The Columbian Exchange

FOUNDATIONS OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD HIST 1301 | History The Columbian Exchange Portuguese and Spanish exploration and colonisation had far-reaching effects that extended well beyond their effects on politics and the economy. When Christopher Columbus first encountered local people in the Caribbean in 1492, it marked the start of the so-called Columbian Exchange. This expression describes the exchange of diseases, plants, and animals between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. But much more was exchanged than just tangible goods. Along the way, ideas, religious beliefs, enslaved peoples, and cultural customs travelled over the Atlantic, reshaping, blending, and even destroying different civilizations. The world that Columbus entered in 1492 was every bit as intricate, multifaceted, and perilous as the one he had left behind. Empires came and went, people got married and started kids, and people made innovative moves to improve their lot in life throughout the Americas. But significant distinctions influenced the future crashes. The idea of human nature and beginnings was among the most essential. The globe, its history, and its development were linear to Europeans. It was gloomy at the beginning, just as the Christian Bible says. The earth and light were created by God, and the world will end one day. This idea affected the way that Europeans perceived time to move in a straight line, with humanity continually going ahead. Everything has a start, a middle ground or peak, and a finish. Nonetheless, the world was endless and cyclical for many Indigenous peoples. For example, the Aztecs thought that their world was just the most recent in a long line of planets that had been created and destroyed. Only as long as they fueled the sun with the blood of sacrificed victims would their planet continue. Indigenous conceptions of the universe did not distinguish clearly between the spiritual and human domains or between nature and humanity. Numerous religious systems were animistic, which held that in addition to people, other living things also included animals, plants, and even rocks. Compared to monotheistic thought, which held that a single divine deity possessed all spiritual power, this belief was significantly different. Native American faiths did not emphasise sin or the distinction between good and evil. Rather, the spiritual realm was a fount of energy that humanity might direct towards good or evil. All Indigenous communities in the Western Hemisphere shared these fundamental ideas about their existence, their relationship to others, and their place in the world, while having quite different particular beliefs. The ground could not be owned as it contained holy power, just like people, animals, and plants did. For many Indigenous cultures, the idea of land ownership was absurd, and their consequent disregard for private property contributed to the ease with which European settlers could claim Native American territories. The way that Indigenous Americans saw gender was likewise different from that of 1400s Europeans. While cooking, sewing, and raising children were among the jobs that Native American women performed in similar ways to those of European women, they also engaged in occupations that were traditionally performed by males in Europe and that Europeans thought belonged to them. For instance, women were often the primary growers and builders of the family home in many Indigenous communities. Women were regarded as divine beings with the ability to create and heal in many cultures. Women picked the male leaders of the tribe and frequently attended tribal councils to advise male clan representatives, as was the case with the Iroquois of North America. This authority also gave them a prominent role in the leadership of their communities, and in some of these, women served on tribal councils. Among the southern New England Wampanoag, women were capable of holding tribe leadership positions. Those who refused to conform to the duties that were customarily ascribed to members of their own sex enjoyed substantially greater freedom to live as they pleased in many tribes than they did in Europe. As long as they made other contributions to society, men and women who wanted to live as women and women who wanted to live as men did not always suffer from discrimination or punishment. For instance, women became hunters and fighters in several communities. In numerous communities, males who believed they possessed the souls of women from birth dressed like women, went into careers traditionally held by women, and married other men twice or three times. These folks were respected and were thought to have considerable spiritual ability. Historians' estimates vary widely, but it is estimated that the Indigenous population of the entire Western Hemisphere was around 75 million at the time of Columbus' arrival, compared to the roughly 70 million people who lived in Europe. In North America alone, there were about six hundred clans or tribes of indigenous people. Some, like the Dene and the Inuit, lived primarily as huntergatherers in icy regions unsuitable for cultivation. Some people who lived further south, like the Puebloans and the Creek, cultivated a lot and relied mostly on maize as their main food source. These communities frequently embraced political structures that made sense for their surroundings. Hunter-gatherers, like the Apache, were grouped together in small bands under a single family unit headed by a recognised leader. Towns united to create political confederacies in township societies like the Iroquois. Monarchs presided over sizable urban populations in the Inca and Aztec empires. European settlers brought domestic crops to the Americas as part of the Columbian Exchange, including wheat, the Vitis vinifera grape species, pears, peaches, and several apple kinds, as well as vegetables like onions and garlic. Particularly significant to the Spanish and Portuguese were the first two. European grapes were needed to manufacture wine for the same event, and wheat was needed to make the communion wafers that were an essential feature of the Roman Catholic mass. Although most Native Americans were not interested in consuming foods from Europe, the introduction of inedible resources had an instantaneous effect. Those who decided to use metal weapons and cookware gained immense power. New plant life carried east over the Atlantic also altered African, Asian, and European cultures. For millennia, Native Americans in North America had subsisted on maize, or corn, while Native Americans in South America had long eaten a variety of potatoes, including sweet potatoes. Together with them, countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia grew to know and embrace tomatoes, chilli peppers, vanilla, manioc, pineapples, and peanuts as staple foods. Tobacco, another American commodity, and chocolate, which the Aztecs and Maya had ingested in liquid form, gained particular popularity in Europe. The tropical climates of the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and the southernmost regions of North America are ideal for the growth of coffee and sugar cane, which were brought to the Americas by European settlers. The rest of the world's broad embrace of these meals set off a domino effect that grew demand for both agricultural labour and these goods. Slavery in the plantation system ultimately spread to sections of the United States, Caribbean islands, and South American countries like Brazil as a result of this demand for labour. Animals from all throughout the world travelled with European settlers when they crossed the Atlantic and returned, too, not just plants. Horses, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and poultry all made the Atlantic trip to the Americas. The lives of several Indigenous groups were changed by these creatures. After adopting the horse, tribes in North America like the Lakota went onto the Great Plains and developed a way of life centred on hunting bison. The Navajo developed became skilled woollen textile weavers and sheep herders. Goats and chickens were raised by tribes in Mexico, Central America, and South America as vital sources of protein. Additionally, deadly diseases reached the Americas, where they contributed to one of the biggest disease-related tragedies in recorded history. Because the animals that first spawned infectious diseases (and from which they had jumped to humans) simply did not exist in the Americas, no one realised, given our limited understanding of epidemic science, that native peoples had virtually none of the resistance and immunity Europeans had developed to infectious diseases. Some researchers estimate that as many as 95% of local peoples without natural immunity died from contracting these diseases when they were brought by Europeans and the enslaved Africans who frequently accompanied them. However, there are more reasons why the Indigenous peoples of the Americas perished in such vast numbers than just not being exposed to European cattle or illnesses. Millions of people in the Americas perished from smallpox, typhus, measles, influenza, salmonella, and other infections as a result of the devastation caused by European settlers. The livestock that European immigrants frequently let go wild, particularly the pigs, caused terrible damage to the crops that the Indigenous peoples had sown. Native Americans sometimes fled into hiding in areas where the Spanish carried out slave raids, not daring to go out and fish, work, or tend their crops for fear of being apprehended. Their immune systems were compromised by the ensuing starvation, making it more difficult for them to fend off infectious diseases— even ones that their bodies were accustomed to—and prevent infections. In areas that are highly inhabited and heavily occupied, infectious illnesses spread quickly. A body compromised by one illness was more vulnerable to illnesses later on. The Western continents' population decline was also influenced by other causes. Colonising groups, like the Spanish in New Spain, aimed to create economies that sent resources and riches back home. In order to do this, the infrastructure they constructed purposefully destroyed nearby ecosystems and denied Indigenous peoples access to the natural riches found on their territories, such as rich soil, water, wood, and valuable metals. Indigenous communities faced violence against themselves and their families when they refused to accept these economic circumstances. The sixteenth century was a disaster for the first people of the Western Hemisphere because of servitude, brutality, exile, and a high death rate from sickness. Nevertheless, they continued to oppose European encroachment, starting a centuries-long conflict that still has consequences today. For instance, Native chiefs started pointing Columbus in the direction of other islands a few months after he started exploring the Caribbean, avoiding the unfavourable effects of European presence. Indigenous communities have occasionally resorted to violence in order to oppose European atrocities. However, not all Indigenous peoples responded violently. Many of the gender, religious, and social structures that had existed in the Americas did fall apart during the sometimes harsh colonisation of the Western Hemisphere, while others combined or altered to form new hybrid cultures that were spread over the American continents and the Caribbean islands. However, in order to survive, many Indigenous communities made the decision to adopt elements of European material culture, such as tools and weapons, into their own. The Comanche, a mostly hunter-gatherer tribe, embraced the Spanish horses that the conquistadors brought with them. The Comanche were reduced to an empire that engaged in equal-opportunity negotiations with the Spanish, British, and French after a few generations thanks to the acquisition of horses and metal weapons. Lastly, not all Atlantic colonisation and trade occurred east to west. Using the Columbian Exchange, indigenous people also went to Europe in search of solutions for themselves and their community. Dozens of Native American negotiators travelled to Europe during the seventeenth century to make direct appeals to the kings for financial, military, and other advantages. Their actions demonstrate the many ways that indigenous people throughout the Atlantic World aspired to control their own destiny.