The Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange of diseases, ideas, foods, crops, and populations between the New World and the Old World following the voyage to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The exchange not only brought gains, but also losses. European contact enabled the transmission of diseases to previously isolated communities, which caused devastation far exceeding that of even the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe.
The neo-Columbian exchange denned the Greater Caribbean by giving the region its distinctive ecological and economic shape. From an ecological perspective, the Greater Caribbean ecumene consists largely of the colonial and postcolonial landscapes organized around the production of tropical commodities …show more content…
Most of the organisms deliberately introduced to the Greater Caribbean in this period supported the agricultural export economy. (2) Both public and private shaped the global movement of plants and animals. (3) New technologies such as railroads and steamships accelerated the global and regional diffusion of organisms. (4) Direct introduction from the Indian Ocean basin, Asian and the Pacific became commonplace, thus making the Neo- Columbian Exchange truly global. Finally, the neo-Columbian exchange was not an encounter between separate worlds. The New World in general and the Greater Caribbean specifically were no longer “Virgin" soil. (McNeill …show more content…
Global demand for tropical commodities stagnated through much of the 193ÜS. Although the volume of exports from Latin America and the Caribbean gradually recovered after 1932, their value did not necessarily recover with the same speed. The economic and institutional order that had structured the neo-Columbian exchange since the early eighteenth century was moribund. By the 1930s, there was no longer the same pressure to increase commodity production and to colonize new frontiers. By the 1930s, many of the most important introductions had already taken place, and the most important agricultural frontiers in the Greater Caribbean had been colonized.
The threat of new diseases and pests had also dampened the enthusiasm for unrestricted introductions of plants and animals. The focus of agricultural innovation generally and agricultural science specifically had largely shifted from global bioprospecting to systematic breeding. Likewise, scientists and farmers alike came to favor chemical control of diseases and pests rather than biological control. A new chapter in the continuing history of the Columbian exchanges in the Caribbean began with the many transformations that swept the region after World War
The neo-Columbian exchange denned the Greater Caribbean by giving the region its distinctive ecological and economic shape. From an ecological perspective, the Greater Caribbean ecumene consists largely of the colonial and postcolonial landscapes organized around the production of tropical commodities …show more content…
Most of the organisms deliberately introduced to the Greater Caribbean in this period supported the agricultural export economy. (2) Both public and private shaped the global movement of plants and animals. (3) New technologies such as railroads and steamships accelerated the global and regional diffusion of organisms. (4) Direct introduction from the Indian Ocean basin, Asian and the Pacific became commonplace, thus making the Neo- Columbian Exchange truly global. Finally, the neo-Columbian exchange was not an encounter between separate worlds. The New World in general and the Greater Caribbean specifically were no longer “Virgin" soil. (McNeill …show more content…
Global demand for tropical commodities stagnated through much of the 193ÜS. Although the volume of exports from Latin America and the Caribbean gradually recovered after 1932, their value did not necessarily recover with the same speed. The economic and institutional order that had structured the neo-Columbian exchange since the early eighteenth century was moribund. By the 1930s, there was no longer the same pressure to increase commodity production and to colonize new frontiers. By the 1930s, many of the most important introductions had already taken place, and the most important agricultural frontiers in the Greater Caribbean had been colonized.
The threat of new diseases and pests had also dampened the enthusiasm for unrestricted introductions of plants and animals. The focus of agricultural innovation generally and agricultural science specifically had largely shifted from global bioprospecting to systematic breeding. Likewise, scientists and farmers alike came to favor chemical control of diseases and pests rather than biological control. A new chapter in the continuing history of the Columbian exchanges in the Caribbean began with the many transformations that swept the region after World War