Columbian Exchange
Station One
First Contact
Before the year 1492, the continents of North and South America were almost
completely isolated from the rest of the world. The ecosystems of the rest of the world were
connected with each other at least a little bit. Even if a European never saw an elephant they
would at least have heard about them. The lands that Native Americans inhabited before 1492
and the lands inhabited by Europeans, Africans, or Asians were very different.
“The two worlds, which God had cast asunder, were reunited, and the two worlds,
which were so very different, began on that day to become alike. The trend towards
biological homogeneity (being all alike or at least similar) is one of the most important
aspects of the history of life on this planet…” -Alfred Crosby Jr.
1) The voyage of Columbus in 1492 is seen as a first step in linking the Old World and New
World together. What events or inventions have continued this linking process over the
last 100 years? Name at least three and explain how they have linked the world
together.
Columbian Exchange
Station Two
Diseases from the Old World to the New World
European societies were much denser than the societies in the New World. People had
lived in close contact with each other and with their animals for centuries in Europe. People
and animals living close together in large groups had allowed a great number of diseases to
develop over the centuries. Europeans had lived with these diseases for generations, so they
had formed immunities to them. This process of building immunities took hundreds of years.
These diseases were all introduced into the populations of the New World in a matter of
decades. There was no time for the Native Americans to form immunities. As a result, diseases
brought in by the Europeans killed huge numbers of people.
The Indians “died in heaps , as they lay in their houses; and the living, that were able to
shift for themselves, would run away and let them die, and let their carcasses lay above
the ground without burial…And the bones and skulls upon the several places of their
habitations made such a spectacle after my coming into those parties, that, as I traveled
in the forests of Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgotha (the place of the
skull).” -European traveler in the New World in the year 1622
2) What can you tell about the effects of European diseases upon Indian populations by
reading that quote?
Columbian Exchange
Station Three
Diseases from the New World to the Old World
At the end of the 15th century, doctors in Europe and Asia began to suffer from a new
disease. Many doctors said it was among the most contagious, most terrible, and most difficult
to cure that they had ever encountered. Almost all of the Old World physicians agreed that
they infection was a new one.
It was called many different names:
-In Italy it was called French Disease.
-In France it was called the Disease of Naples.
-In England it was called French Disease or Bordeaux Disease.
-In Poland it was called German Disease.
-In Russia it was called Polish Disease.
-In the Middle East it was called the European Pustules.
-In India it was called the Disease of the Franks.
-In China it was called the Ulcer of Canton (port city that traded with European
merchants).
-In Japan it was called the Tang Sore (Tang was their word for China).
Today, we call this disease Syphilis, and most people agree that it was never seen in
Europe before 1493.
3) What do the names the Europeans gave this disease tell you about European empires?
Columbian Exchange
Station Four
Animals from the Old World to the New World
One of the most amazing things about the pyramids that were left by the Mesoamerican
societies is that the labor used to build them was strictly human labor. There were no
beasts of burden. Europeans were using donkeys, horses, and oxen. Arabs were using
Camels. The Native Americans had no animals that were useful for work.
The Europeans brought many different animals with them to the New World. Cattle,
pigs, and chickens were domesticated by Americans. Meat became a common part of the
Indian diet. The horse revolutionized many Indian tribes. Several groups that were farmers
became horse mounted hunting tribes.
These domesticated animals eventually made it into the wild, and within a century they
had become feral. This simply means that they had become a part of the ecosystem.
4) How do you think the introduction of the horse changed American society? Think
about mobility and class structure.
Columbian Exchange
Station Five
Crops from the New World to the Old World
By the end of the 1500s many of the crops that were native to the New World had
become dietary staples of many Europeans countries.
There were several reasons that these crops spread so quickly and became so common.
Many of them could grow in areas that were no good for farming traditional European crops.
Many of the American crops were lower maintenance meaning that fewer men would need to
work to grow more food. Several of these New World crops also had very high caloric values.
This meant that the same harvest could feed more people.
In 1840 there was a potato famine in Ireland. Great numbers of the Irish population
starved because of poor potato harvests.
5) What does the death and suffering of the Irish Potato Famine in 1840 tell you about the
way New World Crops traveled to the Old World?
6) Were there any items on the list of crops that transferred from the New World to the
Old World that surprised you? Why or why not?
Columbian Exchange
Station Six
Crops from the Old World to the New World
It took longer for the crops of the Old World to spread throughout the New World than
it had taken for Old World animals to become common. Land that was suitable for growing
them had to be located, but once American farmers started growing the new crops successfully
the techniques spread quickly. By 1600 the majority of Old World food crops were being grown
all over coastal America. This enabled the American population (this population would not all
be native) to eventually grow beyond what it had been before the arrival of Europeans.
7) Look over the list of plants that came from the Old World to the New World. Are there
any plants on the list that you thought were native to America? Which ones?
8) During the colonial era, did the Europeans buy native or non-native crops from the
American plantations?
Columbian Exchange
Station Seven
The Exchange Reaches China
No nation adopted New World plants faster than China. Around 1500 the rice paddies
were suffering from below average harvests, and the population was growing. This had led to
food shortages. The arrival of white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peanuts allowed the
Chinese population to double.
Sweet potatoes were the first to arrive in the late 16th century. They are low
maintenance, high calorie food crops. By 1650 various types of potatoes had spread
throughout China. They were a staple food in the diet of Chinese peasants wherever they could
be grown.
“…When the rice culture was gradually approaching its limit, and encountering the law
of diminishing returns, the various dry land food crops introduced from America have
contributed most to the increase in national population and have made possible the
continual growth in population.” -Chinese Historian Ho Ping-ti
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9) What does this information tell you about the global characteristics of the Columbian
Exchange? Do you think that this means the Columbian Exchange was a global
revolution? Why or why not?
Columbian Exchange
Station Eight
The Beginning of Slavery in the New World
Among the crops that were introduced into the New World at the beginning of the 16th
century the one that was most promising as a cash crop was sugarcane. In warm and wet
regions such as Brazil and the West Indies, sugarcane became the most advantageous crop for
Europeans to grow. The market for sugar in Europe seemed almost endless.
The problem faced by sugarcane growers was that growing and processing sugarcane
into sugar takes a HUGE amount of labor. There were not enough Europeans coming to the
New World to fulfill the sugarcane plantation’s labor needs. This labor shortage and the desire
to make as much money as possible off of the crop was the beginning of African slavery in the
New World. Between 11 and 12 million African slaves were brought across the Atlantic Ocean.
The overwhelming majority of them did not go to Southern cotton plantations. They went to
sugarcane plantations in Brazil and the West Indies.
10) Do these figures about the numbers of slaves that were transported to the different
regions surprise you? Why or why not?
11) When the struggle to end the slave trade was going on in England, which product do
you think was boycotted, cotton or sugar? Why?