The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course World History #23

In which John Green teaches you about the changes wrought by contact between the Old World and the New. John does this by exploring the totally awesome history book "The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Cosby, Jr. After Columbus "discovered" the Americas, European conquerors, traders, and settlers brought all manner of changes to the formerly isolated continents. Disease and invasive plant and animal species remade the New World, usually in negative ways. While native people, plants, and animals were being displaced in the Americas, the rest of the world was benefitting from American imports, especially foods like maize, tomatoes, potatoes, pineapple, blueberries, sweet potatoes, and manioc. Was the Columbian Exchange a net positive? It's debatable. So debate.

Resources:

The Columbian Exchange, by Alfred Cosby, Jr: http://dft.ba/-columbian


Follow us!
@thecrashcourse
@realjohngreen
@raoulmeyer
@crashcoursestan
@saysdanica
@thoughtbubbler


Like us! 
‪http://www.facebook.com/youtubecrashc...
Follow us again! 
‪http://thecrashcourse.tumblr.com

• Category

  Education

[Anna Fiske]

An open letter to John Green,

Dear John....you know the cinnamon challenge can kill......don't die!! Best Wishes, Anna

[SallieAltie]

AP World Exam tomorrow! Looking over all of your videos to help review! Thank you John Green!

[SaffronStories]

Do you know when a documentary or something on wider historical topic mentions something not so well-known but what is one of your personal favourite topics?I just fangirled over the Prague defenestration.

[BishopTakesRook]

John. Thank You.

You have saved my butt all semester.

I...I love you man.

[71KR117]

The AP exam is over, but I still have a final D: must keep watching.

[carsiotto]

Disease is only one side of the issue and some can argue that it is the least heinous side. I'm talking about the intentional destruction, eradication and enslavement of people. That could have been avoided.

[Adder Kleet]

He stated that out of the soldiers who started smoking during the war (because they were given free cigarettes), more died due to smoking than due to the war. He said it very fast and it is not the easiest statement to understand. I think the "off-topic" parts are there to keep attention spans, or just to increase the fact density.

[Adder Kleet]

Your point 2 is not quite true. NOW we can exchange ideas and goods without massive destruction. Back then we couldn't, mostly due to disease. Disease killed millions. We also didn't have technology to bypass problems like disease, manual labour and language translation.

[Adder Kleet]

Slightly annoyed that (in 9:00-ish) you show the Republic of Ireland (where I'm from) despite it existing under British rule at the time, and thus not having a Northern Ireland as a separate section.

[arp49]

ya thats true, but the amount they killed does pale in comparison with the number killed by disease, although that hardly excuses the spanish, but makroteh has a point, the spanish atrocities were exaggerated by the british to partially excuse their own murderous acts..... ps sorry for the run-on sentence lol

[arp49]

oh ya totally, but i think thats whats so great about crash course, and youtube ed in general, they give you lots of info on lots of topics, and subtopics (and sometimes random tangents lol), and then you can discuss the rest in comments, its like the video is a lecture and the comments are like a class discussion

[b0b0maj0]

I don't think there is anyone alive today the genuinely believes that tobacco isn't harmful. These videos have a lot of information to present in the amount of time. So its understandable that he doesn't present comprehensive viewpoints.

I don't get why the videos couldn't a bit longer if they decide to go off topic.