Name ______Class ______Date ______

The Columbian Exchange: Learning Stations

Center One: The Columbian Exchange and Mercantilism

Use your textbook and the placard to answer the following questions.

  1. What is the definition, in your textbook’s glossary, of the Columbian Exchange?
  1. On the map of the world, clearly fill in the items which were exchanged between the Europe, Africa, and the Americas.Use p. 138 in your textbook to complete this portion.

Use the last 3 paragraphs on p.137 to answer #3 and #4.

  1. In your opinion, what were the most beneficial aspects of the Columbian Exchange? (BE SPECIFIC in justifying your answer!)
  1. In your opinion, what were the most harmful aspects of the Columbian Exchange? (BE SPECIFIC in justifying your answer!)
  1. Write down the definition of “mercantilism” from the placard.
  1. Do you think mercantilism a good policy for all countries involved? Why or why not?

Center Two: Animals

Use the article to answer the following questions.

  1. Which had more domesticated animals, Europe or the Americas?
  1. Why did the livestock from the Europe thrive in the Americas?
  1. What resources did animals provide to people that raised them?
  1. Why were the Aztecs afraid of horses at first?
  1. Create a small chart showing positive and negative results of bringing the pig to the Americas.

Positive Impacts of the pig / Negative Impacts of the pig
  1. What were the only domesticated animals that native people had in North America?
  1. South America?
  1. Which new animal do you think brought the most change to life in the Americas? Why?
  1. Pretend that you are a Native American who has just received your first horse. List as many possible uses for the horse in your daily life as possible. Include uses of a horse that has died!

Center Three: Food

Use the article to answer the following questions:

  1. What is the Columbian Exchange?
  1. What were some differences in environment between the Americas and Europe?
  1. How did the new plants that Columbus brought to the Americas change life?
  1. How do new food crops help people?
  1. Do you think new food crops helped Europeans or Americans more? Why?
  1. Where did the following foods/plants originate? Carefully read the text and fill out the chart – it can be tricky!

Plant and Food Origins
Plant / Origin
Tobacco
Potato
Sugar Cane
Pumpkin
Lemon
Crab grass

Center Four: The Columbian Exchange and Slavery

Use the articles to answer the following questions:

  1. Use the blank map and illustrate the routes used and items traded in the Triangular Trade. Indicate with an arrow and a label, which portion was known as the “Middle Passage.”

  1. Define Middle Passage from the glossary.
  1. Look at the masking tape marked out on the floor. Can you fit inside the amount of space given to each slave on board ships in the middle passage?Try it out - - Describe how you might feel if you had to fit into that space for several months.
  1. Look at the pictures depicting slave ships. Now, read the excerpt in the article from Olaudah Equiano toward the bottom. Equiano was a high-status person from Nigeria who was forced into slavery and later wrote a book about his experience. What conditions aboard a slave ship would you have found most intolerable? What would you have done in those circumstances?