Columbian Exchange

Columbian Exchange

Columbian Exchange: global transfer of plants, animals, diseases,

and food as a result of European Exploration

Columbian Exchange• Global diffusion of biological

goods (food, disease, animals, plants)

• Began in the 1400s

• Corn and potatoes were most important – cheap, easy to grow, highly nutritious

Population changes

Americas ↓ because diseases

Europe ↑ because new foods make

people healthier

Atlantic Slave Trade

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Atlantic Slave Trade: the buying, transporting, and selling of Africans

for work in the Americas

Why Africans?• Slavery had existed in Africa

since the 600s when Muslims enslaved non-Muslims

• Most Native Americans were killed by European diseases

• Many Africans had immunity • Africans were unfamiliar with the

Americas less likely to escape or have allies.

• By 1870 around 9.5 million Africans were imported to the Americas in bondage.

• Majority of slaves worked on large sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations.

Middle Passage: the middle leg of the Atlantic Slave Trade that

brought Africans to the West Indies, and N+S America

Roughly 20% did not survive the journey (disease, cruel treatment,

suicide).

Impact

AFRICA• Many societies

lost entire generations of their healthiest people

• Families were torn apart

AMERICAS• Colonies

became profitable

• African culture influenced many societies throughout the Americas.

"God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression

of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of manners [morals].”

October 1787 • Abolition of slave

trade in England• Slave Trade Act

1807• (outlawed all

British involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade)

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)

• Key player in campaign to end slavery

• 1789: wrote and published, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

Triangular Trade

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Triangular Trade: transatlantic trading route connecting Africa,

Europe, and the Americas

Columbian Exchange

+Atlantic Slave

Trade=

Triangular Trade