The Columbian Exchange

The purpose of this paper is to help individuals to understand what all was exchanged in the Columbian Exchange according to Alfred Crosby, Jr. We will discuss several aspects of his views in this short paper. The Columbian Exchange was an exchange of plants, food, diseases, peoples, cultures, and animals. The most interactions were between the Indians and the Europeans. They exchanged technologies and goods. The Europeans also pressed their religions onto the natives. Most of the Europeans saw that the way the natives lived their lives to be barbaric. Others dealt with and accepted the natives’ ways and thought that the more radical beings were acting hypocritical. Of the diseases and other things brought to the Americas, new sources of food were made available to the world. Food is the greatest and most important thing that came out of the Columbian Exchange according to Crosby. There were not many ways of getting healthy and nutritious food. Bad nutrition was part of why no one could recover from any of the diseases that were amongst them. After all of the natives and other people afflicted by disease were gone, the population started to rise. Columbus had no idea what he had created. From the diseases, animals, and cultural boundaries that had been traded, the discovery of healthier foods would increase the world’s population by four times. The new increase in food supply created a wider market and availability for people to obtain the essential vitamins and nutrients their bodies need to operate efficiently and properly. More people started farming and cultivating important crops. However the planting of the same crops over and over led to an increased population in pests and insects that eat and destroy them. The planting of an entirely new crop to the area will boost the food production, which in turn will increase the population. Nobody can really tell how the population increased from the transition from wheat to maize, or the population