Negative Effects Of The Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange had both a positive and negative effect on the New World. First off, when Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, Europeans began an exchange of ideas, plants, people and animals. In the PBS LearningMedia Article, the text explicitly states, “But throughout the 21st Century, other views on Columbus and what happened once Europeans landed in the Americas began to be heard. Native Americans, people descended from enslaved Africans, and others made the case that Columbus, who immediately enslaved some of the Native American Arawaks he met, brought only colonialism, conquest, and death to the Americas.” This means that when Columbus acquired full or political control over the Americas, after he had thought he found Asia, he enslaved the …show more content…
They also brought African Slavery to the Americas (though native slavery had existed in the Americas before Christopher Columbus). Ideas such as Christianity, Liberty, Equality, and Democracy began to spread in the Americas, from Europe. Liberty and Equality made Creoles and other Latin Americans want to revolt against their rulers. In paragraph 3, in the PBS LearningMedia Article, the text explicitly states, “On the positive side, valuable plants and animals crossed the ocean, making survival much easier for poor people around the world. Europe, Africa, and Asia received tomatoes, chocolate, potatoes, corn, green beans, peanuts, vanilla, pineapple, and turkey. The Americas, in turn, received cattle, pigs, coffee, sheep, chickens, apples, bananas, and almonds from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Ideas also flowed between the continents; in particular, some Europeans began to denounce slavery and colonialism when they saw how destructive both were in the Americas.” Horses were exchanged from the Europeans to the Americas, and originally were a great help to kill