preview

Effects Of The Columbian Exchange

Decent Essays

After Columbus' 'discovery' of America in 1492, an began exchange between the 'Old World', the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, and the 'New World', the continents of what today is North America and South America. Historian Alfred Crosby called this exchange the 'Columbian Exchange'. The spread of new foods and animals benefited both the Old and New worlds, although the exchange of disease devastated the New World. Historians estimate that as many as 100 million people died as a result of the spread of diseases such as Small Pox and Influenza. This exchange changed world history and created the world that we live in today. After the Spanish settled in America, many new foods and species of plants were introduced to the people of Eurasia, none of which they had said before. Although most of the exchange of food was from the New World to the Old World, Eurasia also introduced the America’s to wheat and grapes, two very important foods for mass. Potatoes and corn were a major part of the Columbian Exchange as they provided a lot of nutrition and were very easy to grow. They could grow in soil that was previously useless for agriculture. Other foods that spread across Europe were tomatoes, peppers, chocolate, beans, pineapples, avocados and blueberries. This exchange of food was the main reason that the worlds population doubled from 545,000,000 in 1600 to 1,128,000,000 in 1850 and historians often describe this massive increase in the nutritional value and variety of

Get Access