Columbian Exchange, Age of Discovery and Atlantic Slave Trade Essay

Introduction

World history is made of various narratives of global events and experiences that attempt to explain man’s shared past while at the same time trying to create an image of the modern world from a historical context. Such events indicate how world people came together through an integrative process, and also highlight various differences among them. The Columbian Exchange, Age of Discovery and Atlantic Slave Trade are great examples of such events marking world history.

Columbian Exchange

The term Columbian exchange was coined to describe a very significant event in global history that led to massive changes in the agriculture, ecology and culture of most parts of the world. Columbian exchange stems from Christopher Columbus’ first voyage in 1492 that launched a new era of widespread contact between Europe and other parts of the world. This event impacted nearly every society in the world, resulting in very destructive diseases that almost wiped off many cultures. Through the exchange, there was also massive circulation of new types of crops and livestock. European visiting the new worlds brought along their crops and in the process also introduced weed seed to the new soils. The burning and clearing of flora for cultivation greatly disrupted the ecosystem (Cosby 1, 47-48, 66).

Crops such as potatoes and maize became very important in both Europe and Asia while peanuts, tobacco, cotton and coffee flourished in West Africa. Other crops like white potatoes. Manioc, sweet potatoes and maize found their way to Europe. Animals were also exchanged across different world locations with sheep, goats, cattle and horses which were previously unknown in the Americas finding their way there. The Americas were sparsely populated and offered good ground for ranching. But such creatures as cattle, chicken, black rats and mosquitoes also came along with germs that were strange in these lands and with them came new diseases like measles, influenza, yellow fever, malaria and smallpox. Smallpox was the most infectious disease to attack Native Americans, wiping out large populations. European explorers also suffered new world diseases like Chagas and venereal syphilis (Cosby 47-48, 66, 77, 113, 211, 218-219)

Age of Discovery

The age of discovery refers to a period in world history stretching between the 15^th and 17^th centuries, during which European explorers crisscrossed the major oceans of the world acquiring un-paralled knowledge about other parts of the globe that had little been known to them. Through long distance voyaging, these explorers discovered vast areas such as Africa, North America and Asia. But these explorers did not experience empty new lands in most of the parts that they visited but instead encountered long-established and complex societies that were quite different from those back in Europe. Before Columbus travels’ at around 100 A.D, Scandnavian Vikings had however already crossed the North Atlantic and landed in the Newfoundland of the Americas, although they did not establish permanent presence there (Arnold 1-2).

Earlier attempts had therefore been made to explore other lands and the age of discovery was the outcome of cultural, technological and economic developments that Europeans had been nurturing since the 11^th and 12^th centuries. Daring men like Columbus, Prince Henry, Vasco da Gama, Pizarro and Cortes only accelerated the pace of an already nurtured course and simply helped to determine the direction and character of discovery. The whole of Europe led by Italy had a significant role to play in the age of discovery by producing expertise in cartography and navigation, financial backing and ready markets for the goods that the voyagers brought back from their travels. New trade routes were opened and by the 20^th century, European exploration and conquest had become a global phenomenon (Arnold 59 – 61).

Atlantic Slave Trade

Slave regimes had also existed in medieval Europe and African states where North African Muslim traders had sold slaves as peasant labor force in the gradually expanding economy especially in the Mediterranean region. Towards the end of the 15^th century, the Western Hemisphere was opened up to European conquest and sugar production was introduced in the Atlantic Islands leading to a new and very important use of slave labor. The Portuguese intermingled with the North African slave traders to start trading in African slaves making these slaves the first inhabitants of the New World and Atlantic Islands (Klein 7, 10-13).

Spaniards exercised the most rapid conquest of America and generated enormous wealth in such a way that Spaniards were the first Europeans to import African slaves to Mexico and Peru through the Atlantic Slave trade. Crops such as grapes and sugar were proofing profitable in places like Peru and together with the development of Potosi silver increased the demand for slave labor. Between 1580 and 1640, Spanish and Portuguese crowns were unified giving the Portuguese full access to the Spanish markets in America. African slaves were also used in gold mines as well as cattle ranches. But their most important role was in the cities of the new continental empire where they pre-dominated skilled trades like clothing, metalworking, printing, silver-smithing and construction (Klein 21-23; Landers & Robinson 33, 87).

The Atlantic slave trade was largely influenced by categorization of the West African region on the basis of religious or ethnic backgrounds. There was a strong tendency to justify slavery under religious and legal precedents that recognized race and ethnicity as determining factors for legitimacy. Muslims for example enslaved freeborn Muslims captured after the religious jihad wars. Political struggles also led to enslavement with many people being captured as slaves after civil wars (Landers & Robinson 18-23).

Conclusion

World history could not have been without such events and as history rolled on, one event led to another. The age of discovery led to the conquest of new lands that in turn required massive cheap labor to develop. Slave trade became a good source of such labor leading to the Atlantic slave trade. Different parts of the world were also opened up to new trade that led to exchange of crops, animals and diseases as people settled in new lands. All these events led to changes in the world ecosystem whose impact has stretched out into modern times.

Works Cited

Arnold, David. The Age of Discovery, 1400-1600. London, UK: Routledge, 2002.

Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Landers, Jane and Robinson Barry. Slaves, subjects, and subversives: blacks in colonial Latin America. Albuquerque, NM: UNM Press, 2006.