COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

Alfred Crosby

Columbian Exchange

• The global transfer of foods, plants, and animals during the colonization of the Americas

The Rise of Capitalism

• Capitalism: economic system based on private ownership and the investment of resources, such as money, for profit

• Joint Stock Company: investors buying shares of stock in a company.

Mercantilism• Mercantilism: economic theory stating that

the power of a country is derived from its wealth. (Belief in the benefits of profitable trading, or commercialism)

3 Major Consequences of the Columbian Exchange

1. Decline of Native populations2. Growth of European populations (new,

nutrient dense foods)3. Decrease in Global Biodiversity ->

“The Columbian exchange has included man, and he has changed the old and new world. Sometimes intentionally, Sometimes Inadvertently, Often brutally. It is possible that he and the plants and animals he brings with him have caused the extinction of more species of life forms in the last four hundred years than the usual processes of evolution might kill off in a million. The Columbian exchange has left us with not a richer, but a more impoverished genetic pool. We, all of life on the planet are the less for Columbus, and the impoverishment will increase.”

-Alfred Crosby

Exit Slip: Are longer, healthier lives for humans worth the impoverishment of the biosphere?