Essay About Columbian Exchange And New World

The Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations
between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher
Columbus in 1492.
The Old World—by which we mean not just Europe, but the entire Eastern Hemisphere—gained
from the Columbian Exchange in number of ways. Discoveries of new supplies of metals are perhaps the
best-known. But the Old World also gained new staple crops, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and
cassava. Less calorie-intensive foods, such as tomatoes, chili peppers, cacao, peanuts, and pineapples
were also introduced, and are now culinary centerpieces in many Old World countries, namely Italy,
Greece, and other Mediterranean countries (tomatoes), India and Korea (chili peppers), Hungary (paprika,
made from chili peppers), and Malaysia and Thailand (chili peppers, peanuts, and pineapples). Tobacco,
another New World crop, was so universally adopted that it came to be used as a substitute for currency in
many parts of the world. The exchange also drastically increased the availability of many Old World
crops, such as sugar and coffee, which were particularly well-suited for the virgin soils of the New World.
The Exchange not only brought gains, but also loses. European contact enabled the transmission
of diseases to previously isolated communities, which caused devastation far exceeding that of even the
Black