VNU-EPT Sample test
15
PART FOUR (26 pts)
Read the passage carefully.
COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE
1 The Columbian Exchange was the “exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations
(including slaves) communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western
hemispheres that occurred after 1492.” The term “Columbian Exchange,” coined in 1972 by
historian Alfred Crosby, took hold and became not only standard shorthand for the
phenomenon which it exemplified, but also a perspective for witnessing societal and
ecological events.
2 When Christopher Columbus made landfall with his crew in the Bahamas in October
1492, two worlds with separate evolutionary histories met. When Europeans began to
settle America’s east coast, they brought with them and cultivated familiar crops – wheat
and apples – as well as familiar weeds, such as dandelion and chickweed. In the 1600s,
they introduced cattle and horses, which flourished in the New World climate.
3 Devastating diseases were introduced to the American population which had no resistance
to them. John R. McNeill, professor of history at Georgetown University, points out that
“when the first inhabitants of the Americas arrived across the Bering land bridge between
20,000 and 12,000 years ago, they brought few diseases with them because they had no
domesticated animals, the original source of human diseases such as smallpox and
measles. In addition, as they passed from Siberia to North America, the first Americans had
spent many years in extreme cold, which eliminated many of the disease-causing agents
that might have traveled with them.” Consequently, between 1492 and 1650, over 90% of
the Native American population died in epidemic after epidemic of smallpox, measles,
mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus. The loss of labor caused by
pathogens indirectly led to the establishment of African slavery among European immigrants
in the Americas, resulting in the importation of malaria and yellow fever from Africa, causing
even more destruction of the Native American population.
4 The export of American flora and fauna did not revolutionize the Old World as the influx of
European agriculture altered the New World ecosystem. According to Crosby, the New
World’s great contribution to the Old World was crop plants. Maize, white potatoes, sweet
potatoes, various squashes, chilies, and manioc augmented and invigorated the European
cuisine. Very few New World creatures traversed the ocean - the muskrat, the gray squirrel,
and a few others - but they did not precipitate large scale changes in Old World ecosystems.
5 Although some diseases made the ocean voyage from New World to the Old World, they did
not have appreciable effects on the European population. Crosby stated that, although some
deaths were attributed to ailments from America, the total was insignificant compared to
Native American losses to smallpox alone.