Columbian Exchange

The Columbian exchange was the trade of raw materials, plants, culture and many other things from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere and vice versa. Breaking down east and west, the Americas are the west and Europe the east. When a new variable is introduced to an environment, that variable is sure to have some kind of change inflicted upon it. For the Americas this variable is known as the Columbian Exchange.

The restless Spanish conquistadors came to the Americas and caused changes in the environment through killing populations and sleeping with their women. Population changes were evident within Mexican colonization; they witnessed the cruelty and brutality the Spanish shown to Indians. The Indians were punished by death for resisting Spanish, when they gave up the Spanish refused to accept the provisions and killed more. Those that weren’t killed were arrested and forced to pay unreasonable tribute.

Once the European countries had escaped the Middle Ages, they raced to claim territory in America. European and American plant and animal life mixed. British brought cattle, horse, and swine and let them go wild to cause havoc on the lands. The Europeans brought weeds to make the grass eatable for the livestock; they also brought diseases that the Indians weren’t exposed or immune to such as smallpox, typhus and influenza. That just about killed them off; the ones that survived went west.

But not all of the results of the Columbian Exchange were negative. European explorers also brought along their techniques of farming, hunting, fighting, city building and many other things. These techniques marginalized the Indians and promoted European dominance in the New World to European settlers pushing westward and settling on Indian land by cutting down trees and exploiting the land. Many Europeans who observed the Native American way of life also benefitted from Columbian Exchange. Nicolas Denys spoke with much respect