Title: The Turning Point: European Conquests of the Americas (1492-1800)
Headings: The Turning Point: European Conquests of the Americas (1492-1800)
The Turning Point: European Conquests of the Americas (1492-1800)
Content: Both Europe and Asia suffered many plagues that devastated their populations, such as the Black Plague during the 14th century, which killed 25 to 33 percent of people across Eurasia, from China to France. But descendants of plague survivors possessed antibodies that inoculated them from such devastating scourges in the future. The Americas, by contrast, lacked large domesticable animals and concomitant diseases. As a result, the devastating diseases went in only one direction, from Eurasia to the Americas. So, in 1492, Columbus’ arrival in the Americas suddenly collided with 12,000 years of American isolation from Eurasia. The transmission of the European diseases that depopulated the Americas was part of a larger cultural and demographic exchange, between the “new” and “old” worlds that included food, animals, people, trade, diseases and technology. Europeans won the better of the exchange. While native populations decreased ninety percent, Europeans took gold, silver, and nutritional new (to them) foods, such as potatoes, tomatoes, chiles, squash, vanilla, turkey, corn, and cacao (to make chocolate). Indigenous Americans received, in return, European diseases—smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plagues, cholera, chicken pox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tropical malaria. Historians call this the “Columbian Exchange,” and it was not an even trade.