Question

First, explain what is meant by the "Columbian Exchange". Then, give your opinion as to whether or not it had a positive or negative effect on the world. Back up your opinion with facts! (4 sentence minimum)

Answer 1

The Columbian Exchange , was the exchange of goods and ideas from Europe, Africa, and Asia and goods and ideas from the Americas. A positive effect of the Columbian Exchange is the increased food supply of both the Old World and the New World. Various crops such as wheat, barley, and turnips, olives, and other items were introduced by Columbus and his followers. Moreover, the natives had presented them with avocados, cacao beans, pepper, tomato, corn, vanilla, and more. The exchange also brought animals, such as turkeys, guinea pigs, dogs, pigs, cattle, goats, horses, and sheep to America. On the other hand, one of the negative effects of the Columbian Exchange was the introduction of new diseases. Contact with Europeans allowed for diseases to easily be transmitted to communities that were once isolated. Europeans brought deadly viruses and bacteria, such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and cholera, for which Native Americans had no immunity.

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Answer 2

The Columbian Exchange greatly affected almost every society on earth, bringing destructive diseases that depopulated many cultures, and also circulating a wide variety of new crops and livestock that, in the long term, increased rather than diminished the world human population.