Demographic and Environmental History - AP World History: Modern

Although the arrival of Europeans led to widespread death and destruction in the Americas, the global population still rose significantly in this time period. This was caused by the exchange of native crops between the Old World and the New World. Crops like potatoes and corn, which were native to the Americas, could be used to sustain the population in unexpected parts of the world -like Ireland or Eastern Europe.

Modern-day New York City was established on the island of Manhattan by Dutch settlers in 1625. It was called New Amsterdam and was the capital of the Dutch North American empire, called New Netherland. It was ceded to the English in 1667 after it had been captured by English forces a few years earlier. The English settlers renamed it New York.

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who made a famous voyage, on behalf of the Spanish crown, around the tip of South America (through the Strait of Magellan) and across the Pacific Ocean. This voyage was the first to successfully circumnavigate the earth, but, unfortunately for Magellan, he was killed in battle in the Philippines and thus did not complete the circumnavigation personally.

Christopher Columbus’ voyages to the new world were sponsored by the Spanish crown, which at the time was led by Ferdinand and Isabella.

Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese explorer who, in 1488, became the first European known to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope (at the tip of South Africa) and reached the Indian Ocean. His voyage was part of the early era of European exploration and colonialism that established Portugal as a leading maritime empire.

The population of Ireland before the Great Famine was just over 8 million people. The famine hit so hard that between the millions who starved and the millions who fled to the United States, England, Australia, and New Zealand by the time the famine ended the population of Ireland had fallen to 4 million.

After the arrival of Europeans in the fifteenth century the population of the Americas declined dramatically in the following decades. The Europeans contributed to this widespread death directly by exterminating and enslaving the native population, but the bulk of the damage was done by deadly contagious diseases that the European explorers and settlers brought with them. Diseases like smallpox were not native to the Americas and the local population had no natural resistance to the disease. By most historians’ estimates, within two centuries of the arrival of Europeans the population of the Americas had declined by ninety percent.

The Spanish were the first European settlers to settle in Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida was one of the earliest European colonies in the New World. It was established by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513.

James Cook, who was born in England and lived from 1728 until 1779, was the first European to reach Australia as well as New Zealand and Hawaii on his ship the HMS Bark Endeavor. He mapped large portions of the Pacific Ocean, including the eastern coastline of Australia and the entirely of the New Zealand coast.

The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved after Napoleon conquered it, and eventually replaced with the German Federation, which became the German Republic in 1918, and was divided into East and West Germany after World War II. The modern country of Germany was finally created with reunification in 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Italy is also a country with a complicated history, and might be a tempting answer for "Holy Roman Empire" due to Rome; however, after the collapse of the Roman Empire many distinct claims to its successor lived on, with the city of Rome, Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, and the Germanic tribes that had conquered Rome in the Early Middle Ages. The latter is what eventually led to the Holy Roman Empire.

During the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, tens of millions of Europeans migrated from Europe to colonies (and later countries) such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and Argentina. The peak of this migration occurred during the mid 19th to early 20th centuries.

Malthus was an ardent student of population trends. He published many studies on how populations affected the economics of a given area or nation. He also looked at the trends of the populations of the world as a whole.

Malthus believed the world's population was growing far too fast for the farms and agricultural markets to keep up. He feared that the world would be plunged into a massive famine due to the lack of ability to feed the ever-rising population. While his fears were never completely realized as a worldwide famine on the scale he imagined never happened, there have been many large-scale famines that greatly diminished the populations of many nations.

The states of Bohemia and Moravia form modern-day Czech Republic.

The westward expansion of the Huns displaced more than a dozen Germanic tribes from Central Europe. This displacement forced them to seek refuge in the already collapsing Western Roman Empire, forever changing its demography and creating tensions that would lead to its total collapse.

First known as Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople, after the emperor when he moved the Roam capitol there.

The Vandals and the Ostrogoths are two Germanic tribes who were influential in Europe during the decline of the Roman Empire, the Vandals in particular contributed heavily to the demise of the empire. The Vandals sacked the city of Rome in 445 CE and the Ostrogoths sacked the city in 546 CE.

The Celts are an ancient ethnic group who emerged in modern-day France and migrated around Western Europe, settling in places like Spain, Germany, and (most impactfully) the British Isles.

The Anasazi culture emerged in the southwest of the modern-day United States. The Anasazi lived in this part of North America from about 300 - 1300 CE.