Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange was the transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, people, diseases, and cultures among the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia after 1492.

Atlantic slave trade: The forced transportation of millions of Africans to the Americas for enslavement from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. It forcibly moved people from Africa to the Americas within the same Atlantic networks.
Potato: A tuber domesticated in the Andes and now cultivated worldwide as a major food crop. Its movement from the Americas transformed diets and population growth in parts of Europe and Asia.
Great Dying: The catastrophic decline of Indigenous American populations after European contact, driven largely by disease, violence, and forced labor. Epidemics introduced through transoceanic contact caused immense mortality in the Americas.
Christopher Columbus: A Genoese navigator whose 1492 Spanish-sponsored voyage initiated sustained European contact with the Americas. His voyage marks the conventional starting point for the post-1492 exchange.
Transatlantic trade: Commercial exchange across the Atlantic Ocean linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Its shipping routes carried crops, animals, commodities, and people between continents.
Maize: A cereal crop domesticated in Mexico and widely grown as food and animal feed. Its spread into Africa and Asia made it a staple in many regions.
Plantation economy: An agricultural system producing export crops on large estates using coerced or enslaved labor. Transferred crops such as sugarcane supported plantation economies across the Americas.
1492: The year Christopher Columbus’s first voyage reached the Caribbean under the Spanish crown. It marks the opening of sustained transatlantic biological and human transfers.
Biological invasion: The establishment and spread of organisms beyond their native ranges, often with ecological consequences. Introduced species became lasting parts of ecosystems far from their places of origin.
Cacao: The tropical tree whose seeds are processed to make cocoa and chocolate. American cacao became a global commodity through European cultivation and trade.

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