Courtney+Edgley

 Courtney Edgley  Block: 7  __ The Columbian Exchange: Good or Bad? __   The Columbian Exchange had a negative impact on the world, in my opinion as a part Native American human being. It brought many diseases to our world. These diseases, from new world to old world and vice versa, include: chicken pox, common cold, influenza, leprosy, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, syphilis and more. Due to these diseases depopulation occurred. The Native American population was majorly decreased in North America. In South America, the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, and many others were also affected. If those diseases had not been brought to our world we would still have those cultures around today. Granted we did gain a lot from the Columbian Exchange such as food and animals, but what was wrong with our life before? We had our ways of life and beliefs. We had our way of transportation, we used resources. If you think about it we all had our own way of doing things and then some people come along and change it thinking they are better than us and they are civilized and we are barbaric. Our way of living was not like theirs, the Europeans decided to change our way of life instead of learning and seeing we really are not as barbaric as we seem. Think about our way of life now and if someone came and changed it and brought foreign things, and people started getting sick with unknown symptoms and dying, what would you do? Would you blame the foreigners? Or would you know if you could blame anyone? The Native Americans had no idea what to do, or who to blame, or the cause of anything. All they knew is what was happening, and didn’t know what to do about it. Did the Europeans help with the illness? No, they saw land, free land, with lots of trees, potential for a place for people to live, but the Native Americans was the only thing stopping them from doing this. So if they were dying for some reason some-what unknown, why stop it? You can then do what you want and not have anything in your way. The few who did survive, tried to continue their way of life, but the Europeans made it hard for them to do that, because they were taking away their resources, such as trees, fish, other animals, and, crops. How is a culture supposed to survive if everything they need to survive is being taken from them? They can’t, again the Europeans saw this window of opportunity, and took it. The Columbian Exchange negatively impacted the world, because of diseases brought by the greedy inconsiderate Europeans. They changed our world and we have now lost cultures that can never be brought back.