The Columbian ExchangeAnd Triangular Trade

What was the Columbian Exchange?

The explorers created contact between Europe and the Americas.

Interaction with Native Americans led to big cultural changes.

Exchange of physical elements: animals, plants, diseases, weapons, etc.

Animals

Llamas were the only domesticated animals in Latin America.– Europeans brought horses, pigs, cattle,

sheep. changed the use of the land

Plants

Europeans brought cash crops to the Americas: sugar, rice, wheat, coffee, bananas, & grapes.– New crops flourished in the Americas.

Europeans adopt crops found in the Americas: maize, tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, beans, & cotton.

Encomienda System

Spanish government granted a number of natives to a notable person

Grant receiver protected Natives from warring tribes, learn Spanish, and convert to Catholicism

Became corrupt, harsh, and violent Bartolome de las Casas wrote about

injustices against Natives– Missionaries also protested

The Introduction of New Diseases Nearly all of the European diseases

were communicable by air & touch. Smallpox, measles, diphtheria, whooping

cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, scarlet fever and influenza were the most common diseases exchanged.

Illness in Europe was considered to be the result of sin.– Indians, who were largely “heathen” or

non-Christian were regarded as sinners and therefore subject to illness as a punishment.

Devastating Impact of Diseases

Native Americans had no natural resistance to European diseases .– population continued to decline for

centuries Inca empire decreased from 13 million

in 1492 to 2 million in 1600. North American population fell from 2

million in 1492 to 500,000 in 1900.

Effects of Diseases Native American population dramatically

decreases Europeans need labor to cultivate new

crops in the Americas, but there aren’t many natives left.

Europeans look to Africa & begin to import African slaves to the Americas.

Slavery Expands In 1518, the first shipment of slaves went directly

from West Africa to the Caribbean where the slaves worked on sugar plantations.

By the 1520s, the Spanish had introduced slaves to Mexico, Peru, and Central America where they worked as farmers and miners.

By the early 17th century, the British had introduced slaves to North America.

The demand for labor in the western

hemisphere encouraged a money-

making triangular trading pattern.

Triangular Trade Route

Triangular Trade

The triangular trade demonstrates how people were reduced to commodities to be sold.

Goods such as metal, cloth, beads and guns went from Europe to Africa, enslaved Africans went to America and the Caribbean, and raw products such as sugar, tobacco and cotton came back to Europe.

Capture

The original capture of slaves was almost always violent.

As European demand grew, African chieftains organized raiding parties to seize individuals from neighboring societies.

Others launched wars specifically for the purpose of capturing slaves.

“Africans became enslaved mainly through four ways:

first, criminals sold by the chiefs as punishment;

secondly, free Africans obtained from raids by African and a few European gangs;

thirdly, domestic slaves resold, and fourthly; prisoners of war.”

Plantations After crossing the Atlantic, most African slaves went

to plantations in the tropical or subtropical regions of the western hemisphere.

Originally the main crop was sugar. In addition to sugar, plantations produced crops like tobacco, indigo, and cotton.

1530s--Portuguese began organizing plantations in Brazil, and Brazil became the world’s leading supplier of sugar.