The Devastating Effects Of The Columbian Exchange

Aidan Donnager

Charles Parker-Alofs

U.S History

January 31, 2023

The Devastating Effects of The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian exchange refers to the exchange of food, crops, livestock, diseases, and ideas that occurred between Europe and the Americas after Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492. When discussing the Columbian exchange it is crucial to consider one of its worst parts: the crimes committed against the indigenous people in the Americas. The Columbian exchange led to the planned exploitation of the native at the hands of the Spanish and continental depopulation which led to the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.

Upon their arrival, the Spaniards promptly began planning the subjugation and enslavement of the Native

The Native Americans were not only forced to carry the Spanish and their belongings but they were also forced to work in mines among other labor jobs. In 1508, 16 years after the arrival of Columbus to the Americas, Bartolomé De Las Casas wrote, “…there were 60,000 people living on this island (Hispaniola), including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines.” Three million is an extremely large number to have perished in only 16 years and this statistic given by de las Casas gives an extremely important estimate that's still considered in how modern historians estimate how many people there were in the Americas pre-Columbian exchange. In the book A People’s History of The United States, Howard Zin comments, “...when you read Las Casas--even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death.” De Las Casas is an important figure from the time of the Columbian exchange and has had an impact on how we reconstruct the historical New World, but it is also important to take into account the fact that his statistics may not

This means that while a significant portion of the native population is being killed off no new people were being born to grow up and replace them. This caused the population to decline at an even faster rate. While he was in Cuba, Bartolomé de las Casas wrote, “7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…” Even though people were dying at incredibly high rates and there were very few babies being born the Spanish still needed people to construct settlements, work fields of crops, and manage livestock. The Spanish soon realized that they would need to import more people to the Americas so they could replace the dying native communities. In an article for Khan Academy Eman Elshaikh wrote, “Because there were so few people, there was a shortage of labor in the Americas. That need for labor contributed to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.” People were being captured and taken as slaves, primarily in Africa, and were moved to the Americas in vast numbers. While slavery is a major issue in and of itself there is a multitude of other issues that surround people being transported on ships for months on end. One of these concerns is death due to disease while the ships were making the voyage to the Americas. In an article titled The