Transcript of The COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE, Spanish Exploration, and Conquest [APUSH Unit 1 Topic 4] 1.4

Well, hey, and welcome back to Himler's History. Now, we've been going through unit one of the AP US History curriculum, and in the last video, I talked about Spanish colonialism in the Americas and ended by mentioning the Columbian Exchange. And in this video, that's what I'm about to explain up. So, let's get to it. Okay, so the Columbian Exchange, what is it? So glad you asked. The Columbian Exchange was the transfer of food, animals, minerals, people, and diseases between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. And I know what you're thinking. So what? But this was a really big deal because this exchange fundamentally transformed the societies and the economies and the environments of all three of the continents that I just mentioned. And I think you're going to start to see it as we start talking about it. And just for poops and giggles, let's start with the transfer of disease. In the last video, we considered what happened when the Spanish first showed up in the Americas. But it did not take long for them to embark on a campaign to conquer the Americas and remake them in their own image. But here's the conundrum. Recall that Tennos Titlon, the capital of the Aztec or the Mexican Empire, had somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 inhabitants. When the Spanish concisador Hernand Cortez showed up, he had just over a thousand men with him, most of which were allies he had made with another group of native peoples. And yet, in short order, Tennos Titlon fell to Cortez and his forces. Now, you don't have to be that good of a military strategist to realize that something is very strange here. How did 1,000 people conquer hundreds of thousands of people? And the simple answer is disease. Most notably smallox. And when the Spanish showed up with this deadly disease, it ravaged the native peoples. You see, Africans, Europeans, and Asians, they all had contact with one another for like millennia and therefore had been exposed to each other's nasty germs and had built up some immunity. But the Americas have been completely isolated from such germs, and the people therefore had no immunity. And I'm not overstating it when I say that the disease part of the Columbian exchange fundamentally altered society in the Americas. For example, when the Spanish landed on the island of Hispanola, they brought smallpox with them. And the native Arowok and Tino peoples were devastated to the tune of about 300,000 dead. It was the same with the Incas. In 1530, they had a population of about 9 million. And a century later, their population was 500,000. The Aztecs and the Maya and all the surrounding regions had a combined 40 million people in 1530, but 150 years later, they had a combined 3 million. Okay, so you're starting to see that the Columbian exchange was a big deal. It absolutely was. But it wasn't just disease that was exchanged. So was food. Coming from the Americas into Europe, you had high yielding nutritious foods like maze and tomatoes and potatoes and cacao. And just for funsies, tobacco, which I know isn't food, but you know, whatever. And Europeans and Africans sent food over to the Americas like rice and wheat and soybeans and rye and oats and lemons and oranges. And it was the grain crops especially that transformed the populations in the Americas as it became a staple food item for them. All right, how about animals? Well, the Europeans introduced horses and pigs and cattle and chickens to the Americas. And pigs and cattle transformed the diet of Native Americans. And horses revolutionized farming and warfare. And another element of the exchange was minerals, which is to say gold and silver. And after the Incan and Aztec empires were conquered, the Spanish plundered them for their vast quantities of gold and silver. And when those metric buttloads of money were sent back to the homeland, it made Spain wealthy beyond belief. And frankly, if it wasn't for this new source of wealth, it's hard to say whether European colonizers would have kept returning. I mean, you know, maybe they would, but the silver and gold certainly made them sick with desire to return. And not only did this wealth transform the Americas by attracting large numbers of European colonizers, but it also transform Europe itself as well. Starting a little after 1500, Europe and more to the point, Western Europe began experiencing unprecedented economic growth, which had significant consequences for how their society functioned. Prior to this, the social, political, and economic system of Europe was largely defined by a system called feudalism, which was a system where peasants lived and worked on the land of a noble in exchange for armed protection. But this influx of wealth hastened the end of the system. And then what came to take its place was a form of capitalism which is an economic system based on private ownership in the free and open exchange of goods between property owners. Additionally, people were transferred in the Columbian exchange as well. And starting with Christopher Columbus, Native Americans were enslaved and taken back to Spain. And admittedly, this was a relatively small transfer of people. Far more significant was the transfer of enslaved Africans to the Americas. They were captured and sold on the African coast, crammed into ships in astonishing numbers, and then were made to endure the brutal middle passage. across the Atlantic Ocean in which many of them died of disease and starvation before even arriving. And when they did arrive, they were sold into bondage to the highest bidder. Now, we're going to talk a lot more about that in the next video. So, I'll leave it there at this point. So, I focused a lot on the Spanish in this video only because they were the first to be in colonizing the Americas, but soon many Western European nations will join the Spanish in this new world colonization and participate in the Columbian exchange. But one more thing is worth mentioning and that's how the Spanish finance all this exploration and how other colonizing nations would later innovate upon this. The Spanish colonization effort was driven by the state and specifically its mercantalist economic policies. And in case you don't know, mercantalism was the dominant economic system of Europe during this time. And basically what you need to know about mercantalism is that it depended on heavy governmental direction and intervention. Later, other nations would privatize exploration with a new model of funding, namely joint stock companies. We're going to talk much more about that in unit two, but I just wanted to mention it here by way of contrast. All right, that's what you need to know about unit one, topic four of AP US history. If you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, then click here and get view packet. If you want me to keep making videos for you, then subscribe because that's how I know you want me to keep making them. And if you do subscribe, I will oblige and keep making you videos. I'm out.