Columbian Exchange and its Impact to the Global Forces

Columbian Exchange, is a term to refer to grand exchange of population, culture, animals, plants, biotas, diseases, and ideas between the old world and the new world following the voyage by Christophorus Columbus in 1492. This term was coined in 1972 by Alfred Crosby, an American historian. The exchange means that the dynamics go both ways. Its a reciprocal flow of influence.

Three Major Exchange

Shortly, from the Course of The Columbian Exchange, we can conclude that it was between three types of exchange. What Jeremy Adelman said was Biotas (Microbes, Infectious Diseases), Floras (domesticated plants), and Macrofauna (domesticated animals).

From Old World, We can say about first kind of exchange was diseases spread by Europeans to the native americans. The native population decline heavily not because of the war with the spaniard conquistadors, but mostly of the diseases. The diseases that was brought from the time of Black Death into the locals. Epidemics spread across the entire regions. The worst disease was scarlet fever, smallpox, measles, typhus. The list of them were chicken pox, cholera, common cold, leprosy, malaria, influenza, bubonic plaque, yams, whooping cough, diptheria, etc. The second was Flora. European transferred crops, cotton, rice, indigo, banana oats, cacao and most of all, sugar. The third was about macrofauna. Horses, cattles, livestocks, sheeps, pigs. Intact they were quickest to adapt and many Carribean Islands were soon overrun by these pigs.

From the New World, European in the exchanges of diseases was the syphilis. Syphilis spread to the european sailors and soldiers and quickly infected many European and they become hosts to spread to the rest of the world including India, China and etc. The Flora, the New World also contributed their own floras. Tomato, cocoa, guava, pineapple etc. Among these plants, Tomato and Potato was very easy to adapt, thus who would become the major basic food in European’s daily life.

Global Forces after Columbian Exchange

Final contribution from the New world was new precious metals, gold and silver above all. Effect of the Columbian Exchange was an “Ecological windfall”. Europeans found in the Americas access to a cheap source of food, ready access metal that would transform the balance of the world power between east of Eurasia and west of Eurasia. It give European access to redefine their relationship with the rest of the world. New cheap food sources that could be exploited in Europe. After that, European mariners and traders, searching for new routes to to South and East Asia, began exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa. Lured by spices, silks, and slaves, and aided by new maritime technology, Portuguese expeditions made their way around Africa and onward to India.

Population, which is African slaves transferred to America to be a labor force in plantations and the exploitation of the new world would then become colonies. The producers for someone else’s consumptions. That is Europeans. So that After Spanish monarchs sponsored Columbus’s bid to reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic, and the Portuguese and Spanish ventures alike sought to convert “heathen” peoples to Christianity and to reap the riches abounding in Asian ports. Although Euro peans still had little to offer would-be trading partners in Asia, their developing capability in overseas trade would lay the foundations for a new kind of global commerce and led the first “globalization”.

Meanwhile, French, English, and Dutch elites envied the riches of Portuguese and Spanish colonial possessions. These rivals yearned for their own profitable colonies. But in their New World explorations, the French, English, and Dutch had not yet found gold and silver, nor had they discovered an easier route to Asia. Still, they managed to claim a share of the wealth of the Americas by stealing it on the high seas. Some of the plunderers were pirates who raided for their own benefit; others were privateers who stole with official sanction and shared the profits with their monarchs. Often the distinction between pirate and privateer was blurred.

The “religious reformation” or transformation in Europe and the Gold, Gospel, Glory to spread the Christianity, find precious gold and silver and the glorious of the nations were almost all of the cause of the explorations and after the Columbian Exchanges, Europe was transformed into a new height of rivalries and competition for Gold, Gospel & Glory. Also have a new way of living. The Potatoes and Tomatoes were growth and became Italy’s best products and a daily life of the Europeans. Sugar become habit in every tea-time of the British and so on. The animal were “exchange” and domesticated, the globalization started and made a huge exchange between every region in the world through the expansion and explorations, and trade. And that would become what the world we see today. Yes, because before of the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no tomatoes in Italy, no potatoes in Germany, donkey in Mexico, even no chocolate in Switzerland.