Alfred Crosby (37) asserts that the Columbian Exchange happened when Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492. This was when there had been a substantial interchange or swapping of goods, animals, dwellers and slaves, as well as infectious diseases between the Old World, which was the Eastern Hemisphere and the New World, which was the Western Hemisphere. Man’s movement to another place, along with illnesses and afflictions is the main doer or stimulant to an outbreak.
In addition, Crosby (31) says that illnesses were transmitted from Europeans to Native Americans and from Native Americans to Europeans. This vast exchange incredibly affected humankind negatively in a way that multiple infectious infirmities were unleashed. These people were tremendously in pain as caused by sicknesses that were new to them. Unarmed with any form of immunity, the original settlers of Latin America captured the following ailments: Cholera, Diphtheria, Common cold, Bubonic plague, Chicken pox, Dysentery, Influenza, Leprosy, Mumps, Smallpox, Malaria, Scarlet fever, Measles, whooping cough, Typhus, Yellow fever, and Typhoid fever. Small pox caused massive death among Latin Americans and that their population dropped right away. The following are illnesses which came from the New World: Syphilis, Polio, Hepatitis, and Encephalitis. There had been a brisk and quick transmission of these diseases since they were severely contagious.
The Indian society was easily ravaged or wrecked by the diseases from the Europeans because the former never had an earlier experience on having such sickness, making their bodies and or system thoroughly responsive to such. Also, their bodies’ defense was not equipped or expectant to have such infirmities due to the fact that the Indians were segregated and secluded prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Most of all, the diffusion of the disease was effortless since almost all of them were transmittable by air and physical contact.
Crosby emphasized that the segregation of the Indians from other class or civilization prior to the European’s arrival led to the reduction of their strength and immune system to counter or fight primary illnesses. In reality, the transmission of the disease was so prompt that Indians caught the disease and became afflicted before they even had seen the Europeans. According to Crosby, throughout the Columbian Exchange, those of perilous fevers such as typhus, smallpox and measles are the most fatal of the endemics or outbreak in America. As it may be, smallpox was the most fatal among the illnesses having to do with the Indians. It was really believed to be the most harmful.
The Europeans were not spared from any diseases during those times. They were not spared from the harsh and relentless effect of having Syphilis, an Old World illness which was passed on during sexual intercourse. It was almost a pandemic since it reached locations such as Russia and Africa. During the Columbian Exchange era, Europe was confined into a rampant sexual illness. The aftermath of syphilis was tremendous but it eventually came to rest and became a stable circumstance in human life or survival.
Seemingly, communicable disease had the greatest effect and impact to mankind directly after the birth of interaction of Christopher Columbus and his troops. The Old World diseases annihilated a huge part of the Indian populace. Syphilis did the same to Europe, Russia, Africa and other countries. The conveyance of diseases during the Columbian Exchange had an intense aftermath on the world then and remains to impact our world of today.
History of Disease, Food, and Ideas
Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian (2010), defines Columbian Exchange as the trade or exchange of illnesses, concepts, food crops, and communities between the Old World and the New World following the journey to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The Old World—by which we mean not just European countries, but the whole East Hemisphere, gained from the Columbian Exchange in various methods. Findings of new resources of materials are perhaps the best known. However, Old world also obtained new choice plants, like potatoes, maize, cassava and sweet potatoes. This only shows how the trade process changed from old ways of doing them to new methods of trading. However, these practices have the influence of the voyage that Christopher Columbus had in 1492.
In addition, Nunn and Qian (2010) added that the exchange not only introduced benefits, but also failures. Western contact allowed the transmitting of illnesses to previously separated areas, which caused destruction far going above that of even the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe. European people introduced dangerous airborne malware and bacteria, such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and cholera, for which Local People in America had no resistance this has been asserted by Denevan (1976) as they added. The effects of the Columbian trade were not separated to the parts around the globe most straight playing the exchange: Americas and Europe. It also had large, although less direct, effects on Asia and Africa. European development and colonization of the vast exotic areas of these major areas was with the new world development of quinine, the first effective treatment for malaria. Nunn and Qian (2010) also says that the cultivation of economically profitable plants and crops in The Americas, along with the destruction of local communities from illness, led to a demand for work that was met with the abduction and pressured activity of over 12 thousand African. These assertions portrays that Columbian Exchange also had a negative effect that made so many Africans to be forced to work due to lack of man power as a result of wide spread diseases.
The Columbian Exchange, as written has a relation in line with the diseases that have been spreading those days. Nunn and Qian (2010) say that there are very few illustrations of illness being propagate from the new world to the Old. The most significant exemption, and by far the most questionable, is venereal syphilis. This may seem amazing, given that these days venereal syphilis is a nonfatal illness that is successfully handled with penicillin. However, this was not always the situation. Beginning on, in the delayed fifteenth and early 16th century, the illness was regularly critical, and its signs were much more serious. They involved vaginal sores, rashes, huge cancers, serious discomfort, dementia, and ultimate loss of life. Eventually, as the illness progressed, its signs and symptoms changed, becoming more harmless and less critical (Nunn & Qian, 2010). As they added, the origins of this disease has two theories, first one is what they called the Columbian Hypothesis, which spread in 1493 by Christopher Columbus together with his crew. Based on the theory, they acquired the disease from the Hispaniola natives through sexual intercourse. When they return to Spain, some of these men finalized up with the military force of Charles VIII of Italy and then set stress towards Florida in 1495. Encamped military uncovered the local areas of hookers, which elevated sickness transmission. The next theory refers to as pre-Columbian hypothesis which says that the disease already existed in the old world, but it was only accounted in 1490s because the disease was not yet differentiated with other diseases that has the same signs and symptoms (Nunn & Qian, 2010). In these two theories the syphilis may have two possibilities of origins, it may have been present long ago which people may not have been noticed, or it may have been a result of different sexual intercourse between Columbus and his crew and the prostitutes.
African Plant and Crop Domestication
Judith Carney (2009) says that as Asian and African crops transactions were ongoing thousands of years before the appearance of European navigators in the 15th century, these ancient crop dispersals expose the prejudice against African achievements in plant domestication that appeared in the modern era. Against a background of scholarship that focuses on the role of Amerindian plant insights for each on the reorganization of food systems of Africans, the study shows how following research on grain in the Columbian exchange undervalues the participation of indigenous plants in Africa and the contribution of agricultural history in Atlantic. And as Carney (2009) added, a region of tremendous environmental variety, Africa has been analyzed more for its farming downturn than for the natural vegetation that continual human populations for centuries. Like in other two world areas of crops plant domestication, the Asia and Americas, the individuals of African responded to growing weather aridity between 7,000 and 2,000 years before, with an agricultural trend. During this period, Africans trained nine crucial cereal products, six root crops, five oil-producing vegetation, a dozen forage vegetation, fresh vegetables, nuts and fruits, and the gourd bottle.
Judith Carney (2009) says that the decades following 1492 released a remarkable trade of crop which became known as the Columbian Exchange. In underscoring the value of historic development for international seeds transactions, Columbian exchange's scholarship has attracted interest to the critical role of European people in changing the landscape of transoceanic food systems with the release of Asian and Ameridian seeds to Africa. Relatively little interest, however, has been instructed to the Africa plant domesticates that also figured in the Columbian exchange. This ignore is amazing for several factors. Africans domesticated several life-sustaining cereals; plants expanded in African American routinely provisioned the servant delivers that provided at least 11 thousand forced migrants to the New World; and the organization of many Africa staples in the nation's lead from the purposeful farming by slaves of preferred meal plants. The effect of Columbian Exchange has also been the foundation of new beginning when it comes to farming important crops as included above. Carney (2009) added that while the Columbian exchange may have led to the release of Asian rice to the Africa irrigated grain program during the Ocean slave trade, this was only possible because seaside farm owners have already designed an innovative development program to agree to it, an innovative development program to agree to it. This shows that Columbia Exchange had a part of having the Asian rice to be introduced to the rice and grain program in Africa when transoceanic trade was happening.
The trend in international farming development remains a central finding of grant on the Columbian exchange. But these transoceanic crop transfers were going on within the political-economic perspective of European overseas development and Ocean captivity. More than the brand new role of Amerindian plants on meals systems was at share with the Columbian exchange in African. Africa farming development experienced a radical reorganization as demand increased for meals that would nourish the military involved in the Ocean servant trade, their sufferers onboard servant delivers, and the groups who left the assault by getaway to remote places.
Bibliography
Carney, Judith A. "African Rice in the Columbian Exchange." Cambridge University Press. Last modified March 28, 2009. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/594/35.pdf.
Malone, Cory, Sarah Gray, Sean Ross, and Katie Ryan. "The Columbian Exchange." Accessed May 10, 2013. http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/site19/diseases.htm.
Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. "The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food and Ideas." The American Economic Association. Last modified 2010. http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.24.2.163.
