Columbian Exchange
Columbian Exchange: global transfer of plants, animals, diseases,
and food as a result of European Exploration
Columbian Exchange• Global diffusion of biological
goods (food, disease, animals, plants)
• Began in the 1400s
• Corn and potatoes were most important – cheap, easy to grow, highly nutritious
Population changes
Americas ↓ because diseases
Europe ↑ because new foods make
people healthier
Atlantic Slave Trade
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Atlantic Slave Trade: the buying, transporting, and selling of Africans
for work in the Americas
Why Africans?• Slavery had existed in Africa
since the 600s when Muslims enslaved non-Muslims
• Most Native Americans were killed by European diseases
• Many Africans had immunity • Africans were unfamiliar with the
Americas less likely to escape or have allies.
• By 1870 around 9.5 million Africans were imported to the Americas in bondage.
• Majority of slaves worked on large sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations.
Middle Passage: the middle leg of the Atlantic Slave Trade that
brought Africans to the West Indies, and N+S America
Roughly 20% did not survive the journey (disease, cruel treatment,
suicide).
Impact
AFRICA• Many societies
lost entire generations of their healthiest people
• Families were torn apart
AMERICAS• Colonies
became profitable
• African culture influenced many societies throughout the Americas.
"God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression
of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of manners [morals].”
October 1787 • Abolition of slave
trade in England• Slave Trade Act
1807• (outlawed all
British involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade)
William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)
• Key player in campaign to end slavery
• 1789: wrote and published, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Triangular Trade
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Triangular Trade: transatlantic trading route connecting Africa,
Europe, and the Americas
Columbian Exchange
+Atlantic Slave
Trade=
Triangular Trade
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