The Columbian Exchange [AP World History] Unit 4 Topic 3

The Columbian Exchange [AP World History] Unit 4 Topic 3

The Columbian Exchange [AP World History] Unit 4 Topic 3

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In this video Heimler continues explaining Unit 4 in AP World History, and in this one we talk about that momentous transfer of food, people, and disease between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere, namely, the Columbian Exchange.

It’s hard to overestimate the great change that took place in the world as a result of the Columbian Exchange. Diseases like smallpox devastated the populations of the Native Americans. But animals like horses transformed their lives, arguably for the better. Foods were exchanged as well like maize, manioc, and potatoes, and these all led to population explosions.

And there is a dark side to the Columbian Exchange as well: the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The wild success of agriculture in the New World, especially sugarcane and tobacco, led to an increased demand for Enslaved people to work the fields.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below and Heimler will answer forthwithly.


Content

0.08 -> Hi and welcome back to Heimler’s History.
1.51 -> So in Unit 4 of AP World History we’ve been talking about the expansion of European sea-based
5.779 -> empires.
6.779 -> And in this video we’re going to talk about the momentous change that occurred when the
9.96 -> Eastern and Western hemispheres came crashing together.
13.18 -> And that change has a name: the Columbian Exchange.
17.42 -> And if you’re ready, I’m ready—let’s get to it.
32.88 -> So we’re talking about the Columbian Exchange, and I don’t think I’m overstating it when
36.59 -> I say that the Columbian Exchange changed the world in ways that few other events had.
41.33 -> In the short run, the Columbian Exchange meant disaster for the natives of the Americas and
46.55 -> extraordinary profitability and wealth for the Europeans.
49.35 -> But in the long run, for all involved, the Columbian Exchange introduced new ways of
53.26 -> life (and death) through the mutual sharing of the East and West.
57.76 -> So first of all, what is the Columbian Exchange?
60.3 -> Well its name comes from our good buddy Christopher Columbus whose landing on the Caribbean island
63.46 -> of Hispaniola launched the transaction.
65.47 -> But the definition is essentially this: The Columbian Exchange is the transfer of people,
70.15 -> animals, plants, and diseases from the East to the West and from the West to the East.
75.08 -> So let’s start with an upper: diseases.
76.92 -> Until Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, Afro-Eurasia and the American continents were completely
81.57 -> isolated.
82.57 -> And through a series of unfortunate or fortunate, depending on how you look at it, those worlds
86.61 -> came crashing together.
88.16 -> Because of the long-term separation of these two groups of people, the natives in the Americas
91.75 -> had no immunity to some of the more devastating European diseases.
94.78 -> And the most devastating of the bunch was smallpox.
97.98 -> Smallpox was an airborne disease that Europeans had been exposed to for many centuries.
101.87 -> And even though it was still devastating, they had built up some immunity to it.
105.7 -> But when the white people showed up in the Americas and started coughing all over the
109.48 -> natives, the smallpox contagion was deadly to a people who had never encountered it before.
114.06 -> It was this disease that was responsible for the large-scale death that occurred in the
118.38 -> Americas.
119.38 -> In general, historians estimate that it wiped out about 50% of the native population.
123.39 -> And in some places upwards of 80-90% of the natives populations were destroyed.
128.09 -> But that’s not all.
129.09 -> The more Europeans that showed up in the New World, the more diseases they brought.
132.76 -> They brought malaria and the measles, and the flu.
135.44 -> And all of these wrought disaster on the native peoples.
138.33 -> You might even compare it to the devastating effects of the Black Death in the last period.
142.73 -> Alright, if that has sufficiently depressed you, then let’s move on to happier matters:
146.95 -> animals and food.
147.95 -> The sharing of animals and food went both ways in the exchange and in many cases completely
153.569 -> transformed the respective societies into which they were introduced.
157.16 -> For example, the Europeans introduced pigs and cows and wheat and grapes to the Americas.
162.19 -> And these food items eventually became staples in the American diet.
165.35 -> I mean, what would we be today without beef?
167.62 -> I know that 50% of your population is dead, but on the upside: cheeseburgers.
172.48 -> The Europeans also introduced horses into the western hemisphere.
175.49 -> And the adoption of that animal changed the lives of the native Americans who lived in
179.45 -> the plains regions.
180.86 -> After they learned to ride horses they were able to hunt buffalo with greater efficiency
184.33 -> and that meant in many cases, excess food.
187.45 -> Also the horse gave tribes a competitive advantage against other tribes who did not have horses,
192.06 -> so not only could they kill buffalo better, they could kill other humans better too.
195.91 -> Now let’s look at what travelled in the other direction: from west to east.
197.931 -> The Mesoamericans introduced some very important food items to the Europeans.
202.77 -> For example, cacao, maize (which is a kind of corn), and potatoes (which is a kind of
207.569 -> potato).
208.569 -> When these were introduced to Europeans it led to an expanded diet and more importantly,
212.27 -> massive population growth.
213.53 -> Alright, now let’s look at the Columbian Exchange in terms of agriculture and labor.
216.81 -> Even though the initial explorers were in search of gold and silver, it didn’t take
220.8 -> them long to realize that their colonies in the Americas could get them rich through farming.
227.379 -> But there were far too few European colonists to attempt any large-scale agriculture, so
233.42 -> what to do.
234.42 -> First solution: enslave the natives and make them do it.
236.85 -> And this kind of worked, but there was a major problem.
239.03 -> Turns out the natives knew their own land way better than the Europeans did, and so
242.31 -> they often escaped into the hills and forests it was unlikely that the colonists would find
247.67 -> them.
248.67 -> For example, the Portuguese dealt with this difficulty in their Brazilian colony.
250.629 -> They took to growing sugarcane there and it was making them so wealthy that when the natives
254.08 -> ran away the colonists could just go cry in a bag of money.
256.09 -> But it wasn’t long before they got tired of crying into their moneybags and came up
259.599 -> with a solution.
260.599 -> And that solution was to import enslaved laborers from Africa, and in Portugal’s case, especially
265.86 -> from the Kongo Kingdom.
267.61 -> This solved the problem of the natives so rudely escaping because the Africans knew
271.419 -> the land less than the colonists.
273.339 -> And as the demand for sugarcane and in other regions, tobacco, spiked, so did the demand
278.159 -> for enslaved people from Africa.
280.219 -> And that meant that millions of Africans were forcibly removed from their homes and made
283.939 -> to participate in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
287.62 -> But in a strange turn of events, even though the African population was experiencing a
290.75 -> large scale deprivation of its menfolk, the African population actually grew significantly
295.75 -> during this period.
296.75 -> The reason is, again, because of the Columbian Exchange.
298.889 -> While enslaved people were being transferred from East to West, foods like yams and manioc
303.749 -> were being introduced into Africa from places like Brazil.
306.99 -> And those new foods meant new population.
310.059 -> And finally, we need to talk about the environmental impact of the Columbian Exchange.
313.28 -> It probably won’t surprise you to hear that the natives of the Americas had been farming
316.59 -> for a long time.
318.289 -> And they had developed ways to live with the land sustainably.
321.21 -> But when the European colonists arrived and grew wealthy through agriculture, they began
324.86 -> to use the land much more aggressively.
326.68 -> And that led to large-scale deforestation and the eventual depletion of the soil.
330.389 -> Also, because Europeans tended to live in more densely populated settlements than did
333.819 -> the natives, they put greater strain on the water supplies and introduced greater amounts
336.279 -> of pollution to boot.
337.34 -> Okay, that’s what you need to know about the Columbian Exchange.
339.15 -> If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.
341.409 -> If you want me to keep making these videos then subscribe and join us.
344.249 -> And if you want to join the inner circle of Heimler’s History enthusiasts, then you
346.939 -> could consider supporting me on Patreon.
349.06 -> Heimler out.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrF6TDzsGuA