Growing up in a Big World

Growing up in a big world not knowing how we have the things we do now and where they had come from or how was the environment before and after. As we look back, in the 15 and 16 century many explorers wanted to venture out in hopes to find wealth and undiscovered land, such as Hernan Cortes. Who arrived in Tenochtitlan, which is now located in the center of Mexico City. Then there was Christopher Columbus a man who was the first explorer to discover or rediscover America during his voyage from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean, regarding to find a direct water route, west from Europe to Asia. Well as many of us have heard of the Columbian Exchange but never was fully taught on what it was and how it benefited the world.

The Columbian Exchange has given us many benefits and drawbacks such as religion, food, culture etc. for many people around the world. The Columbian Exchange is the flow of goods and people across the Atlantic Ocean including animals, plants, religion, people, and diseases. As many have once called it Old World vs. New World. These things that had evolved independently on separate continents was now being thrown together from Europe to America. The Old World brought potato, corn, tomato, sweet potato, cacao(cocoa), pineapples, pumpkins, and tobacco.

Then the New World brought tobacco, corn, gold, silver, chocolate, and cotton. Thanks to the trading the world now has so much food to offer but never has anyone identified the environmental effects. In America the effects were worse then in Europe due to deforestation and soil depletion which is the removal of nutrients or improper extractive practices, which caused a lot of harm to not only to the soil but a lot to the families who had to survive through agriculture. Then we also have animals from the Old world to the New world pigs, chicken, sheep, goats, cattle, oxen's, donkeys, and horses. Then again, the New World to the Old World llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs, and turkeys. Although

The Columbian Exchange brought wonderful food to the New World it also brought people and diseases. There were a few groups such as the importation of Africans due to the slave trade also called the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with this in mind the demand for labor grew on the colonies so much that on 1491 the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed with Portugal to supply all Spanish colonies in America with African slaves. Dutch, English, French followed by 1650 with West African Nations as well. In addition, with the Africans there was also the Indians, but they did not live very long, while the trading and importation of goods was happening there were also diseases that came along with them from Europe such as smallpox, influenza, measles and many rodents that carried diseases. The Indians had not created antibodies to fight them resulting in a population that went from two and five million to one-thousand and nine hundred people. Although we may never know the correct extents of the depopulation it changed America.

Lastly but not least a major fact in the Columbian Exchange is religion and culture. The European settlers who went to the Americas presented a large group of new things, for example, cultural practices that they carried their with them and practiced it, rehearsed it, and made converts among different types of people. Thanks to many explores such as Christopher Columbus himself for bringing Christianity. By spreading it in hopes to not only convert ethnic groups like Asians to enlist them in a crusade to redeem Jerusalem from Muslim control but to also gain more land and bringing their national religion to that region. The Columbian trade helped make Christianity a more worldwide religion. Since Europe coercively spread Christianity to North and South America, Christianity was able to overtake Islam and different religions in the New World.

On the contrary during the 15 century the Spanish explorers and soldiers also known as conquistadors took the lead in exploration and conquest and was inspired as well as desired to spread Catholicism, creating and setting up missions throughout America in attempt to evangelize Native American groups as well as use religion to secure authority as well as wealth. Which was done mainly in Florida, the American Southwest, Mexico, Central America, and South America, which is why these places have a heavy Catholic population. There was one more religion that is not talked as much, which is the Pilgrims. In 1620 Plymouth Massachusetts in order to escape religious persecution under the Church of England. The church decided to form it own religion and became a protestant(angelism), which is theological concept referring to ideas and philosophies which regard the human being as essentially angelic, and therefore sin-less in actual nature. form based off of Christianity and of the official religion of England. This spread to the New World and become very popular throughout Colonial America during the early colonial period.

The Columbian Exchange had a tremendous impact on the world. It remains the greatest trade of products between countries the world has ever observed. Christopher Columbus made the primary really overall economy with his first venture to America. Although numerous Americans still observe Columbus Day, it is broadly contended with reference to regardless of whether there ought to be such an occasion, as the consequences of the Columbian Exchange could be viewed as both great and terrible. Some constructive outcomes, similar to the farming development and utilization of the potato and other staple harvests in the Old World improved individuals' lives.

The exchanging of animals additionally significantly improved the open doors for the pilgrims and Native Americans. In any case, a few outcomes were negative The most puzzling actuality about the Columbian Exchange is that it can't be really portrayed as totally positive or negative, however simply that it happened. Regardless of whether Americans ought to celebrate or censure Columbus Day remains an enormous verbal confrontation, and maybe it will perpetually be that way. In the end without all of the food, the culture, people, technology, plants and disease our world, society, would not be what it is today.

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