Environmental World History Essay
Kumbaya90
8_TheAmericasandtheColumbianExchange.htmlTHE AMERICASAND THE COLUMBIANEXCHANGE
AGENDA
- AmericanColumbianExchange
- Discussion
- Writing time
- Marks Chapter3, pgs. 67-86
- Quiz#5 dueWed, Sept 25
- medium writingassignment due nextThurs Sept 26 at11:59 pm
- Portuguese exploration in theearly 1400s = discovery ofislands near West Africa
- Mild climate = wheat andsheep
- Portuguese exploration in theearly 1400s = discovery ofislands near West Africa
- Mild climate = wheat andsheep (altered environment)
- Good for sugar
- Enslaved natives for laborturned to Africa when theydied off or escaped
- Disrupted indigenousplant life
- livestock compactedsoil & ateplants
- Cut down treesfor timber&fuel
- Disrupted ecosystems morevulnerable toinvasivespecies
- Newly cleared landOldWorldweeds expanded everywhere
- Positive side:
- rootsanchor soil
- prevent wind/rainerosion,
- protectsoil fromsun
- providefood for grazers
- disappear after stabilizing soil
- Europeans tried to recreate familiar eatinghabits but crops (like wheat) couldn’t growin tropics
- Without grapes and wheat–what don’t wehave?
- Started to assimilate local foods (maize/cornand cassava)
- Plantations to take advantage of tropicalgrowing season
- sugar, cotton, rice, indigo, tobacco, coffee
- This drove use of slave labor
- Europeans tried to recreate familiar eating andcommercial habits
- Let animals loose to procreate: these animals devastatedlocal eco-systems
- Pigs at local plants, cattle/sheep/goats compacted soil
- Many went wild after early years, but cattle on the plainsand cheap pork fed Europeans and slave labor
- Tied to population and climate
- This keeps diseases where the population or theclimate is best: people move, so do diseases
- People who aren’t exposed to certain diseases orhave low genetic variation (from geographicalisolation) are more vulnerable
- Filled in necessary ecological/climaticgaps for crops
- Produced lots of extra calories–fedstarving peasants and even allowedpopulation to increase
- Fills places around the tropics
- What are the exchanges that characterize European expansioninto the “New World” (from the four categories we learnedabout on Tuesday)?
- In what way do climate and geography affect these exchanges?How do Europeans modify local conditions?
- How does the chapter by Crosby support these discussions?What biological exchange does he focus on? How does it affectthe New World?
- How do European explorations/exchanges look like those fromthe monsoon exchange (Africa-Asia) or the Pacific World?
- Write:500-word paper(due Thurs, Sept 26 at 11:59 pm EST):
- How has the movement of people and commodities to different parts of theworld transformed it?
- Discuss the four main categories of (biological) Columbian exchange
- Explain how they affected different regions of the world (Americas, Africa/Asia, the Pacific)differently
- What effect did it have on both the regions where biological entities were extracted and wherethey were brought to?
- How did climate/geography/ideology play a role in these movements?
- Why were their similarities and differences?
- In what way do we understand these exchanges as a result of imperialexpansion?
- Compare Zheng He’s voyages with the European counterparts.
- How did different political, economic, or political structures seem to influence how these empiresexpanded and affected their environments? For example, you could compare European economicdesire for colonial crops and Chinese political desire to change their ‘enemies’ landscapes.
- Marks Chapter 3, pgs. 67-86
- Quiz #5 due Wed, Sept 25
- medium writing assignmentdue next Thurs Sept 26 at 11:59 pm
EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT OF THEATLANTIC ISLANDS
EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT OF THEATLANTIC ISLANDS
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Philip_II%27s_realms_in_1598.png/440px-Philip_II%27s_realms_in_1598.png
SPANISH RED | PORTUGUESE BLUE | 1598
Biological Exchange Impact–PLANTS
“Englishman’s Foot” (only grows where Europeans trod)
BIOLOGICAL EXCHANGE IMPACT-FOOD
BIOLOGICAL EXCHANGE IMPACT--COLONIAL CROPS
“If the Europeans had arrived in the New World andAustralasia with twentieth-century technology in hand,but no animals, they would not have made as great achange as they did by arriving with horses, cattle, pigs,sheep, asses, chickens, cats, and so forth. Because theseanimals are self-replicators, the efficiency and speedwith which they can alter environments, evencontinental environments, are superior to those for anymachine we have thus far devised”
-Alfred Crosby,Ecological Imperialism, p. 173
