The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492

The Columbian Exchange persists in the modern world as the population of Indigenous American people continues to suffer marginalization, poverty, and disenfranchisement and epidemics continue. Modern medicine successfully curbed the impact of some diseases, like syphilis, which can now be treated thanks to the discovery of penicillin. The exchange of flora and fauna between regions of the world continues with mixed results. Many plants that are indigenous to the Americas have been wiped out, while imported crops like sugar, bananas, wheat, and coffee support population growth. However, these changes caused environmental degradation and erosion of land than cannot be undone.

European colonization of the Americas resulted in the creation of new nations but the destructions of Indigenous societies and the arrival of enslaved peoples who were taken from their homes in Africa by force. As Indigenous populations declined due to disease and brutal forced labor, colonizers began to enslave African people to replace them in the mines and in the sugar harvest: “Almost 90 percent of the Africans who were torn from their homes to serve as [enslaved people] in America were brought to the tropics of the New World, 38 percent to Brazil, and 42 percent to the

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