What were the demographic and biological effects of the Columbian exchange?

People say that the Columbian Exchange occurred but it really didn't benefit the people of the New World very much.

We usually describe this in purely economic terms, but it is also biological. Researchers increasingly think that the most important cargo on these early voyages was not silk and silver but plants and animals, many of them accidental stowaways.


Before Columbus, the parasites that cause malaria were rampant in Eurasia and Africa but unknown in the Americas. Transported in the bodies of sailors, malaria may have crossed the ocean as early as Columbus's second voyage. Yellow fever, malaria's frequent companion, soon followed.

The diseases of the Columbian Exchange made the enslaved worker preferable at three times the price of the European servant.

Hunger was then a familiar presence in Europe. France had 40 nationwide food calamities between 1500 and 1800, more than one every decade, according to the French historian Braudel.England had still more. The continent simply could not sustain itself any longer. The natives of the Americas were actually larger, stronger and better fed.

The potato from the New world allowed most of Europe (a 2,000-mile band between Ireland and the Ukraine) to feed itself.

But worse for the New World was the loss of 90 percent of the native population due to diseases that they never had seen before. There had been about 80 million and only around 720,000 were left by 1570. The land appeared to be empty.

From the Old World to the New:
The deadly smallpox, malaria, yellow fever, gonorrhea, chlamydia, common cold, measles, influenza, chickenpox, cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, slaves from Africa, barley, wheat, rye, sugar cane, coffee, dandelions and ragweed.

From the New World to the Old:
Tobacco, syphilis, corn, squash, beans, most importantly potatoes, turkeys, llamas, peanuts, pumpkins and peppers.