Columbian Exchange Notes
Funded by the Spanish, an explorer named Christopher Columbus set sail westwards in 1492 in search of a faster trading route to the Asias, but instead what Columbus found was a land separated from Europe for millions of years, North America. Columbus’s discovery of North America had many profound effects on the world, one of the greatest being the founding of the Columbian Exchange. The Columbian Exchange was a form of commerce between North America and Western Europe. The establishment of Columbian Exchange held both positive and negative repercussions, one positive repercussions being agricultural growth due to all the newly discovered crops and flora and one negative repercussion being the introduction of European diseases to the New world that resulted in the death of approximately70 million North American natives.
After news of Columbus's discovery spread to the rest of Europe, many explorer sailed to North
…show more content…
Diseases such as diphtheria, the bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, and scarlet fever were scattered throughout the New World as the Europeans settled inland. The Native Americans who had little to no resistance against these diseases succumbed. It is estimated around 90% of Native Americans population perished due to the diseases listed above. However the explorers weren’t the sole transmitters these diseases. Critters and livestock like mosquitoes, black rats and chickens that migrated along with the Europeans also carried the bacteria. The contagions held by these creatures consisted of: measles, chicken pox, malaria and yellow fever. Some American diseases that were transferred back to the old world include Chagas disease and supposedly, Syphilis. Although they did have some impact on European populous the effects were seemingly insignificant compared to the impact of the European diseases on the Native