Consequences of exploration and colonization

• The Columbian Exchange—Columbus's discovery of the New World was the first link in the great chain of cause and effect known as the Columbian Exchange. The concept refers to the interchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, and populations set off by European exploration and colonization in the New World. As Spain conquered and colonized much of the Caribbean and South and North America, and (along with the Portuguese) institutionalized slavery in the New World, the cultivation of Old World products like sugar and coffee became possible on a much larger scale, making them affordable to ordinary Europeans for the first time. New World crops like potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and tobacco were embraced across Europe and Asia. Although the New World gained new plant species and livestock, for the most part this was an unequal exchange: a transfer of Old World diseases to the New World depleted native populations.

• Methods of navigation, mapping, and shipbuilding advanced during the age of exploration. With Prince Henry the Navigator's patronage, Portuguese sailors took the lead in using quadrants and astrolabes for celestial navigation, useful for measuring latitude. (It would not be till 1761 that the invention of a seagoing chronometer allowed longitude to be determined.) Ship design improved: better sails and stronger and sleeker hulls meant greater maneuverability in rough Atlantic waters.

• Overthrow and subjugation of native populations
  
  In their conquest and overthrow of native empires like the Maya, Aztec, and Inca, invading Spaniards wielded an unintentional biological weapon and vastly superior war technologies. The biological weapon was the transmission of diseases to populations who had never experienced such illnesses as typhus and smallpox and therefore had no built-in immunity. Epidemics heightened cultural disunity and dissolved tribal cohesion. That Indians succumbed to these diseases was seen by Europeans as God's punishment for not converting to Christianity. The disparate level of technologies was another factor in favor of the Spanish. Indians had llamas, canoes, and arrows while the conquistadors had horses, ships, and guns, cannons, swords, and explosives.