The Impact of The Columbian Exchange and The Colonization of America on The World

The ways European colonization impacted in the early modern period were the circulation of peoples, plants, animals, goods and diseases. The discovery of the new world opened doors to the Columbian exchange which shaped the modern world through the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Once the Spanish conquistadores encountered the Aztec Empire, everything changed after that. Those domains and tribes in America were living peacefully until the Spanish and Europeans invaded empires of thousands with just some hundreds. Ultimately, Western Europe had gone on to become major world powers such as British, French, Portuguese, Dutch and the English.

In the case of the Mesoamerican empires, mainly the Aztecs and the Incas, their major city (Tenochtitlan) was on an island, like a fortress. They were isolated, easily allowing them to be safe guarded form their enemies as it would have been hard for the Europeans to take over because of natural barriers. All those mountains would have made it hard take over. But if it was for that china would have been a goner. Simultaneously, that becomes very problematic if they were under siege by the Spanish because if they make their way onto the island, the Aztecs would not have an escape route. Based on this, geographical features were significant in the security of the empires. The seas near us was a great training ground for sailing across the world and finding these places who had no horses, wheeled transportation or reliable livestock.

Spanish colonized the Aztecs, later the Portuguese and Europeans discovered them too. Their arrival of presence in amidst these well-established empires affected these local peoples. The question of alliance is to whether they remain allied with the leaders they had before or shift their allegiance to these new coming leaders. Power shifts occurred when there is a new player on the landscape. New technologies and weaponry emerged. Europeans appropriated gunpowder from the Chinese and they took it to South America, and they are using gunpowder and weaponry against the local people which was an advantage that they have. They were able to kill many more people so there is this effective technology being that the population becomes reduced. Disease was another factor that reduced population. Disease went both ways because while the Aztecs has got smallpox from the Europeans, a new strand of settlers was being introduced back in Spain and Portuguese so that affected the Europeans. Disease was a serious problem when these two civilizations were set upon by Europeans because of very limited immunity. The main reason that Native Americans were not immune to smallpox and other European disease because they did not have domesticated animals/livestock, or at least not the kind they had in Europe. This was one reason they switched to African slaves. Africans did have livestock, and therefore had been exposed to smallpox before so most of the population was resistant to it. Furthermore, they in no way made slavery illegal in Spain or its New World Colonies, millions of African Slaves would be imported by the Spanish and Portuguese up until the 19th Century. Logically speaking, the simple existence of special laws for the 'proper treatment' of native peoples implies that they were not being properly treated to begin with, and by simply reading the laws themselves it can be seen that the Natives were considered blatantly inferior. Eventually, rather then tighten restrictions, the Spanish simply gave up trying to protect what natives they could and in 1545 and 1552 respectively the New Laws were either systematically weakened or in some cases completely abolished. Not that it mattered of course, as by this time the Native populations of South America had been so decimated by diseases and hard labor that barely any of them remained. They didn't have technology to bypass problems like disease, manual labour and language translation. The Spanish and Portuguese were able to kill more than the British and other northern European powers through sheer proximity alone (Not to mention their century head start on large scale American colonization). If old world disease had not been a factor during the Colombian exchange? You'd have preserved armies at full strength spanning across the American continents, ready to defend their respective empires. The sheer numbers, preserved organization and acquirement of Old World ideas and technology (and potential improvement) would have been a sort of steroid for the indigenous national consciousness, These nuances would have most likely jettisoned Native peoples to the forefront of the world stage. Their endless resources and newly acquired social/technological advancements would have made their endless and inevitably unified numbers into a world power house. Should the benefits of the Old World have reached a people whose population hadn't been decimated, you'd be right to imagine no truer rival for the Europeans than the Natives.

There was a loss of culture and language. So this kind of dominance of European values, European ideas, the big one being - before they were about to conquer people – the Spanish would go through this process of telling about Christianity so they could convert in hope that they would be saved of course but the problem was that they were not speaking the same language. So it was not just that initial contact, it was that they sent missionaries, trying to convert people, trying to change their ways, subvert local practices all in the name of religion. But drawing back to the effects back in Europe, gold, silver and natural resources were being extracted. Spanish were lucky getting them first as they became very rich very quickly. This resulted in a maritime gold rush it took the Britain and French a long time to catch up. Because of the European powers could see just how rapidly Spain had reached itself as a nation, they were trying to build ships very quickly that could travel a long way but the Spanish had been doing this for a while so they were much more experienced at quality ship building than for instance the British were. So, it created a race between them, it set up rivalries between the colonial powers that had not happened before so now they were fighting in Europe but also fighting on the seas so that was a problem.

Other impacts on Europe was that they got into the slave trade.so they would have brought back a lot of slaves with them which would have helped boost production in Spain and Portugal as well. Slaves were mandatory to build all these ships or conquer these lands and they needed as cheap a labor as possible. It does not get much cheaper than free. So now that they are building that are capable of going on this Columbian exchange where they would go to the coast of Africa, pick up slaves (because the slaves from Africa were already being sold), travel across to the Americas, and brought back sugar, tobacco, gold, potatoes and other crops to Europe. The Columbian Exchange has been, in short, a process that has radically changed and shaped culture, community and almost everything about humans after it started. The Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world by bringing in slave populations to the Americas. So Europe becomes incredibly enriched, incredibly competitive and advancing in technology rate that is unprecedented because they have the money to do it along with the natural resources. This diversity even of things like new food supplies going back to Europe, changes the diet and improves their diet, lifespan and well-being of Europeans. During voyages, spices, chilis and salt (white gold) were used to preserve food so the people can go further without starving. Chilly and spices in India are not from new world food. Most spices came from India. And English people came to India for those spices. Columbian Exchange to promote the world economy. Many goods were transferred from America to Europe and also the other way around, also this helped the slave trade who came from the Gold Coast of Africa and were taken to America (mostly South America.). However, there are issues that have stemmed from the event. For example, decreasing biodiversity and the eventual explosion of the human population, with all the subsequent resource mining and pollution which we brought with us, we are still living in the legacy of this event hundreds of years from its happening and will be for the foreseeable future. The Columbian exchange caused the destruction of the equilibrium of many ecosystems and drove many species to extinction due invasive species and limited the effect that natural selection had on the environment (More calories available for those who survive, so only a handful of genomes make up the next generations).

With this colonization, they kind of did have this exodus of people. Hundreds of thousands of people believe in Spain at that point in time. That starts to affect their standing armies, their capacity to fight in Europe as opposed in the colonies. It was a time of great flux. Early ideas that were emerging that these people from these other places was somehow less capable, less intelligent, less civilized, than Europeans and referred to them as barbarians and cannibals. Mostly because if it weren't for the conquistadors South American and North American natives would not be Christian and would probably still be sacrificing each other's hearts to the Sun god. Similarly, America was invaded and murdered by European were called barbarians for invading America and murdering Americans. However, back in the time, nearly every early empire did horrendous things in the name of land, wealth, and power.

Horses being exchanged impacted on the American populations as in these colonists could come in and can go long distances, can travel beyond the realm that the Aztecs had set up, continue fighting long after they did. This changed the landscape, changed agricultural practises. They started using horses to draw ploughs, then plant crops on a much larger scale, which they must because when a large group of Spanish appeared, they needed to be fed. They had to do mass cultivation, so it starts to change the landscape, starts to get exchange of plant species both because they needed them for scientific purposes and biological purposes. That meant land usage changed. Something worth noting regarding all of botanical and agricultural products coming from the Americas into Europe is that a lot of European knowledge about said plant life actually came from Aztec botanical science, as they had complex categorical systems for cataloging plants, flowers, herbs, and fruit, as well as the first Botanical gardens.

Others outside those two civilisations whom are fixed, some of them are nomadic kind of peoples (North America and Native America), we start to see a shift in the way that they interact with land because they know when they are at a certain place, British traders will come and trade goods with them, and change their hunting practices because of access to guns than traditional tools.

So, the European colonisation of America completely changes the relationship between human societies and their environment. How they start to interact and understand their environments and there’s also that cultural practise side of things.

Without colonialism the enlightenment and the industrial revolution could not have happened. It was a dark chapter of human history, but it was necessary for the world of today to be a reality. It was inevitable for the two worlds to meet for the crops to mingle across worlds and to change things. Species die, it happens. It has happened before humans emerged and it will happen afterward. Trees die, plants die, animals die, and even humans die. The gene pool is impoverished for now, but time will show it to blossom once again and for the many plants to adapt to their new environments. Those that survive will be hardier, this will be good in the long run for the planet and even humans. The people in the 'New World' suffered immediately and in the “Old World” they are starting to see the problems to the environment that it caused. The Columbian Exchange and the colonization of the America was one of very many steps that led to the world today.