Answer to Question #253257 in History for Lauren

Question

How should we assess the Columbian Discovery of America? Was it beneficial or harmful to the human race? Were the actions of some of the Spanish explorers that Stannard describes in his essay justifiable? What does this teach us about the nature of colonialism? What were some of the similarities and differences between the Spanish, French, English and Dutch in regards to exploring and settling in the "New World"?

Answer 1

The Colombian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The Old World? by which we mean not just Europe, but the entire Eastern Hemisphere? gained from the Colombian Exchange in a number of ways. Discoveries of new supplies of metals are perhaps the best known. But the Old World also gained new staple crops, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava. Less calorie-intensive foods, such as tomatoes, chili peppers, cacao, peanuts, and pineapples were also introduced, and are now culinary centerpieces in many Old World countries, namely Italy, Greece, and other Mediterranean countries (tomatoes), India, and Korea (chili peppers), Hungary (paprika, made from chili peppers), and Malaysia and Thailand (chili peppers, peanuts, and pineapples). Tobacco, another New World crop, was so universally adopted that it came to be used as a substitute for currency in many parts of the world. The exchange also drastically increased the availability of many Old World crops, such as sugar and coffee, which were particularly well-suited for the soils of the New World. The exchange not only brought gains but also losses. European contact enabled the transmission of diseases to previously isolated communities, which caused devastation far exceeding that of even the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe. Europeans brought deadly viruses and bacteria, such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and cholera, for which Native Americans had no immunity (Denevan, 1976). On their return home, European sailors brought syphilis to Europe. Although less deadly, the disease was known to have caused great social disruption throughout the Old World. The effects of the Colombian Exchange were not isolated to the parts of the world most directly participating in the exchange: Europe and the Americas. It also had large, although less direct, impacts on Africa and Asia. European exploration and colonization of the vast tropical regions of these continents was aided by the New World discovery of quinine, the first effective treatment for malaria. Moreover, the cultivation of financially lucrative crops in the Americas, along with the devastation of native populations from disease, resulted in a demand for labor that was met with the abduction and forced movement of over 12 million Africans during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries (Lovejoy, 2000; Manning, 1990). The Colombian Exchange has provided economists interested in the long-term effects of history on economic development with a rich historical laboratory. Economic studies have thus far mainly focused on how European institutions, through colonialism, were transplanted to non-European parts of the world.