Question

Give two examples of different types of global exchanges which took place in the seventeenth century, choosing one example from Asia and one from the Americas.

Answer 1

Two examples of different types of global exchanges which took place in the seventeenth century are Disease and Trade.

Increase in European Wealth – Trade with the Americas

• After European sailors found a sea route to Asia and also successfully crossed the western ocean to America, the pre-modern world shrank greatly in the sixteenth century.
• America had been cut off from regular contact, for millions of years, with the rest of the world, before its discovery by the Europeans.
• From the sixteenth century, vast resources of minerals, crops, and land of the Americas began to transform lives and trade everywhere.
• Europe’s wealth was increased by precious metals like silver from the mines located in Mexico and Peru. This wealth accumulated by Europe helped them to expand trade with Asia.

Introduction of Food into Different Continents

• Noodles travelled from China to the West, to become spaghetti is a very popular belief.
• Many of our common foods such as sweet potatoes, chillies, potatoes, tomatoes, maize, groundnuts, soya and so on were unknown to our ancestors.
• Only after Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the Americas, did the food mentioned above were introduced in Asia and Europe.
• Plenty of examples of cultural exchanges which are long-distance in nature, can be found through examples of different food.
• Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the lands they travelled.

Spread of Disease from Europe to the Americas

• Superior firepower alone was not the reason behind the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans.
• The most powerful weapon carried on a person was the gems such as those of smallpox. Smallpox was especially a dangerous killer.
• A conventional military weapon was not the powerful weapon of Spanish conquerors.
• Once the gems were introduced to the Americas, they spread rapidly far, wide, and deep into the continent, even before the Europeans could physically reach those locations.
• The whole community was killed and decimated by the disease, thereby paving the way for the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans.