Period One Notes(SECOND PAGE) - Columbian Exchange, Spanish Colonial Power, Slave Trade, and Joint Stock Companies

Columbian Exchange

• Period of rapid exchange of plants, animals, foods, communicable diseases.
• Europe: resources and tech to establish colonies.
• Flow of trade between Old and New World.
• Old World (Africa, Asia, Europe) to New World: horses, pigs, rice, wheat, grapes.
• New World to Old World: corn, potatoes, chocolate, tomatoes, avocados, sweet potatoes.

Spanish Colonial Power

• Spain: colonial power in the Americas.
• Founded coastal towns in Central & South America, West Indies.
• Conquistadors: collected and exported wealth.

Slave Trade

• Directed towards Caribbean and South America.
• More than 5,000 enslaved peoples brought to English colonies.
• By 1790, 750,000 African Americans enslaved in England's North American colonies.

The Middle Passage

• Middle leg of triangular trade route (Colonies, Europe, Africa).
• Inhumane conditions.
• Suicide and sickness common.
• $(\frac{1}{5})$ of blacks died aboard.

Encomienda System

• Crown granted colonists authority over natives.
• Colonists obligated to protect natives and convert them to Catholicism.
• Colonists entitled to native's labor (sugar harvesting, silver mining).
• Form of slavery.

Joint Stock Companies

• Made intercontinental trade more organized.
• Corporate businesses to settle/develop lands in North America.
• Example: Virginia Company settled Jamestown (first settlement).