Environments - Columbian Exchange
3 important questions on Environments - Columbian Exchange
How did early governments and merchants come to see the New World?
While early commentators were sceptical about the value of expending energy and resources in a faraway land, early modern governments and merchants came to see the New World as one of abundance and possibility.
What agricultural changes happened because of the Columbian exchange?
- Key commodities extracted from the New World included hard woods (particularly in forested coastal regions of Brazil), precious metals (particularly from the silver mines at Potosi) and furs (particularly from across northeastern America).
- Plant species were introduced to Europe from the Americas, and became important staples in the diets of working people; key among them were maize and potatoes,
- which Adam Smith called 'the two most important improvements which the agriculture of Europe, perhaps which Europe itself, has received from the great extension of its commerce and navigation'.
What was environmentally introduced by the colonies Europeans founded? Name some examples.
- The colonies Europeans founded introduced new extractive and environmentally destructive forms of industry and agriculture.
- By 1800, Brazil's millennia-old Atlantic forest ecosystem had begun to collapse after three centuries of logging, gold mining, plantation agriculture and cattle ranching predominantly by Portuguese colonists.
- Sugar plantations on Caribbean islands such as Barbados destroyed tropical rainforest habitat, leading to the decimation of land mammals and birds, the leaching of nutrients from soils and the spread of rats and introduced plant species.
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