Columbian Exchange

Costs for the Benefits The Colombian Exchange’s forward approach included the exchange of new foods, animals, and resources between Europe, the Americas, and Africa. However, there was an indirect exchange of diseases, weapons, ideas, and people. This process had both positive and negative side effects. The Colombian Exchange resulted in an overall definite benefit compared to its costs. These benefits would include the sugar production, a financial silver income, the impact of nutritious foods and plants, and the Amerindian demographic catastrophe was not as bad as it seems. The first of the overwhelming benefits of this exchange would include the production of sugar. From the European and African side of the Atlantic, horses, pigs, goats, chili peppers, and sugar were exchanged. The Americans transferred squash, beans, corn, potatoes, and cacao. Sugar, an originally a rare spice originating from India, but was soon made much more accessible as it was massively cultivated in the Americas. Sugar was greatly valuable as it provided a great improvement to the overall taste of common, household food. This was a huge opportunity to monopolize the cash crop, making certain companies rich corresponding to its country. This is due to the fact of how a monopoly controls a large amount of merchandise; allowing the bargaining with just a single company. This, in turn, gives this company a huge amount of profits; especially when the object being sold is valuable. Plantations were established throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. These plantations needed many workers and when the enslaved native populations started to die off, a new source of forced labor were required. This labor came from Africa, resulting in massive exchanges of African slaves throughout the Atlantic. This exchange was done through the offer of slaves for technology. This led to an increase of power of many African states as their control dramatically rose. This is due to the exchange of the