed communities to viably settle permanently in certain regions for the first time. This, in turn, led to the birth of kingdoms, state-building, and the consequent political developments.

Cassava could be stockpiled too. Additionally, it could remain underground for a long time, unharvested, without going bad. This became a useful feature of the crop when slave traders invaded villages looking for individuals that they could capture and take away to be sold in Europe and the Americas. The villagers could flee and hide, leaving the cassava crop unattended, which would keep until they returned after the departure of the slave traders. 

Other plants, such as tomatoes, peppers, cocoa, and vanilla, weren’t as nutritionally valuable. However, they considerably enhanced flavor and provided benefits such as making nutrients in other foods more readily available to the human body. Old World cultures adopted these plants and, in some cases, as in Italy and the tomato or Hungary and paprika, they became cornerstones of their cuisines. 

Meanwhile, the Europeans brought to the New World crops such as sugar and coffee. Like their opposite numbers that had spread to the Old World, these crops thrived in the environment of the New World and quickly became important to the global economy. Large plantations were set up across Central and South America and the Caribbean islands, allowing sugar and coffee to be produced in large quantities. Both supply of and demand for the two commodities increased across the world, making these plantations an essential element of the world economy.

Crops such as coffee, sugar, and tobacco were instrumental in the establishment of the plantation system in the Americas.

Tobacco and cotton were two other commercial crops cultivated in New World plantations. These were native to the Americas and did not put down roots in the Old World as well as potatoes or corn. However, their products soon came to be in high demand across Europe and Asia, so much so that they took their position alongside sugar and coffee in world trade and commerce.

Bringing Animals to the New World During the Columbian Exchange

As mentioned previously, the inhabitants of the New World did not engage considerably in the domestication of animals. The few that they had domesticated, such as pigs, primarily served as a source of food. Llamas are the rare exception of animals being used as beasts of burden in the New World prior to the arrival of Europeans.

Besides a limited exposure to disease-causing germs, this non-domestication of animals by the Native Americans ensured that their lifestyles were vastly different from those of the Old World. Agricultural techniques were labor-intensive and travel was slow and difficult (ensuring isolation between tribes as well). 

As the Europeans brought along their domesticated animals, the scene began to change. Several species were brought across the Atlantic and soon became entrenched into the lives of Native Americans as well as of the settler-colonizers.

The agricultural scene was completely revamped; with the exception of plantations that remained labor-intensive, animals were incorporated into the agricultural process, making it faster and more efficient. More crops could be cultivated and harvested in a lesser amount of time than before.

The introduction of several animal species to the New World revamped the agricultural scene there, making much of it less dependent on labor.

The horse, in particular, was a significant import to the New World. In the popular imagination, the image of Native Americans is inextricably linked with that of horses. The media frequently pictures them astride horses as they explore and/or travel across the vast expanses of the North American continent. However, horses are not native to the Americas and were brought over by Europeans. Their incorporation into the lifestyle of several Native American tribes of North America is an illustrative example of the impact of the Columbian Exchange.

Several animals were introduced to the New World in the process of the Columbian Exchange. Most of these flourished in their surroundings. Besides similar climates and environments, a significant factor in their growth here was a lack of predators. Back in the Old World, the centuries of development of the ecosystems led to the evolution of predators to keep the populations of these animals in check, even in the case of domesticated ones. However, these limits were entirely lacking in the New World, allowing them to proliferate rapidly.

Human Interaction and Interchange in the Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange may appear to primarily involve contact and interaction between Europeans and Native Americans. Its effects, however, have extended to human populations around the world, both positive and negative. 

The exchange of microbes, plants, and animals wrought significant cultural and economic impact on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It brought means to boost population growth as well as widespread death. The latter was mainly received by the Native Americans. Foreign diseases ravaged several tribes to the point of severe depopulation and some to near extinction. 

On the other hand, the discovery and inclusion of the American landmasses under imperial rule made them a crucial part of the global economic machinery. Coffee and sugar crops were introduced, and as the plants easily took to the soil, the plantation system was devised to commercially cultivate them. The system was then extended to the native plant crops of tobacco and cotton.

The deaths of Native Americans and the establishment of the labor-intensive plantation system in the New World resulted in the forced migration of Africans to the Americas through slavery.

However, the plantation system was a labor-intensive agricultural method, and local manpower was lacking due to the depopulation of Native Americans by diseases. And even as the Eurasian population grew rapidly thanks to plant exports from the New World, not enough of them moved to the Americas to bridge the manpower gap. Instead, in order to fulfill this need, the Europeans turned to Africa. The existing institution of slavery was utilized to capture Africans and ship them to the New World as slaves to work on plantations. 

The flow of non-European populations to the New World did not stop there. When slavery began to be banned in several European countries and their colonies, the need for labor did not waver; it remained just as strong, as demand for the produced commodities remained high. Slavery was then replaced by bonded labor. Populations from other colonies, mainly those based in Asia, such as India, were brought to replace slaves on plantations. This phenomenon was especially evident in regions of South America and the Caribbean islands.

The importance of these crops lay in their utility for the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Sugar and cotton, in particular, along with potatoes were engines of the Industrial Revolution. Together, they provided the energy and nutrients needed to produce a population that was much healthier and larger than those that came before it. This provided the Revolution with the labor needed to set it up and sustain it.

Even as Native American populations faced the deadly consequences of foreign diseases, the New World provided European colonizing powers with a gift in the form of a cure for malaria—quinine. The anti-malarial drug is an active compound isolated from the bark of the cinchona tree, a native of the region that now falls in Peru. Prior to this discovery, a large section of Africa remained inaccessible to Europeans due to the widespread threat of the fatal malaria fever. The same was true of several other regions in Asia, such as India and Indonesia. Even if these areas were known to colonizing powers, they remained unable to establish and/or strengthen their authority there. Soldiers sent to strengthen European rule in these regions regularly succumbed to malaria—a tremendous loss of life and resources.

Quinine - the cure for malaria - was one of the most useful tools for the progress of imperialism.

Thus, when the cure was found in the New World, it became a powerful tool in imperialist hands, and the cinchona tree began to be cultivated elsewhere in large quantities to fulfill a need to protect against the deadly disease. Parts of the world that had been closed due to malaria were now thrown open to Europeans.

The Europeans also brought with them their own religious, political, and cultural ideologies. While missionaries attempted to spread Christianity to the natives of the New World, the colonizers set up institutions and governments in line with their political beliefs and systems. Settlers brought cultural identities and practices. As all the various migrant groups established themselves in different parts of the New World, some intermingling of populations and practices, among themselves and with the locals, also took place.

Today, globalization is a well-known and widely accepted phenomenon. It may seem modern, but has in fact been taking place through most of human history. The Columbian Exchange is one of its strongest and most evident iterations. It clearly had an impact around the world which is visible even today.

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