How Did African Americans Contribute To The Columbian Exchange

1176 Words5 Pages

French Caribbean
1607-1754

In 1492 Columbus set sail for the Indies and landed in the Bahamas, and in 1493 the first Spanish settlement was established. His journey and geographical discoveries helped pave the way for European colonization of the New World. Columbus’s voyage lead to the Columbian exchange in which crops, livestock, ideas, culture, and even people were exchanged between the Americas and the “Old World”. In their strive for wealth, the Spanish began to exploit and enslave both indigenous people and Africans through this exchange. The Arawak and Taino who settled onto the Caribbean, but were displaced into Hispaniola by the Carib, were met by European colonizers with disease and enslavement and many indigenous women were …show more content…

Slaves were imported from Africa and were taken to South America then moved to the Caribbean, and were later brought to the United States. Slaves were used as a free or cheaper labor force to work as housemaids, servants, cotton pickers, planting and harvesting rice, sugar cane, tobacco, and coffee. Slave owners, owned at most 50 slaves. “Historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million black slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women” (“Slavery in America”). Slave owners were so content on making their slaves completely dependent on them that there was restrictive codes governed among slaves. Many owners used slave women for their sexual pleasures, rewarded those who were good and punished slaves who tried to rebel. Some slave rebellions did occur but few succeeded. One that was successful was the rebellion led by Nat Turner in South …show more content…

In this hypothetical state of affairs, Gentlemen, it is easy to see that, because the Colonies’ ports are closed to French vessels, this Kingdom would be obligated to import from abroad what it consumes in sugar, in coffee, in cotton, and in indigo, and that it would consequently become tributary of these Foreigners. It would be impossible for this kingdom to clear a sum of 50-60 million as a result of all of these exchanges.
It is even easier to see the ways in which this powerful enemy of France would augment its wealth and prosperity and the degree of strength and glory it would gain through an increase of six hundred million in monetary wealth at the expense of France. This powerful enemy [England] could also use its strength to attack and dismember the most beautiful Kingdom of Europe, notwithstanding its population and the courage of the French people.
You see, once again, the degree of poverty to which the Kingdom would find itself reduced in ten years, if it threw from its bosom such a large sum of