Impacts of the Columbian Exchange Essay Example

the Native Americans. The Native Americans were not as densely populated as the Europeans in the Old world and therefore there were few diseases and they had developed immunity to these. However, the Europeans brought with them new diseases that proved to be fatal to the Natives who were not immune to them. The large part of the Native American population was wiped by new diseases brought from the Old World. For instance, in Mexico, the population dropped by more than 90% especially after Cortes arrived in 1519.

In order for the population in Mexico to go back to normal, it took about 350 years to return to the 1519 level. Various diseases killed the Native Americans such as northern outbreaks, epidemic influenza, typhoid, dysentery, measles, diphtheria, yellow fever, cholera and small pox just to mention a few. Influenza was even more fatal than most diseases and it claimed a lot of Native lives.

The advantage that the non-Natives had over the Natives is that they had an easy access to medical care, they could leave a community during an epidemic, and their immune systems not much susceptible to most diseases. The Natives of North America were particularly wiped by diseases such as tuberculosis andbacterial pneumonia.

In addition, new plants were introduced to the Americas like tobacco, sweet, and white potatoes, and sugarcane. Potatoes and tobacco came from England and Ireland even before 1600.New crops were brought from Africa to Asia like forage crops, root crops, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.

As the people from the Old World came to the New World, they brought with them species and subspecies of plants, animals, and diseases. Human diseases were not the

only types of diseases brought by the Europeans. Plants’ diseases were also brought like germs and weeds. However human diseases were the most prevalent and deadliest of all. Nearly all the diseases that were brought about by the Europeans were communicable by air and touch and this made it easy for the new diseases to spread very quickly.

The Native Americans were not the only people who were adversely affected by the diseases brought by the Europeans. The Europeans were also affected by diseases from the New World, diseases they had never known existed. Examples of such diseases include Syphilis. Syphilis had a negative impact on the Europeans and it was spread through sexual contact. Sailors who came to the New World contacted the diseases especially because they spent a long time in seas without women. Syphilis epidemic spread throughout Europe and many people perished from it. Even though tuberculosis and syphilis were already familiar in the Old World, their spread increased and claimed a lot of European lives.

However, over time, people from both the New and the Old Worlds came to learn of the ways in which various diseases were spread and this is how they somehow managed to control the spread of various diseases. For those who managed to survive some of these diseases, their immune systems became stronger and adapted to them making it hard for the diseases to kill in case of recurrence.

Bibliography

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• Grennes, Thomas. "THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE AND THE REVERSAL OF FORTUNE." CATO Journal
  

27, no. 1 (Winter2007 2007): 91-107. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 29, 2016).