Colonial America

The Columbian Exchange was a biological and cultural exchange of plants (especially potato, maize and various fruits), animals (e.g. horses), humans (via slavery) and their culture, and communicable diseases between Europe (the "Old World") and the Americas after Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492.

The term was coined by historian Alfred Crosby in 1972, although the "event" took place hundreds of years earlier. The Columbian Exchange is considered to have been of great benefit to the Europeans who sought to spread out and conquer other lands, but it ultimately brought disaster to the Native Americans.

the biological interactions that re

The Columbian Exchange, sometimes known as the Grand Exchange, is a term used to denote the massive exchange of agricultural goods, slave labor, communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres which occurred after the year 1492CE.

The columbian exchange is the exchange of goods between Europe and its colonies in North and South America.

The Columbian exchange was the exchange of diseases, crops, and goods between Europe and the Americas starting with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

The Columbian Exchange relates to the exchange of animals, technology, culture, ideas and crops.
The movement of people, plants, animals, and germs across the Atlantic Ocean is the Colombian Exchange.
As a result of Columbus's voyages to the New World, a biological pipeline between America and Europe opened up that had been apart since before humans appeared on earth. The lands had drifted apart that had once been connected. Some species of plants and animals flourished in both areas, and some did not. There were many new animals and plants in the Americas that Europeans had never seen. And, Europeans brought plants and animals to the New World that America had never seen. This includes viruses and other biological organisms. The new animals brought to America upset the ecology of the area. The people living in the Americas did not have resistance to many of the "germs" brought by the Europeans. Biologically, the Indians had not been exposed to measles, smallpox, whooping cough, chicken pox, and influenza. The effect of these diseases on the Americans was catastrophic. Bacteria and viruses killed more Native Americans than did Spanish swords. The Indians also gave to the Europeans, venereal disease. Medical historians disagree on the origins of syphilis, but it was first identified by physicians in 1493, in Cadiz, Spain, the port which Columbus returned to after his first voyage.

The Colombian Exchange was also a cultural exchange. New agricultural developments were traded, economic activity and opportunities opened up between the New and Old Worlds, and new ideas were exchanged.

Disease killed millions of Native Americans
The Columbian Exchange (the transfer of plants, animals, diseases, etc. between the old and new worlds) had both positive and negative impacts. For the native people in the Americas, the cumulative effect was negative.

One example is large groups of native peoples being wiped out by European diseases like smallpox.