Question

How did the discovery of America effected other countries ?
Explain in brief

Answer 1

 

1) Contact with Europeans exposed Native Americans to diseases against which they had not developed resistance -- small pox, measles, chickenpox, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever.  For example, in 1738, a small pox epidemic decimated half the Cherokee population.

 

2) Economically, the population decrease brought by the Columbian Exchange (decimation of Native American populations by disease) indirectly caused a drastic labor shortage throughout the Americas, which eventually resulted in the establishment of African slavery on a vast scale in the Americas.

3) Europeans, who settled in the New World, also chose to cultivate Old World crops, such as wheat and apples. Europeans in sowing these crops also inadvertently introduced various Old World weeds -- couch grass, dandelion, shepherd’s purse, groundsel, sow thistle, and chickweeds. In stripping and burning forests in order to plant, European settlers exposed native flora to direct sunlight and to domesticated animals brought from the Old World. New World flora could not tolerate this stress. However, Old World crops and weeds could because they had coexisted with large numbers of grazing animals for years. In short, it transformed European crops and weeds transformed the landscape of the New World.

4) Introduced new animals -- from horses to earthworms. Wherever earthworms appeared, it changed the landscape, aerating the soil, breaking down fallen foliage and accelerating erosion and nutrient exchange. Earthworms make it easier for some plants to grow, while robbing others of habitat. They take away living space from other bugs, while providing a new source of food for some birds.

 

 

The Columbian Exchange: How it Impacted the Old World:

 

1) The New World's greatest contribution to the Old was in crop plants. Maize, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, various squashes, chiles, and manioc became essentials in the diets of hundreds of millions of Europeans, Africans, and Asians. Their influence on Old World peoples, like that of wheat and rice on New World peoples, is key to understanding the global population explosion of the past three centuries. The Columbian Exchange has been an indispensable factor in that demographic explosion.

 

2. It also impacted China, which up until this point had shown little interest in Europe. But this time, Europeans brought something from America that electrified China -- silver.This precious metal was the most important form of currency, in which all business was transacted, during the Ming Dynasty. Thus, in the eyes of the Chinese, the galleons from South America arrived loaded with nothing less than pure money.

 

 

The Columbian Exchange marked the beginning of an era of global trade. Oceans no longer represented barriers to people, goods, animals, plants and microbes. Contact catalyzed progress, but it also produced suffering and exploitation.

 

This list of effects is by no means exhaustive; if you would like to learn more about the Columbian exchange, see:

Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. Vintage Books, 2012

Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th edition. 2003.