Lesson video

Hi everyone.

Welcome back to history with me, Mr. Wallace.

Now over the first two lessons of this unit, we've studied the voyage of Columbus and the short term impact that that had on what's called the New World, the Americas, the conquistadors and the devastating conquests of the different empires over Central and South America.

Today we're going to begin to broaden our scope a little bit.

We're going to zoom out and we're going to look at what is called the Columbian Exchange.

Now this is one of my absolute favourite topics to teach.

I love going into this.

So before we go into it together, can we just make sure we've got what we need to get started? So you should have a pen.

You should have something to write on, and hopefully you've got a place to work that's quiet and where you won't get interrupted.

If you need to go and take a moment to get those things, let's go and do it.

If you're ready to start, let's start with this question.

What do the following things have in common? So on the screen, you can see some chocolate, a pumpkin, a turkey, and some corn.

Now you might want to pause for a moment.

You want to have a think.

What do these four things have in common? And I've not pulled them out of nowhere.

They clearly linked to what we've been studying in some way.

So I'll give you a few seconds.

Maybe pause, write down your idea.

What do they have in common? Any guesses, any ideas? Hopefully what you've thought of is along the lines of what I'm about to say.

All of these things we only have because of contact with the New World.

None of them originally come from Europe, Africa or Asia.

Chocolate originally from South America.

Pumpkin's from the Americas, turkeys from the Americas and corn from the Americas.

Without our interaction, without the contact and the exchange of items and crops and food and animals.

Some of the things that we consider completely normal would not be in our lives.

So this is why I really find this topic fascinating because it shows the impact of a voyage 500 years ago and how that ripples out into modern day society.

If you really want to think how history affects us today.

Well, go down to the shop and see all the chocolate that you can see on the shelves.

That chocolate is there because of contact with the New World.

When we have Halloween come around and you've got a pumpkin on your front porch.

That's there because of contact with the New World and a Turkey at Christmas contact with the New World.

We might not realise that.

And all of these things have become completely normal to us.

But the Columbian Exchange is about those interactions and the way that our lives changed in Europe and the New World changed over in the Americas as well.

Before we go into some more detail on the Columbian Exchange and we begin to really kind of blow our minds with everything that affects us today, that is actually shaped by this exchange.

Let's have a little bit of a recap on what we know so far.

Let me just remove myself so you can focus on these.

Each of these boxes has a statement and each of them is wrong.

What I would like you to do is just write down what it should say.

What is the mistake? So write down what the mistake is, or probably more smartly write down what it should say.

Pause the video here, got six statements.

Make sure you write down what they should say.

Let's go through them one by one then I'm sure you've done absolutely fantastically, loads from the first two lessons.

Let's just get it on the page and share what we know.

Before Columbus it was thought the world was flat.

Now, come on we know better than that.

It was known that the world was a globe.

Obviously, come on.

Columbus landed in North America.

Now a lot of people think this a lot of people use the phrase "Columbus discovered America." Well, we've already talked about how that's not true.

He didn't discover anything because people there already lived there.

But secondly, he didn't land in North America.

He landed in the Caribbean and specifically he named the Island he landed at San Salvador.

The capital of the Inca Empire was Tenochtitlan.

Now we mentioned the Inca Empire, but that's not really been the focus, has it? Last lesson, we focused on a different empire.

It's the Aztec Empire.

Tenochtitlan was built alongside a river.

Is that true? We know that's not.

It's built on water though.

It was built on a Lake and it was the control of the Lake from Cortes troops that helped them finally take the city.

Tenochtitlan was struck by measles before the Spanish attacked.

Now we know they were hit by a disease, but was it measles? It was smallpox.

Well done.

Well remembered.

And lastly, the capital of New Spain was Madrid.

Well, the capital of Spain is Madrid, but New Spain, the colony that they created in central America, the capital of that was Mexico City.

Which if you remember, was built on the very site of Tenochtitlan once they destroyed it.

Now, we're looking at an exchange here between this part of the world and this part of the world and how some things went backwards and forwards.

And changed the way we live.

But let's have a quick check that we know exactly where we're talking about here.

So you've got A, B, C, D, E write those down on your page.

Just write them in the margin.

And you've got five places.

All I want you to do is label each place correctly.

So A over here is that Spain, the Caribbean, Tenochtitlan, Brazil or West Africa? Five places, five labels.

Pause the video here this should not take you long.

Pause the video here and write them down.

Excellent, it really helped.

We're going to be using a lot of maps over the last couple of lessons.

And it really helps that you can visualise what the world looks like.

So when I say Spain, you know that we're talking about a certain place.

When I say the Caribbean, you know where we're talking about.

So let's go through them.

Tenochtitlan over here, Central America and eventually replaced by Mexico City.

Spain here we are, Spain which is where Columbus was funded on this trip, the Caribbean, where he landed.

So he went across the Atlantic ocean.

He went kind of that way.

He was sailing West.

Then he changed course and moved downwards.

West Africa, this coast here, this is going to come up over the next couple of lessons and Brazil it's in South America.

Now, when we talk about these places, we often call them different names and I'm going to use them interchangeably.

So sometimes I might refer to what's in blue, The New World and The Old World and sometimes I might refer to them as what's in pink.

So when I say the New World, you should think, "Oh okay, that's that stuff over here." That's the Americas.

That's North, Central and South America, the Americas.

So I'm not talking about the country of America.

The country of America did not exist yet.

But North America as a continent, Central America and South America, the Americas.

And sometimes I might refer to the Old World and the Old World in general refers to Europe, but more broadly it's the world that was known of before 1492, there's three main continents, Europe, Africa.

And if we were to spin the globe around a little bit Asia.

So, the Columbian Exchange is that transfer of some things from the New World to the Old World.

And I've already given you an example of that at the very start of the lesson, such as turkeys or pumpkins.

And some things going from the Old World to The New World.

Actually let me come to what I was about to say in a second.

Let's just have a very good definition.

The Columbian Exchange refers to the transfer of diseases, people, crops and animals.

So we've got four specific things there diseases, people, crops, and animals between the New World of the Americas and the Old World of Europe, Asia and Africa.

It's some things that had only been in this part of the world, coming to this part of the world and changing life and some things that had only ever been in this part of the world, going in the other direction.

Now, as I was about to say, if you think about it, you already know some examples of this from our first two lessons.

What can you think of that has been already exchanged between the Old World and the New? So think very carefully one or two of them have already been mentioned in today's lesson.

And I don't mean those pictures from the very start, the chocolate and the turkeys.

I don't mean them.

But what other examples are there of things being transferred from Old World to new.

Pause the video here and see what ideas you can come up with to begin with.

Well done, let's see what you've got.

And if I've added anything that you don't have, then do write them down as well.

So what do we already know has been transferred? Well, first of all, colonies and colonists, and we'll talk about the difference between them in a moment.

But the Spanish moved over so many people, they created a colony called New Spain.

So people are moving to the New World, disease, smallpox we know that the Aztec Empire was hit by smallpox before Cortes attacked Tenochtitlan.

And if you think very carefully back to the end of last lesson.

I told you the story of Juan Garrido the African conquistador, who was given land in Mexico City and became the first colonist to grow wheat in the America's.

Wheat was not a crop that they had in the Americas.

It was common in Europe.

He moved it there and grew up growed it.

Grew it I should say.

So he showed that it was possible to grow crops in different parts of the world.

So we already know a little bit about this.

But today we're really going to expand our mind and really see the kind of the major impact of this Columbian Exchange.

'Cause it is fascinating just how much of our lives and our history is shaped by this exchange.

Now, before we go in, we're going to read something shortly and it talks about colonies, colonists, colonise over and over again.

So one thing I want you to do is make sure that you really understand that word very precisely before you start reading.

So you don't read it and think, "Oh I have no idea what this is talking about." So a colony, a colony is land that is under the control of another country or empire.

So New Spain was one colony in the Spanish Empire.

And you may know other empires you may about the Roman Empire or the British Empire.

So for example, during the British Empire, Australia was one colony in the British Empire.

It was land under the control of another country or empire.

Now to colonise that's the way we would use that word.

The process of taking control, to establish control Spain colonised land they conquered from the Aztecs.

So when people from another place, were to take control of land and settle it and take over it.

So to colonise the verb.

And a colonist, a person, someone who settles in a colony in order to take control of it.

So the Spanish colonists lived in New Spain once the Aztecs were defeated.

Juan Garrido was a Spanish colonist.

So the colonist is the person, colonise is the verb, the taking control and a colony is the noun, the thing New Spain was a colony.

So make sure you're using those words really effectively.

So when you read through the text, you know exactly what it's saying.

Let's just quickly check you know what you're talking about.

The Spanish what the Island of Hispaniola.

Colony, colonist or colonised? Five, four, three, two, one.

Point to the screen.

Well done.

They colonised the Island of Hispaniola.

Well done.

Now, in a moment, I'm going to ask you to pause.

And often I ask you to answer questions and so on, but I'm going to ask you to do a slightly different task today.

I've given you six statements about the Columbian Exchange.

I'm telling you straight away, the Columbian Exchange led to improved living conditions in the Old World.

So Europe and Asia and Africa.

The Columbian Exchange had a terrible impact on millions of people.

The Columbian Exchange changed the food that we eat.

It changed different cultures way of life.

It led to the growth of European empires, and it still affects us in the modern day.

I'm telling you those things straight away.

Your task is to look through the information and add evidence.

So write the statement out and add bullet points or sentences underneath that statement to tell me how is this true.

So where it says it had a terrible impact on millions of people.

What's the evidence for that? When you read through the information try and get, say two or three bullet points for each statement.

Obviously some of them will have more evidence than others, and that's absolutely fine.

But all of these straight statements can be supported with what you're about to read.

So at this point, let's pause.

Go ahead, write out those statements.

This will all be on the reading.

So write out those statements, maybe leave a few lines between each one and then add evidence for each one as you read each part of the worksheet.

Excellent, let's pause here and get going.

All right, welcome back.

So at this point, I would expect you to have read through the information on the Columbian Exchange.

See all the different ways that it impacted life in the New World and The Old World and added evidence for those statements.

Now, what we'll do now is go through each one of them and talk about some of the different pieces of evidence.

And if I am introducing you or reminding you of things that you didn't originally write down, then now go on and do that.

So as we go through it, you might want to pause the video from time to time because you think, "Oh, I didn't write that bullet point down." So write it down now, okay? Perfect.

The Columbian Exchange firstly, led to improved living conditions in the Old World.

Well, there's different ways that this happened, but specifically it's because of the foods that was coming over, more food was available.

Calorie rich food like potatoes, which could grow in weaker soil.

That's hard to wrap your head around sometimes.

Potatoes are such an ordinary food now, but they did not exist in Europe before this time.

And for what they are, they're quite high in calories.

So people were living longer.

They weren't going hungry so much.

So because people had better diets, they began to live a little bit longer.

And some products which used to be luxuries such as sugar.

So much of it was grown in the New World that the price went down and ordinary people could afford them.

So again, sugar is quite calorie rich and it helped keep people healthier.

Now we'd see sugar as very much a not healthy thing.

You don't want to have too much of it, but back when they're not overeating it.

Back when it's part of drinks, for example, or certain products that means that people are getting a richer, healthier diet.

They've got a few more calories.

And this comes from a time when kind of overeating is not really a problem.

The Columbian Exchange had a terrible impact on millions of people.

Now, there are two specific what three specific ways that this happened.

So first as we've already seen in the Aztec Empire, millions died from diseases.

Some estimates go as high as 90 or even 95% of indigenous people died from diseases.

Now this is because those diseases were common in the Old World.

So people had some immunity.

Now it's not that they didn't kill people.

They absolutely did, but not as many because your body has some immunity to that.

The New World had never had these diseases.

They'd never spread to the Americas.

And so when they came over the indigenous people of the New World had no defences.

Their bodies had no antibodies to fight off these diseases.

And millions of people died.

This helped destroy empires, such as the Aztec.

And we've already seen that in our last lesson.

That's one way that, the terrible spread of diseases.

Secondly, European nations enslaved and transported around 12 million Africans to the New World.

They worked on plantations especially for sugar.

Sugar was a crop that was in high demand in Europe.

Europeans wanted it.

And all of a sudden European countries like Spain and Britain they had land to grow sugar on.

Sugar can't grow in Europe, the climate isn't right, but it could grow in the Caribbean.

So when they took over these places, they grew sugar and they wanted labour.

They wanted workers.

And to do this, they decided to enslave people and ship them over there.

Now this isn't the first time slavery had come around.

Slavery has existed for a long time, all over the world.

But this was a new type of slavery, transatlantic slavery.

It went across the Atlantic ocean from Africa to the New World.

And it became race based slavery.

These people were enslaved because they were seen as inferior because they were African because they were black.

And there are other lessons and I'm sure you've done this in your school.

Or you will at some point, and there are other lessons on Oak that we'll go into this in the topic of transatlantic slavery.

But it is one of the most tragic and impactful consequences of the Columbian Exchange.

And it's something that we will return to at points during this lesson and in our last lesson.

Finally, millions of indigenous people who did survive, had to live under the rule of settler colonists.

If you were Mexica, if you lived under the Aztecs, well now you lived under New Spain.

They weren't Spanish, but they were forced to live under the rule of colonists.

So their culture, their identity was being weakened.

So the Columbian Exchange was not just positives of new food and better diets.

It had a really devastating impact on many people in the Old World under the new.

The Columbian Exchange changed the food that we eat.

We've already seen some examples of this.

Sugar is a major one.

Crops that Europeans wanted such as sugar, bananas or coffee, but they couldn't grow in Europe.

Usually they would have to trade over the Silk Roads to get those things.

Well, now they could set up colonies that could grow those crops.

That meant more people had access to them and they became cheaper.

And in the opposite direction, food from the New World was spread around the world potatoes hugely important crop that was spread all over the world.

And what was useful is it could grow in poor quality soil.

So in countries such as Ireland or Poland, potatoes became a really important crop.

Because they could support populations and populations began to increase as a result.

And one of the things I find most interesting are national cuisine.

So the type of traditional food that we have in certain countries became focused on New World items. I mean, you can't think of Italy without thinking of pizza or pasta, and you're not having either of those things really without tomatoes.

But that wouldn't be possible without the Columbian Exchange.

Tomatoes were from the New World, not from the Old.

And chilli peppers you're not going to have an Indian Curry without chilli peppers.

But they again came from the Americas.

So, when these foods began to spread around the world, they changed our cuisine.

And what we now think of as traditional national foods are in fact a mixture of crops that come from all over the world.

The Columbian Exchange changed different cultures way of life.

Well one example of this is the spreading of Christianity.

Had that spread all across the Americas, because the Spanish and the Portuguese especially, were quite passionate about spreading Christianity.

Another way was the introduction of horses.

Horses did not exist in the New World.

They had not evolved there.

Horses were kept in the Old World.

And when the Spanish took them over and used them as part of their conquests.

These horses began to be exchanged and bred in the New World.

North American tribes began to use them and that changed their entire way of life.

They used them to hunt Buffalo, to live a nomadic life where they would move around following the animal herds and so on.

The introduction of horses changed the lives of many North American tribes.

European society if we're going to the other side of the Atlantic now.

European society became used to items like sugar and chocolate.

Which was definitely not things they were used to before.

And African societies became weakened and attacked because Europeans wanted slaves.

They wanted to enslave people to take them to work on their plantations and force them to work in really quite brutal conditions.

So, way of life changed all over the world as a result of this Columbian Exchange.

It led to the growth of European empires.

Well, as an example, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, especially France, Netherlands.

They all began to colonise land.

Spain, Portugal, and Britain probably colonised the largest amount of land in the Americas.

And they transferred crops that they could then control.

As I keep on mentioning such as sugar.

This meant they didn't need to trade as much with the Silk Roads.

They relied less on Asian trade they could bypass that and grow the crops themselves.

Which made them get richer.

And if you've got more money, they could take control of more land.

They could keep expanding.

They could keep getting more powerful.

Land is power.

Land means that you can make money from it.

That means that you can have bigger, more successful militaries and so on.

Land is power.

So the more money they had the better able they were to take control of more land and so on.

So European empires, because they were the ones taking from the New World, taking from the America's.

European empires, grew richer and more powerful.

Finally, the Columbian Exchange still affects us in the modern day.

Well, one example of this is the mass movement of people.

Huge percentages of populations in the New World are in fact from the Old.

So if we look at country like Haiti.

What is now part of the Island of what originally we talked about Hispaniola that Columbus eventually arrived at.

98% of Haiti was originally from Africa.

They were enslaved, moved to Haiti and their descendants are now Haitian.

So colonisation spread cultures it spread African cultures in Haiti.

It also spread European cultures, huge percentages of countries, such as Canada or Argentina originally came from Europe, from Spain, from Britain, from France.

So the movement of people has meant that the New World is now populated by a large number of people who originally came Europe.

That's not to say that everyone in the New World is European.

There are people there who are indigenous and they were so proud of their culture, but their culture was weakened.

Europeans took control of these lands.

They tried to make sure that Christianity was spread.

They tried to weaken the local cultures, and that has had an impact on the modern day.

Our national cuisine has been shaped by mixing those crops.

And I've already talked to you about examples, such as Italian and Indian food and colonisation and slavery led to long lasting impacts on African countries that have been exploited.

So the West coast of Africa, from which up to 12 million people were enslaved, these countries grew weaker and that weakened them in the long run, making them vulnerable to more attacks and to colonisation from the European nations.

So here's an example, jollof rice, you need tomatoes, chilli peppers.

Fish and chips, no chips, pizza, no tomatoes and curry with no spices.

None of these foods, none of these traditional dishes.

I mean, just looking at this page makes me hungry.

I don't want to live in a world where I can't have an Indian Curry.

That doesn't seem like very fun to me.

But none of these things would be possible without the exchange of culture, the exchange of crops that took place after the Columbian Exchange.

Without realising it, we're growing up in a world that has fundamentally dramatically changed because of the contact between the Old World and the New.

In one way, you have chocolate, sugar, potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, which we've not talked about.

More wealth, peppers, corn all of these things go into the Old World.

And in the other way, you've got colonists, diseases like smallpox, wheat, horses, cholera, European settlements, plantations and enslaved Africans.

You've got this really dramatic exchange, which has had ripple effects and consequences over the world for the last 500 years.

And one of the most important of those consequences is the colonisation of the New World.

This map here shows you different parts of the Americas that have been colonised by European countries.

All of this light green, this is Spain.

This is New Spain.

The dark green, the Portuguese.

The red, the British colonies, and the blue of the French and a very small piece of the Netherlands at time as well.

European nations exploited the resources, the people they took from the Americas to make themselves richer and powerful.

And they were not able to do that.

Those societies functioned because of slavery, they were built on slavery.

Like I said, slavery wasn't new, but it was kind of turbocharged under these European nations who used slavery to grow crops especially sugar.

Now we traditionally focused on the Caribbean for this and for North America for products like cotton, tobacco as well.

But sugar plantations were absolutely rife in Brazil as well.

So North, Central and South America were transformed by colonisation and the movement of people.

Europeans, who were settling and enslaved Africans who were forced there.

Now here's our final question then.

Did the Columbian Exchange have a greater effect on the Old World or the New? So let's have a think about that.

Did it have a bigger impact, a greater effect on the Old World or the New? So I've given you two bullet points to begin with.

New food was introduced and improved diets, such as potatoes and corn.

And empires such as the Aztec and Inca were destroyed.

What I want you to do is write down this table.

So you've got two columns, one column Old World, one column New World.

You can see that here.

And I want you to put these two bullet points into the right column to begin with.

So which one is an impact on the Old World and which one is an impact on the New World? So pause this video here and put them in the right column.

Okay, perfect.

New food impacted the Old World.

Potatoes, corn these were moved to the Old World.

Chocolate, tomatoes all of these things were moved to the Old World.

Because they were from the Americas.

The Americas had empires destroyed such as the Aztec and Inca.

Now, what I want you to do is add any more consequences for each side.

And think positive and negative, good things and bad.

What are the bullet points can we say, this is how the Old World was affected, and this is how the New World was affected.

Pause the video here and add any more evidence that you can think of.

All right, fantastic.

Again, just like every lesson, you're taking in a huge amount of information.

I'm super impressed at how well you're able to think about this stuff.

So let's have a look.

The Old World, the Silk Roads declined as the focus of trade moved.

So trade was usually done over the Silk Roads over the Asian trade routes.

But now they were being bypassed.

European Empires grew such as Spain, Britain, Portugal, France and so on.

And European nations grew richer and had more luxuries, such as sugar.

For the New World you had new colonies.

They were created with European settlers, such as the British colonies or New Spain.

Indigenous people and culture were weakened.

Millions died from disease.

They were converted to Christianity.

They had to live under the control of European colonists and transatlantic slavery moved millions to the New World in terrible conditions.

Now, no doubt you'll have added more things to this as well.

I've only given a sample, some of the details.

If I've included things that you haven't write them down, just make sure that your table is as detailed as possible.

With this in mind, here is a way to kind of have that argument.

Now I can't check this for you.

What would be really great is if you were to show this to your teacher and then you were to send it to me and I'll show you how you can do that in a moment.

But these sentence starters, this structure will help you get across what you think.

Did the Columbian Exchange have a greater effect on the Old World or the New? On the one hand, you can talk about the Old World.

Give me an example.

Why is it such an important impact? On the other hand, the New World, give me examples and so on.

And the really good answers here we'll compare them.

This had a greater impact on the Old World and the New because? Compare some of the ways that they have affected people, maybe the number of people they affected or the length of time that it's affected.

In conclusion, which part of the world do you think was affected more greatly by the Columbian Exchange? The Old World of Europe or the New World of the Americas? Now, like I said, I would really like to see what you've done here, because like I said, at the start of this lesson.

This is one of my absolute favourite topics and I hope you've been able to see why.

Our world is fundamentally shaped by the Columbian Exchange.

The people who live in the Americas, the food that we eat today.

The way that European Empires have shaped much of the last few hundred years.

That is a direct consequence of this transfer of wealth and resources and power and people and disease that happened after Columbus landed.

I would love to see what you've written.

I'm sure your teachers would as well.

So share it with them and get some advice and try and write the best answer that you can.

But I would really like to see it.

So if you would like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I'll be checking that.

I would love to see what you've written.

We've got one more lesson.

I'm going to zoom out and look at the big picture.

How and why are historians thinking of 1492 as a turning point? Now, today we've built up a lot of evidence for why 1492 was a turning point.

'Cause it led to all of these changes.

There's a few more things we need to go over, got one more lesson to do it.

I look forward to seeing you then.

Have a great rest of the day.