The Enduring Impact of 1492: A Historical Analysis

1. The Consequences of 1492

2. The Consequences of 1492 • Demographic Revolution • Culture Interchange • Political Transformations • Economic Transformation • A Revolution in Diet • Re-dividing the World’s Labor

3. The Consequences of 1492 Demographic Revolution • The most “ gigantic “ population changes the world has ever known. • The Spanish touched off a biological holocaust that catastrophically depopulated the Caribbean island and Central America. • Native people were geographically sealed off from European diseases:( smallpox, measles, diphtheria) • Within the first 100 years of contact, over 90% of the huge native population of Central America & the Caribbean died (25 million). • Collective germ warfare eliminated two-thirds of the native people within a few generations. • Since Cortez conquest, Mexico did not regain its level of population until 1940. • For every six people that crossed the Atlantic- five were African

4. The Consequences of 1492 Culture Interchange • Immense population genetic and cultural intermingling to an extent the world has never known (mixing of European, African, and Native Americans). • The New World was not only a battleground but a mating ground as well. • Cultural borrowing (political, food ways, language, dress, music, rituals, religious beliefs). • Evidence of this interpenetration of cultures is every where around us.

5. The Consequences of 1492 Political Transformation • The first worldwide empires in the history of humankind and enlargement of the arena of conflict between European nations. • The New World became an area where European nations fought each other for centuries, for possession of: lands, minerals, and control of native and enslaved populations. • Results of colonization led to the rise of merchant fleets, armed navies, and large land armies to great scale.

6. The Consequences of 1492 Economic Transformation • The European discovery of huge deposits of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru. • Indians and African labor primarily extracted these deposits of gold and silver. • Europe’s supply of money increased eight times by the 1600’s. • This expansion led to the quickening of trade ( silks and spices from the Far East, rice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco from the American plantations).

7. The Consequences of 1492 A Revolution in Diet • Generation after 1492, European began to group large number of crops indigenous to the Americans ( potatoes, cocoa, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, maize (corn), and green beans). • Within 200 years corn and potatoes became the main source of protein in some parts of Europe. • This increase in Europe’s food supply led to over population. • The failure of the potato crop in the 1900’s led to mass immigration to America. • The cash crops (sugar, coffee, and tobacco) became known as the “proletarian drug foods” the stimulants that killed hunger while giving rushes of energy.

8. The Consequences of 1492 Re-Dividing the World’s Labor • The final chapter from the result of 1492 was the division of world laboring of people and the increase in slave labor. • Where in Europe serfdom decreased rapidly from the 1500’s to 1700’s, in the Colonized New World, European enslaved American Indians and transported Africans in chains in vast numbers. • Columbus even enslaved the Arawaks and took then back to Spain, thus starting the Atlantic slave trade. • As European would call the discovery of the America’s a “great giant leap” towards progress it became the first steps in free trade institutions and systems of government.