Idea #3
Indigenous peoples in the Americas had been growing and using various agricultural goods for
thousands of years at the time of European colonization. Many of the traditional agricultural goods
from the Americas would transform life around the world.
For instance, there were only a few types of cotton available to Europeans before the Columbian
Exchange, and this cotton was weak, costly, and hard to weave. However:
"The long-strand cotton of the American Indians so surpassed in quality the puny cotton of the
Old World that the Spaniards mistook American Indian cloth for silk..."
Cotton, and the goods made from cotton, greatly changed the clothes people wore and how clothes
would be made. Prior to the Columbian Exchange, Europeans mostly wore clothing made from wool
and leather. In fact, "they wove everything, from their underwear to their hats, from wool. Only the
very rich could afford luxury fabrics such as silk or linen." This meant clothing production was limited
by the number of sheep and the amount of land that sheep had to graze and live. This meant that
clothing production was slow, small-scale, and required a lot of land.
Before the Age of Colonization, most Europeans made their clothing at home. Yet:
"This situation changed with the massive influx of cotton from America. Suddenly, the peasants
and the weavers had more fiber than they could weave. They lacked the labor to process so
much fiber.
Europe desperately needed more energy than it had in human and animal power, and the most
readily available source for creating new energy lay in the waterwheels already in place
throughout the continent. Thus were born the first textile factories."
The demand for textiles would lead to factories and the Industrial Revolution. The availability of cotton
would allow for the mass production of clothing.
How did cotton from the Americas change the rest of the world? Give at least one specific example.
Based on this excerpt, how did the Columbian Exchange transform clothing production?