The Ongoing Columbian Exchange

This unique encyclopedia enables students to understand the myriad ways that the Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world covering every major living organism from pathogens and plants to insects and mammals.Most people have only the vaguest notion of how profoundly the world was changed by Christopher Columbus''s arrival in the Americas. Indeed some of what is commonly regarded as traditional Native American life and cultureliving in teepees and hunting buffalo from horseback for examplecame from the arrival of Europeans. This encyclopedia helps students acquire fundamental information about the Columbian Exchange through approximately 100 alphabetically arranged entries on animals plants diseases and items that were exchanged accompanied by sidebars throughout that provide interesting discussions of key people companies and other related topics. The work begins with an introductory essay that overviews the Columbian exchange and not only addresses its biological and cultural components but also treats it as a political and economic event. The alphabetically organized entries cover topics ranging from the African slave trade almonds and alpacas to watermelon whooping cough and yellow fever. The encyclopedia also offers a chronology of the major events of the Columbian Exchange as well as 15 transcribed primary source documents that enable students to look into history directly including passages about the exchange that focus on the Irish Potato Famine the slave trade and the influenza pandemic of 19181919.