The Columbian Exchange

1. The Columbian Exchange Beginning of the World Economy

2. Themes in the Video • What are the major themes of the video The Columbian Exchange? • the significance of the seemingly insignificant things exchanged • the significance of the movements of people (not as conquistadores) occasioned by the discovery and colonization of the New World • the development of whole cultures as the outcome of the exchange of flora and fauna from one hemisphere to another

5. What Was Exchanged?

6. The Exchange of Diseases • the character of epidemics • the need for concentrations of people • how gene pools develop with resistence to strains of diseases • the apparent absence of epidemic diseases in the New World prior to 1492 • dense populations in valley of Mexico and in Peruvian highlands • close to the margin, but not yet at it? • the emergence of several "childhood" diseases in the New World shortly after the arrival of the Spanish

7. The Demographic Collapse • Some contending estimates: • http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/vircatas/virtab3.htm

8. Contending Views of Demographic Collapse

9. The Demographic Collapse • http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/vircatas/virtab3.htm • http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/PSci/Inst21/mexico_population.htm • Consequences: • Loss of cultural confidence • http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/PSci/Inst21/aztec_old_men.htm

10. Varieties of Old and New World Staples(millions of calories per hectare)

11. Growth of World Population

13. Example: Cattle Ranching

14. The Potato and Population Growth in Ireland