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The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the New World (the Americas) in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, from the late 15th century on.
Aside from that, most of the major infectious diseases known today originated in the Old World. The American era of limited infectious disease ended with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas and the Columbian exchange of microorganisms, including those that cause human diseases. European infections and epidemics had major effects on Native ...
The author describes the Columbian Exchange and its global impact. Monocultures such as tobacco caused soil erosion and flooding. Colonization also brought the infectious diseases of malaria and yellow fever that he says did not exist on the American continent. Potatoes and tobacco were exchanged for silver in China.
The global silver trade between the Americas, Europe, and China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was a spillover of the Columbian exchange which had a profound effect on the world economy. Many scholars consider the silver trade to mark the beginning of a genuinely global economy , [ 1 ] with one historian noting that silver "went ...
When the New world was colonized by the Old around 1500 CE there was a major movement of cultivated crops, which was known as the Columbian Exchange. The Old world brought back seeds for foods such as corn, peppers, tomatoes and pineapples. In exchange, Europeans brought with them apples, pears, stone and citrus fruits, bananas and coconuts.
Food historian Lois Ellen Frank calls potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, and vanilla the "magic eight" ingredients that were found and used only in the Americas before 1492 and were taken via the Columbian Exchange back to the Old World, dramatically transforming the cuisine there. [17] [18] [19] According to Frank, [20]
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Smallpox is among the most notable of diseases in the Columbian Exchange due to the high number of deaths and impact on life for Indigenous societies. [1] [5] Smallpox first broke out in the Americas on the island of Hispaniola in 1518. [7] The disease was carried over from Europe, where it had been endemic for over seven hundred years. [5]