Original subtitles

Hello learned and astonishingly attractive pupils. My name is John Green

and I want to welcome you to Crash Course World History. Over the next 40

weeks together we will learn how in a mere 15,000 years humans went from

hunting and gathering... Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Is this going to be on the test?

Yeah, about the test. The test will measure whether you are an informed,

engaged, and productive citizen of the world. And it will take place in schools

and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be

tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football and

while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability

to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you'll be

easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you'll be able to

place your life and your community in a broader context.

The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of

decisions that, when taken together, make your life yours.

And everything, everything will be on it. I know, right? So pay attention.

In a mere 15,000 years, humans went from hunting and gathering to creating such

improbabilities as the airplane, the internet, and the 99-cent double

cheeseburger. It's an extraordinary journey, one that I will now symbolize

by embarking upon a journey of my own. Over to Camera 2. Hi there, Camera 2.

It's me, John Green. Let's start with that double cheeseburger.

Oh, food photography.

So this hot hunk of meat contains 490 calories.

To get this cheeseburger, you have to feed, raise, and slaughter cows, then

grind their meat, then freeze it and ship it to its destination.

You also gotta grow some wheat and then process the living crap out of it until

it's whiter than Queen Elizabeth I. Then you gotta milk some cows and turn their

milk into cheese, and that's not even to mention the growing and pickling of

cucumbers, or the sweetening of tomatoes, or the grinding of mustard

seeds, etc.

How in the sweet name of everything holy did we ever come to live in a world in

which such a thing can even be created? And how is it possible that those 490

calories can be served to me for an amount of money that if I make the

minimum wage here in the U.S., I can earn in 11 minutes?

And most importantly, should I be delighted or alarmed to live in this

strange world of relative abundance?

Well, to answer that question, we're not going to be able to look strictly at

history because there isn't a written record about a lot of these things. But

thanks to archaeology and paleobiology, we can look deep into the past. Let's go

to the Thought Bubble.

ago, humans were foragers and hunters.

Foraging meant gathering fruits, nuts, also wild grains and grasses.

Hunting allowed for a more protein-rich diet, so long as you could find

something with meat to kill. By far the best hunting gig in the prehistoric

world, incidentally, was fishing. Which is one of the reasons that if you look

at the history of people populating the planet, we tended to run for the shore

and then stay there.

Marine life was abundant and relatively unlikely to eat you. While we tend to

think that the lives of foragers were nasty, brutish, and short, fossil

evidence suggests that they actually had it pretty good. Their Bones and teeth

are healthier than those of agriculturalists, and anthropologists

who've studied the remaining forager peoples have noted that they actually

spend a lot fewer hours working than the rest of us, and they spend more time on

art, music, and storytelling.

Also, if you believe the classic of anthropology, Nyssa, they also have a

lot more time for Scootily Poopin'. What? I call it scoodley pooping. I'm

not going to apologize.

It's worth noting that cultivation of crops seems to have arisen independently

over the course of millennia in a number of places, from Africa to China to the

Americas. Using crops that naturally grew nearby, rice in Southeast Asia,

maize in Mexico, potatoes in the Andes, wheat in the Fertile Crescent, yams in

West Africa, people around the world began to abandon their foraging for

agriculture. And since so many communities made this choice

independently, it must have been a good choice, right?

even though it meant less music and scoodily-pooping. Thanks, Thought

Bubble. Alright, to answer that question, let's take a look at the

advantages and disadvantages of agriculture.

Controllable food supply. You might have droughts or floods, but if you're

growing the crops and breeding them to be hardier, you have a better chance of

not starving. In order to keep feeding people as the population grows, you have

to radically change the environment of the planet.

Especially if you grow grain, you can create a food surplus, which makes

cities possible and also the specialization of labor, like in the

before agriculture everybody's job was foraging, and it took about a thousand

calories of work to create a thousand calories of food. And it was impossible

to create large population centers. But if you have a surplus, agriculture can

support people not directly involved in the production of food. Like, for

instance, tradespeople who can devote their lives to better farming equipment,

which in turn makes it easier to produce more food more efficiently, which in

time makes it possible for a corporation to turn a profit on this 99-cent double

cheeseburger.

This is delicious, by the way.

It's actually terrible. And it's very cold.

And I wish that I had not eaten it. I mean, can we just compare what I was

promised to what I was delivered?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this is not... Some would say that large and complex

agricultural communities that can support cities and eventually

inexpensive meat sandwiches are not necessarily beneficial to the planet or

even to its human inhabitants.

Although that's a bit of a tough argument to make coming to you as I am

in a series of ones and zeros.

Agriculture can be practiced all over the world, although in some cases it

takes extensive manipulation of the environment like, you know, irrigation,

controlled flooding, terracing, that kind of thing.

Farming is hard.

So hard, in fact, that one is tempted to claim ownership over other humans and

then have them till the land on your behalf, which is the kind of non-ideal

social order that tends to be associated with agricultural communities.

So why did agriculture happen? Wait, I haven't talked about herders.

Herders, man! Always getting the short end of the stick.

Herding is a really good and interesting alternative to foraging and agriculture.

You domesticate some animals and then you take them on the road with you. The

advantages of herding are obvious. First, you get to be a cowboy.

Also, animals provide meat and milk, but they also help out with shelter because

they can provide wool and leather. The downside is that you have to move around

a lot because your herd always needs new grass, which makes it hard to build

cities unless you are the Mongols.

By the way, over the next 40 weeks you will frequently hear generalizations

followed by, unless you are the Mongols.

But anyway, one of the main reasons herding only caught on in certain parts

of the world is that there aren't that many animals that lend themselves to

domestication. Like you have sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, horses, camels,

donkeys, reindeer, water buffalo, yaks, all of which have something in common,

they aren't native to the Americas.

The only halfway useful herding animal native to the Americas is the llama.

No, not that llama.

Two L's. Yes, that llama.

Most animals just don't work for domestication. Like hippos are large,

which means they provide lots of meat, but unfortunately they like to eat

people. Zebras are too ornery. Grizzlies have wild hearts that can't be broken.

Elephants are awesome, but they take way too long to breed. Which reminds me,

it's time for the open letter.

Elegant. But first, let's see what the secret compartment has for me today.

Oh!

It's another double cheeseburger.

Thanks, secret compartment.

Just kidding, I don't thank you for this. An open letter to elephants.

Hey elephants, you're so cute and smart and awesome, why you gotta be pregnant

for 22 months?

That's crazy!

And then you only have one kid!

If you were more like cows, you might have taken us over by now. Little did

you know, but the greatest evolutionary advantage?

being useful to humans.

Like here is a graph of cow population and here is a graph of elephant

population. Elephants, if you just inserted yourself into human life the

way cows did, you could have used your power and intelligence to form secret

elephant societies conspiring against the humans.

And then you could have risen up and destroyed us and made an awesome

elephant world with elephant cars and elephant planes. It would have been so

great, but no, you gotta be pregnant for 22 months and then have just one It's so

annoying. Best wishes.

John Green. Right, but back to the agricultural revolution and why it

occurred. Historians don't know for sure, of course, because there are no

written records, but they love to make guesses.

Maybe population pressure necessitated agriculture even though it was more

work, or abundance gave people leisure to experiment with domestication, or

planting originated as a fertility right, or, as some historians have

argued, people needed to domesticate grains in order to produce more alcohol.

Charles Darwin, like most 19th century scientists, believed agriculture was an

accident, saying,

usually good variety of native plant might attract the attention of some wise

old savage.

Off topic, but you will note in the coming weeks that the definition of

savage tends to be, not me.

Maybe the best theory is that there wasn't really an agricultural revolution

at all, but that agriculture came out of an evolutionary desire to eat more.

Like, early hunter-gatherers knew that seeds germinate when planted, and when

you find something that makes food, you want to do more of it. Unless it's this

food. Then you want to do less of it.

I kind of want to spit it out.

Oh, that's much better. So early farmers would find the most accessible forms of

wheat and plant them and experiment with them, not because they were trying to

start an agricultural revolution, because they were like, you know what

would be awesome?

More food!

Like on this topic, we have evidence that more than 13,000 years ago, humans

in southern Greece were domesticating snails. In the Fronkvi cave, there's a

huge pile of snail shells. Most of them are larger than current snails,

suggesting that the people who ate them were selectively breeding them to be

bigger and more nutritious.

Snails make excellent domesticated food sources, by the way, because A

surprisingly caloric, B they're easy to carry since they come with their own

suitcases, and C to imprison them you just have to scratch a ditch around

their living quarters.

That's not really a revolution, that's just people trying to increase available

calories. But one non-revolution leads to another, and pretty soon you have

this as far as the eye can see. Many historians also argue that without

agriculture we wouldn't have all the bad things that come with complex

civilizations like patriarchy, inequality, war, and unfortunately

famine. And as far as the planet is concerned, agriculture has been a big

loser. Without it, humans never would have changed the environment so much,

building dams and clearing forests and more recently drilling for oil that we

can turn into fertilizer.

Many people made the choice for agriculture independently, but does that

mean it was the right? choice?

Maybe so, and maybe not, but regardless, we can't unmake that choice.

And that's one of the reasons I think it's so important to study history.

History reminds us that revolutions are not events so much as they're processes.

That for tens of thousands of years, people have been making decisions that

irrevocably shaped the world that we live in today. Just as today we're

making subtle, irrevocable decisions that people of the future will remember

as revolutions.

Next week, we're going to journey to the Indus River Ve- Whoa.

It's very fragile, our globe.

Like the real globe. We're going to travel to the Indus River Valley.

I'll see you then.

Hi, I'm John Green, and this is Crash Course World History. Let's begin today

with a question.

Why am I alive?

Also, why don't I have any eyes? Ah, that's better. The way we answer that

question ends up organizing all kinds of other thoughts, like what we should

value, and how we should behave, and if we should eat meat, and whether we

should dump that boy who is very nice, but insanely clingy in a way that he

cannot possibly think is attractive.

All of which adds up... Mr. Green, Mr. Green, uh, are... Are you talking about

me? Yes, I am talking about you, me from the past. I am telling you that one of

the reasons we study history is so that you can be a less terrible boyfriend.

But more on that momentarily.

Today we're going to talk about civilizations, but in order to do that,

we have to talk about talking about civilizations, because it's a

problematic word. So problematic, in fact, that I have to turn to camera two

to discuss it. Certain conglomerations of humans are seen as civilizations,

whereas, say, nomadic cultures generally aren't. Unless you are, say it with me,

the Mongols.

By calling some groups civilizations, you imply that all other social orders

are uncivilized, which is basically just another way of saying that they're

savages or barbarians. Side note, originally Greek, the word barbarian

denoted anyone who did not speak ancient Greek, because to the Greeks, all other

languages sounded like bar bar bar bar bar bar.

So that is to say that we are all essentially barbarians, except for the

classics majors, which is worth remembering when we're discussing

civilizations. Civilizations are like most of the things we like to study.

They're intellectual constructs. No one woke up in the city of Thebes in Egypt

one morning and said, what a beautiful morning, I sure am living at the height

of Egyptian civilization.

Still, they're useful constructs, particularly when you're comparing one

civilization to another. They're less useful when you're comparing a

civilization to a non-civilization type social order, which is why we will try

to avoid that.

And yes, I am getting to the good boyfriend stuff.

Patience, grasshopper. So what is a civilization?

Well, diagnosing a civilization is a little like diagnosing an illness. If

you have four or more of the following symptoms, you might be a civilization.

Surplus production, once one person can make an food to feed several people, it

becomes possible to build a city, another symptom of civilization.

It also leads to the specialization of labor, which in turn leads to trade.

Like, if everybody picks berries for a living, there is no reason to trade,

because I have berries and you have berries. But if I pick berries for a

living and you make hammers, suddenly we have cause to trade.

Civilizations are also usually associated with social stratification,

centralized government, shared values, generally in the form of religion, and

writing. And at least in the early days, they were almost always associated with

rivers. These days you can just bisect a segment of land horizontally and

vertically and boom, build a city. But 5,000 years ago, civilizations were

almost always associated with rivers, whether that's the Tigris and the

Euphrates, the Yellow River, the Nile, the Amazon Basin, the Coatzacoalcos.

God, I was doing so good until I got to Coatzacoalcos.

Coatzacoalcos.

Coatzacoalcos, maybe.

Why river valleys? They're flat, they're well-watered, and when they flood, they

deposit nutrient-rich silt. We'll have more to say about most of these

civilizations later, but let's talk about this guy, the Indus Valley

civilization, because it's my all-time favorite.

The Indus Valley Civilization was located in the floodplain of the Indus

and Suwardi Rivers, and it was about the best place in the world to have an

ancient civilization because the rivers flooded very reliably twice a year,

which meant that it had the most available calories per acre of pretty

much anywhere on the planet. We know the Indus Valley Civilization flourished a

long time ago, probably around 3000 BCE.

Why is that question literally hanging over my head?

But people of the Indus Valley were trading with Mesopotamians as early as

3500 BCE.

We also know that it was the largest of the ancient civilizations,

archaeologists have discovered more than 1,500 sites.

So what do we know about this civilization?

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. Everything we know about the Indus

Valley civilization comes from archaeology, because while they did use

written language, we don't know how to read it, and no Rosetta Stone has thus

far appeared to help us learn it. I meant the other Rosetta Stone Thought

Bubble. Yeah.

Although, come to think of it, either would be acceptable.

So here's what we know. They had amazing cities. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are the

best known, with dense, multi-story homes constructed out of uniformly sized

bricks along perpendicular streets.

I mean, this wasn't some ancient world version of Houston.

More like Chicago.

This means they must have had some form of government and zoning, but we don't

know what gave this government its authority.

Cities were oriented to catch the wind and provide a natural form of air

conditioning. And they were clean. Most homes were to a centralized drainage

system that used gravity to carry waste and water out of the city in big sewer

ditches that ran under the main avenues, a plumbing system that would have been

the envy of many 18th century European cities. Also, in Mohenjo-daro, the

largest public building was not a temple or a palace, but a public bath, which

historians call the Great Bath.

We don't know what the Great Bath was used for, but since later Indian culture

placed a huge emphasis on ritual purity, which is the basis for the caste system,

some historians have speculated that the bath might have been like a giant

baptismal pool. Also, they traded. One of the coolest things that the Indus

Valley civilization produced were seals, used as identification markers on goods

and clay tablets.

These seals contain the writing that we still can't decipher, and a number of

fantastic designs, many featuring animals and monsters. One of the most

famous and frightening is of a man with what looks like water buffalo horns on

his head, sitting cross-legged between a tiger and a bull.

We don't know what's really going on here, but it's safe to say that this was

a powerful dude, because he seems to be able to control the How did these seals

let us know that they traded? Well, because we found them in Mesopotamia,

not the Indus Valley.

Plus, archaeologists have found stuff like bronze in the Indus Valley that is

not native to the region.

So what did they trade? Cotton cloth.

Still such a fascinating export, incidentally, that it will be the

subject of the 40th and final video in this very series.

But here's the most amazing thing about the Indus Valley people.

They were peaceful.

Despite archaeologists finding 1,500 sites, they have found very little

evidence of warfare and almost no weapons.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, before we talk about the fascinating demise of the

Indus Valley civilization, it's time for the open letter.

Magic! I wonder what the secret compartment has for me today.

Oh! Fancy clothes!

I guess the secret compartment didn't think I was dressed up enough for the

occasion.

An open letter to historians.

Dear historians, The Great Bath?

Really? The Great Bath?

I'm trying to make history fascinating and you give me a term that evokes

scented candles, bath salts, and Frederik Fekai hair products?

I know sometimes the crushingly boring names of history aren't your fault, you

didn't name the Federalist Papers or the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Adam Smith,

but when you do get a chance to name something, you go with... The Great

Bath? Not the epic bath of Mohenjo-daro? Or the bath to end all baths? Or the

pool that ruled?

Or the moist mystery of Mohenjo-daro? Or the wet wonder? The Great Bath?

Really? You can do better!

Best wishes, John Green.

So what happened to these people? Well, here's what didn't happen to them. They

didn't morph into the current residents of that area of the world, Hindu Indians

or Muslim Pakistanis. Those people probably came from the Caucasus.

Instead, sometime around 1750 BCE, the Indus Valley civilization declined until

it faded into obscurity. Why?

Historians have three theories.

One, conquest.

Turns out to be a terrible military strategy not to have any weapons, and

it's possible people from the Indus Valley were completely overrun by people

from the Caucasus. Two, environmental disaster.

It's possible they brought about their own end by destroying their environment.

Three, earthquake.

The most interesting theory is that a massive earthquake changed the course of

the river so much that a lot of the tributaries dried up. Without adequate

water supplies for irrigation, the cities couldn't sustain themselves, so

people literally just picked up and left for greener pastures.

Well, probably not pastures. It's unlikely they became nomads. They

probably just moved to a different plane and continued their agricultural ways. I

am already boring you and I haven't even told you yet how to be a better boy and

or girlfriend. I'm gonna do that now. So we don't know why the Indus Valley

civilization ended, but we also don't really know why it started.

Why did these people build cities and dig swimming pools and make

unnecessarily ornate seals?

Were they motivated by hunger, fear, a desire for companionship, the need to be

near their sacred spaces, or a general feeling that city life was just more

awesome than foraging?

Thinking about what motivated them to structure their life as they did helps

us to think about how we structure our own lives. In short, you're clingy

because you're motivated by fear and a need for companionship. And she finds it

annoying because it's enough work having to be responsible for herself without

having to also be responsible for you.

Also, you're not really helping her by clinging, and from the Indus Valley in

the Bronze Age to school life today, human life is all about collaboration.

Trading cloth for bronze, building cities together, and collaborating to

make sure that human lives are tilted to catch the wind.

Next week we will travel here to discuss the hot mess, Opitamia, but in the

meantime, if you have any questions, leave them in comments and our team of

semi-trained semi-professionals will do their best to answer them. Also, you'll

find some suggested resources in the video info below, he said, pointing at

his pants. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next week.

Hi there, I'm John Green. You're watching Crash Course World History, and

today we're gonna talk about... Iraq.

No, you purportedly smart globe. We're gonna talk about Mesopotamia. I love

Mesopotamia because it helped create two of my favorite things, writing and

taxes. Why do I like taxes? Because before taxes, the only certainty was

death. Mr. Green! Mr. Green!

Did you know that you're referencing Mark Twain? I'm not referencing Mark

Twain, me from the past. I'm referencing Benjamin Franklin, who was probably

himself referencing the unfortunately named playwright Christopher Bullock.

Listen, you may be smart, kid, but I've been smart longer. By the way, today's

illustration points out that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world monocular.

So about 5,000 years ago, in the land Meso, or between, the Tigris and

Euphrates Potomoi, or rivers, cities started popping up, much like they had

in our old friend the Indus River Valley.

These early Mesopotamian cities engaged in a form of socialism where farmers

contributed their crops to public storehouses, out of which workers, like

metal workers or builders or male models or whatever, would be paid uniform wages

in grain.

So basically... Mr. Green, Mr. Green, were there really male models? Can you

do blue steel?

Oh, younger version. of myself, How I Hate You.

Oh, the humiliation I suffer for you people. That was my best blue steel.

That was as close as I can get.

So anyway, if you lived in a city, you could be something other than a

shepherd, and thanks to this proto-socialism, you could be reasonably

sure that you'd eat- Stan, is there any way we can get another globe in here? I

feel like this shot is inadequately globed.

Yes, much better. You know, you can tell the quality of a historian by the number

of his or her globes. But even though you could give up your flock, a lot of

people didn't want to, and one of the legacies of Mesopotamia is the enduring

conf- between country and city. You see this explored a lot in some of our

greatest art, like the Beverly Hillbillies and Deliverance and the

showdown between Enkidu and Gilgamesh in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is one

of the oldest known works of literature, and I'm not going to spoil it for you.

There's a link to the poem in the video info, but suffice it to say that in the

showdown between country and city, the city wins.

So what were these city-states like? Well, let's take a look at one such city

-state, Gilgamesh's hometown of Uruk.

in the Thought Bubble. Uruk was a walled city with an extensive canal system and

several monumental temples called ziggurats.

The priests of these temples initially had all the power because they were able

to communicate directly with the gods and that was a useful talent because

Mesopotamian gods were moody and frankly pretty mean. Like according to

Gilgamesh, they once got mad at us because we were making too much noise

while they were trying to sleep.

So they decided to destroy all of humanity with a flood. The Tigris and

Euphrates are decent as rivers go, but Mesopotamia is no Indus Valley with its

on-schedule flooding and easy irrigation.

A lot of slave labor was needed to make the Tigris and Euphrates useful for

irrigation. They're also difficult to navigate and flood unpredictably and

violently.

So, I mean, given that the region tends to yo-yo between devastating flood and

horrible drought, it follows that one would believe that the gods are kind of

random and capricious, and that any priests who might be able to lead

rituals that placate those gods would be very useful individuals.

But about 1,000 years after the first temples, we find in cities like Uruk a

rival structure begins to show up, the palace.

The responsibility for the well-being and success of the social order was

shifting from gods to people, a power shift that we'll see-saw throughout

human history until probably forever, actually.

But in another development we'll see again, these kings, who probably started

out as military leaders or really rich landowners, took on a quasi-religious

role. How?

often by engaging in sacred marriage, specifically, scoodily-pooping with the

high priestess of the city's temple. So the priests were overtaken by kings, who

soon declared themselves priests.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. So how do we know that these kings were scoodily

-pooping with lady priests?

Because they made a scoodily-pooping tape and put it on the internet. No!

Because there's a written record!

Mesopotamia gave us writing, specifically a form of writing called

cuneiform, which was initially created not to, like, woo lovers or whatever,

but to record transactions, like How many bushels of wheat were exchanged for

how many goats? I'm not kidding, by the way, a lot of cuneiform is about wheat

and goats.

I don't think you can overestimate the importance of writing, but let's just

make three points here. First, writing and reading are things that not everyone

can do, so they create a class distinction, one that in fact survives

to this day. Foraging social orders were relatively egalitarian, but the

Mesopotamians had slaves, and they played this metaphorically resonant

sport that was like polo, except instead of riding on horses, you rode- on other

people. And written language played an important role in widening the gap

between classes. Two, once writing enters the picture, you have actual

history instead of just a lot of guesswork and archaeology. And three,

without writing, I would not have a job.

So I'd like to personally thank Mesopotamia for making it possible for

me to work while reclining in my lazy boy. So why did this writing happen in

Mesopotamia? Well, the fertile crescent, while it is fertile, is lacking pretty

much everything else.

In order to get metal for tools, or stone for sculpture, or wood for

burning, Mesopotamia had to trade.

This trading eventually led Mesopotamia to develop the world's first territorial

kingdom, which will become very important and will eventually culminate

in some extraordinarily inbred Habsburgs. The city-state period in

Mesopotamia ended around 2000 BCE, probably because drought and a shift in

the course of rivers led to pastoral nomads coming in and conquering the

environmentally weakened cities, and then the nomads said, into cities of

their own, as nomads almost always will, unless, wait for it, you are the

Mongols.

These new Mesopotamian city-states were similar to their predecessors in that

they had temples and writing and their own self-glorifying stories, but they

were different in some important ways.

First, that early proto-socialism was replaced by something that looked a lot

like private enterprise, where people could produce as much as they would like

as long as they gave a cut, also known as taxes.

to the government.

We talk a lot of smack about taxes, but it turns out they're pretty important to

creating stable social orders.

Things were also different politically because the dudes who'd been the tribal

chiefs became like full-blown kings who tried to extend their power outside of

cities and also tried to pass on their power to their sons.

The most famous of these early monarchs is Hammurabi, or as I remember him from

my high school history class, the Hammer of Abi.

Hammurabi ruled the new kingdom of Babylon from 1792 BCE to 1750 BCE.

Hammurabi's main claim- to fame is his famous law code, which established

everything from like the wages of ox drivers to the fact that the punishment

for taking an eye should be having an eye taken.

Hammurabi's law code can be pretty insanely harsh, like if a builder builds

a shoddy building and then the owner's son dies in a collapse, the punishment

for that is the execution of the builder's son.

The kid's like, that's not fair. I'm just a kid. What did I do? You should

kill my dad.

All of which is to say that Hammurabi's law code gives a new meaning to the

phrase tough on crime, but it did introduce the presumption of innocence.

And in the law code, Hammurabi tried to portray himself in two roles that should

sound familiar.

Shepherd and father.

I am the shepherd who brings peace.

My benevolent shade was spread over the city. I held the peoples of Sumer and

Akkad safely on my lap.

So again, we see the authority for protection of the social order shifting

to men, not gods, which is important, but don't worry, it'll shift back.

Even though territorial kingdoms like Babylon were more powerful than any

cities that had come before, and even though Babylon was probably the world's

most populous city during Hammurabi's rule, it wasn't actually that powerful.

And keeping with the pattern, it was soon taken over by the formerly nomadic

Kassites. The thing about territorial kingdoms is they relied on the poorest

people to pay taxes and provide labor and serve in the army.

of which made you not like your king very much. So if you saw any nomadic

invaders coming by, you might just be like, hey, nomadic invaders, come on in,

you seem better than the last guy.

Well, that was the case until the Assyrians came along anyway. The

Assyrians have a deserved reputation for being the brutal bullies of Mesopotamia.

But the Assyrians did give us an early example of probably the most important

and durable form of political organization in world history, and also

Star Wars history.

The Empire.

The biggest problem with empires is that, by definition, they're diverse and

multi-ethnic, which makes them hard to unify. So beginning around 911 BCE, the

Neo-Assyrian Empire grew from its hometowns of Ashur and Nineveh to

include the whole of Mesopotamia, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and

even, by 680 BCE, Egypt.

They did this thanks to the most brutal, terrifying, and efficient army the world

had ever seen.

adjectives describing my college girlfriend?

For one thing, the army was a meritocracy.

Generals weren't chosen based on who their dads were.

They were chosen based on if they were good at generaling. Stan, is generaling

a word?

It is!

Also, they were super mean, like they would deport hundreds of thousands of

people to separate them from their history and their families and also

moved skilled workers around where they were most needed. Also, the Neo

-Assyrians loved to find would-be rebels and lop off their appendages,

particularly their noses for some reason. And there was your standard

raping and pillaging and torture, all of which was done in the name of Asher, the

great god of the Neo-Assyrians, whose divine regent was the king.

Osher, through the king, kept the world going, and as long as conquest

continued, the world would not end. But if conquest ever stopped, the world

would end, and there would be rivers of blood and weeping and gnashing of teeth.

You know how apocalypses go. The Assyrians spread this worldview with

propaganda like monumental architecture and readings about how awesome the king

was at public festivals, all of which was designed to inspire awe in the

empire's subjects.

Oh, that reminds me, it's time for the open letter.

An open letter to the word awesome.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, Stan, is this yellow cake uranium?

You never find that in Mesopotamia. Dear Awesome, I love you. Like most

contemporary English speakers, in fact, I probably love you a little too much.

The thing about you, Awesome...

is that awesome is just so awesomely awesome at being awesome. So we lose

track of what you really mean, awesome. You're not just cool, you're terrifying

and wonderful.

Your knees buckling, chest tightening, fearful encounters with something

radically other, something that we know could both crush and bless us.

That is awe.

And I apologize for having watered you down, but seriously, you're awesome.

Best wishes.

John Green. So what happened to the Assyrians? Well, first, they extended

their empire beyond their roads, making administration impossible.

But more importantly, when your whole worldview is based on the idea that the

apocalypse will come if you ever lose a battle, and then you lose one battle,

the whole worldview just blows up. That eventually happened and in 612 BCE the

city of Nineveh was finally conquered and the Neo-Assyrian Empire had come to

its end. But the idea of empire was just getting started. Next week we'll talk

about mummies. Oh, I have to talk about other things too?

Crap, I only want to talk about mummies. Anyway, we'll be talking about... Sudan.

No! Dang it!

We'll actually be talking about... Egypt.

Thank you, Smart Globe.

See you next week.

Hi there, my name is John Green and this is Crash Course World History. Today

we're going to talk about Egypt.

No, not that Egypt.

Older, older, older, less fictional.

Yes, that one.

Ancient Egypt is probably the most influential of the river valley

civilizations. Like, you may not recognize any Assyrian kings or Assyrian

language, but you probably do know King Tut and you may recognize that the Eye

of Horus is right now staring at me and judging me. I can feel, I can feel your

judgment.

When we think of ancient civilizations, we think of Egypt. There are a few

reasons for this, like the fact that the pyramids are the last man standing among

the seven ancient wonders of the world. But more importantly, ancient Egyptian

civilization lasted from 3000 BCE to 332 BCE.

That's a period that historians call a long-ass time.

And I will remind you, it is not cursing.

if I'm talking about donkeys. So there are many approaches to the study of

history. You can view history as a millennia-long conversation about

philosophy, or as clashes between great men, or you can see history through the

lens of traditionally neglected populations like women, or indigenous

peoples, or slaves. And we're going to try to take many approaches to our study

of history during Crash Course.

Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Which approach is right?

I mean, for the test.

Oh, me from the past. Remember how you spent all of third year French writing

notes back and forth to that girl and she eventually agreed to go out with you

and you did make it to second base, but now you can hardly parle un mot de

français? Historical lenses are like that, my friend. With every choice,

something is gained and something is lost.

Right, so in discussing agriculture and early river valley civilizations, we've

been approaching history through the lens of resource distribution and

geography. And just as the violent and capricious Tigris and Euphrates rivers

shaped the worldview of of early Mesopotamians, the Nile shaped the

worldview of the Egyptians.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

The Nile was regular, navigable, and benign, making for one of the safest and

richest agricultural areas in the world. Each summer the river flooded the fields

at precisely the right time, leaving behind nutrient-rich silt for planting

season. Planting was so easy that Egyptians just tossed seeds around the

silty earth and then let their cattle or pigs walk on it to press the seeds into

the ground, and then boom!

grain and figs and wheat and pomegranates and melons and joy.

Unlike most river valley civilizations, Egyptian communities existed only along

the Nile, which was navigable enough to get valuable resources downstream from

timber to gold, which the Egyptians considered the divine metal, thereby

introducing an idea that would eventually culminate in Mr. T. The Nile

was also easily tamed. While other river valley civilizations needed complicated

and labor-intensive hydraulic engineering projects to irrigate crops,

the Nile was so chill that Egyptians could use a simple form of water

management called basin irrigation, in which farmers used flood waters to fill

earthen basins and canals for irrigation.

In short, the awesomeness of the Nile meant Egyptians could create big food

surpluses with relatively little work, allowing time and energy for some pretty

impressive projects.

Also, the Nile may help explain ancient Egypt's general optimism.

While ancient Sumerian religion, for instance, saw the afterlife as this

gloomy, dark place, Egyptians were often buried with things that were useful and

pleasurable to them in life, because the afterlife was seen as a continuation of

this life.

Which, at least if you lived along the Nile, wasn't half bad.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. And now, my dear pupils, I shall terrorize you with the

oppression of dates.

No.

Dates.

Yes. Thank you.

Historians have divided Egyptian history into three broad categories, each with

their own numbered dynasties. But only hardcore Egyptologists know the

dynasties, and we're not trying to become hardcore Egyptologists.

The Old Kingdom lasted from 2649 to 2152, the Middle Kingdom from 2040 to

1640, and the New Kingdom, so-called because it is only 3,000 years old,

lasted from 1550 to 1070 BCE.

In between you have a couple so-called intermediate periods. Okay, Old Kingdom.

This was really the glory age of ancient Egypt, when you got all the stuff that

would later make India Anna Jones possible, like the pyramids at Giza, and

the Sun King Ra, and the idea of divine kingship. The king, or pharaoh, was

either a god or very close to a god, which seems like a good gig, except that

it meant he wasn't expected to act like a person, he was expected to act like a

god, which in ancient Egypt means acting like the Nile.

Calm, cool, benevolent.

There's no fun in that.

And then of course there are the pyramids, which aside from remaining

impressive to behold, represent a remarkable degree of political and

social control over the population.

Because it is not easy to convince people to devote their lives to building

a sarcophagus.

For someone else.

The most famous pyramids were built between 2575 and 2465 BCE.

The one with the Sphinx was built for Kefrin. The largest, the Great Pyramid,

was built for the Pharaoh Khufu. The pyramids were built partly by peasants

who were required by Egyptian law to work for the government a certain number

of months per year, and partly by slaves. But not by Moses and the Jews,

who showed up on the scene long before the pyramids were ever even a twinkle in

Khufu's eye. This leads to an overwhelming question.

Why? Why in the sweet name of Ra would anyone ever build such a thing? Well,

let's start with Ra. So Ra started out as a regional god reigning over

Heliopolis, but he eventually became really central to the entire pantheon of

gods in ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, but also the god of creation.

And the thinking was that if humans did their jobs, then the pantheon of gods

would maintain cosmic order. And since the pharaohs became gods upon their

death, It made sense to please them, even unto pyramids.

Egyptian popular religion also embraced the belief in amulets and magic and

divination and the belief that certain animals, especially cats, had divine

power, and yes, I did bring that up just so I could wallcat.

Old Kingdom Egypt was also remarkably literate. They had two forms of writing,

hieroglyphics for sacred writing, and then demotic script for recording

contracts and agreements and other boring stuff.

The last thing I want to say about Old Kingdom Egypt, it was ridiculously rich.

But then, around 2250 BCE, there were a series of droughts and pharaohs started

fighting over who should have power, and we had an intermediate period.

Which was followed by the Middle Earth.

You know what? The Middle Kingdom?

Oh, really?

That's a bummer, Stan.

I want it to be the Middle Earth.

How awesome would that be? Like, right in the middle of Egyptian history there

were hobbits.

So the Middle Kingdom, which apparently had no hobbits, restored pharaonic rule

in 2040 BCE, but with some distinct changes.

First, the new rulers were outsiders from downriver Anubia. Second, they

fostered a new pantheon of gods, the star of which was Amun, which means

Hidden. So here's a little lesson from history.

Hidden gods tend to do well because they're omnipresent. So Amun eventually

merged with Ra to form the god Amun-Ra, who was like the best god ever, and all

the Middle Kingdom pharaohs made temples for him and devoted all of their surplus

to his glory.

The Middle Kingdom also developed an interest in conquering, specifically the

new pharaoh's homeland of Nubia, and they developed a side interest in

getting conquered, specifically by the Semitic peoples from the Levant.

They were able to conquer much of Egypt using superior military technology like

bronze weapons and compound bows and chariots of fire.

What? They're just regular chariots?

Stan, why are you always killing my dreams?

One group, the Hyksos, were able to conquer all of Egypt, but rather than,

like, destroying Egyptian culture, they just relaxed, like the Nile, and

assimilated into the Egyptians.

And the Egyptians adopted their military technology, and then the Egyptians

destroyed the Hyksos and expelled them from Egypt.

And then by 1550 BCE, there was again an Egyptian pharaoh, Ammosus.

whose name only sounds like an STD. Anyway, after all this conquering and

being conquered, Egypt eventually emerged from its geographically imposed

isolationism and...

Can we cue the New Kingdom graphic please? There it is!

New Kingdom Egypt continued this military expansion, but it looked more

like an empire, particularly when they headed south and took over land in an

attempt to find gold and slaves.

Probably the most expansive of the New Kingdom pharaohs was Hatshepsut, a woman

who ruled Egypt for about 22 years, and who expanded Egypt not through military

might, but through trade. But most New Kingdom pharaohs, being dudes, focused

on military expansion, which brought Egypt into conflicts with the Assyrians,

who you'll remember from last week. and then the Persians, and then Alexander

the Great, and finally the Romans.

On the whole, Egypt probably would have been better off enjoying its

geographical isolation and not trying to conquer new territory, but all of

Egypt's friends had jumped off a bridge, so... One last thing about the New

Kingdom. There was this crazy New Kingdom pharaoh named Akhenaten who

tried to invent a new god for Egypt.

Akhenaten was kind of the Kim Jong Il of ancient Egypt, like he had this feared

police force and this big cult of personality and also he was a nut job.

Anyway, after his death he was replaced by his wife and then a daughter and then

a son, Tutankhaten, who turned his back on the weird god Aten and changed his

name. to Tutankhamun. And that is about all King Tut did before he died,

probably around the age of 17.

Honestly, the only reason King Tut is famous is that most pharaohs had their

graves robbed by ancient people, and King Tut had his grave robbed by 20th

century British people. Which brings us to the open letter.

An open letter to King Tut.

But first we gotta find out what Stan left for me in the secret compartment.

The pen.

I don't- AH!

The shock pad! Stay on!

That was a terrible, terrible gift for the secret compartment.

Dear King Tut, I know that as Pharaoh's lives go, yours was pretty poor. First,

you had to marry your sister, which hopefully you weren't that psyched

about. Plus, you had a cleft palate and probably scoliosis.

Plus, you died before reaching adulthood. But dude, you have had the

best- afterlife ever.

Since your body was discovered in 1922, you've become probably the most famous

ancient person. There have been lots of books about you, scholars have devoted

their lives to you. Dude, we're so obsessed with you that we use this fancy

new technology to scan your body and establish that you probably died of an

infected broken leg and or malaria.

Also, you've inspired such seminal works of art as the Discovery Kids series,

Tootenstein, which my son forces me to watch. Your relics have been to six

continents. So it all works out in the end, man!

Well, I mean, you're still dead, so that kinda sucks.

Best wishes, John Green. King Tut leads us nicely to the really crucial thing

about Egyptian culture. Because King Tut lived right around the same time as the

pyramids, right?

Wrong. Remember, the pyramids were built around 2500 BCE, during the Old Kingdom.

King Tut died in 1322 BCE.

1200 years later.

That's five and a half Americas, but because Egypt was so similar for so

long, it all tends to blend together when we imagine it. Ancient Egypt lasted

a thousand years longer than Christianity has been around, and 800

years longer than that other super long-lived civilization, China.

So there was an entire culture that lasted longer than Western civilization

has existed.

and it had run its course before the West was even born.

Next week, we'll be looking at the Persians and the Greeks.

I'll see you then.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

do some legitimate comp sieve for those of you into that kind of thing. Stan, I

can't help but feel that we have perhaps too many globes.

That's better. Today we're going to learn about the horrible totalitarian

Persians and the saintly, democracy-loving Greeks. But of course,

we already know this story. There were some wars in which no one wore any

shirts and everyone was reasonably fit. The Persians were bad. The Greeks were

good. Socrates and Plato are awesome. The Persians didn't even philosophize.

The West is the best. Go team!

Yeah, well, no.

Let's start with the Persian Empire, which became the model for pretty much

all land-based empires throughout the world, except for, wait for it, the

Mongols.

Much of what we know about the Persians and their empire comes from an outsider

writing about them, which is something we now call history.

And one of the first true historians was Herodotus, whose famous book, The

Persian Wars, talks about the Persians quite a bit. Now the fact that Herodotus

was Greek is important because it introduces us to the idea of historical

bias, but more on that in a second. So the Persian Achaemenid dynasty,

Achaemenid? Hold on.

Achaemenid or Achaemenid.

They're both right? I was right twice?

Right, so the Persian Achaemenid or Achaemenid dynasty was founded in 539

BCE by King Cyrus the Great. Cyrus took his nomadic warriors and conquered most

of Mesopotamia, including the Babylonians, which ended a sad period in

Jewish history called the Babylonian exile, thus ensuring that Cyrus got

great press in the Bible.

But his son Darius I was even greater. He extended Persian control east to our

old friend the Indus Valley, west to our new friend Egypt, and north to Crash

Course newcomer Anatolia. By the way, there were Greeks in Anatolia called

Ionian Greeks who will become relevant shortly.

So even if you weren't Persian, the Persian Empire was pretty dreamy. For

one thing, the Persians ruled with a light touch, like conquered kingdoms

were allowed to keep their kings and their elites as long as they pledged

allegiance to the Persian king and paid taxes, which is why the Persian king was

known as the King of Kings.

Plus taxes weren't too high and the Persians improved infrastructure with

better roads and they had this pony express-like mail service of which

Herodotus said, And

the Persians embraced freedom of religion. Like, they

were Zoroastrian, which has a claim to be the world's first monotheistic

religion. It was really Zoroastrianism that introduced us to the good evil

dualism we all know so well, you know, God and Satan, or Perry and Voldemort.

But the Persians weren't very concerned about converting people of the Empire to

their faith. Plus, Zoroastrianism forbids slavery, and so slavery was

almost unheard of in the Persian Empire.

All in all, if you had to live in the 5th century BCE, the Persian Empire was

probably the best place to do it. Unless, that is, You believe Herodotus

and the Greeks.

We all know about the Greeks. Architecture, philosophy, literature.

The very word music comes from Greek, as does so much else in contemporary

culture. Greek poets and mathematicians and architects and philosophers founded

a culture that we still identify with. And they introduced us to many ideas,

from democracy to fart jokes.

And the Greeks gave the West our first dedicated history. They gave us our

vocabulary for talking about politics.

Plus they gifted us our idealization of democracy, which comes from the

government they had. in Athens. Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Mr. Green!

Did you say fart jokes?

Oh, you don't ask about Doric, Ionian, or Corinthian columns. You don't ask

about Plato's Allegory of the Cave. It's all scatological humor with you. It's

time for the open letter? Really? Already?

All right.

An open letter.

Stan!

To Aristophanes. Dear Aristophanes. Oh, right, I have to check the secret

compartment. Stan, what? Oh.

Thank you, Stan.

It's fake dog poo.

How thoughtful.

So good news and bad news, Aristophanes. 2300 years after your death, this is the

good news, you're still reasonably famous, only 11 of your 40 plays

survived, but even so, you're called the father of comedy, there are scholars

devoted to your work. Now the bad news. Even though your plays are exceptionally

well translated and absolutely hilarious, students don't like to read

them in schools.

They're always like, why do we gotta read this boring And this must be

particularly galling to you because so much of what you did in your career was

make fun of boring crap, specifically in the form of theatrical tragedies. Plus,

you frequently used actual crap to make jokes.

Such as when you had the chorus in the Akarnians imagining a character in your

play throwing crap at a real poet you didn't like.

You, Aristophanes, who wrote that under every stone works a politician who

called wealth the most excellent of all the gods.

You, who are responsible for the following conversation.

I want all to have a share of everything. and everything to be in

common. There will no longer be rich or poor.

I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property

common to all." But who will till the soil?

The slaves.

No. And yet you're seen as homework, drudgery.

That, my friend, is a true tragedy.

On the upside, we did take care of slavery. It only took us 2,000 years.

Best wishes.

John Green. When we think about the high point of Greek culture, exemplified by

the Parthenon and the Plays of Aeschylus, what we're really thinking

about is Athens in the 4th century BCE, right after the Persian Wars.

But Greece was way more than Athens.

Greeks lived in city-states, which consisted of a city and its surrounding

area. Most of these city-states featured at least some form of slavery, and in

all of them, citizenship was limited to males.

Sorry ladies.

Also, each of these city-states had its own form of government ranging from very

democratic, unless you were a woman or a slave, to completely dictatorial. And

the people who lived in these cities considered themselves citizens of that

city, not of anything that would ever be called Greece.

At least until the Persian Wars.

So between 490 and 480 BCE, the Persians made war on the Greek city-states. This

was the war that featured the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 brave Spartans

battled, if you believe Herodotus, 5 million Persians. And also the Battle of

Marathon, which is a plain about 26.2 miles away from Athens.

The whole war started because Athens supported those aforementioned Ionian

Greeks when they were rebelling in Anatolia against the Persians. That made

the Persian king Xerxes mad, so he led two ma- major campaigns against the

Athenians, and the Athenians enlisted the help of all the other Greek city

-states. In the wake of that shared Greek victory, the Greeks began to see

themselves as Greeks rather than as Spartans or Athenians or whatever.

And then Athens emerged as the de facto capital of Greece and then got to

experience a Golden Age, which is something that historians make up. But a

lot of things did happen during the Golden Age, including the Parthenon, a

temple that became a church and then a mosque and then an armory until finally

settling into its current gig.

as a ruin. You also had statesmen like Pericles whose famous funeral oration

brags about the golden democracy of Athens with rhetoric that wouldn't sound

out of place today.

If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private

differences. If a man is able to serve the state, He is not hindered by the

obscurity of his condition.

And when you combine that high-minded rhetoric with the undeniable power and

beauty of the art and philosophy that was created in ancient Athens, it's not

hard to see it as the foundation of Western civilization.

And if you buy into this, you have to be glad that the Greeks won the Persian

Wars. But even if you put aside the slavery and other injustices in Greek

society, there's still trouble. Do I have to say it?

Seriously?

Fine. Trouble, right here in River City with a capital T and that rhymes with P

and that stands for Peloponnese.

Pericles' funeral oration comes from a later war, the Peloponnesian War, which

was a 30-year conflict between the Athenians and the Spartans. The Spartans

did not embrace democracy, but instead embraced a kingship that functioned only

because of a huge class of brutally mistreated slaves.

But to be clear, the war was not about Athens trying to get Sparta to embrace

democratic reform.

Wars rarely are. It was about resources and power.

And the Athenians were hardly saintly in all of this, as evidenced by the famous

Melian dialogue.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So in one of the most famous passages of

Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians sailed to the island

of Melos. a Spartan colony and demanded that the Melians submit to Athenian

rule. The Melians pointed out that they'd never actually fought with the

Spartans and were like, listen, if it's all the same to you, we'd like to go

Switzerland on this one. Except, of course, they didn't say that because

there was no Switzerland. To which the Athenians responded, and here I am

quoting directly, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they

must.

Needless to say, this is not a terribly democratic or enlightened position to

take. This statement, in fact, is sometimes seen as the first explicit

endorsement of the so-called theory of realism in international relations.

For realists, interaction between nations or peoples or cultures is all

about who has the power.

Whoever has it can compel whoever doesn't have it to do pretty much

anything. So what did the meritocratic and democratic Athenians do when the

Melians politely asked not to participate in the fight?

They killed all the Melian men and enslaved all the women and children.

So yes, Socrates gave us his interrogative method, Sophocles gave us

Oedipus, but the legacy of ancient Greece is profoundly ambiguous.

All the more so because the final winner of the Peloponnesian War were the

dictatorial Spartans. Thanks for the incredible bummer, Thought Bubble. So

here's a non-rhetorical question.

Did the right side win the Persian Wars?

Most classicists and defenders of the Western tradition will tell you that of

course we should be glad the Greeks won.

After all, winning the Persian Wars set off the cultural flourishing that gave

us the Classical Age, and plus, if the Persians had won with their monarchy,

they might have strangled democracy in its crib and gave us more one-man rule.

And that's possible, but as a counter to that argument, let's consider three

things. First, it's worth remembering that life under the Persians was pretty

good, and if you look at the last 5,000 years of human history, you'll find a

lot more successful and stable empires than you will democracies. Second, life

under the Athenians wasn't so awesome, particularly if you were a woman or a

slave, and their government was notoriously corrupt.

And ultimately, the Athenian government derived its power not from its citizens,

but from the imperialist belief that might makes right.

It's true that Athens gave us Socrates, but let me remind you, they also killed

him. Well, I mean, they forced him to commit suicide.

Whatever, Herodotus, you're not the only one here who can engage in historical

bias. And lastly, under Persian rule, the Greeks might have avoided the

Peloponnesian War, which ended up weakening the Greek city-states so much

that Alexander, coming soon, the Great's father, was able to conquer all of them,

and then there were a bunch of bloody wars with the Persians, and all kinds of

horrible things, and Greece wouldn't glimpse democracy again for two

millennia, all of which might have been avoided if they had just let themselves

get beaten by the Persians.

All of which forces us to return to the core question of human history.

What's the point of being alive?

I've got good news for you, Guy.

You're only gonna have to worry about it for about eight more seconds.

Should we try to ensure the longest, healthiest, and most productive lives

for humans?

If so, it's easy to argue that Greece should have lost the Persian Wars.

But perhaps lives are supposed to be lived in pursuit of some great ideal

worth sacrificing endlessly for.

And if so, maybe the glory of Athens still shines, however dimly. Those are

the real questions of history. What's the point of being alive? How should we

organize ourselves?

What should we seek from this life? Those aren't easy questions, but...

We'll take another crack at them next week when we talk about the Buddha. I'll

see you then.

Hi, my name is John Green. You're watching Crash Course World History, and

today we're going to talk about... India, which is hard because A, I only

have 10 minutes.

Mr. Green! Mr. Green! I don't have time for you today, me from the past. B, when

we study history, we tend to study unified polities that we can label, like

the Roman Empire, or China, or Beliebers.

And this emphasis on unity tends to... C, lead to labels that mask a lot of

historical difference, like for instance, Europe, which is such a weird

and nebulous word that we don't even know what it means.

Plus, D, no offense Europe, but there are not many histories more complex than

India. And... E, a lot of what we know about Indian history comes from British

historian... who both used and embodied the phrase historical bias.

All of which, F, makes it very unfortunate that we only have ten

minutes, but we will do our best.

Okay, we're gonna make this like Voldemort's soul and split it up into

eight parts.

Part 1, the Vedas. So as you no doubt remember, the Indus River Valley was one

of the earliest cradles of civilization.

But that original civilization basically disappeared sometime after 1750 BCE.

Then there was a long period of Aryan migration, and by Aryans we do not mean,

like, prehistoric Nazis. We mean people from the Caucasus who migrated down to

the Indo-Gag-Gag-Gag-Gag- Stan, can you just spell it for me?

Thank you. We know about these Aryans primarily because they left behind

religious texts, the earliest of which is called the Vedas. The Vedas are also

the earliest texts of what will come to be known as Hinduism, although it wasn't

known as Hinduism then, and they're responsible for tons of stuff, but we

only have ten minutes, so let's just cut to part two, the caste system. The caste

system is one of India's most enduring and fascinating institutions.

Let us read from one of the Vedas about Purusha, the universe-pervading spirit.

When they divided Purusha, in how many different portions did they arrange him?

What became of his mouth? What of his two arms? What were his two thighs and

his two feet called? His mouth became the Brahman, his two arms were made into

the Kshatriya, his two thighs the Vaisyas, from his two feet the Shudra

was born. So this section gives a divine explanation for the caste system.

Brahmins, who as Purusha's mouth, speak to the gods, were at the top.

Kshatriyas from Purusha's arm became the warriors, as you no doubt know if you've

ever attended my gun show.

Vaishyas, the merchants and artisans who provide money for the priests and the

warriors, came from Purusha's thighs.

Because everybody knows the thighs are the money makers, and the shudras are at

the bottom. They're the feet, the laborers and the farmers, who are the

foundation of the social order. Also, the rest of us stand on them. The caste

system becomes much more complicated than this, but that basic division into

four classes remains throughout much of Indian history. In spite of the efforts

of many reformers we'll be meeting in future episodes of Crash Course, the

caste system is the foundation for another big concept in Hinduism.

Dharma is basically one's role in life and society, and it is defined primarily

by birth and by caste.

The whole idea is explained nicely in this passage from the Bhagavad Gita,

where Krishna is talking to the warrior Arjuna.

than a righteous battle.

The Bhagavad Gita is a section of a much larger epic poem called the Mahabharata,

which basically tells the complicated and long story of a war between two

kingdoms. And we can really see how important Dharma is in this passage,

because Krishna is basically telling Arjuna that because he is a warrior, a

kshatriya, He must fight. Even if he's bad at it, like for instance if he gets

killed, it's still preferable to not living his dharma. It's better to be a

bad warrior, if you're a kshatriya, than to be the world's best baker. Basically,

you're better off fulfilling your own dharma poorly than doing someone else's

well. That leads us to part four, samsara, moksha, and- There are both

personal and social reasons for doing your dharma. Right, the social reason is

obvious. Dharma and caste combine for excellent social cohesion.

You get the exact right number of bakers and the exact right number of warriors.

We could stand to implement this system in the United States, actually, where

everyone knows we suffer from a shortage of electrical engineers and a surplus of

people who want to be on reality TV shows.

That would never happen in ancient India. But say that your dharma is to

scoop animal dung your entire life.

Why do you keep doing that when you see other lives that at least appear to be

far more fulfilling, that leads us to the concept of samsara, or the cycle of

rebirth, often called reincarnation. The basic idea is that when you die, your

soul is transferred to another living thing as it is being born.

And if you fulfill your dharma, things improve and you get reborn into a higher

being. You don't have to scoop elephant dung anymore.

But the ultimate goal is not to be reborn as a Brahmin. The ultimate goal

is to be released from the merry-go-round altogether.

And that release is called moksha. The law that holds all this together is

karma, which is summarized really nicely in the Aranyaka Upanishad. The doer of

good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil.

One becomes virtuous by virtuous action.

Bad. by bad action. The Upanishads, by the way, are later religious texts that

began as commentaries on the Vedas, but later became sacred writings in their

own right. This is a really great way to organize a social order from top to

bottom. Everyone has a role, and because their role has a religious dimension,

society stays in balance.

But as a religion, Hinduism has a problem, at least if you want to start

an empire.

Everyone's path to salvation is individual.

The original Brahmins tried to set themselves up as political leaders, but

Hinduism doesn't really place a premium on worshippers obeying their leaders.

And if you are a leader trying to make your subjects listen to you, that's kind

of a bummer. Which brings us to Part 5, Buddhism.

We can't establish this historically, but according to traditional

biographies, our story begins in the 6th century BCE.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So there was this prince, Siddhartha Gautama,

whose father kept him locked away in a palace because a prophecy foretold that

the family would lose the kingdom if he ever left.

But as house arrests go...

this was a good one.

Siddhartha had great food, great entertainment, a hot cousin for a wife,

etc. But he suspected that there was more to life, so he snuck out of the

palace a few times.

On these travels, he encountered an old man, a sick man, and finally, a corpse.

Having realized the ubiquity of suffering, Siddhartha left the palace,

renounced the crown, and sought out the holiest men to try to find how it could

be possible that life would come to such a terrible end.

Eventually, Gautama became an ascetic, fasting and meditating for days at a

time, hoping to find enlightenment.

And finally, after meditating for about a month under a tree, it came to him.

Nirvana. No, not that one. Yes, that.

He finally understood the meaning of life and began teaching it to people who

would become his disciples.

He had become the Buddha, which means teacher. And he taught the four noble

truths, which are 1.

All life is suffering.

2. The source of suffering is desire.

Not just sexual desire, but all wanting of stuff and prestige.

Three, to stop suffering, you must rid yourself of desire.

This sounds simple enough, but if you've ever been dumped by someone, you know

that it is not that easy to just stop desiring.

Four, so how do you do it?

By following the eight-fold path, which, as you may suspect, is a set of eight

prescriptions on how to live that we don't have time to talk about because,

oh, wait, look, Thought Bubble, you put some learning in our learning so we can

learn while we learn.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. So as a religion, Buddhism involves a lot of

meditating and moderation, and there aren't that many fun rituals, and if

you're a Buddhist monk, you don't get to have power like most holy people do. You

have to renounce everything, including your hair. And yes, some of them get to

be Kung Fu monks, but only in China, where Buddhism eventually migrated. and

became a religion with fun rituals and all kinds of great stuff that Siddhartha

Gautama probably wouldn't have even recognized.

But we're not talking about fun, populist religion, we're talking about

old-school ascetic Buddhism.

Sure, you might be happy and fulfilled if you follow the Eightfold Path, but

from everything we've learned so far, it would appear that humans don't want to

be happy and fulfilled or else they never would have stopped foraging. But,

Buddhism was very attractive if you were a low-caste Hindu because there was no

caste system.

In theory, anyone who follows the Eightfold Path and renounces desire can

be freed from suffering and achieve nirvana, maybe even in this life,

instead of having to get reborn for maybe millennia and knowing that each

time there is only a tiny chance that you will end up something awesome like a

honey badger. By the way, totally tangential part six, did you know the

game Chutes and Ladders has its origins in ancient India?

They call it Snakes and Ladders. The ladders are steps forward on the path to

moksha and the snakes take you away from it. Which reminds me, it's time for the

open letter.

That is very close to my head.

Wow. But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment.

Oh look, it's a golf club.

Must be so I can play disco golf.

An open letter to Chutes and Ladders. Dear Chutes and Ladders, this is disco

golf. It's a game of skill.

My success at disco golf is entirely dependent on whether I am good at disco

golf. Now listen, Chutes and Ladders, I remember your game being awesome when I

was a kid, but I have a two-year-old son myself, and I recently bought him Chutes

and Ladders, and you know what happened the first time we played? He beat me!

Chutes and Ladders, this is a child who regularly refers to helicopters as

Heliflopters. I don't want to say that he's not my intellectual equal, but I'm

potty trained.

You know why he beat me? Because there is no skill involved in Chutes and

Ladders at all. It is completely random and capricious and arbitrary and cold,

just like the universe.

I don't want to play games that are like the universe. I want to play games so I

can forget what the universe is like.

Best wishes.

John Green. Okay, part seven, Ashoka. Remember that for most of Indian

history, India was not one unified place. It was tons of different

principalities and city-states and everything else.

But India did experience indigenous political unity twice, first under the

Mauryan dynasty in the third century BCE, and then again in the Gupta dynasty

from the 300s to the 500 CE, but we're not going to talk about that because it

bores me. Right now we're interested in one particular leader from the Mauryan

dynasty. Ashoka. Because Ashoka attempted to rule through quasi-Buddhist

principles. So Ashoka was initially a warrior who ended up expanding the

empire that his grandfather started, and Ashoka experienced this conversion to

Buddhism after he saw his own army devastate the Kingdom of Kalinga,

something I bring up primarily so that I can say Kingdom of Kalinga. Stan, is

there any way we could write a song about that? Like, Kingdom of Kalinga.

Sorry you got destroyed.

So Ashoka built stupas. Stupas? Hold on.

Stupas. Could he have said that any more pretentiously?

Stupas. So Ashoka built stupas, these mound-like monuments to the Buddha, all

over his kingdom to show his devotion.

And he also put up pillars all throughout his empire that proclaimed

his benevolent rule and said he was going to rule through something he

called Dhamma, which according to one of the pillars went like this.

Proper behavior towards servants and employees, respect for mother and

father, generosity to friends, companions, relations, Brahmins, and

ascetics. and not killing living beings.

So those are not individualistic goals like we see in Hinduism, they're

relational goals like we're gonna see next week.

when we study Confucianism. And that's one of the reasons why Ashoka's empire

wasn't actually very Buddhist, because ultimately, Buddhism isn't that

concerned with the order of the world. Buddhism argues that the fulfillment of

the self will lead to the order of the world. In the end, Ashoka's empire

didn't outlast him by much, and soon enough, Buddhism declined in India,

almost to the point of extinction.

Part 8, the big finish. So as anyone who's ever practiced yoga knows,

Hinduism is the most flexible of all the world religions, which is part of the

reason it's often described as polytheistic. The belief that gods can

take many forms makes it easy for Hinduism to assimilate other religious

traditions, which is exactly what happened with Buddhism. In time, the

Buddha came to be worshipped as another incarnation of one of the Hindu gods and

not as a mortal teacher. So in the end, Hinduism, rather than purging the

Buddha, enveloped him. So all this means that while Hinduism has a tremendous

amount of variety and flexibility, its core tenets of Samsara karma, and the

caste system have provided a remarkable amount of cultural and social unity to

the Indian subcontinent for millennia. Fortunately for the Buddha, his

teachings migrated east to China. We're going to make that same journey next

week. I'll see you then.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're gonna

talk about China, which these days is discussed almost constantly on

television and in newspapers. Wait, are they still a thing? So we used to put

information on thinly sliced trees, and then you would pay someone to take these

thinly sliced trees and throw them onto your front lawn, and that's how we

received information.

No one thought this was weird, by the way.

Right, but anyway, you hear a lot about how China's going to overtake the US and

bury us under a pile of inexpensive electronics, but I don't want to address

those fears today. Instead, I want to talk about how the way you tell a story

shapes the story.

China was really the first modern state, by which I mean it had a centralized

government and a core of bureaucrats who could execute the wishes of that

government, and it lasted in pretty much the same form from 150 BCE until 1911

CE, which is technically known as a long-ass time.

The Chinese were also among the first people to write history. In fact, one of

the Confucian classics is called the Shu Jing, or Classic of History.

This is great for us because we can now see the things the Chinese recorded as

they were happening, but it's also problematic because of the way the story

is told.

So even me from the past with this five minutes of world history knows that

Chinese history is conveniently divided into periods called dynasties. Mr.

Green, I didn't even say anything.

That doesn't seem...

Very fair. What makes a dynasty a dynasty is that it's ruled by a king, or

as the Chinese know him, an emperor, who comes from a continuous ruling family.

As long as that family produces emperors, and they are always dudes. No

they aren't. First off, there were several empress dowagers who wielded

tremendous power throughout Chinese history, and there was one very

important full-fledged empress, Empress Wu, who ruled China for more than 20

years and founded her own freaking dynasty.

And those emperors keep ruling, the dynasty gets to be a dynasty.

So the dynasty can end for two reasons, either they run out of dudes, which

never happened thanks to the hard work of many, many concubines, or the emperor

is overthrown after a rebellion or a war. This is more or less what happened

to all the dynasties, which makes it easy for me to go over to Camera 2 and

describe them in a single run-on sentence.

Hi there, Camera 2. Leaving aside the Xia Dynasty, which was sadly fictional,

the first Chinese dynasty was the Shang, who were overthrown by the Zhao, which

disintegrated into political chaos, called the Warring States Period, in

which states warred over periods. Oh, no, wait, it was a period in which

states warred, which ended when the Qin Emperor was able to extend his power

over most of the heretofore warring... states, but the Qin were replaced by the

Han, which was the dynasty that really set the pattern for most of China's

history and lasted for almost 400 years, after which China fell again into

political chaos, which only means there was no dynasty that ruled over all of

China. And out of this chaos rose the Sui, who were followed quickly by the

Tang, who in turn were replaced after a short period of no dynasty by the Song,

who saw a huge growth in China's commerce that was still not enough to

prevent them from being conquered by the Wan, who were both unpopular and unusual

because they were Mongols.

which sparked rebellions resulting in the rise of the Ming, which was the

dynasty that built the Great Wall and made amazing vases, but didn't save them

from falling to the Manchus, who founded a dynasty that was called the Qing,

which was the last dynasty, because in 1911 there was a rebellion like the ones

in, say, America, France, or Russia, and the whole dynastic system, which at that

point had lasted for a long-ass time, came to an end. And breathe.

So that's what happened, but what's interesting as far as capital-H history

is concerned is why it happened, and especially why the people who were

writing history at the time Said it happened.

Which leads us to the Mandate of Heaven. So the concept of the Mandate of Heaven

dates from the Zhou Dynasty, and current historians think that they invented it

to get rid of the Shang.

Before the Zhou, China didn't even have a concept of heaven, or Tian, but they

did have a high god called Shengdi. But the Zhou believed in Tian, and they were

eager to portray the idea of heaven as eternal, so they ascribed the concept of

the Mandate of Heaven back to a time even before the Shang, explaining that

the Shang were able to conquer the Xia only because the Xia kings had lost the

mandate of heaven. This, of course, would have been impossible, partly

because the Xia kings had no concept of heaven, and partly because, as

previously noted, they didn't exist, but let's just leave that aside.

The Xu Jing is pretty specific about what caused the Xia kings to lose the

mandate, by the way, explaining the attack on Xia may be traced to the

orgies in Mingtao. Sadly, the Xu Jing is woefully short on details of these

orgies, but orgies are the kind of behavior that is not expected of a

ruler, and therefore heaven saw fit to come in, remove the mandate, and allow

the Shang to take power.

But then the Shang lost the mandate. Why? Well, the last Shang Emperor is

reported to have roasted and eaten his opponents, which... You know, bit of a

deal breaker as far as the mandate of heaven is concerned.

Of course, that might not actually have happened, but it would explain why

heaven would allow the Zhou to come to power. So basically the fact that one

dynasty falls and is replaced by another in a cycle that lasts for 3,000 years is

explained in the eyes of early Chinese historians by divine intervention based

on whether the ruler behaves in a proper, upright manner.

It's after the fact analysis that has the virtue of being completely

impossible to disprove, as well as offering a tidy explanation for some

very messy political history.

And even more importantly, it reinforces a vision of moral behavior that is a

cornerstone of Confucianism, which I will get to momentarily. But first,

let's see an example of the Mandate of Heaven in action. So the Qin Dynasty

only lasted 38 years, but it's one of the most important dynasties in Chinese

history. So important, in fact, that it gave the place its name.

Qin.

Uh. Can I just tell you guys that we literally just spent 20 minutes on that

shot? We shot it like 40 times.

Stan, you are in love with puns! The accomplishment of the Qin was to reunify

China under a single emperor for the first time in 500 years, ending the

Warring States Period.

As you can imagine, the making of that particular omelette required the

cracking of quite a few eggs, and the great Qin Emperor Qin Shuangdi and his

descendants developed a reputation for brutality that was justified.

But it was also exaggerated for effect so that the successor dynasty, the Han,

would look more legitimate in the eyes of heaven. So when recounting the fall

of the Qin, historians focused on how a bunch of murderous eunuchs turned the

Qin emperors into puppets, not literal puppets, although that would have been

awesome. And these crazy eunuchs, like, tricked emperors into committing suicide

when they started thinking for themselves, etc.

So the Mandate of Heaven turned away from these suicidal puppet emperors,

which set up a nice contrast with the early Han emperors, such as Wen, who

came to power in 180 BCE and ruled benevolently, avoiding extravagance,

impersonal behavior, and ruling largely according to Confucian principles.

Under Wen, there were no more harsh punishments for criticizing the

government, executions declined, and most importantly, for the Confucian

scholars who were writing the history, the government stopped burning books.

Thus, according to the ancient Chinese version of history, Emperor Wen, by

behaving as a wise Confucian, maintains the mandate of Pepe. So who is this

Confucius I won't shut up about?

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

Confucius was a minor official who lived during the warring states period and

developed a philosophical and political system he hoped would lead to a more

stable state and society.

He spent a great deal of his time trying to convince one of the powerful kings to

embrace his system, but while none ever did, Confucius got the last laugh

because his recipe for creating a functioning society was ultimately

adopted and became the basis for Chinese government, education, and, well, most

things. So Confucius was conservative.

He argued that the key to bringing about a strong and peaceful state was to look

to the past and the model of the sage emperors. By following their example of

upright moral behavior, the Chinese emperor could bring order to China.

Confucius' idea of morally upright behavior boils down to a person's

knowing his or her place in a series of hierarchical relationships and acting

accordingly. Everyone lives his life or her wife, but like most ancient

philosophical traditions, women were marginalized, in relationship to other

people, and is either a superior or an inferior.

There are five key relationships, but the most important is the one between

father and son, and one of the keys to understanding Confucius is filial piety,

a son treating his father with reverential respect.

The father is supposed to earn this respect by caring for the son and

educating him, but this doesn't mean that a son has the right to disrespect a

neglectful father.

Clearly though, both the father and the son will act accordingly.

The son will respect the father, and the father will act respectively.

Ultimately, the goal of both father and son is to be a superior man, chun zi in

Chinese. If all men strive to be chun zi, the society as a whole will run

smoothly. This idea applies especially to the emperor, who is like the father

to the whole country.

It's time for the open letter? Alright.

God, that's good. But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, an iPhone?

Stan, this doesn't factor into Chinese history until much later. An open letter

to the Xia Dynasty.

Dear Xia Dynasty, Why you gotta be so fictional?

You contain all of the most awesome emperors, including my favorite emperor

of all time, Yu the Engineer.

There are so many the greats and the terribles among royalty, and so few the

engineers. We need more kings like Yu the Engineer, Peter the mortgage broker,

Danica the script supervisor, Stan the video editing and producer guy.

Those should be our kings.

I freaking love you, you the engineer, and the fact that you're not real, it

breaks my heart in a way that could only be fixed by you the engineer.

Circularity actually reminds me of the Mandate of Heaven. Best wishes, John

Green. But back to the Chun-Zi. So how do you know how to behave?

Well, first you have to look to historical antecedents, particularly the

sage emperors. The study of history as well as poetry and paintings in order to

understand and appreciate beauty is indispensable.

for a Chun-Zi. The other important aspects of Chun-Zi-ness are contained in

the Confucian ideas of Ren and Li.

Ren and Li are both incredibly complex concepts that are difficult to

translate, but we're going to do our best. Ren is usually translated as

propriety. It means understanding and practicing proper behavior in every

possible situation, which of course depends on who you're interacting with.

hence the importance of the five relationships.

Li is usually translated as ritual and refers to rituals associated with

Chinese religion, most of which involve the veneration of ancestors.

Which brings us back, in a very roundabout way, to the fundamental

problem of how early Chinese historians wrote their history.

Traditional Chinese historians were all trained in the Confucian classics, which

emphasized the idea that good emperors behaved like good Confucians. Would-be

historians had to know these classics by heart and they'd imbibed their lessons,

chief among which was the idea that in order to maintain the Mandate of Heaven,

you had to behave properly and not engage in orgies or eat your enemies or

eat your enemies while engaging in orgies.

In this history, the political fortunes of a dynasty ultimately rest on one man

and his actions, whether he behaves properly.

The Mandate of Heaven is remarkably flexible as an explanation of historical

causation. It explains why, as dynasties fell, there were often terrible storms

and floods and peasant uprisings. If the emperor had been behaving properly, none

of that stuff would have happened.

Now, a more modern historian might point out that the negative effects of

terrible storms and floods, which include peasant uprisings, sometimes

lead to changes in leadership.

But that would take the moral aspect out of history, and it would also diminish

the importance of Confucian scholars.

Because the scholars can tell you that one of the best ways to learn how to be

a good emperor and their by maintain the mandate of heaven is to read the

Confucian classics, which were written by scholars.

In short, the complicated circularity of Chinese history is mirrored by the

complicated circularity of the relationship between those who write it

and those who make it. Which is something to think about no matter what

history you're learning, even if it's from Crash Course.

Next week we'll be talking about Alexander the Grape. Really, Stan? For

an entire episode? That seems excessive to me. They're just like less sour,

grapier lemonheads.

Oh, Alexander the Great.

That makes more sense.

Until then, thanks for watching.

Which situation?

Oh, me from the past. I forgot you wanted to go to Columbia. Me from the

present regrets to inform you that you do not get in. But since you live in the

past, you have no way of knowing who I'm talking about. And it occurs to me that

this video may be watched in some glorious future when Kim Kardashian and

the situation have mercifully disappeared from public life. They're

both known by millions, live in luxury, and people literally pay to own their

odors. Why do these people crave fame? Why do any of us? Well, I'd argue it's

not about money. If it were, our tabloids would be div- devoted to the

lives and times of bankers. I think we all want to leave a legacy. We want to

be remembered.

We want to be great.

For a long time history was all about the study of great men, and it was

common to call people the Great, although these days historians are less

likely to do that because they recognize that one man's great is generally

another man's terrible.

And also the Great has some misogynistic implications, like it's almost always

men who are called the Great. You never hear of Cleopatra the Great or Elizabeth

the Great. Sure, there's Catherine the Great of Russia, but for her masculine

greatness, she was saddled with the completely untrue rumor that she died

trying to scoodley poop with a horse.

Saddled. Get it? Anybody saddled with the rumor? Anyway, they could have

soiled Catherine the Great's name just by telling the truth, which is that like

so many other great men and women, she died on the toilet.

Get it?

Soiled. Toilet.

Yes.

Yes! So, quick biography of Alexander of Macedon. Born in 356 BCE, died in 323

BCE at the ripe old age of 32.

Alexander was the son of King Philip II, and when just 13 years old, he tamed a

horse no one else could ride named Bucephalus, which impressed his father

so much that he said,

For Macedonia is too little for thee.

By that time he was already an accomplished general, but over the next

decade he expanded his empire with unprecedented speed and he is famous for

having never lost a battle. Today we're going to look at Alexander of Macedon's

story by examining three possible definitions of greatness.

First, maybe Alexander was great because of his accomplishments.

This is an extension of the idea that history is the record of the deeds of

great men. Now, of course, that's ridiculous.

For one thing, half of people are women. For another, and this is important,

there are lots of historical events. that no one can take responsibility for,

like, for instance, the Black Plague. Still, Alexander was accomplished.

I mean, he conquered a lot of territory.

Like... A lot.

His father Philip had conquered all of Greece, but Alexander did what the

Spartans and the Athenians had failed to do. He destroyed the Persian Empire.

He conquered all the land the Persians had held, including Egypt, and then

marched toward India, stopping at the Indus River only because his army was

like, hey, Alexander, you know what would be awesome?

Not marching.

Also, Alexander was a really good general, although historians disagree

over whether his tactics were truly brilliant or if his army just happened

to have better technology, specifically these extra long spears. called Cereces.

But much of his reputation as a general, and his reputation in general, anybody?

Puns? Maybe I should stop? Okay, is because of Napoleon.

Napoleon, like many other generals through the millennia, was obsessed with

Alexander the Great, but More on that in a moment. That said, Alexander wasn't

very good at what we might now call empire building.

Alexander's empire is definitely visually impressive, but it wasn't

actually much of an empire.

Like, Alexander specialized in the tearing down of things, but he wasn't so

great at the building up of institutions to replace the things he'd torn down.

And that's why pretty soon after his death, his empire broke into three

empires called the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Each was ruled by one of Alexander's

generals, and they became important dynasties. The Antigonids in Greece and

Macedonia, the the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Persia, all of which

lasted longer than Alexander's empire itself.

A second kind of greatness, maybe Alexander was great because he had an

enormous impact on the world after his death. Like King Tut, Alexander the

Great was amazingly good at being a dead person.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

So after Alexander of Macedon died, everyone from the Romans to Napoleon to

Oliver Stone loved him. And he was an important military model for many

generals throughout history. But his main post-death legacy may be that he

introduced the Persian idea of absolute monarchy to the Greco-Roman world.

which would become a pretty big deal. Alexander also built a number of cities

on his route that became big deals after his death, and it's easy to spot them

because he named most of them after himself and one after his horse.

The Alexandrian Egypt became a major center of learning in the classical

world and was home to the most amazing library ever, which Julius Caesar

probably accidentally burned down while trying to conquer a bunch of land to

emulate his hero.

Alexander the Great. Plus, the dead Alexander had a huge impact on culture.

He gave the region its common language, Greek, which facilitated conversations

and commerce. Greek was so widespread that archaeologists have found coins in

what is now Afghanistan with pictures of their kings with the word king written

beneath the pictures in Greek.

This is also why, incidentally, the New Testament was eventually written in

Greek. Although Alexander was mostly just conquering territory for the glory

and heroism and greatness of it all, in his wake emerged a more closely

connected world that could trade and communicate with more people more

efficiently than ever before.

Alexander didn't make those things happen, but they probably wouldn't have

happened without him.

But here's a question. If you're watching Jersey Shore and get so

involved in the situation's romantic conquest that you leave the bath water

running, thereby flooding your apartment, and you have to call a

plumber, and the plumber comes over and you fall in love with him and get

married and live happily ever after, does that make the situation responsible

for your marriage?

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, a third definition of greatness. Maybe Alexander

is great because of his legend.

Since no accounts of Alexander were written while he was alive,

embellishment was easy.

And maybe that's where true greatness lies.

I mean, the guy died at 32 before he ever had a chance to get old and lose

battles. He was tutored by Aristotle, for God's sakes! Then there's

Alexander's single-minded, obsessive, Ahab-esque pursuit of the Persian king

Darius, who he chased across modern-day Iraq and Iran for no real reason except

that he desperately wanted to kill him. And when Bessus, one of Darius's

generals, assassinated him before Alexander had the chance, Alexander

chased Bessus around until he could at least kill him!

These almost pursuits of glory and heroism are accompanied in classical

histories by stories of Alexander walking through the desert and it's

suddenly raining and these ravens coming to lead him to the army he's supposed to

fight. And stories of his hot Persian wife Roxanna who while still a teenager

engineered the assassination of many of Alexander's fellow wives.

And even in his death people tried to make Alexander live up to this heroic

ideal like Plutarch tells us that he died of a fever but that's no way for a

masculine empire building awesome person to die, so rumors persist that he died

either of alcohol poisoning or else of assassination-y poisoning.

I mean, no great man can die of a fever.

Speaking of great men, it's time to strip down for the open letter.

So elegant.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's Kim Kardashian's perfume.

Thanks, Stan.

I'll wear this. I'll check it out. I'll give it a try.

Wow.

That is... mmm.

It's like all the worst parts of baby powder and all the worst parts of cat

pee. An open letter to the ladies.

Hello, ladies.

You've really been unfairly neglected in Crash Course World History and also in

world history textbooks everywhere.

Like, there will be a whole chapter exploring the exploits of great men and

then at the end there will be one sentence that's like...

Also, women were doing stuff at the time, and it was important, but we don't

really know what it was, so back to Alexander the Great. History has been

very good at marginalizing and demeaning women, and we're going to fight against

that as we move forward in the story of human civilization.

Ladies, I have to go now because my eyes are stinging from the biological weapon

known as Kim Kardashian's gold.

Seriously, don't wear it. Best wishes.

John Green.

So in Alexander the Great we have a story of a man who united the world

while riding a magical horse only he could tame across deserts where it

magically reigned for him so that he could chase down his mortal enemy and

then leave in his wake a more enlightened world and a gorgeous,

murderous wife. But of course it's not just Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty

that celebrate the idea that ennobled violence can lead to a better world. And

that takes us to my opinion of how Alexander really came to be great.

Millennia after his death in 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt not because he

particularly needed to invade Egypt, but because he wanted to do what Alexander

had done. And long before Napoleon, the Romans really worshipped Alexander,

particularly the Roman general Pompey, aka Pompeius Magnus, aka...

Pompey the Great. Pompey was so obsessed with Alexander that he literally tried

to emulate Alexander's boyishly disheveled hairstyle.

In short, Alexander is great because others decided he was great, because

they chose to admire and emulate him. Yes, Alexander was a great general. Yes,

he conquered a lot of land. The situation is also really good at picking

up girls of a certain type. And Kim Kardashian is good at... Stan, what is

Kim Kardashian good at?

We made Alexander great, just as today we make people great when we admire them

and try to emulate them. History has traditionally been in the business of

finding and celebrating great men, and only occasionally great women, but this

obsession with greatness is troubling to me. It wrongly implies first that

history is made primarily by men, and secondly that history is made primarily

by celebrated people, which of course makes us all want to be celebrities.

Thankfully, we've left behind the idea that the best way to become an icon is

to butcher people and conquer a lot of land, but the idea ideals that we've

embraced instead aren't necessarily worth celebrating either.

All of which is to say, we decide what to worship, and what to care about, and

what to pay attention to. We decide whether to care about the situation.

Alexander couldn't make history in a vacuum, and neither can anyone else.

Thanks for watching, I'll see you next week.

Hi there, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're

going to talk about the Silk Road so-called because it was not a road, and

was not.

Made of silk. So this is a t-shirt. It was designed in Belgium and contains

cotton from both Brazil and Texas, which was turned into cloth in China, stitched

in Haiti, screen printed in Washington, sold to me in Indiana, and now that I am

too fat to wear it, it will soon make its way to Cameroon or Honduras or

possibly even back to Haiti. Can we just pause for a moment to consider the

astonishing fact that most t-shirts see more of the world than most of us do?

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, but t-shirts can't see the world because they don't have

eyes. Look me from the past. It's difficult for me to isolate what I hate

most about you because there is so much to hate. But very near the top is your

relentless talent for ignoring everything that is interesting and

beautiful about our species in favor of pedantic sniveling in which no one loses

or gains anything of value.

I'm gonna go put on a collared shirt because we're here to tackle the big

picture.

So the Silk Road didn't begin trade, but it did radically expand its scope. And

the connections that were formed by mostly unknown merchants arguably

changed the world more than any political or religious leaders.

It was especially cool if you were rich because you finally had something to

spend your money on other than temples. But even if you weren't rich, the Silk

Road reshaped the lives of everyone living in Africa and Eurasia as we will

see today. Let's go straight to the Thought Bubble. As previously mentioned,

the Silk Road was not a road.

It's not like archaeologists working in Uzbekistan have uncovered a bunch of

yield signs and baby on board stickers. It was an overland route where merchants

carried goods for trade.

But it was really two routes, one that connected the Eastern Mediterranean to

Central Asia, and one that went from Central Asia to China.

Further complicating things, the Silk Road involved sea routes.

Many goods reached Rome via the Mediterranean, and goods from Central

Asia found their way across the Pacific to Japan and even Java.

So we shouldn't think of the Silk Road as a road, but rather as a network of

trade routes.

But just as now, the goods traveled more than the people who traded them. Very

few traders traversed the entire Silk Road. Instead, they'd move back and

forth between towns, selling to traders who'd take the goods further toward

their destination, with everybody marking up prices along the way.

So what'd they trade?

Well, silk, for starters.

For millennia, silk was only produced in China. It is spun from the cocoons of

mulberry tree-eating worms, and the process of silk-making, as well as the

techniques for raising the worms, were closely guarded secrets since the lion's

share of China's wealth came from silk production.

The Chinese used silk as fishing line, to buy off nomadic raiders to keep

things peaceful, and to write before they invented paper. But as an export,

Silk was mostly used for clothes.

Silk clothing feels light in the summer and warm in the winter, and until we

invented $700 pre-distressed designer jeans, decking yourself out in silk was

the number one way to show people that you were wealthy.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. But the Silk Road wasn't all about silk. The

Mediterranean exported such cliché goods as olives, olive oil, wine, and

mustachioed plumbers. China also exported raw materials like jade,

silver, and iron. India exported fine cotton textiles. Ivory that originated

in East Africa made its way across the Silk Road. And Arabia exported incense

and spices and tortoise shells.

Oh god, it's a red one, isn't it?

It's just gonna chase me, I just... OW!

Up until now on Crash Course, we've been focused on city-dwelling, civilizational

types, but with the growth of the Silk Road, the nomadic peoples of Central

Asia suddenly become much more important to world history. Most of Central Asia

isn't great for agriculture, but it's difficult to conquer unless you are,

wait for it, the Mongols.

It also lends itself fairly well to herding, and since nomads are

definitionally good at moving around, they're also good at moving stuff from

point A to point B, which makes them good traders.

Plus, all their travel made them more resistant to diseases.

One group of such nomads, the Yuzhai, were humiliated in battle in the 2nd

century BCE by their bitter rivals, the Xiongnu, who turned the Yuzhai's king's

skull into a drinking cup, in fact.

And in the wake of that, the Yuzhai migrated to Bactria and started the

Kushan Empire in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Silk Road trading began more than a century before the birth of Jesus. It

really took off in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, and the Kushan Empire

became a huge hub for that Silk Road trade.

By then, nomads were being eclipsed by professional merchants who traveled the

Silk Roads, often making huge profits.

But those cities that had been founded by nomadic peoples became hugely

important. They continued to grow because most of the trade on the Silk

Road was by caravan, and those caravans had to stop frequently, you know, for

like food and water and prostitutes. These towns became fantastically

wealthy. One, Palmyra, was particularly important because all of the incense and

silk that traveled to Rome had to go through Palmyra. Silk was so popular

among the Roman elite that the Roman Senate repeatedly tried to ban it,

complaining about trade imbalances caused by the silk trade and also that

silk was inadequately modest.

To quote Seneca the Younger, I see clothes of silk if materials that do not

hide the body nor even one's decency can be called clothes.

He also said of the woman who wears silk, Her husband has no more

acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.

And yet, all attempts to ban silk failed, which speaks to how much, even

in the ancient world, wealth shaped governance.

And with trade there was a way of becoming wealthy without being a king or

a lord who takes part of what your citizens produce.

The merchant class that grew along with the Silk Road came to have a lot of

political clout, and in some ways that began the tension that we still see

today between wealth and politics, whether it's, you know, corporations

making large donations, or Vladimir Putin periodically jailing billionaires?

Mr. Putin, I just want to state for the record that I did not mean that in any

way. I was... Stan wrote that joke.

Oh, it's time for the open letter.

An open letter to billionaires. But first, let's see what's in the secret

compartment today.

Oh, it's some fake silk.

The stuff that put real silk out of business.

Dear billionaires, I've wrapped myself in the finest of polyester so that you

will take my message seriously.

Here at Crash Course, we've done a lot of research into our demographics, and

our show is watched primarily by grammar Nazis, muggle Quidditch players, people

who have a test tomorrow, and billionaires. And I have a message for

you billionaires. It will never be enough. Your relentless yearning is

going to kill us all.

Best wishes, John Green. Speaking of billionaires, the goods that traveled on

the Silk Road really only changed the lives of rich people. Did the Silk Road

affect the rest of us?

Yes, for three reasons.

First, wider economic impact.

Relatively few people could afford silk, but a lot of people devoted their lives

to making that silk. And as the market for silk grew, more and more people

chose to go into silk production rather than doing something else with their

lives. Second, the Silk Road didn't just trade luxury goods. In fact, arguably

the most important thing traded along the Silk Road?

ideas. For example, the Silk Road was the primary route for the spread of

Buddhism. When we last saw the Buddha's eight-fold path to escaping the cycle of

suffering and desire that's inherent to humans, it was beginning to dwindle in

India. But through contacts with other cultures and traditions, Buddhism grew

and flourished and became one of the great religious traditions of the world.

The variation of Buddhism that took root in China, Korea, Japan, and Central Asia

is known as Mahayana Buddhism.

And it differed from the original teachings of the Buddha in many ways,

but one that was fundamental.

For Mahayana Buddhists, the Buddha was divine.

I mean, we can, and religious historians do, fight over the exact definition of

divine. But in Mahayana Buddhism, there's no question that the Buddha is

venerated to a greater degree. The idea of nirvana also transformed from a

release from that cycle of suffering and desire to something much more heavenly

and, frankly, more fun. And in some versions of Mahayana Buddhism, there are

lots of different heavens, each more awesome than the last.

Rather than focusing on the fundamental fact of suffering, Mahayana Buddhism

offered the hope that through worship of the Buddha or one of the many

Bodhisattvas, holy people who could have achieved Nirvana but chose to hang out

on Earth with us because they're super nice, one could attain a good afterlife.

Many merchants on the Silk Road became strong supporters of monasteries, which

in turn became convenient way stations for caravans. And by endowing the

monastery rich merchants were buying a form of supernatural insurance.

Monks who lived in the monasteries would pray for the success of trade missions

and the health of their patrons. It was win-win, especially when you consider

that one of the central materials used in Mahayana Buddhist rituals is silk.

And a third reason the Silk Road changed all our lives. Worldwide

interconnectedness of populations led to the spread of disease.

Measles and smallpox traveled along it, as did bubonic plague, which came from

the east to the west in 534-750.

and most devastatingly, in 1346.

This last plague, known as the Black Death, resulted in the largest

population decimation in human history, with nearly half of Europeans dying in a

four-year period.

A sizable majority of people living in Italy died, as did two-thirds of

Londoners. And it quite possibly wouldn't have happened without the Silk

Road. If you were living in London in the 14th century, you probably didn't

blame the Silk Road trade for your community's devastation.

but it played a role. If you look at it that way, the interconnectedness

fostered by the Silk Road affected way, way more people than just those rich

enough to buy silk, just as today's globalization offers both promise and

threat to each of us. Next week we'll talk about Julius Caesar and in what

situation, if any, it's okay to stab your friend in the gut. Until then,

thanks for watching.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

learn about the Roman Empire, which of course began when two totally non

-fictional twins, Romulus and Remus, who'd been raised by wolves, founded a

city on Seven Hills.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, what does SPQR stand for?

It means Shut Piehole Quickly Rapscallion. No, it means Senatus

Populus Que Romanus, one of the mottos of the Roman Republic.

So today we're going to do some old school great man history and focus on

Julius Caesar while trying to answer a question.

When... If ever, is it okay to stab someone 23 times?

Shakespeare answers that question by saying that Roman senators killed Caesar

because he was going to destroy the Roman Republic, but even if that's true,

we still have to answer whether a the Roman Republic was worth preserving, and

b whether Caesar actually destroyed it. One of the things that made the Roman

Republic endure, both in reality and in the imagination, was its balance.

According to the Greek historian Polybius, the three kinds of government,

monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, were all found united in Rome.

And it was no easy thing to determine with assurance whether the entire state

was an aristocracy, a democracy, or a monarchy. At the heart of this blended

system was the Senate, a body of legislators chosen from a group of elite

families. Rome was divided into two broad classes, the patricians, a small

group of aristocratic families, and the plebeians, basically everyone else. The

Senate was sort of a mixture of legislature and giant advisory council.

Their main job was to set policy for the consuls. Each year the Senate would

choose from among its ranks two co-consuls to serve as sort of the chief

executives of Rome.

There needed to be two so that they could check each other's ambition and

also so that one could, you know, take care of Rome domestically while the

other was off fighting wars, conquering new territory.

There were two additional checks on power. First, the one-year term. I mean,

how much trouble can you really do in a year, right? Unless you're the CEO of

Netflix. I mean, he destroyed that company in like two weeks.

And secondly, once a senator had served as consul, he was forbidden to serve as

consul again for at least ten years, although that went a little bit like how

you say you're only gonna eat one Chipotle burrito per week, and then

there are a few exceptions, and then all of a sudden you're there every day, and

yes, I know guacamole is more, just give it to me! But right, we were talking

about the Romans. So the Romans also had a position of dictator, a person who

would take over in the event that the Republic was in imminent danger.

The paradigm for this selfless Roman ruler was Cincinnatus, a general who

came out of comfortable retirement at his plantation, took command of an army,

defeated whatever enemy Rome was battling, and then laid down his command

and returned to his farm safe in the knowledge that one day the second

largest city in Ohio would be named for him. If that model of leadership sounds

familiar to Americans, by the way, it's because George Washington was heavily

influenced by Cincinnatus when he invented the idea of the two-term

president. So along comes Caesar. Gaius Ju- Gaius? No, it's Gaius. I know from

Battlestar Galactica. Gaius Julius Caesar was born around 100 BCE to one of

Rome's leading families.

His birth was somewhat miraculous, requiring a surgical procedure that we

know today as a Caesar-ian section.

Coming as he did from the senatorial class, it was natural that Caesar would

serve in both the army and the senate, which he did. He rose through the ranks,

and after some top-notch generaling and a gig as the governor of Spain, he

decided to run for consul. In order to win, Caesar needed financial help, which

he got from Crassus, one of Rome's richest men. Crassus ran a private fire

company whose business model was essentially, hey, I notice your house is

on fire.

Give me some money and I'll help you out with that. Caesar succeeded in becoming

consul in 59 BCE, and thereafter sought to dominate Roman politics by allying

himself with Crassus and also with Rome's other most powerful man, the

general Pompey. You'll no doubt remember Pompey from his fascination with

Alexander the Great. Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar were the so-called first

triumvirate, and the alliance worked out super well.

For Caesar. Not so well for the other two. Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

After a year as consul that included getting the Senate to pass laws largely

because of intimidation by Pompey's troops, Caesar landed the governorship

of Gaul, at least the southern part of Gaul that Rome controlled.

He quickly conquered the rest of Gaul, and his four loyal armies, or legions as

the Romans called them, became his source of power.

Caesar continued his conquests, invading Britain and waging another successful

war against the Gauls. While he was away, Crassus died in battle with the

Parthians and Pompey, who had become Caesar's rival and enemy, was elected

consul. Pompey and the Senate decided to try to strip Caesar of his command and

recall him to Rome. If he returned to Rome without an army, Caesar would have

been prosecuted for corrupt consuling and also probably exceeding his

authority as governor.

So instead, he returned with the 13th Legion.

He crossed the Rubicon River. famously saying, the die is cast or possibly let

the die be cast. Sorry, Thought Bubble, sources disagree.

Basically, Caesar was invading his own hometown.

Pompey was in charge of Rome's army, but like a boss, fled the city. And by 48

BCE, Caesar was in total command of all of Rome's holdings, having been named

both dictator and consul. Caesar set out to Egypt to track down Pompey, only to

learn that he'd already been assassinated by agents of the pharaoh

Ptolemy. Egypt had its own civil war at the time between the pharaoh and his

sister-slash-wife Cleopatra.

Ptolemy was trying to curry favor with Caesar by killing his enemy, but Caesar

was mad in that the-only-person-who-gets-to-tease-my-little-brother-is-me

kind of way, except with murder instead of teasing. So Caesar sided with

Cleopatra. Thanks, Thought Bubble. Cleopatra went on to become the last

pharaoh of ancient Egypt. Egypt and then bet on Mark.

I am the wrong horse, Antony, instead of Emperor, there is a baby attached to my

leg, Augustus. But before all that, Caesar made his way back from Egypt to

Rome, stopping off to defeat a few kings in the east on his way, and was declared

dictator again.

That position was later extended for ten years, and then for life. He was elected

consul in 46 BCE, and then again in 45 BCE, this last time without a co-consul.

By 45 BCE, Caesar was the undisputed master of Rome, and he pursued reforms

that strengthened his own power.

He provided land, pensions for his soldiers, restructured the debts of a

huge percentage of Rome's debtors, and also changed the calendar to make it

look more like the one we use today.

But by 44 BCE, many senators had decided that Caesar controlled too much of the

power in Rome, and so they stabbed him 23 times on the floor of the Roman

Senate. Caesar was duly surprised about this and everything, but he never said

et tu, Brute, when he realized Brutus was one of the co-conspirators. That was

an invention of Shakespeare.

The conspirators thought the death of Caesar would bring about the restoration

of the Roman Republic.

And they were wrong.

For one thing, Caesar's reforms were really popular with the Roman people,

who were quick to hail his adopted son, Octavian, as well as his second in

command, Mark.

I am the wrong horse Antony, and a dude named Lepidus, as a second triumvirate.

This triumvirate was an awesome failure, degenerating into a second civil war.

Octavian and Antony fought it out, Antony being the wrong horse lost.

Octavian I changed his name to Caesar Augustus, became sole ruler of Rome,

attached a baby to his leg, adopted the title emperor, and started printing

coins identifying himself as Divini Filius, the son of God.

More on that next week. Although Augustus tried to pretend that the forms

of the Roman Empire were still intact, the truth was he made the laws and the

the Senate had become nothing more than a rubber stamp.

Which reminds me, it's time for the open letter.

Movie magic!

An open letter to the Roman Senate. Oh, but first, let's check what's in the

secret compartment.

Oh, it's a harmonica. Stan, do you want me to play some old Roman folk songs?

Very well.

Stan, I just want to thank you for doing such a good job of overdubbing there.

Dear Roman Senate, whether you were rubber stamping the laws of Emperor

Augustus or stabbing Caesar on the floor of your sacred hall, you were always

Doing something!

I don't want to sound nostalgic for a time when people lived to be 30, a tiny

minority of adults could vote, and the best fashion choice was bed sheets, but

oh my god, at least you did something!

Your Senate was chosen from among the patrician class. Our Senate here in the

United States is chosen from among the obstructionist class.

But don't get me wrong, Roman Senate.

You were terrible.

Best wishes, John Green. So did Caesar destroy the Roman Republic? Well, he

started a series of civil wars, he seized power for himself, he subverted

the ideas of the Republic, he changed the Constitution, but he's only really

to blame if he was the first one to do that.

And he wasn't. Take the general Marius, for instance, who rose to power on the

strength of his generalship and on his willingness to open up the army to the

poor, who were loyal to him personally and not to Rome, and whom he promised

land in exchange for their good service in the army. This, of course, required

the Romans to keep conquering new land so they could keep giving it to new

legionnaires. Marius was also consul five times in a row, 60 years before

Caesar. Or look at the Roman general Sulla, who, like Marius, ensured that

his armies would be more to him personally than to Rome, but who marched

against Rome itself and then became its dictator, executing thousands of people

in 81 BCE, 30 years before Caesar entered the scene.

There's another way of looking at this question altogether if we dispense with

great man history. Maybe Rome became an empire before it had an emperor.

Like, remember the Persian Empire?

You'll recall that that empire had some characteristics that made it...

imperial, like a unified system of government, continual military

expansion, and a diversity of subject peoples.

The Roman Empire had all three of those characteristics long before it became

the Roman Empire.

Like, Rome started out as a city, and then it became a city-state, and then a

kingdom, and then a republic, but that entire time it was basically comprised

of the area around Rome.

By the 4th century BCE, Rome started to incorporate its neighbors, like the

Latins and the Etruscans, and pretty soon they had all of Italy under their

control, but that's not diversity of subject peoples. I mean, nothing

personal, Italians, but you have a lot of things in common, like the constant

gesticulations. If you want to talk about real expansion and diversity,

you've got to talk about the Punic Wars.

These were the wars that I remember primarily because they involved Hannibal

crossing the Alps with freaking war elephants, which was probably the last

time that the elephants could have risen up and formed their awesome secret

elephant society with elephant planes and elephant cars.

In the First Punic War, Rome wanted Sicily, which was controlled by the

Carthaginians. Rome won, which made Carthage cranky. so they started the

Second Punic War. In 219 BCE, Hannibal attacked a Roman town, then led an army

across Spain, and then crossed the freaking Alps with elephants!

Hannibal and his elephant army almost won, but alas, they didn't, and as a

result, the Romans got Spain.

People in Spain are definitely not Romans, despite Russell Crowe's

character in Gladiator, which means that by 201 BCE, Rome was definitely an

empire. The Third Punic War was a formality. Rome found some excuse to

attack Carthage and then destroyed it so completely that these days you can't

even find it on a map.

Eventually this whole area and a lot more would be incorporated into a system

of provinces and millions of people would be ruled by the Roman Empire.

And it's ridiculous to say that Rome was a republic until Augustus became Rome's

first official emperor because by that time Rome had been an empire for almost

200 years.

There's a reason I'm arguing that the death of the republic came long before

Caesar and probably around the time that Rome became an empire.

If anything destroyed the idea of republican Rome it was the concentration

of power into the hands of And this man was always a general. I mean, you can't

march on Rome without an army, after all. Why were there such powerful

generals? Because Rome had decided to become an empire, and empires need to

expand militarily. Particularly, the Roman Empire needed to expand militarily

because it always needed new land to give its retired legionnaires.

That expansion created the all-powerful general, and the incorporation of

diverse peoples made it easier for them to be loyal to him rather than to some

abstract idea of the republic.

Julius Caesar didn't create emperors.

Empire created them. Next week we'll be discussing Christianity, so that

shouldn't be controversial.

Until then, thanks for watching.

Hi there, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today

we're going to talk about Jesus.

So this is a Roman coin from around the time Jesus was born in the Roman Empire,

and it calls Augustus, the emperor, the son of God.

So let's just state at the outset that in 4 BCE, being the son of God, or at

least being the son of a god, was not such an unusual thing.

But a poor Jew being the son of God...

That was news.

Any understanding of Christianity has to start with Judaism because Jesus was

born a Jew and he grew up in the Jewish tradition.

He was one of many teachers spreading his ideas in the Roman province of Judea

at the time and he was part of a messianic tradition that helps us

understand why he was thought of not only as a teacher but as something much,

much more.

Let's go straight to the Thought Bubble for that. The people who would become

the Jews were just one of many tribal peoples eking out an existence in that

not very fertile crescent world of Mesopotamia after the agricultural

revolution. The Hebrews initially worshipped many gods, making sacrifices

to them in order to bring good weather and good fortune, but they eventually

developed a religion centered around an idea that would become key to the other

great Western religions.

This was monotheism, the idea that there is only one true god, or at least that

if there are other gods, they're total lame-oids. The Hebrews developed a

second concept that is key to their religion as well, the idea of the

covenant, a deal with God.

The main man in this, the big mocker, was Abraham.

Not to make this too much of a scripture lesson, but it's kind of hard to

understand the Jews without understanding Abraham, or Abram as he

was known before he had his big conversation with God recorded in

Genesis 17.

When Abram was 90 years and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto

him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be thou perfect.

And I'm gonna make a covenant with you and a bunch of cool things will happen,

like you're gonna have kids and your descendants will number the stars and

you can have all the land of Canaan forever. It's gonna be awesome. I'm

paraphrasing. by the way, Thought Bubble. So God promised that Abram would

have kids with his wife, even though the dude was already like 99, but there was

a catch.

This is my covenant which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed after

thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised.

Keep it PG-13, Thought Bubble. Now that is asking a lot from a guy, especially a

99-year-old geezer like Abram living in a time before general anesthesia. But

those were the terms of the deal, and in exchange, God had chosen Abraham and his

descendants to be a great nation.

From this, we get the expression that the Jews are the chosen people.

Thanks for keeping it clean, Thought Bubble. So some important things about

this god. One, singularity. He, and I'm using the masculine pronoun because

that's what Hebrew prayers use, does not want you to put any gods before him. He

is also transcendent, having always existed, and he is deeply personal. He

chats with prophets, sends locusts, etc.

But he doesn't take corporeal form like Greek and Roman gods do. He is also

involved in history, like he will destroy cities and bring floods and

det... the outcome of wars and possibly football games. Stan, no, football

games! Probably most important to us today and certainly most important to

Jesus, this God demands moral righteousness and social justice.

So this is the God of the Hebrews, Yahweh, and despite many ups and downs,

the Jewish people have stuck with him for, according to the Hebrew calendar,

at least over 5,700 years.

And he has stuck by them too, despite the Jews being on occasion something of

a disappointment to him, which leads to various miseries and also to a tradition

of prophets who speak for God and warn the people to get back on the right path

lest there be more miseries. Which brings us back to our friends, the

Romans. By the time Jesus was born, the land of the Israelites had been absorbed

into the Roman Empire as the province of Judea. At the time of Jesus' birth,

Judea was under the control of Herod the Great, best known for building the

massive temple in Jerusalem that the Romans would later destroy.

And by the time Jesus died and expanded, Judea was under the rule of Herod

Antipater. also unhelpfully known as Herod. Both Herods ultimately took their

orders from the Romans, and they both show up on the list of rulers who were

oppressive to the Jews, partly because there's never that much religious

freedom in an empire.

Unless you are, wait for it, the Mongols.

or the Persians. Also, they were Hellenizers, bringing in Greek theater

and architecture and rationalism. And in response to those Hellenistic

influences, there were a lot of preachers trying to get the Jews to

return to the traditions and the godly ways of the past, including the

Sadducees and the Pharisees and the Essenes and the Zealots. And one of

those preachers who didn't fit comfortably into any of those four

groups was Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was a preacher who spread his message of

peace, love, and above all, justice across Judea during his actually average

length of life. life for his time.

He was remarkably charismatic, attracting a small but incredibly loyal

group of followers, and he was said to perform miracles, although it's worth

noting that miracles weren't terribly uncommon at the time. Jesus' message was

particularly resonant to the poor and downtrodden, and pretty radical in its

anti-authoritarian stance.

He said it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a

rich man to get to heaven. He said the meek were blessed, that the last would

be first and the first would be last.

All of which was kind of threatening to the powers that be, who accordingly had

him arrested, tried, and then executed in the normal manner of killing rebels

at that time, crucifixion. Also, just to put this question to bed, the Romans

crucified Jesus because he was a threat to their authority.

Later traditions saying that the Jews killed Jesus, very unfortunate.

Also very untrue. We're not going to discuss Jesus' divinity because one,

this isn't a theology class, and two, flame wars on the internet make me so

uncomfortable that I have to turn to camera two.

Hi there, camera two. I'm here to remind you that three, fighting over such

things, like fighting over whether the proverbial cake is a lie, rarely

accomplishes anything.

Plus, four, what matters to us is the historical fact that people at the time

believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed One.

the Son of God.

And they believed that he would return someday to redeem the world. Which leads

us to two questions about Christianity.

First, why did this small group of people believe this? And second, why and

how did that belief become so widespread?

So why would people believe that Jesus was the Messiah?

First, the Jews had a long tradition of believing that a Savior would come to

them in a time of trouble. And Judea under the rule of Herod and the Romans?

Definitely a time of trouble. And many of the prophecies about this Savior

point to someone whose life looks a lot like Jesus's. For instance, Isaiah

Isaiah 53 says the person will be misunderstood and mistreated, just like

Jesus was.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with

grief. And as one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we

didn't respect him." And a lot of the prophecies, like Daniel 7.14 for

instance, explain that when the Messiah comes, there will be this awesome new

everlasting kingdom.

And that had to sound pretty good to people who'd had their autonomy taken

away from them. So some religious Jews saw Jesus in those prophecies and came

to believe, either during his life or shortly thereafter, that he was the

Messiah. Most of them thought the new everlasting kingdom was right around the

corner, which is probably why no one bothered to write down much about the of

Jesus for several decades, by which time it was clear that we might have to wait

a bit for this.

brilliant new everlasting kingdom.

I should note, by the way, that the idea of a messiah was not unique to the Jews

at the time. Even the Romans got in on the action. For instance, the Roman poet

Virgil wrote of a boy who, "...shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear.

He shall receive the life of gods and see heroes with gods commingling." Sound

familiar? But Virgil was writing about Emperor Augustus in that poem, not

Jesus, which points again to the similarities between the two. Both

called sons of God, both sent to free the earth from never-ceasing fear, but

one ruled the largest empire in the world, and the other believed that

empire and the world needed to change dramatically.

So why did the less wealthy and famous Son of God become by far the more

influential? Well, here are three possible historical reasons.

Reason one, the Romans continued to make things bad for the Jews.

In fact, things got much worse for the Jews, especially after they launched a

revolt between 66 and 73 CE.

which did not go well.

By the time the dust had settled, the Romans had destroyed the temple and

expelled the Jews from Judea, beginning what we now know as the Jewish Diaspora.

And without a temple or geographic unity, the Jews had to solidify what it

meant to be a Jew and what the basic tenets of the religion were.

This forced the followers of Jesus to make a decision. Were they going to

continue to be Jews, following stricter laws set forth by rabbis, or were they

going to be something else?

The decision to open up their religion to non-Jews, people who weren't part of

the covenant, is the central reason that Christianity could become a world

religion instead of just a sect of Judaism.

And it probably didn't hurt that the main proponent of sticking with Judaism

was James, Jesus's brother, who was killed by the Romans.

Reason number two is related to reason number one, and it's all about a dude

named Saul.

No, not that Saul. Yes.

Saul of Tarsus, thank you. Saul, having received a vision on the road to

Damascus, became Paul and began visiting and sending letters to Jesus followers

throughout the Mediterranean.

And it was Paul who emphatically declared that Jesus followers did not

have to be Jews, that they didn't have to be circumcised or keep to Jewish laws

or any of that stuff.

This opened the floodgates for thousands of people to convert to this new

religion. And the other thing to remember about Paul is that he was a

Roman citizen, which meant he could travel freely throughout the Roman

Empire. This allowed him to make his case to lots of different people. and

facilitated the geographic spread of Christianity.

Oh, it's time for the open letter? All right.

An open letter to the fish.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, Stan.

It's my favorite album, Jesus Christ Superstar, finally available in my

favorite format, the cassette.

Did I color coordinate my shirt to Jesus Christ Superstar?

Yes. Dear Ichthys, so check this out. In the first century when it was still

super underground and hipster to be a Christian, you were a secret symbol of

Christianity used to kind of hide from the Romans.

Ichthys, the Greek word for fish, was an acronym and it was a super clever way to

talk about religion without anyone knowing that you were talking about it.

But you'll never guess what happened. Even in places where it's completely

fine to talk about Christianity now and to use, you know, regular Christian

symbols like the cross, you have had a huge resurgence thanks to the plastic

automobile decal- I mean, seriously, Ickthis, I haven't seen a comeback like

this since Jesus.

Best wishes, John Green. And lastly, Christianity was born and flourished in

an empire with a common language that allowed for its spread.

And crucially, it was also an empire in decline.

Like, even by the end of the first century CE, Rome was on its way down.

And for the average person, and even for some elites, things weren't as good as

they had been. In fact, they were getting worse so fast that you might

have thought the end of the world was coming. And Roman religion offered no

promise of an afterlife and a bunch of squabbling, whiny gods.

Sorry if I offended adherence to Roman religion, but seriously, they squabble.

So even though early Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire and

sometimes fed to the lions and other animals, the religion continued to grow,

albeit slowly.

But then as the Roman decline continued, Emperor Constantine allowed the worship

of Jesus and then eventually converted to Christianity himself.

And then the religion really took off. I mean, Rome wasn't what it used to be,

but everybody still wanted to be like the Emperor.

And soon enough, there was a new Son of God on coins.

Thanks for watching. See you next week.

Hi there, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today

we're going to talk about the fall of Rome. Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Mr. Green!

Who's that pretty lady? That lady, me from the past, is Emperor Justinian.

We'll get to him in a minute.

How and when Rome fell remains the subject of considerable historical

debate, but today I'm going to argue that Rome didn't really fall until the

middle of the 15th century. But first, let me introduce you to the traditional

view, barbarians at the gates. My, don't you look traditional. If you want to be

really technical about it, the city of Rome was conquered by bar-bar-bar-bar

-bar-barbarians in 476 CE.

There was a last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, who ruled the empire for less

than a year before being deposed and sent into exile by Odoacer, who was some

kind of barbarian, we don't know. for sure.

Ostrogoth, Hun, Visigoth, Vandals, they all look the same to the Romans.

Rome had been sacked by barbarians before, most notably by Alaric the

Visigoth in 410. Is it Alaric or Alaric? The dictionary says Alaric, but the

vampire diaries say Alaric, so I'm gonna go with Alaric. But anyway, after 476

CE, there was never again a Roman emperor.

in Rome. Then there's the hipper anti-imperialistic argument. That's

nice, but if you really want to go full hipster, you should probably deny that

you're being hipster, right?

Exactly. Which goes like this. Rome was doomed to fall as soon as it spread

outside of Italy because the further the territory is from the capital, the

harder it is to govern. Thus imperialism itself sowed the seeds of destruction in

Rome. This was the argument put forth by the Roman historian Tacitus, although he

put it in the mouth of a British chieftain.

That sounded dirty, but it's not. It's all about context here on Crash Course.

To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire.

They make a desert and call it peace.

There are two ways to overcome this governance problem. First, you can rule

with the proverbial topaz fist.

That's not the proverb. Really, Stan? It's an iron fist?

But topaz is much harder than iron. Don't these people know their Mohs scale

of mineral hardness?

Regardless, the Romans couldn't do this because their whole identity was wrapped

up in an idea of justice that precluded indiscriminate violence.

The other strategy is to try to incorporate conquered people into the

empire more fully, in Rome's case, to make them Romans.

This worked really well in the early days of the Roman Republic and even at

the beginning of the empire, but it eventually led to barbarians inside the

gates. The decline of the Roman legion started long before Rome started getting

s- it really began with the extremely bad decision to incorporate Germanic

warriors into the Roman army. Rome had a long history of absorbing people from

the empire's fringes into the polity, first by making them allies and then

eventually by granting them full citizenship rights.

But usually these foreign citizens had developed ties to Rome itself.

They learned Latin, they bought into the whole idea of the aristocratic republic.

By the 3rd and 4th century CE, though, the empire had been forced to allow the

kind of riff-raff into their army who didn't really care about the idea of

Rome. Rome itself, they were only loyal to their commanders.

And as you no doubt remember from the historical examples of Caesar, Pompey,

Marius, contemporary Afghanistan, this is not a recipe for domestic bliss.

So here was Rome stuck with a bunch of expensive and bloody wars against

Germanic peoples who were really good at fighting, and then they had a great

idea. Why not fight with these guys?

So they essentially hired them, and soon the Roman legions were teaming with

these mercenaries who were loyal mostly to gold, secondarily to their

commanders, and not at all to Rome, which was a place that very few of them

ever even saw.

I mean, why would they even give a crap about the health and well-being of the

Roman Empire? Am I allowed to say crap, Stan?

Nice. This was of course a recipe for civil war, and that's exactly what

happened with general after general after general declaring himself emperor

of Rome.

So there was very little stability in the West. For instance, between 235 and

284 CE, 41 different people were either emperor or claimed to be emperor.

And after the year 200, many of the generals who were powerful enough to

proclaim themselves emperors weren't even Roman. In fact, a lot of them

didn't speak much Latin.

Oddly enough, one of the best symbols of the new face of the Roman Empire was

sartorial. Instead of the traditional and toga of the glory days of the

Senate, most of the new general emperors adopted that most practical and most

barbaric of garments.

Pants. Oh, which reminds me, it's time for the open letter.

An open letter to pants.

But first, let's see what's inside the secret compartment.

Oh, look!

It's Rosie the Riveter! And she's wearing...

Pants! Dear Pants, although you eventually became a symbol of

patriarchal oppression, in your early days you were worn by both men and

women. And in the days of the Roman Republic, they hated you. They thought

you were barbarous. They thought that people wearing you was the definition of

people lacking civilization.

They ventured north, and the wind blew up through their togas, and lo and

behold... They adopted pants.

And there's a history lesson in that pants, which is that when people have to

choose between civilization and warm genitals, they choose warm genitals.

Best wishes, John Green. And now a note from our sponsor. Today's episode of

Crash Course is brought to you by the all-new Oldsmobile Byzantium, mixing

power and luxury in a way that's never... Really?

Oldsmobile isn't a company anymore?

And Byzantium is a place? Are you sure? So remember when I said the Roman Empire

survived till the 15th century? Well that was the Eastern Roman Empire,

commonly known as the Byzantine Empire, although not by the people who lived in

it who identified themselves as Romans.

So while the Western Roman Empire descended into chaos, the eastern half

of the empire had its capital in Byzantium, a city on the Bosphorus

Strait that Constantine would later rename Constantinople.

thereby paving the way for They Might Be Giants' only mainstream hit. Constantine

moved his headquarters, and thereby the headquarters of the Roman Empire, to

Constantinople in 324 CE.

Constantine had lots of reasons to move his capital east. For one thing, he was

born in modern-day Croatia. Also, he probably spoke better Greek than Latin.

And plus, the eastern provinces were a lot richer than the western provinces,

and from a looting perspective, you just want to be closer to where the good

warring is.

The enemies in the east, like the Persian Parthians and the Persian

Sassanians, were real empires. not just bands of warriors. And no matter who you

were in world history, if you wanted to make a name for yourself in terms of

war, you really needed to be up against the Persians, even if you were the

Mongols. Not this time, friends.

As the political center of the Roman Empire shifted east, Constantine also

tried to reorient his new religion, Christianity, toward the east, holding

the first church council in Nicaea in 325. The idea was to get all Christians

to believe the same thing. That worked, but it did mark the beginning of the

emperor having greater control over the church.

That trend would of course later lead to tensions between the church centered in

Constantinople and the one centered in Rome, but more on that in a bit. To give

you a sense of how dramatic this shift was, by the 4th century CE,

Constantinople's population had soared while Rome's had gone from 500,000 to 80

,000. And although the Byzantines spoke Greek, not Latin, they considered

themselves Romans, and if they did, we probably should too.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

There was a lot of continuity between the old Western Roman Empire and the new

Eastern one. Politically, each was ruled by a single man, sometimes there were

two and once there were four, but let's forget about that for now, who wielded

absolute military power.

War was pretty much constant as the Byzantines fought the Persian Sassanian

Empire and then various Islamic empires, trade in valuable agricultural land that

yielded high taxes meant that the Byzantine Empire was, like the Western

Roman Empire, exceptionally rich, and it was slightly more compact as a territory

than its predecessor, and much more urban, containing, as it did, all of

those once-independent Greek city-states, which made it easier to

administer. Also, like their Western counterparts, the Byzantines enjoyed

spectacle and sport.

Chariot races in Constantinople were huge, with thousands turning out at the

Hippodrome to cheer on their favorites. Big bets were placed and there was a

huge rivalry, not just about sports, but also about political affiliations

between the two main teams, the Blues and the Greens.

Thanks for putting us on the Greens, Thought Bubble. That rivalry was so

heated that riots often broke out between them, and in one such riot, an

estimated 30,000 people were killed.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. But perhaps the most consistently Roman aspect of

Byzantine society was that they followed Roman orders. law.

The Romans always prided themselves on being ruled by laws, not by men, and

even though that wasn't actually the case after the second century BCE,

there's no question that the Eastern Roman Empire's codification of Roman

laws was one of its great achievements. And much of the credit for that goes to

the most famous Byzantine emperor, at least after Constantine, Justinian.

I like your brooch, sir.

In 533, Justinian published the Digest, an 800,000-word condensation of 1

,528 Latin law books.

And to go along with this, he published the Institutes, which was like a

curriculum for the Roman law schools that existed all through the empire.

Justinian, incidentally, was by far the most awesome of the Byzantine emperors.

He was like the David Tennant of doctors.

He was born a peasant somewhere in the Balkans and then rose to become emperor

in 527. He ruled for almost 30 years, and in addition to codifying Roman law,

he did a lot to restore the former glory of the Roman Empire.

He took Carthage back, he even took Rome back from the Goths, although not for

long. And he's responsible for the building of one of the great churches of

all time, which is now a mosque, the Hagia Sophia, or Church of Saint Wisdom.

So after one of those sporting riots destroyed the previous church, he built

this, which with its soaring domes became a symbol for the wealth and

opulence of his empire.

The Romans were remarkable builders and engineers, and the Hagia Sophia is no

exception. A dome its equal wouldn't be built for another 500 years.

But you'd never mistake it for a Roman temple. It doesn't have the austerity or

the emphasis on engineering that you see in, for instance, the Colosseum. And

this building in many ways functions as a symbol for the ways in which the

Eastern Roman Empire was both Roman and not.

the most interesting thing that Justinian ever did was to be married to

his controversial theater person of a wife, Theodora. Hey, Danica, can we get

Theodora up here? Wow, that is... Perfect. It's funny how married couples

always look like each other. Theodora began her career as an actress, dancer,

and possible prostitute before becoming empress, and she may have saved her

husband's rule by convincing him not to flee the city during riots between the

blues and the greens.

She also mentored a eunuch who went on to become a hugely important general.

Mentoring a eunuch sounds like a euphemism, but it's not.

And she fought to expand the rights of women in divorce and property ownership,

and even had a law passed taking the bold stance that adulterous women should

not be executed.

So in short, the Byzantines continued the Roman legacy of empire and war and

law for almost a thousand years after Romulus Augustus was driven out of Rome.

The Byzantines may not have spoken Latin and few of their emperors came from

Rome, but in most important ways they were Romans.

Except one really important way.

The Byzantines followed a different form of Christianity, the branch we now call

Eastern, or sometimes Greek, Orthodox.

How there came to be a split between the Catholic and Orthodox traditions is

complicated, you might even call it Byzantine. What matters for us are the

differences between the churches, the main doctrinal one being about the

dating of Easter, and the main political one being about who rules whom.

Did I get my whom right there, Stan?

Yes! In the West, there was a Pope, and in the East, there was a Patriarch. The

Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

He sort of serves as God's regent on Earth, and he doesn't answer to any

secular ruler.

And ever since the fall of Rome, there has been a lot of tension in Western

Europe between Popes and Kings over who should have the real power.

But in the Orthodox Church, they didn't have that problem because the Patriarch

was always appointed by the Emperor. So it was pretty clear who had control over

the Church, so much that they even had a word for it.

Caesaropapism. Caesar over Pope. Pope. But the fact that in Rome there was no

emperor after 476 meant there was no one to challenge the Pope, which would

profoundly shape European history over the next, like, 1200 years.

So I would argue that in some important ways, the Roman Empire survived for a

thousand years after it left Rome, but in some ways, it still survives today.

It survives in our imagination when we think of this as East and this as West.

It survives in football rivalries that have their roots in religious conflicts,

and it survives in the Justinian Law Code, which continues to be the basis

for much of civil law in Europe. Next week we'll talk about the emergence of

Islam over here.

How'd I do, Stan?

Well, you can't win them all. Thanks for watching.

Hi there, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History and today we're

going to talk about Islam, which like Christianity and Judaism, grew up on the

east coast of the Mediterranean.

But unlike Christianity and Judaism, it's not terribly well understood in the

West. For instance, you probably know what this is and what this is. You

probably don't know what that is.

Google it. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, why do you think people know so little about

Islamic history? Did you just ask an interesting, non-annoying question me

from the past? I think we don't know much about early Islamic history because

we don't learn about it, because we're taught that our history is the story of

Christianity in Europe, when in fact, our history is the story of people on

the planet.

So let's try to learn something today.

So in less than 200 years, Islam went from not existing to being the religious

and political organizing principle of one of the largest empires in the world.

And that story begins in the 7th century CE, when the angel Gabriel appeared to

Muhammad, a 40ish guy who made his living as a caravan trader, and told him

to begin reciting the word of God.

Initially, this freaked Muhammad out, as, you know, it would, but then his

wife and a couple other people encouraged him, and slowly he came to

accept the mantle of prophet.

A few things to know about the world Islam entered.

Muhammad's society was intensely tribal.

He was a member of the Quraysh tribe living in Mecca, and tribal ties were

extremely important.

Also at the time, the Arabian Peninsula was like this crazy religious melting

pot, like most tribal Arabs worshipped gods very similar to the Mesopotamian

gods you'll remember from episode 3.

And by the time of Muhammad, cult statues of many of those gods had been

collected in his hometown of Mecca in this temple-like structure called the

Kaaba. But Arabia was also home to monotheisms like Christianity and

Judaism and even a a bit of Zoroastrianism, so the message that

there was only one God wouldn't have been as surprising to Muhammad as it

was, for instance, to Abraham.

Also, and this will become very important, the northern part of Arabia

was sandwiched between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian-Sassanian Empire,

and you'll remember, those guys were always fighting. They were like

snowboarders and skiers, or like the Westboro Baptist Church and everyone

else. At its core, Islam is what we call a radical reforming religion. Just as

Jesus and Moses sought to restore Abrahamic monotheism after what they

perceived as straying, so too did Muhammad.

Muslims believe that God sent Muhammad as the final prophet to bring people

back to the one true religion, which involves the worship of and submission

to a single and all-powerful God.

The Quran also acknowledges Abraham and Moses and Jesus, among others, as

prophets, but it's very different from the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. For one

thing, it's much less narrative, but also it's the written record of the

revelations Muhammad received, which means it's not written from the point of

view of people.

It is seen as the actual word of God.

The Quran is a really broad-ranging text, but it returns again and again to

a couple themes.

One is strict monotheism, and the other is the important of taking care of those

less fortunate than you. The Quran says of the good person, These

revelations

also radically increase the rights of women and orphans, which is one of the

reasons that Muhammad's tribal leaders weren't that psyched about them. To talk

more about Islamic faith and practice, let's go to the Thought Belt. The five

pillars of Islam are the basic acts considered obligatory, at least by Sunni

Muslims. First is the shahada, or the profession of faith.

There is no God but God, and Muhammad is God's prophet, which is sometimes

translated as there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah's prophet, which

tries to make Muslims sound other and ignores the fact that the Arabic word

for God, whether you're Christian or Jewish or Muslim, is Allah.

Second, Salah, or ritual prayer five times a day at dawn, noon, afternoon,

sunset, and late evening, which are obligatory unless you haven't hit

puberty, are too sick, or are menstruating.

Keep it PG, Thought Bubble. Third, Saum, the month-long fast during the month of

Ramadan, in which Muslims do not eat or drink or smoke cigarettes during

daylight hours.

Since Ramadan is a lunar calendar month, it moves around the seasons, and

obviously it's most fun during the winter, when the days are shorter, and

least fun during the summer, when days are both long and hot.

Fourth is Zakat, or almsgiving, in which non-poor Muslims are required to give a

percentage of their income to the poor. And lastly, Hajj, the pilgrimage to

Mecca that Muslims must try to fulfill at least once in their lives, provided

they are healthy and have enough money.

And there's also more to understanding Islam than just knowing the Quran. Like

Judaism, with its Talmud, and Christianity, with its lives of saints

and writings of church fathers, Islam has supplementary sacred texts, chief

among which is the Hadith, a collection of sayings and stories about the

Prophet. Thanks, Thought Bubble. Oh, it's time for the open letter?

Magic! An open letter to the 72 virgins. Oh, but first, let's check what's in the

secret compartment.

Oh, it's Andre the Giant!

Did you know that Andre the Giant died a virgin?

Is a fact that I made up? Dear 72 virgins, hey there. It's me, John Green.

Did you know that not all hadiths were created equal?

Some sayings of the Prophet are really well sourced. Like, for instance, a good

friend or a relative heard the Prophet say something and then it ended up as a

hadith. But some hadiths are terribly sourced. Like, not to be irreverent, but

some of it is like middle school gossip. Like, Rachel told Rebecca that her

sister's brother's friend kissed Justin Bieber on the face.

And the vast majority of Muslims don't treat terribly sourced hadiths as

scripture. And the idea that you go to heaven and get 72 virgins is not in the

Quran. It's in a terribly sourced hadith. So it is my great regret to

inform you, 72 virgins, that in the eyes of almost all Muslims, you do not exist.

Best wishes, John Green. One more thing about Islam. Like Christianity and

Judaism, it has a body of law.

You might have heard of it. It's called Sharia. Although we tend to think of

Sharia as a single set of laws that all Muslims follow, that's ridiculous.

There are numerous competing ideas about Sharia, just as there are within any

legal tradition.

So people who embraced this worldview were called Muslims because they

submitted to the will of God, and they became part of the Ummah, or community

of believers.

This would be a good moment for an Ummah Thurman joke, but sadly, she is no

longer famous.

I'm sorry if you're watching this, Uma Thurman. Being part of the Ummah trumped

all other ties, including tribal ties, which got Muhammad into some trouble and

brings us, at last, Back to history.

So as Muhammad's following in Mecca grew, the Ummah aroused the suspicion of

the most powerful tribe in Mecca, the Quraysh. And it didn't matter that

Muhammad himself was born into the Quraysh tribe, because he wouldn't shut

up about how there was only one god, which was really bad news to the Quraysh

tribe, because they managed the pilgrimage trade in Mecca, and if all

those gods were false, it would be a disaster economically.

Although come to think of it, in the end, the Meccan pilgrimage business

turned out just fine.

So the Quraysh forced Muhammad and his followers out of Mecca in 622 CE and

they headed to Yathrab, also known as Medina. This journey, also known as the

Hijrah, is so important that it marks year zero in the Islamic calendar.

In Medina, Muhammad severed the religion's ties to Judaism, turning the

focus of prayer away from Jerusalem.

to Mecca. Also in Medina, the Islamic community started to look a lot more

like a small empire than like a church.

Like, Jesus never had a country to run, but Muhammad did almost from the

beginning, and in addition to being an important prophet, he was a good

general, and in 630, the Islamic community took back Mecca. They

destroyed all those idols in the Kaaba, and soon Islam was as powerful a

political force in the region as it was a religious one. And it's because the

political and religious coexisted from the beginning that there's no separate

tradition of civic and religious law like there is in Christianity and

Judaism. So then when Muhammad died in 632 CE, there wasn't a religious vacuum

left behind.

Muhammad was the final prophet.

The revelation of the Quran would continue to guide the Ummah throughout

their lives.

But the community did need a political leader, a caliph, and the first caliph

was Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, who was not without his opponents.

Many people wanted Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, to lead the community, and

although he did become the fourth caliph, caliph, that initial

disagreement, to radically oversimplify because we only have 10 minutes, began

the divide between the two major sects of Islam, Sunni and Shia. And even

today, Sunni Muslims believe Abu Bakr was rightly elected the first caliph,

and Shia Muslims believe it should have been Ali.

To Sunnis, the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, are known

as the rightly guided caliphs. And many of the conservative movements in the

Islamic world today are all about trying to restore the Islamic world to those

glory. days, which, like most glory days, were not unambiguously glorious.

Abu Bakr stabilized the community after Muhammad's death and began the process

of recording the Quran in writing, and started the military campaigns against

the Byzantine and Sasanian empires that, within 116 years, would allow the

Islamic empire to go from this to this.

His successor Umar was both an uncommonly good general and a brilliant

administrator, but like so many other great men, he proved terrible at

avoiding assassination.

Which led to the Caliphate of Uthman, who standardized the Quran and continued

both his predecessor's tradition of conquest and his predecessor's tradition

of getting assassinated. Then Ali finally got his turn as caliph, but his

ascension was very controversial and it ultimately led to a civil war, which

eventually led to the emergence of Uthman's tribe, the Umayyads, as the

dynasty that would rule over an ever-expanding Islamic empire for more

than a hundred years. It's common to hear that in these early years Islam,

quote, spread by the sword, and that's partly true, unless you are, wait for

it, the Mongols.

Actually, as usual, the truth is more complicated.

Many people, including the Mongols, but also including lots of people in Central

and East Asia, embraced Islam without any military campaigns.

And in fact, the Quran says that religion must not be an act of

compulsion. But this much is true. The early Islamic Empire was really good at

winning wars.

And situated as they were between two very wealthy empires, the Byzantines and

the Sasanians, there was plenty to fight for. The first of all were the

Sasanians, the last non-Muslim successor to the Persian Empire.

easy pickings because they'd been fighting the Byzantines for like 300

years and they were super tired.

Also, they had recently been struck by plague. Plague, man, I'm telling you,

it's like the red tortoise shell of history.

But in those early days they did pry away some valuable territory like Egypt

and the Holy Land and then eventually they got into Spain, where various

Muslim dynasties would entrench themselves until being expelled in 1492.

But as good as they were at making war, it's still tempting to chalk up the Arab

success to, you know, the will of God.

And certainly a lot of the people they conquered felt that way. Wars in this

part of the world didn't just pit people against each other, they also pitted

their gods against each other. So while the Islamic empire didn't require its

subjects to convert to Islam, their stunning successes certainly convinced a

lot of people that this monotheism thing was legit.

Once again John Green proving super hip to the slang of today's youngins.

Also you paid lower taxes if you converted and just as taxes on

cigarettes lead to people not wanting to smoke, taxes on worshipping your idols

lead to people not wanting to worship them anymore. So in a period of time

that was, historically speaking, both remarkably recent and remarkably short,

a small group of people from an area of the world with no natural resources

managed to create one of the great empires of the world and also one of its

great religions.

And that very fact may be why people of Western European descent remain largely

ignorant about this period.

Not only were the Muslims great conquerors, they spawned an explosion of

trade and learning that lasted hundreds of years.

They saved many of the classic texts that formed the basis of the so-called

Western canon while Europe was ignoring them, and they paved the way for the

Renaissance. While it's important to remember that much of the world between

Spain and the Indus River wasn't Arabized, most of it was so thoroughly

Islamized that these days we We can't think of the world we now call the

Middle East without thinking of it as Islamic.

Like, perhaps the greatest testimony to Islam's power to organize people's lives

and their communities is that in Egypt, five times a day, millions of people

turn away from the pyramids and toward Mecca. Egypt, birthplace to one of the

longest continuous cultures the world has ever known, is now the largest Arab

country in the world.

Next week we'll talk about the Dark Ages. Spoiler alert, they were darkest

in the evening. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

Hi there, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today

we're going to talk about the Dark Ages, possibly the most egregious Eurocentrism

in all of history, which is really saying something.

We're Europe! The prime meridian runs through us, we're in the middle of every

map, and we get to be a continent even though we're not a continent.

But let's begin today with a pop quiz. What was the best year of your life?

And what was the worst year? Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Best, 1994.

Worst, 1990.

Oh, me from the past. It gets so much better and also so much worse. For worst

year, I'm gonna go with 2001.

Best year, 2006.

Alright, now it's your turn, dear people. Share your best and worst years

in comments during the intro.

Right, so what you'll quickly find is that your worst year was someone else's

best year. So too with history.

The period between 600 and 1450 CE is often called the Middle Ages in Europe

because it came between the Roman Empire, assuming you forget about the

Byzantines, and the beginning of the Modern Age.

And it's sometimes called the Dark Ages because it was so purportedly

unenlightened, but was the age really so dark?

Depends on what you find depressing.

If you like cities and great poetry, then the Dark Ages were indeed pretty

dark in Europe. But if, like me, your two favorite things are not dying from

wars and not dying from anything else, then the Dark Ages actually weren't that

bad, at least until the plague came in the 14th century. And meanwhile, outside

of Europe, the Dark Ages were truly an age of enlightenment.

But we'll get boring Europe out of the way first. Let's go to the Thought

Bubble. Medieval Europe had less trade, fewer cities, and less cultural output

than the original Roman Empire.

London and Paris were fetid fire traps, with none of the planning or sewage

management of places 5,000 years older like Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley

Civilization, let alone Rome.

But with fewer powerful governments, wars were at least smaller, which is one

reason why Europeans living in medieval times... Ugh, Thought Bubble, I knew you

were gonna do that!

Anyway... People in medieval times lived slightly longer than Europeans during

the Roman Empire . Instead of centralized governments, Europe in the

Middle Ages had feudalism, a political system based on reciprocal relationships

between lords, who owned lots of land, and vassals, who protected the land and

got to dress up as knights in exchange for pledging loyalty to the lords.

The lords were also vassals to more important lords, with the most important

of all being the king.

Below the knights were peasants, who did the actual work on the land in exchange

for protection from bandits and other threats.

Feudalism was also an economic system, with the peasants working the land and

keeping some of their production to feed themselves while giving the rest to the

landowner whose land they worked. The small-scale local nature of the feudal

system was perfect for a time and place where the threats to people's safety

were also small-scale and local.

But of course, this system reinforces the status quo. There's little freedom

and absolutely no social mobility.

Peasants could never work their way up to lords, and they almost never left

their villages.

Thanks Thought Bubble. One more point that's really interesting from a world

history perspective.

This devolution from empire to localism has happened in lots of places at lots

of different times.

And in times of extreme political stress, like after the fall of the Han

Dynasty in China, power tends to flow into the hands of local lords who can

protect the peasants better than the state can.

We hear a lot about this in Chinese history and also in contemporary

Afghanistan, but instead of being called feudal lords, these landlords are called

warlords.

Eurocentrism striking again.

The other reason the Dark Ages are called dark is because Europe was

dominated by superstition and by boring religious debates about, like, how many

angels can fit on the head of a pin. And while there's something to that, the

Middle Ages also saw theologians like Thomas Aquinas, who was Quite an

important philosopher.

And women like Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote all this important liturgical

music and also basically invented the genre of the morality play.

All that noted, things were certainly brighter in the Islamic world, or Dar al

-Islam. So when we last left the Muslims, they had expanded out of their

homeland in Arabia and conquered the rich Egyptian provinces of the

Byzantines and the entire Sasanian Empire, all in the space of about a

hundred years.

The Umayyad dynasty then expanded the empire west to Spain and moved the

capital to Damascus because it was closer to the action empire. wise but

still technically in Arabia.

That was really important to the Umayyads because they'd established this

hierarchy with the Arabs like them at the top, and in fact they tried to keep

Arabs from fraternizing with non-Arab Muslims throughout the empire.

This of course annoyed the non-Arab Muslims who were like, I don't know if

you're reading the same Quran we are, but this one says that we're all

supposed to be equal.

And pretty quickly a majority of Muslims weren't Arabs, which made it pretty easy

for them to overthrow the Umayyads, which they did in 750 CE.

Their replacements, the Abbasids, Abbasids hold on.

Ah, I'm right twice!

Right, so the Abbasids were from the Abbasi, or Abbasi family, which hailed

from one of the eastern and therefore more Persian provinces of the Islamic

Empire. The Abbasids took over in 750 and no one could fully defeat them until

1258 when they were conquered by, wait for it, the Mongols.

The Abbasids kept the idea of a hereditary monarchy, but they moved the

capital of the empire to Baghdad, and they were much more welcoming of non

-Arab Muslims into positions of power. And under the Abbasids, the Dar al-Islam

took on a distinctly Persian cast that it never really lost.

The caliph now styled himself as a king of kings, just like the Achaemenids had,

and pretty soon the caliph's rule was a lot more indirect, just like the

original Persians.

This meant that his control was much weaker, and by about 1000 CE, the

Islamic caliphate, which looks so incredibly impressive on a map, had

really descended into a series of smaller kingdoms, each paying lip

service to the caliph in Baghdad. This was partly because the Islamic Empire

relied more and more on soldiers from the frontier, in this case the Turks,

and also slaves pressed into military service in order to be the backbone of

their army, a strategy that has been tried over and over again and has worked

exactly zero times, which you should remember if you ever become an emperor.

Actually, our resident historian points out that that strategy has worked, if

you are the Mongols.

More important than the Persian-style monarchy that the Abbasids set up was

their openness to foreigners and their ideas.

That tolerance and curiosity ushered in a golden age of Islamic learning

centered in Baghdad.

The Abbasids oversaw an effervescence of culture unlike anything that had been

seen since Hellenistic times.

Arabic replaced Greek not only as the language of commerce and religion, but

also of culture. Philosophy, medicine, and poetry were all written in Arabic,

although Persian remained an important literary language. And Baghdad became

the world's center of scholarship with its house of wisdom, and immense

library. Muslim scholars translated the works of Greek philosophers, including

Aristotle and Plato, as well as scientific works by Hippocrates,

Archimedes, and especially the physician Galen. And they translated and preserved

Buddhist and Hindu manuscripts that might otherwise have been lost.

Muslims made huge strides in medicine as well. One Muslim scholar, Ibn Sina,

wrote the Canon of Medicine, which became the standard medical textbook for

centuries in both Europe and the Middle East.

And the Islamic Empire adopted mathematical concepts from India, such

as the zero, a number so fascinating and that we could write an entire episode

about it, but instead, I'm just going to write it a little love poem.

Oh, zero, pretty little zero.

They say you're nothing, but you mean everything to mathematical history and

me. Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to science and religion.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, champagne poppers?

am I supposed to do with these?

Dear science and religion, you're supposed to be so irreconcilable in

everything, but not so much in the Abbasid Empire.

I mean, Muslim mathematicians expanded math to such a degree that we now call

the base ten number system and the symbols we use to denote it Arabic

numerals. And religion was at least part of what pushed all that learning

forward. Like the great philosopher Ibn Rushd argued that the only path to

religious enlightenment was through Aristotelian reasoning.

And Muslim mathematicians and astronomers developed algebra partly so

they could simplify Islamic inheritance law. Plus they made importance strides

in trigonometry to help people understand where to turn when trying to

turn toward Mecca. You were working so well together, science and religion, but

then, like Al and Tipper Gore, just couldn't last forever.

Nothing gold can stay in this world.

Nothing gold can stay.

Best wishes.

John Green. Baghdad wasn't the only center of learning in the Islamic world.

In Spain, Islamic Cordoba became a center for the arts, especially

architecture. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Great Mosque at

Cordoba, built by the Umayyad ruler Abd al-Rahman I in 785-786 CE.

That's right, this building, still standing today and one of the most

amazing mosques in the world, was built in a year, whereas medieval cathedrals

took like A million years to finish.

The Muslims of Spain were also engineers who rivaled the Romans.

Aqueducts in Cordoba brought drinkable water into the city, and Muslim scholars

took the lead in agricultural science, improving yields on all kinds of new

crops, allowing Spanish lives to be longer and less hungry.

Everybody wanted to live in Spain. Even the greatest Jewish philosopher,

Maimonides, wanted to live in Spain, but sadly he was expelled and ended up in

Alexandria, Egypt.

There he wrote his awesomely titled Defensive Rationality, a guide for the

perplexed. I'm translating the title of course because the original text was

written in Arabic.

Meanwhile, China was having a golden age of its own. The Tang Dynasty made

China's government more of a meritocracy, and ruled over 80 million

people across 4 million square miles.

And they might have conquered all of Central Asia had it not been for the

Abbasids, whom they fought at the most important battle you've never heard of,

the Battle of the Tallis River. This was like the Ali Frazier of the 8th century,

and the Abbasids won, which ended up defining who had cultural influence

where, with the Abbasids dominating to the west of the river, and China

dominating the East.

The Tang also produced incredible art that was traded all throughout Asia. And

many of the more famous sculptures from the Tang Dynasty feature figures who are

distinctly not Chinese, which again demonstrates the diversity of the

empire. The Tang was also a golden age for Chinese poetry, with notables like

Du Fu and Li Bo plying their craft, encouraged by the official government.

And the Song Dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1258, kicked even more ass, it's

not cursing if you're talking about donkeys. By the 11th century, Chinese

metalworkers were producing as much iron as Europe would be able to produce in

the 18th century.

Some of this iron was put to use in new plows, which enabled agriculture to

boom, thereby supporting population growth.

Porcelain was of such high quality that it was shipped throughout the world,

which is why we now call it China.

And there was so much trade going on that the Chinese ran out of metal for

coins, leading to another innovation, paper money.

And by the 11th century, the Chinese were writing down their recipe for a

mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal that we now know as gunpowder.

That becomes kind of a big deal in history, paving the way as it does for

modern war. warfare, and arena rock pyrotechnics, and oh, that's why!

Not so dark after all. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.

Hi there, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today

we're going to talk about the Crusades.

Oh, Stan, do we have to talk about the Crusades? I hate them.

Here's the thing about the Crusades, which were a series of military

expeditions from parts of Europe to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

The real reason they feature so prominently in history is because we've

endlessly romanticized the story of the Crusades. We've created this simple

narrative with characters to root for and to root against, and it's been

endlessly idealized by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, and there are knights with

swords and lion hearts. No, Stan, lion hearts.

Thank you.

Let's start by saying that initially the Crusades were not a holy war on the part

of Europeans against Islam, but in important ways the Crusades were driven

by religious faith.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, religion causes all wars.

Imagine no religion. I'm going to cut you off right there before you violate

copyright me from the past, but as usual, you're wrong.

Simple readings of history are rarely sufficient.

By the way, when did my handwriting get so much better? I mean, if the Crusades

had been brought on by the lightning-fast rise of the Islamic

Empire and a desire to keep in Christian hands the land of Jesus, us than they

would have started in the 8th century.

But early Islamic dynasties like the Umayyads and the Abbasids were perfectly

happy with Christians and Jews living among them, as long as they paid a tax.

And plus the Christian pilgrimage business was awesome for the Islamic

Empire's economy.

But then a new group of Muslims, the Seljuk Turks, moved into the region and

they sacked the holy cities and made it much more difficult for Christians to

make their pilgrimages.

And while they quickly realized their mistake, it was already too late. The

Byzantines, who'd had their literal asses kicked at the Battle of Manzikert

in 1071, felt the threat.

and called upon the West for help. So the first official crusade began with a

call to arms by Pope Urban II in 1095 CE.

This was partly because Urban wanted to unite Europe and he'd figured out the

lesson the rest of us learned from alien invasion movies. The best way to get

people to unite is to give them a common enemy.

So Urban called on all the bickering knights and nobility of Europe and he

said unto his people, let us go forth and help the Byzantines because then

maybe they will acknowledge my awesomeness and get rid of their stupid

not having me as Pope thing and while we're at it, Let's liberate Jerusalem.

I'm paraphrasing, by the way. Shifting the focus to Jerusalem was really

important because the Crusades were not primarily military operations.

They were pilgrimages. Theologically, Christianity didn't have an idea of a

holy war. Like, war might be just, but fighting wasn't something that got you

into heaven. But pilgrimage to a holy shrine could help you out on that front,

and Urban had the key insight to pitch the Crusade as a pilgrimage with a touch

of warring on the side.

I do the same thing to my kid every night. I'm not feeding you dinner

featuring animal crackers.

I'm feeding you animal crackers featuring dinner.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to animal crackers.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's animal crackers.

Thanks, Stan.

Hi there, Animal Crackers. It's me, John Green. Thanks for being delicious, but

let me throw out a crazy idea here. Maybe foods that are already delicious

do not need the added benefit of being pleasingly shaped.

I mean, why can't I get my kid animal spinach, or animal sweet potato, or even

animal cooked animal?

I mean, we can put a man on Mars, but we can't make spinach shaped like

elephants? What, Stan? We haven't put a man on Mars?

Stupid world always disappointing me.

Best wishes.

John Green. One last myth to dispel. The Crusades were not an example of early

European colonization of the Middle East, even if they did create some

European-ish kingdoms there for a while. That's a much later post- and anti

-colonialist view that comes at least in part from a Marxist reading of history.

In the case of the Crusades, it was argued, the knights who went adventuring

in the Levant were the second and third sons of wealthy nobles who, because of

European inheritance rules, had little to look forward to by staying in Europe.

and lots to gain in terms of plunder by going to the east. Cool theory, bro, but

it's not true. First, most of the people who responded to the call to crusade

weren't knights at all, they were poor people. And secondly, most of the nobles

who did go crusading were lords of estates, not their wastrel kids.

But more importantly, that analysis ignores religious motivations.

We've approached religions as historical phenomena, thinking about how, for

instance, the capricious environment of Mesopotamia led to a capricious cadre of

Mesopotamian gods.

But just as the world shapes religion, religion also shapes the world. And some

modern historians might ignore religious motivations, but medieval crusaders sure

as hell didn't. I mean, when people came up with that idiom, they clearly thought

hell was for sure. To the crusaders, they were taking up arms to protect

Christ and his kingdom.

And what better way to show your devotion to God than putting a cross on

your sleeve, spending five to six times your annual income to outfit yourself

and all your horses?

and heading for the Holy Land.

So when these people cried out, God wills it, to explain their reasons for

going, we should do them the favor of believing them. And the results of the

First Crusade seemed to indicate that God had willed it. Following the lead of

roving preachers with names like Peter the Rabbit, Peter the Hermit, Stan,

you're always making history less cool.

Fine. Following preachers like Peter the Hermit, thousands of peasants and nobles

alike volunteered for the First Crusade. It got off to kind of a rough start

because pilgrims kept robbing those they'd encounter along the way. Plus,

there was no real leader, so there were constant rivalries between nobles about

who could supply the most troops.

Notable among the notables were Godfrey of Bullion, Bohemond of Toronto, and

Raymond of Toulouse.

But despite the rivalries and the disorganization, the Crusaders were

remarkably, some would say miraculously, successful. By the time they arrived in

the Levant, they were fighting not against the Seljuk Turks, but against

Fatimid Egyptians who had captured the Holy Land from the Seljuks, thereby

making the Turks none too pleased with the Egyptians.

At Antioch, the Crusaders reversed a seemingly hopeless situation when a

peasant found the spear that had pierced Christ's side hidden under a church,

thereby raising morale enough to win the day.

And then they did the impossible.

They took Jerusalem, securing it for Christendom, and famously killing a lot

of people in the Alaska Mosque.

The Crusaders succeeded in part because the Turkish Muslims, who were Sunnis,

did not step up to help the Egyptians, who were Shia. But that kind of

complicated inter-Islamic rivalry gets in the way of the awesome narrative.

The Christians just saw it as a miracle.

So by 1100 CE, European nobles held both Antioch and Jerusalem as Latin Christian

kingdoms. I say Latin to make the point that there were lots of Christians

living in these cities before the Crusaders arrived. They just weren't

Catholic. They were Orthodox.

A point that will become relevant shortly.

We're gonna skip the Second Crusade because it bores me and move on to the

Third Crusade because it's the famous one.

Broadly speaking, the Third Crusade was a European response to the emergence of

a new Islamic power, neither Turkish nor Abbasid. The Egyptian, although he was

really a Kurd, Sultan al-Malik al-Nasr Salih al-Din Yusuf, better known to the

West. as Saladin. Saladin, having consolidated his power in Egypt, sought

to expand by taking Damascus and eventually Jerusalem, which he did

successfully because he was an amazing general.

And then the loss of Jerusalem caused Pope Gregory VIII to call for a third

crusade. Three of the most important kings in Europe answered the call.

Philip, cowardly schemer II of France, Richard, Lionheart I of England, and

Frederick, I am going to drown anticlimactically on the journey while

trying to bathe in a river, Barbarossa, of the not holy, not Roman, and not

imperial Holy Roman Empire.

Both Richard and Saladin were great generals who earned the respect of their

troops, and while from the European perspective the crusade was a failure

because they didn't take Jerusalem, it did radically change crusading forever

by making Egypt a target.

Richard understood that his best chance to take Jerusalem involved first taking

Egypt, but he couldn't convince any crusaders to join him because Egypt had

a lot less religious value to Christians than Jerusalem.

So Richard was forced to call off the crusade early, but if he had just hung

around until Easter of 1192, he would have seen Saladin die.

And then Richard probably could have fulfilled all his crusading dreams.

But, you know, then we wouldn't have needed the Fourth Crusade. Although

crusading continued through the 14th century, mostly with an emphasis on

North Africa and not the Holy Land, the Fourth Crusade is the last one we'll

focus on because it was the crazy one.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So a lot of people volunteered for the Fourth

Crusade, more than 35,000, and the generals didn't want to march them all

the way across Anatolia because they knew from experience that it was a

dangerous and b hot.

So they decided to go by boat, which necessitated the building of the largest

naval fleet Europe had seen since the Roman Empire.

The Venetians built 500 ships, but then only 11,000 crusaders actually made it

down to Venice because like, oh, I meant to go, but I had a thing come up, etc.

There wasn't enough money to pay for those boats, so the Venetians made the

Crusaders a deal.

Help us capture the rebellious city of Zara, and we'll ferry you to Anatolia.

This was a smidge problematic, crusading-wise, because Zara was a

Christian city, but the Crusaders agreed to help, resulting in the Pope

excommunicating both them and the Venetians. Then, after the Crusaders

failed to take Zara and were still broke, a would-be Byzantine emperor

named Alexius III promised the Crusaders that he would pay them if they helped

him out, so the excommunicated Catholic Crusaders fought on behalf of the

Orthodox Alexius, who soon became emperor in Constantinople.

But it took Alexius a while to come up with the money he'd promised the

Crusaders, so they were waiting around in Constantinople, and then Alexius was

suddenly dethroned by the awesomely named Mortsophilus, leaving the

Crusaders stuck in Constantinople with no money. Christian warriors couldn't

very well sack the largest city in Christendom, could they?

Well, it turns out they could, and boy did they. They took all the wealth they

could find, killed and raped Christians as they went, stole the statues of

horses that now adorn St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, and retook exactly

none. of the Holy Land.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. So you'd think this disaster would discredit the whole

notion of crusading, right? No. Instead, it legitimized the idea that crusading

didn't have to be about pilgrimage, that any enemies of the Catholic Church were

fair game.

Also, the Fourth Crusade pretty much doomed the Byzantine Empire, which never

really recovered.

Constantinople, a shadow of its former self, was conquered by the Turks in

1453. So ultimately, the Crusades were a total failure at establishing Christian

kingdoms in the Holy Land long term.

And with the coming of the Ottomans, the region remained solid. solidly Muslim,

as it mostly is today.

And the Crusades didn't really open up lines of communication between the

Christian and Muslim worlds, because those lines of communication were

already open.

Plus, most historians now agree that the Crusades didn't bring Europe out of the

Middle Ages by offering it contact with the superior intellectual

accomplishments of the Islamic world.

In fact, they were a tremendous drain on Europe's resources.

For me, the Crusades matter because they remind us that the medieval world was

fundamentally different from ours. The men and women who took up the cross

believed in the sacrality of their work in a way that we often can't even

conceive of today. And when we focus so much on the heroic narrative, or the

anti-imperialist narrative, or all the political infighting, we can lose sight

of what the Crusades must have meant to the Crusaders. How that journey from

pilgrimage to holy war transformed their faith and their lives.

And ultimately, that exercise in empathy is the coolest thing about studying

history. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.

Hi, my name's John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're

going to talk about Africa. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, we've already talked about

Africa. Egypt is in Africa, and you haven't shut up about it the entire

course. Yeah, that's true of me from the past, but Africa's big. It's like super

big. Much bigger than it appears on most maps, actually. I mean, you can fit

India and China and the United States if you just fold in Maine. All of that fits

in Africa. Like any huge place, Africa is incredibly diverse, and it's a

mistake to focus just on Egypt. So today, let's go here, south of the

Sahara Desert.

First, let's turn to written records. Oh right, we don't have very many, at least

not written by sub-Saharan Africans. Much of African history was preserved

via oral rather than written tradition. These days we tend to think of writing

as the most accurate and reliable form of description, but then again, we do

live in a print-based culture.

And we've already said that writing is one of the markers of civilization,

implying that people who don't use writing aren't civilized, a prejudice

that has been applied over and over again to Africa. But one, if you need

evidence that it's possible to produce amazing literary artifacts without the

benefit of writing, let me direct your attention to the Iliad and the Odyssey.

which were composed and memorized by poets for centuries before anyone ever

wrote them down. And two, no less an authority than Plato said that writing

destroys human memory by alleviating the need to remember anything.

And three, you think oral tradition is uncivilized, but here you are listening

to me talk.

But we do have a lot of interesting records for some African histories,

including the legendary tale of Mansa Musa. By legendary, I mean some of it

probably isn't true, but it sure is important.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So there was this king, Mansa Musa, who ruled the

West African Empire of Mali, and in 13- 1924 ish he left his home and made the

Hajj the pilgrimage to Mecca.

He brought with him an entourage of over a thousand people, some sources say 60

,000, and most importantly, 100 camel loads of gold.

I wish it had been donkeys so I could say he had 100 assloads of gold, but no,

camels, right. So along the way, Mansa Musa spent freely and gave away lots of

his riches. Most famously, when he reached Alexandria, at the time one of

the most cultured cities in the world, he spent so much gold that he caused

runaway inflation throughout the city that took years to recover from.

He built houses in Cairo and in Mecca, to house his attendants, and as he

traveled through the world, a lot of people, notably the merchants of Venice,

no, Thought Bubble, like actual merchants of Venice, right, they saw him

in Alexandria and returned to Italy with tales of Monsa Musa's ridiculous wealth,

which helped create the myth in the minds of Europeans that West Africa was

a land of gold, an El Dorado, the kind of place you'd like to visit, and maybe,

you know, in five centuries or so.

begin to pillage. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So what's so important about the

story of Mansa Musa? Well, first, it tells us that there were African

kingdoms ruled by fabulously wealthy African kings.

Which undermines one of the many stereotypes about Africa, that its

people were poor and lived in tribes ruled by chiefs and witch doctors.

Also, since Mansa Musa was making the Hajj, we know that he was a Muslim and b

relatively devout. And this tells us that Africa, or at least Western Africa,

was much more connected to the parts of the world we've been talking about than

we generally are led to believe.

Mansa Musa knew all about the places he was going before he got there, and after

his visits, the rest of the Mediterranean world was sure interested

in finding out more about his homeland.

Mansa Musa's pilgrimage also brings up a lot of questions about West Africa,

namely what did his kingdom look like and how did he come to convert to Islam.

The first question's a little easier, so we'll start with that one. The Empire of

Mali, which Mansa Musa ruled until the extremely elite year of 1337, was a

large swath of West Africa running from the coast hundreds of miles into the

interior and including many significant cities, the largest and best known of

which was Timbuktu. The story of the Islamization of the empire, however, is

a bit more complicated.

Okay, so pastoral North Africans called Berbers had long traded with West

Africans, with the Berbers offering salt in exchange for West African gold.

That may seem like a bad deal, until you consider that without salt, we die.

Whereas without gold, we only have to face the universe's depraved

indifference to us without the benefit of metallic adornment. That went to an

ominous place pretty quickly. Right, so anyway, the Berbers were early converts

to Islam, and Islam spread along those pre-existing trade routes between North

and West Africa. So the first converts in Mali were traders who benefited from

having a religious as well as a commercial connection to their trading

partners in the North and the rest of the Mediterranean.

And then the kings followed the traders, maybe because sharing the religion of

more established kingdoms in the North and the East would give them prestige,

not to mention access to scholars and administrators who could help them

cement their power. So Islam became the religion of the elites in West Africa,

which meant that Muslim kings were trying to extend their power over

largely non-Muslim populations.

which worshipped traditional African gods and spirits.

In order not to seem too foreign, these African Muslim kings would often blend

traditional religion with Islam, like, for instance, giving women more equality

than was seen in Islam's birthplace. Anyway, the first kings we have a record

of adopting Islam were from Ghana, which was probably the first empire in West

Africa, and it really took off around the 11th century. As with all empires,

and also everything else, Ghana rose, and then fell, and was replaced by Mali.

And the kings of Mali, especially Mansa Musa, but also Mansa Suleiman, tried to

increase the knowledge and practice of Islam in their territory.

So, for example, when Mansa Musa returned from his Hajj, he brought back

scholars and architects to build mosques. And the reason we know a lot

about Mali is because it was visited by Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan cleric and

scholar who kind of had the best life ever. He was particularly fascinated by

gender roles in the Malian Empire and by Malian women, writing, Oh,

it must be time for the open letter.

An open letter to Ibn Battuta. I wonder what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, appears to be some kind of fake beard.

Movie magic!

Stan, why did you do this to me?

Dear Ibn Battuta, Bro, I love Twitter and my Xbox and Hawaiian pizza, but if I

had to go into the past and live anyone's life, it would be yours.

Because you were this outlandishly learned scholar who managed to parlay

your knowledge of Islam into the greatest road trip in history.

You went from Mali to Constantinople to India to Russia to Indonesia.

You were probably the most well-traveled person before the invention of the steam

engine. And everywhere you went, you were treated like a king, and then you

went home and you wrote a really famous book called The Real- still read today

and also you could grow a real beard and I'm jealous!

Best wishes.

John Green. One more thing about Monsa Musa, there are lots of stories that

Monsa Musa attempted to engage in maritime trade across the Atlantic

Ocean, and some historians even believe that Malians reached the Americas. CNA

investigation may one day prove it, but until then, we'll only have oral

tradition. The Malian Empire eventually fell to Songhai, which was itself

eventually overthrown for being insufficiently Islamic, all of which is

to say that like China or India or Europe, West Africa had its own empires

that relied upon religion and war and incredibly boring dynastic politics.

Man, I hate dynastic po- If I wanted to live in an ostensibly independent

country that can't let go of monarchy, I'd be like Thought Bubble and move to

Canada. Oh, come on, Thought Bubble, that's not fair. Shut up and take back

Celine Dion!

All right, now let's move to the other side of Africa, where there was an

alternative model of civilizational development.

The eastern coast of Africa saw the rise of what historians call Swahili

civilization, which was not an empire or a kingdom, but a collection of city

-states like Zanzibar and Mombasa and Mogadishu, all of which formed a network

of trade ports. There was no central authority.

Each of these cities was autonomously ruled, usually, although not always,

by... a king. But there were three things that linked the city-states such

that we consider them a common culture. Language, trade, and religion.

The Swahili language is part of a language group called Bantu, and its

original speakers were from West Africa. Their migration to East Africa changed

not only the linguistic traditions of Africa, but everything else, because

they brought with them ironwork and agriculture.

Until then, most of the people living in the East had been hunter-gatherers or

herders, but once introduced, agriculture took hold, as it almost

always does.

Unless, wait for it, you're the Mongols.

Modern-day Swahili, by the way, is still a Bantu-based language, although it's

been heavily influenced by Arabic.

On that topic, for a long time, historians believed that these East

African cities were all started by Arab or Persian traders, which was basically

just racist. They didn't believe that Africans were sophisticated enough to

found these great cities. Now, scholars recognize that all the major Swahili

cities were founded well before Islam arrived in the region, and that, in

fact, trade had been going on since the 1st century CE.

But Swahili civilization didn't begin its rapid development until the 8th

century, when Arab trade arrived seeking goods that they could trade on the vast

Indian Ocean network, the Silk Road of the sea.

And of course those merchants brought Islam with them which, just like in West

Africa, was adopted by the elites who wanted religious as well as commercial

connections to the rest of the Mediterranean world.

In many of the Swahili states these Muslim communities started out quite

small but at their height between the 13th and 16th century most of the cities

boasted large mosques. The one in Kilwa even impressed Ibn Battuta who of course

visited the city because he was having the best life ever. Most of the goods

exported were raw materials like ivory and animal hides and timber. It's worth

noting, by the way, that when you're moving trees around, you have a level of

sophistication to your trade that goes way beyond the Silk Road.

I mean, if you'll recall, they were just trading like tortoise shells and stuff.

Not again!

Africans also exported slaves along the East Coast, although not in huge

numbers, and they exported gold, and they imported luxury goods like

porcelain and books.

In fact, archaeological digs in Kilwa have revealed that houses often featured

a kind of built-in bookshelf.

Learning of books through architecture nicely captures the magic of studying

history. Archaeology, writing, and oral tradition all intermingle to give us

glimpses of the past.

And each of those lenses may show us the past as if through some funhouse mirror,

but if we're conscious about it, we can at least recognize the distortions.

Studying Africa reminds us that we need to look at lots of sources, and lots of

kinds of sources, if we want to get a fuller picture of the past.

If we relied only on written sources, it would be far too easy to fall into the

old trap of seeing Africa as backwards and uncivilized.

it with multiple lenses, we discover a complicated, diverse place that was

sometimes rich and sometimes not. And when you look at it that way, it becomes

not separate from, but part of our history.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History and today we're going to

discuss, wait for it, the Mongols!

So you probably have a picture of the Mongols in your head. Yes, that's the

picture. Brutal, bloodthirsty, swarthy, humorously mustachioed warriors riding

the plains, wearing fur, eating meat directly off the bone, saying bar bar

bar bar bar bar. In short, we imagine the Mongol Empire as stereotypically

barbarian. And that's not entirely wrong.

But if you've been reading recent world history textbooks, like we here at Crash

Course have, you might have a different view of the Mongols, one that emphasizes

the amazing speed and success of their conquests, how they conquered more land

in 25 years than the Romans did in 400?

How they controlled more than 11 million contiguous square miles?

And you may even have read that the Mongols basically created nations like

Russia and even Korea. One historian has even claimed that the Mongols smashed

the feudal system and created international law.

Renowned for their religious tolerance, the Mongols in this view created the

first great free trade zone, like a crazy medieval Eurasian nafta. And

that's not entirely wrong either. Stupid truth always resisting simplicity.

So remember herders? We talked about them back in episode 1 as an alternative

to hunting and gathering or agriculture.

Here are the key things to remember.

1. Nomads aren't Jack Kerouac. They don't go on, like, random road trips.

They migrate according to climate conditions so they can feed their

flocks. 2. Nomads don't generally produce manufactured goods, which means

they need to trade, so they almost always live near settled people. And 3.

Because they generally live close to nature and in harsh conditions,

pastoralists tend to be tougher than diamond-plated differential calculus.

Like, think of the Huns, or the Xiongnu, or the Mongols.

Okay, Stan, that's enough. Back to me. Come. Stan, I am the star of the show,

not the Mongols! Hi. Sorry about that. Right, so one last thing. Pastoral

people also tend to be more egalitarian, especially where women are concerned.

Paradoxically, when there's less to go around, humans tend to share more, and

when both men and women must work for the social order to survive, there tends

to be less patriarchal domination of women, although Mongol women rarely went

to war. I can't tell your gender. I mean, you've got the pants, but then you

also have the floopity flop.

So... That's the technical term, by the way. I'm a historian.

If you had to choose a pastoral nomadic group to come out of Central Asia and

dominate the world, you probably wouldn't have chosen the Mongols.

Because for most of the history we've been discussing, they just hung out in

the foothills bordering the Siberian forest, mixing, herding, and hunting,

quietly getting really good at archery and riding horses.

Also, the Mongols were much smaller than other pastoral groups like the Tatars or

the Uyghurs. And not to get like all great man history on you or anything,

but the reason the Mongols came to dominate the world really started with

one guy, Genghis Khan.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. The story goes that Genghis, or Chinggis

Khan, was born around 1162 with the name Temujin to a lowly clan.

His father was poisoned to death, leaving Temujin under the control of his

older brothers, one of whom he soon killed during an argument. By 19, he was

married to his first and most important wife, Borte, who was later kidnapped.

This was pretty common among the Mongols. Temujin's mom had also been

kidnapped. In rescuing his wife, Temujin proved his military mettle, and he soon

became a leader of his tribe. But uniting the Mongol confederations

required a civil war.

which he won largely thanks to two innovations.

First, he promoted people based on merit rather than family position, and second,

he brought lower classes of conquered people into his own tribe while

dispossessing the leaders of the conquered clans. Thus, he made peasants

love him. The rich hated him, but they didn't matter anymore because they were

no longer rich.

With these two building block policies, Temujin was able to win the loyalty of

more and more people, and in 1206 he was declared the Great Khan, the leader of

all the Mongols. How?

Well, the Mongols chose their rulers in a really cool way.

A prospective ruler would call a general council, called a kurultai, and anyone

who supported his candidacy for leadership would show up on their

horses, literally voting with their feet.

Mr. Green! Mr. Green! But horses don't have feet. They have hooves. I hate you,

me from the past. Also, no interrupting the Thought Bubble. After uniting the

Mongols, Genghis Khan went on to conquer a lot of territory.

By the time he died in his sleep in 1227, his empire stretched from the

Mongol homeland in Mongolia all the way to the Caspian Sea. Thanks, Thought

Bubble. So that's a pretty good-looking empire, and sure, a lot of it was

pasture or mountains or desert, but the Mongols did conquer a lot of people,

too. And in some ways, with Genghis's death, the empire was just getting

started. His son, Ogedai Khan, expanded the empire even more. And Genghis's

grandson, Mongka, was the great Khan in 1258, when Baghdad, the capital of the

Abbasid Empire, fell to the Mongols. And another of Genghis's grandsons, Kublai

Khan, conquered the Song Dynasty in China in 1279.

And if the Mamluks hadn't stopped another of Genghis's grandsons at the

Battle of Ain Jalut, they probably would have taken all of North Africa. Man,

Genghis Khan sure had a lot of grandkids.

Well, it must be time for the open letter.

An open letter to Genghis Khan's descendants.

Oh, but first let's check what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, a noisemaker and champagne poppers. Stan, you know I suck at these.

What's all this for? Oh, it's because it's a birthday party!

Yay! Happy birthday to Genghis Khan's descendants.

How do I know it's your birthday, Genghis Khan's descendants?

Because every day is your birthday.

Because right now, on the planet Earth, there are 16 million direct descendants

of Genghis Khan, meaning that every day is the birthday of 43,000 of them. So

good news, Genghis Khan, your empire might be gone, but your progeny lives

on, and on, and on, and on. Happy birthday!

Best wishes.

John Green. Unfortunately for the Mongols, those guys weren't always

working together because Genghis Khan failed to create a single political unit

out of his conquests.

Instead, after Genghis's death, the Mongols were left with four really

important empires called Khanates. The Yuan Dynasty in China, the Ilkhanate in

Persia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, and the Khanate of the Golden

Horde in Russia. If you remember all the way back to the Hellenistic period, this

is similar to what happened to another good general who wasn't much for

administration, Alexander the Great.

Also, neither of them ever conquered India.

The Mongols succeeded primarily because of their military skill. Genghis Khan's

army, which never numbered more than 130,000, was built on speed and archery.

Just like this guy. Mongol mounted archers were like super fast tanks

compared to the foot soldiers and knights they were up against. But wait,

all the military history nerds are saying, once people knew the Mongols

were coming, why didn't they just hole up in castles and forts? It's not like

the Mongols had flying horses.

Except they did.

They didn't? Stan, why are you always making history boring?

So the Mongols apparently didn't have flying horses, but they were uncommonly

adaptable. So even though they'd never seen a castle before they started

raiding, they became experts at siege warfare by interrogating prisoners.

And they also adopted gunpowder, probably introducing it to Europeans,

and they even built ships so they could attack Japan.

That might have worked too, except there happened to be a typhoon.

Also, people were terrified of the Mongols. Often, cities would surrender

the moment the Mongols arrived, just to escape slaughter.

But of course, that only hap- because there were occasions when the Mongols

did, you know, slaughter entire towns. So with all that background, let us

return to the question of Mongol awesomeness. First...

Five arguments for awesome.

One, the Mongols really did reinvigorate cross-Eurasian trade. The Silk Road

trading routes that had existed for about a thousand years by the time the

Mongols made the scene had fallen into disuse, but the Mongols valued trade

because they could tax it, and they did a great job of keeping their empire

safe. It was said that a man could walk from one end of the Mongol Empire to the

other with a gold plate on his head without ever fearing being robbed.

Two, the Mongols increased communication through Eurasia by developing this pony

express-like system of way stations with horse and riders that could quickly

relay information.

It was called the Yam system, and it also included these amazing bronze

passports which facilitated travel.

Three, another thing that traveled along Mongol trade routes was cuisine.

For example, it was because of the Mongols that rice became a staple of the

Persian diet, which I mention entirely because I happen to like Persian food.

Four, the Mongols forcibly relocated people who were useful to them, like

artists and musicians, and especially administrators.

As you can imagine, the Mongols weren't much for administrative tasks, like

keeping records, so they found people who were good at that stuff and just

move them around the empire.

This created the kind of cross-cultural pollination that world historians these

days get really excited about.

And five, the Mongols were almost unprecedentedly tolerant of different

religions. They themselves were shamanists, believing in nature spirits,

but since their religion was tied to the land from which they came, they didn't

expect new people to adopt it, and they didn't ask them to. So you could find

Muslims and Buddhists and Christians and people of any other religion you can

think of prospering throughout the Mongol Empire.

And it's that kind of openness that has led historians to go back and re

-evaluate the Mongols, seeing them as kind of a precursor to modernity. But

there is another side of the story that we should not forget, so here are five

reasons why the Mongols might not be so great. One, here is Genghis Khan's

definition of happiness.

to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.

Off topic, but if that quote rings a bell, it might be because Oliver Stone

blatantly plagiarized Genghis Khan in the movie Conan the Barbarian. Two is an

extension of one. The Mongols were seriously brutal conquerors. I mean, not

uniquely brutal, but still.

The Mongols often destroyed entire cities, and most historians estimate the

number they killed to be in the millions.

Three, their empire didn't last. Within 80 years, they'd left China and been

replaced by a new dynasty, the Ming, and in Persia, they blended in so completely

that by the 15th century, they were totally unrecognizable. I mean, they'd

even taken up agriculture.

Agriculture! The last refuge of scoundrels who wanted to devote their

lives to working instead of scoodley-pooping. They also weren't

particularly interested in artistic patronage or architecture.

I mean...

Your palace may last forever, but my yurt can go anywhere.

Five, the Mongols were probably responsible for the Black Death.

By opening up trade, they also opened up vectors for disease to travel in the

case of the plague via fleas infected with Yersinia pestis. And at least

according to one story, the Mongols intentionally spread the plague by

catapulting their plague-ridden cadavers over the walls of Caffa in the Crimea.

While this primitive act of biological warfare might have happened, it's

unlikely to be what actually spread the plague.

More likely, it was the fleas on the rats in the holds of Black Sea ships

that were trading with Europe, but that trade only existed because of the

Mongols. Alright Stan, one last time, cue the Mongoltage.

So the Mongols promoted trade, diversity, and tolerance, and they also

promoted slaughter and senseless destruction.

And what you think about the Mongols ends up saying a lot about you.

Do you value artistic output over religious diversity?

Is imperialism that doesn't last better or worse than imperialism that does?

And are certain kinds of warfare inherently wrong?

If you think those are easy questions to answer, then I haven't been doing my

job. Regardless, I look forward to reading your answers in comments. Thanks

for watching, and I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

be discussing trade here in the Indian Ocean.

Oh, my globe had a globe. We're going to do some new school history today where

we talk about a system instead of talking about individuals or some boring

dynasty. No, Stan, not that kind of dynasty. Yes.

that kind of dynasty.

So many world history classes still focus on people who wore funny hats and

how their antics shaped our lives, right? And while it's interesting and

fun to note that, for instance, King Charles VI of France believed that he

was made out of glass, relentlessly focusing on the actions of the funny

-hatted people who ruled us makes us forget that we also make history. Mr.

Green, Mr. Green, did Charles VI of France really believe he was made out of

glass? Yes, he did. But today we're talking about Indian Ocean trade and

it's gonna be interesting, I promise, so pay attention.

Also, no hats!

This is a classroom, not a Truman Capote beach party.

So Indian Ocean trade was like the Silk Road in that it was a network of trade

routes that connected people who had stuff to people who wanted it and were

willing to pay for it. And just as the Silk Road was not a single road, there

were lots of Indian Ocean trade routes connecting various port cities around

the Indian Ocean basin including Zanzibar and Mogadishu and Hormuz and

Canton. By the way, before you criticize my pronunciation, please remember that

mispronunciation is my thing and I've been doing it since episode one and

nobody ever notices it's a thing!

Sorry, I lost it there. But Indian Ocean trade was bigger, richer, and featured

more diverse players than the Silk Road, but it is much less famous, probably

because it does not have a snazzy name.

What do you think, Stan? Like the Neptunian Network?

No? The Wet Web?

No, that's definitely not it. The sexy sea lanes of South Asia?

No, that's too hard for me to say with my lisp. The Monsoon Marketplace!

Thanks Danica. And now the tyranny of dates. By about 700 CE there was a

recognizable monsoon marketplace, but it really blew up between 1000 CE and 1200.

It then declined a bit during the Pax Mongolica when overland trade became

cheap and safe thanks to, wait for it, the Mongols.

But then Indian Ocean trade surged again in the 14th and 15th centuries. So who

was trading?

Swahili coast cities, Islamic empires in the Middle East, India, China, Southeast

Asia, and not Europe, which is probably one of the other reasons that the

monsoon marketplace isn't as famous as it should be. Let's go to the Thought

Bubble. So if you live in China and you need some ivory to make the handle for a

sword, you have to trade for it because elephants only live in India and Africa.

One of the reasons that Indian Ocean trade took off is that there were a wide

range of resources available and a wide range of important needs, from ivory to

timber to books to grain.

But the most important thing was the wind.

The Indian Ocean is home to a set of very special winds called monsoons. You

generally hear about monsoons in the context of rain in India, but rather

than thinking of monsoons as the rain itself, Think of them as the wind that

brings a rainy season.

The great thing about seasons is that they come regularly, and so do the

monsoon winds.

So if you were a sailor, you could count on the wind to bring you from Africa to

India if you sailed between April and September, and one that would bring you

back to Africa if you sailed between November and February.

In fact, these winds were so predictable that early maritime travel guides often

listed ideal times of departure down to the week and sometimes even the day.

Predictable wins made trade a lot less risky, like back in the day when the

only power for ships were sails and oarsmen, your cargo might not arrive on

time, or it might spoil, or you might die, all of which are bad for the health

of global economic trade. But predictable wins meant lower risk, which

meant cheaper trade, which meant more trade, which meant more people could

have awesome sword handles. Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, there are a few

more facets of Indian Ocean trade worth mentioning. First, Indian Ocean trade

incorporated many more people than participated in Silk Road trade. There

were Jewish people and people from Africa and Malaysia and India and China

all sailing around and setting up trading communities where they would act

as middlemen, trying to sell stuff for more than they'd bought it for and

trying to find new stuff to buy that they could sell later. But despite this

diversity, for the most part, especially on the western half of the Indian Ocean

basin, the trade was dominated by Muslim merchants.

Why? Largely because they had the money to build ships, although as we will see

in the 15th century, the Chinese state could have changed that balance

completely. By the way, I need to point out that when I say the trade was

dominated by Muslim merchants.

The emphasis should be on the merchants, not the Muslim or the dominated.

As previously noted, we tend to think that states and governments and the

funny-hatted people who rule them are the real movers and shakers in history,

but that's really not the case. In the Indian Ocean, the terms of trade were

set by the merchants and by the demands of the market, not by the whims of

political rulers.

And the self-regulating nature of that trade was remarkable and pretty much

unprecedented. I mean, the most amazing thing is that, except for a few pirates,

all of this trade was peaceful for the better part of 700 years. these merchant

ships were free to sail without the protection from any state's navy. This

despite the fact that some pretty valuable crap was being traded. No,

Thought Bubble, I meant that colloquially. All right, we need to do

the open letter before Thought Bubble tries any more puns.

Magic! For today's open letter, to further discuss the relationship between

merchants and nobles, we're going to go inland to Kashmir, where Kota Rani was

the ruler until 1339. Mostly, I just love this story. But first, let's find

out what's in the secret compartment.

Oh.

It's blowouts. Stan, are you asking me to make a diarrhea joke? Because I'm

above that. I will, however, give you a party blower solo.

Dear Kotorani, so you had a pretty crazy life. First, when you were a kid, you

were kidnapped by a rival noble who disguised his army as a bunch of

merchants. Then you were forced to marry your kidnapper who was the ruler of

Kashmir, but then he died!

And you became the ruler and you were really good at it and everything was

going awesome and you were lining things up for your sons, but then some dude

comes in and decides that he's going to marry you and forces you to do it by

attacking you! And so what do you do? Immediately after your second wedding,

you commit suicide by slicing open your belly and offer your in- to your

horrible new husband as a wedding present. No, Stan, I don't want to say

it, but I have to. That really took guts, Kotorani.

Sorry. And all this because your father welcomed an army into his house thinking

they were merchants.

Best wishes, John Green. So, right, you wouldn't let an army or a rival noble

into your house, but... Everyone welcomes a merchant, and not just

royalty. The great thing about seaborne trade is that you can trade bulk goods

like cotton cloth, foodstuffs, and timber that's all too heavy to strap

onto a camel or mule.

So for the first time we see goods being traded for a mass market instead of just

luxury goods like silk for elites.

Wood, for instance, can be used to build houses, but it's not all that plentiful

on the Arabian Peninsula.

However, when it becomes cheaper, thanks to trade, suddenly more people can have

better houses.

Much of the timber that was shipped in the monsoon marketplace came from

Africa, which was kind of embla- Africa produced a lot of the raw materials like

animal hides and skin and ivory and gold.

The Swahili city-states imported finished goods such as silk and

porcelain from China and cotton cloth from India. Spices and foodstuffs like

rice were shipped from Southeast Asia and especially Sri Lanka where black

pepper was a primary export.

And the Islamic world provided everything from coffee to books to

weapons. But it wasn't just products that made their way around the eastern

hemisphere thanks to the Indian Ocean. Technology spread too. Like the magnetic

compass, which is kind of crucial if you like to know where you're going, came

from China. Muslim sailors popularized the astrolabe which made it easier to

navigate by the stars.

And boats using stern post rudders were easier to steer, so that technology

quickly spread throughout the monsoon marketplace.

The Islamic world also produced the triangular Latin sail, which became

super important because it allowed ships to tack against the wind.

This meant that a skilled crew could make their way through the ocean even if

they didn't have a strong tailwind. And just as with the Silk Road, ideas also

traveled in the monsoon marketplace.

For instance, today, more Muslims live in Indonesia than in any other country.

And yes, I know Indonesia has more than two islands. It's not to scale,

obviously. Knowing what you've already learned about the growth of Islam and

the spread of trade, it won't surprise you to learn that Islam spread to

Indonesia via the monsoon marketplace.

After the 1200s, the region, which had previously been heavily influenced by

the Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, like witness this temple for

instance, became increasingly Islamic as rulers and elites adopted the religion

so they could have religious as well as economic ties to the people they were

trading with. The conversion of most of a region to Islam, where it continues to

flourish today, is a pretty big deal. But Islam didn't spread as effectively

to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam because they weren't centers of trade.

How do you become a center of trade? Well, let's zoom in here, to the Strait

of Malacca. You can see how it could act as a choke point for trade. Any city

that controlled that strait could stop ships from going through it, or at least

tax them. And that's exactly what happened, to such an extent that a

powerful merchant state called Srivijaya rose up on Sumatra. And for a while,

Srivijaya dominated trade in the region because there were so many ships going

through the Strait of Malacca to and from China. But, as we will see in

another episode, this trade abruptly declined in the 15th century, and with

it, So did Srivijaya. This brings up a key point about Indian Ocean trade,

which is that it was indispensable to the creation of certain city-states like

Srivijaya and the city-states of the Swahili Coast.

Without trade, those places wouldn't have existed, let alone become wealthy

and grand.

Trade was a huge source of wealth for these cities because they could tax it

through import and export duties or port fees.

But the fact that they are no longer powerful shows that trade can be a

pretty weak foundation upon which to build a polity, even a small one. There

are many reasons for this, like high taxes can motivate traders to find other

routes, for instance. But the main one is this. Reliance upon trade makes you

especially vulnerable to the peaks and troughs in the global economy. The

legacy of the merchant kingdom in Southeast Asia is still alive and well

in Singapore, for instance. But one of the great lessons of cities that have

declined or disappeared is that there's usually a town nearby that's eager to

take your place and happy to offer lower taxes.

It's almost as if the merchants decide where the people with the funny hats go,

rather than the other way around.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

talk about a relationship.

No, not you, college girlfriend.

No, not that kind of relationship either. No, Stan, this is a history

class. We're going to talk about the relationship between a city, Venice, and

an empire, the Ottomans, and in doing so, we're going to return to an old

theme here on Crash Course World History, how studying history can make

you a better boyfriend and or girlfriend.

Probably or, but I'm not here to judge. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, no offense, but

you don't really seem like an expert in how to get girls to to like you. Here's

something amazing me from the past. You know that girl Sarah in 10th grade who's

super, super smart? Yeah, she's really hot. She's like three or four leagues

hotter than I am. Yeah, I married her. So shut up and listen.

Ten minutes from now, I'm hoping you'll understand how one mutually beneficial

relationship between the Venetians and the Ottomans led to two really big

deals, the European Renaissance and Christopher Columbus.

Not like his birth. I mean, he wasn't like a half-Ottoman, half-Venetian baby.

His travels!

So Venice is a city made up of hundreds of islands at the northern tip of the

Adriatic Sea, but walking around it, you can't help but feel that the city is

essentially a collection of floating buildings tied together by some canals.

If ever there were a place where geography was destiny, it was Venice.

Venice was literally built for ocean-going trade. As you can imagine,

Venice didn't have a lot of natural resources, except for fish and

mustaches, so if they wanted to grow, they had to rely on trade. Let's go to

the Thought Bubble. First, Venetians became experts in shipbuilding. Remember

that when the Crusaders needed ships for their crazy Fourth Crusade, they headed

to Venice, because the Venetians were famous for their ships, including

merchant ships like the galley and the calm.

Not only could they build ships, they could also sail them to pleasant locales

like Constantinople and the Levant, so the Venetians formed trade treaties,

sometimes called concessions, with the Byzantines, and then when Constantinople

When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans and became Istanbul, the Venetians were

quick to make trade treaties with their new neighbors, famously saying that

while Istanbul had been Constantinople, the matter of Constantinople getting the

works was nobody's business but the Turks.

But even before the Ottomans, Venice had experience trading with the Islamic

world. It initially established itself as the biggest European power in the

Mediterranean thanks to its trade with Egypt's sultan in the outlandishly

lucrative pepper business.

Can't blame the Europeans, really. That stuff's delicious.

Oh, you mean like actual pepper?

Eh, that's good too. Especially since it masks the taste of spoiled meat, which

most meat was in the days before refrigeration. Due to some awkward

crusades, the Egyptian merchants weren't terribly welcome in, you know, Europe.

But they had all the pepper, because the Egyptians imported it from India and

controlled both overland and oversea access to the Mediterranean.

And while others cited moral or religious opposition to trade, the

Venetians usually found a way, which is why the whole freakin' town is made of

marble.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. To avoid the sticky situation of having to consort

with the heathen Egyptians, the Venetians employed a handy story.

This is the Piazza San Marco, the number one destination in the entire world for

people who like to be pooped on by pigeons.

It's also home to this church, which includes some bronze horses you may

remember that were looted from Constantinople. And it contains the body

of St. Mark, author of the Gospel According to St. Mark, who had once been

the bishop of Alexandria.

In Egypt.

So naturally he died and was buried in Alexandria, but the Venetians claimed

him as their own because apparently one time he visited Venice, and these two

merchants hatched a very clever plan.

They went to Alexandria on business, stole St. Mark's body, and then hid it

in a shipment of pork, which the Muslims didn't check very carefully because, you

know, they were disgusted by it. You can actually see a version of this on the

mosaics in the Basilica of St. Mark, complete with the Muslims shouting an

Arabic version of like, ew, gross.

And then forever after, the Venetians were like, listen, we have to trade with

these guys.

use it as a secret way to ferry saint bodies out of Egypt. We don't want to

become fantastically wealthy, it's just a necessary byproduct of our saint

saving. So what did Venice import?

Lots, but notable for us, they imported a lot of grain. Because if you've ever

been to Venice, then you might have noticed that it's basically made out of

marble and therefore kind of difficult to farm.

The Ottomans, on the other hand, had abundant grain, even before they

conquered Egypt and its oh-so-fertile Nile River in 1517.

Also, while trade was certainly the linchpin of Venice's economic success,

they had a diverse economy. they also produced things like textiles and glass.

And in fact Venice is still known for its glass, but they couldn't produce it

without a special ash that they used to make the colors. And you'll never guess

where that ash came from.

the Ottomans. Am I making you a better boyfriend yet? You have to add to your

partner's life.

You have to color their glass.

That sounds like a euphemism, but it's not. Back to history.

One last thing about Venice that makes it special, at least for its time.

Venice was a republic, not a monarchy or, God forbid, an empire.

So its leaders were elected and had to answer to the populace. I mean, you

know, at least the property-owning male populace. The ruler was the Doge, and he

got to live in a very nice house and wear a funny hat.

The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire also got to live in a nice house and wear a

funny hat, but there the similarities end.

To begin, the Ottomans were an empire that lasted from around 1300 CE until

1919, making it one of the longest lasting and richest empires in world

history. The Ottomans managed to blend their pastoral nomadic roots with some

very un-nomadic empire building and some really impressive architecture like this

and this and this, making them very different from, wait for it, the

Mongols.

The Empire, or at least the dynasty, was founded by Osman Bey, and Ottoman is a

Latinization of Osmanli, which basically means, like, the House of Osmond. Nope.

Stan, the house... Yes!

Oh my god. The Ottomans were greatest in the 15th and 16th centuries under two

famous sultans. First, Mehmed the Conqueror ruled from 1451 to 1481 and

expanded Ottoman control to the Balkans, which is why there are Bosnian Muslims

today. But Ottoman expansion reached its greatest extent under Suleiman the

Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 to 1566.

He took valuable territory in Mesopotamia and Egypt, thus securing

control over the western parts of the Asian trade both over land and over sea.

He also defeated the King of Hungary and laid siege to Vienna in 15- and he

turned the Ottomans into a huge naval power.

Also, judging from his hat, he had the largest brain in human history.

The Ottomans basically controlled about half of what the Romans controlled, but

it was much more valuable because of all that Indian Ocean trade you remember

from last week. So all this land brought a lot of wealth, but it needed to be

ruled. The Ottomans could have followed the Roman model, where you send out

generals and nobles to rule over conquered territories, or they could

have demanded the allegiance of client kings like the Persians, or developed a

civil service system like the Chinese, but instead they created an entirely new

ruling class, a system that some historians call the slave aristocracy.

So if you're a king, one of your main problems is hereditary nobles, because

they always want to replace you, and they don't want to give you your money,

and they want their ugly sons to marry your gorgeous daughters, etc.

One way to deal with this problem is to make them part of the government so they

feel included and shut up. Another way is to kill them. That's what they

usually do in Russia. I'm whispering so Putin doesn't hear me.

The Ottomans just bypassed the problem of hereditary nobles altogether by

creating both an army and a bureaucracy from scratch so they would be loyal only

to the Sultan. How?

The Devshirmeh, a program in which they kidnapped Christian boys, converted them

to Islam, and raised them either to be part of an elite military fighting force

called the Janissaries or to be government bureaucrats. Incidentally,

which of those gigs would you prefer? Because I think that says a lot about

you as a person. Either way, you weren't allowed to have kids, which prevented

the whole hereditary nobles problem and also ensured that the Ottoman government

would contain quite a lot of eunuchs.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to Ottoman eunuchs.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's a blow-up globe.

See what quitting smoking will get you, me from the past.

Hey there, Ottoman eunuchs, how's it hanging? I'm just kidding, that was

mean. Listen, there have been eunuchs all around this great planet of ours,

but you're special. I'm not going to get into the details of why, because they're

horrifying. I'm just going to link to an article in the video info. You started

out just being harem guards, Ottoman eunuchs, which is kind of an obvious gig

for you, but then you expanded.

As had happened in China, you made yourselves indispensable, and you were

often the center of palace intrigue. In fact, few people in the Ottoman Empire

were as wealthy and important as many of you were.

Way to turn lemons into lemonade.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought up lemons. Best wishes, John Green.

This system eventually broke down as the Janissaries, who had guns, lobbied to be

allowed to have families. But until that happened, the Ottoman system of using a

mix of slave administrators and eunuchs to run everything worked incredibly

well. But to return to the relationship between the Ottomans and the Venetians,

after the Ottomans captured Egypt, they pretty much controlled the flow of trade

through the Mediterranean.

But the Venetians had centuries of experience as mariners and also lots of

boats. Speaking of ships...

I ship these guys.

So the Ottomans were content to let the Venetians do all the actual like trading

and carrying of goods and they just made their money from taxes.

And that worked because both Venice and the Ottomans added value to each other.

Healthy relationships, listen up me from the past, aren't about extracting value.

They have to be mutually beneficial to work.

And boy was that a mutually beneficial relationship.

For instance, Venice became super rich.

And being super rich was a prerequisite for the European Renaissance because all

that art and learning required money.

which is why Venice was a leading city at the beginning of the European

Renaissance before being eclipsed by Florence, Rome, and, I don't know, say,

Rotterdam. Also, this relationship established firm connections between

Europe and the Islamic world, which allowed ideas to flow again, especially

old Greek ideas that had been preserved and built upon by Muslims.

I mean, I guess those connections had existed for a long time, but crusades

aren't a great way to exchange ideas.

But perhaps the most crucial result of the Venetian and Ottoman control of

trade is that it forced other European powers to look for different paths to

the richest... of the East.

And that fueled huge investments in exploration.

The Portuguese sailed south and east around the southern tip of Africa, and

the Spanish went west, believing that the Indies and China were much closer

than they turned out to be.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

talk about Russia, which means we get to talk about this guy again.

We haven't talked about Russia much so far, because one, it's complicated, and

two, I actually govern you parouski a little bit, because I had some Russian

in college, and that makes it difficult to mispronounce things, which is my

thing. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, why'd you take Russian? Well, because I had this

big crush on a Russian major, but anyway, I'm sure I'll still mispronounce

everything.

So today we're going to talk about persistent stereotypes about Russia and

how Russia came to take its current shape, a turn of events we owe largely

to the Mongols.

But before we talk about the Mongol conquest of Russia, let's discuss

exactly what got conquered.

So before there was a Russian Empire or even a Russian Kingdom, there was the

Kievan Rus'. We know Kiev was a powerful city-state, but who exactly founded it

is a subject of debate.

Most historians now believe that the settlers of Kiev were Slavic people who

migrated from around the Black Sea, but there's an older theory that the

settlers of Kiev were actually like Vikings.

That theory goes that Vikings came down to Kiev from rivers like the Dnieper and

founded a trading outpost similar to ones they founded in Iceland and

Greenland. Which is an awesome idea and everything, but Russian, the language

that developed from what the Rus spoke, sounds a lot more Slavic than it sounds,

you know, Swedish.

To illustrate, here is a Swede fighting a Russian over who founded Kiev.

Right.

Okay, so trade was hugely important to Kiev. Almost all of their wars ended

with... trade concession treaties, and their law codes were unusually devoted

to the subject of commerce.

The Rus traded raw materials like fur, wax, and also slaves.

We're not going to venture into the astonishingly intense etymological

debate over whether the word slav derives from the Latin word for slave,

because there is nothing more terrifying and verbose than an etymologist flame

war. But yeah, the Rus traded slaves.

They also relied upon agriculture, and your relationship to the land determined

both your social status and your tax burden.

And if you ever fell into tax debt, which a lot of peasants did, then you

became bonded to the land you farmed for the rest of your life. I guess that

slave-like dynamic is okay as a model for social organization, but if you step

on the proletariat for too long...

You might end up with a communist revolution, but I'm getting way ahead of

myself. Couple more things about Kiev. First, the ruler of Kiev was called the

Grand Prince, and he became the model for future Russian kings. Also, the

early Grand Princes made a fateful decision.

They became Byzantine Christians.

According to legend, Prince Vladimir chose to convert the Rus to Byzantine

Christianity in the 11th century. He purportedly chose Christianity over

Islam because of Islam's prohibition on alcohol, saying, drink.

is the joy of the Russian. Anyway, the Kievan Rus eventually fell in 1240 when

these guys showed up and replaced them. By that time, the Rus had been at war

with pastoral nomads for centuries, from the Khazars to the Pechenegs to the

Cumans, and they were tired, which made them easy targets. The period of Mongol

rule over Russia is also known as Appanage Russia.

And Appanage is a princedom, and this period basically featured a bunch of

Russian princes vying for control over territory, which is not a recipe for

political stability or economic growth, another theme that will reemerge in

Russia. By the way, I'm describing all of this as Russia, even though if you

did that in the 13th century, people would look at you funny. They'd be all

like, what do you mean Russia?

Also, where'd you get those pants?

And all those teeth?

Mmm. You smell pretty.

Right, so to discuss how important the Mongols were to Russia, let's go to the

Thought Bubble. The Mongols did set up the Khanate of the Golden Horde in

Russia, but it didn't leave much lasting impact on the institutions of the

region, which had already been set up by the Kievans.

But they did bring about a population shift, away from the south, where Kiev

was, toward the northeast.

This was partly to get away from the Mongols and their massacring, but that

noted, the Mongols were comparatively light rulers.

They were happy to live in their yurts and collect tribute from the ever

-bickering Russian princes. And all the princes had to do in exchange for their

relative freedom was recognize the Mongol Khans as their rulers and allow

the Mongols to pick the Grand Prince from among the Russians.

Perhaps most importantly, Mongol rule cut the Russians off from the Byzantines

and further isolated them from Europe, leaving Russia not Byzantine, not

European, and not really Mongol either since they hated the Mongols and

generally believed that the Mongols were a scourge sent from God to punish them

for their sinfulness and everything.

But the Mongols did help propel Moscow to prominence, and in doing so, created

the idea that this was Russia. And as an aside, they also did what Napoleon,

Hitler, and many others couldn't.

the Mongols successfully conquered Russia in the winter. Thanks, Thought

Bubble. So how did the Mongols help catapult Moscow and its princes to

prominence? Well, first, they named Muscovite princes the Grand Prince on

more than one occasion. More importantly, the Muscovite princes won,

that is to say, purchase the right to collect tribute on behalf of the Khan

from other princes.

That's a good gig, because it's easy to skim a little bit off the top before you

send it down the line to the Mongols. Which is precisely what the Muscovite

princes did to enrich themselves.

One prince who was particularly good at this was known as Ivan Kalita, using my

Russian, I can tell you that that translates to Johnny Moneybags.

As my Russian professor would tell you, I'm a creative translator.

All this loot helped Moscow expand their influence and buy up principalities. The

Mongols also helped them more directly by attacking their en- enemies. Plus,

Moscow was at the headwaters of four rivers, which made it well positioned

for trade, and because they were kind of the allies of the Mongols, the Mongols

rarely attacked them, which meant that lots of people went to Moscow because it

was relatively safe. Including churchy people, and in fact Moscow became the

seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1325 when the Metropolitan Peter moved

there. So you might think that the Muscovites would be grateful for all of

this help from the Mongols.

But you would be wrong.

In fact, as the Mongols' position weakened in Russia in the latter half of

the 14th century, one of Moscow's princes, Dmitry Donskoy, made war on

them and inflicted the first major defeat of Mongols in Russia at the

Battle of Kulikovo Field.

This showed that the Mongols weren't invincible, which is always really bad

for an imperial force. Plus, it made Moscow look like the hero of the

Russians. And that helped strengthen the idea of a unified Russia, just as,

you'll remember, the Persians helped unify the Greeks a long time ago. Aiding

this growth was stability, which Moscow owed largely to luck. Muscovite princes

usually had sons, which allowed them to have successors. In fact, there was only

one major succession struggle, and it was between two blind guys named Basil.

That's not a joke, by the way. Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to Basil and Basil.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's Grislor.

Yeah, I guess that is kind of how the Russians saw the Mongols. Dear Bazels,

the 15th century Muscovite Civil War was insanely complicated, but it culminated

with you guys essentially blinding each other. First, Basil II, the eventual

winner of the Civil War, had Basil the Cross-Eyed blinded, because being cross

-eyed wasn't bad enough, and that was seen as the end of the political career

of Basil the Cross-Eyed. But then, Basil the Cross-Eyed's brother tracked down

Basil II, and he was like, I'mma blind you back!

And of course, everybody thought that would end Basil II's political career,

but they were wrong! It turns out you can rule Russia like a boss even if

you're blind.

Best wishes.

John Green. After Basil the Blind came the real man who expanded Moscow's

power, Ivan III, later known as Ivan the Great. First, he asserted Russian

independence from the Mongols and stopped paying tribute to the Khan,

after the Khan had named him Grand Prince, of course. Then, Ivan purchased,

negotiated for, or conquered multiple appanages, thus expanding Muscovite

power even more. Ivan later declared himself sovereign over all Russians and

then married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, thus giving him even

more legitimacy.

And he took the titles autocrat and czar.

which means Caesar. Basically, Ivan created the first centralized Russian

state, and for doing that, he probably deserves the title The Great. And that

would be a great place to stop, except then we wouldn't see the kind of

absolute rule that characterized Russia for most of the rest of its history,

even unto Putin.

Oh God, I'm just kidding, Putin! You would never rig an election! No, I

don't, don't, please don't put me in jail!

While Ivan III consolidated Muscovite power, the undeniably brutal streak in

Russian governance comes not from the Mongols, but from Ivan IV, better known

as Ivan the Terrible. Ivan the Terrible ruled from 1533 to 1584, taking the

throne at the age of 16. Yet more evidence that adolescents should not be

trusted with emerging empires. Ivan the Terrible's reign represents the end of

princely power and the beginning of the autocracy that Russia is famous for. But

in the beginning, he was really an innovative leader. As a young king, he

worked with a group of advisors called the Chosen Council, which certainly

sounds like a good thing. He also called the very first meeting of the Zemsky

Sabor a grand council of representatives.

similar to the Estates General that would become so important in France 200

years later. And he reformed the army, emphasizing the new technology of

muskets. But in the second part of his reign, Ivan earned his nickname the

Terrible, which can mean either bad or just awe-inspiring, depending on your

perspective. Psychological historians will point out that things started to go

terribly wrong with Ivan after the death of his beloved wife, Anastasia Romanov.

or they might point to the fact that he enjoyed torturing animals when he was a

kid. Regardless, Ivan set out to break the power of the nobility, the former

princes and landowners called the boyars.

They were the last link to princely rule, and after an odd episode that saw

him briefly abdicate, Ivan returned to Moscow and declared that he had the

right to punish all traitors and evildoers.

To help him in this effort, Ivan created the Oprechniki, a corps of secret police

who rode around on black horses wearing all black, whose job it was to hunt down

and destroy any enemies of the... See, also Nazgul and Dementors. So this was

the first of Russia's purges, and over the latter half of Ivan's reign, whole

towns were destroyed.

It was in effect a civil war, except with no resistance.

One historian called it a civil massacre.

In the end, Ivan the Terrible established absolute control of the Tsar

over all the Russian people, but he also set the precedent of accomplishing this

through terror, secret police, and the suspension of law.

And that would echo through the ages of Russian history.

I mean, until Vladimir Putin heroically put an end to it. His little eyes.

They're scary.

So hence the stereotype of Russian brutality and barbarism, but here's the

truth. The rest of Europe also knew a lot about brutality and secret police

forces. For centuries, Russia was seen by Western Europe as both European and

not. An other that was to be doubly feared because it wasn't fully other.

And when we think of all these historical stereotypes about Russia,

it's worth remembering that what you see as barbaric about others is often what

they see as barbaric about you.

Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

do some compare and contrast, because that's what passes for hip in world

history circles.

Right, so you've probably heard of Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 sailed

the ocean blue and discovered America, a place that had been previously

discovered only by millions of people. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, Columbus was just

a lucky idiot.

Yeah, no. Here's a little rule of thumb, me from the past. If you're not an

expert in something, don't pretend to be an expert. This is going to serve you

well both in your academic career...

and in your kissing career. Moving on!

So unlike me from the past, I'd argue that Columbus has a deserved reputation

in history, but was he really the greatest sailor of the 15th century?

Well, let's meet the other contestants. In the red corner, we have Zheng He,

who, when it comes to ocean-going voyages, was the first major figure of

the 15th century. And in the blue corner is Vasco da Gama from scrappy little

Portugal, who managed to introduce Europeans to the Indian Ocean Trade

Network. Columbus, you have to sit in the polka-dotted corner.

As you'll no doubt remember from our discussion of Indian Ocean trade, it was

dominated by Muslim merchants, involved ports and Africa and the Middle East and

India and Indonesia and China, and it made a lot of people super rich.

That last point explains why our three contestants were so eager to set sail.

Well, that and the ceaseless desire of human beings to discover things and

contract scurvy. Let's begin with Zheng He, who is probably the greatest admiral

you've never heard of. Couple important things about Zheng He. First, he was a

Muslim. That may seem strange until you consider that by the way In the late

14th century, China had long experience with Muslims, especially when they were

ruled by, wait for it, the Mongols.

Secondly, Zheng He was a eunuch. Fortunately, 15th century China had

excellent general anesthesia, so I'm sure it didn't hurt at all when they

castrated him. What's that, Stan? They didn't have general anesthesia? Oh boy.

Stan, I'm seeing it. I can see it. Ah, Stan, show me something cute right now.

Oh, hi there, kitty.

How'd you get in that little teacup? Thank you, Stan.

Right, so Zheng He rose from humble beginnings to lose both of his testicles

and become the greatest admiral in Chinese history.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led seven

voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, the expeditions of these so-called treasure

ships. And they were huge.

Columbus' first voyage consisted of three ships. Zheng He led an armada of

over 300 with a crew of over 27,000, more than half of London's population at

the time. And some of these ships were well, enormous.

The flagships, known as the treasure ships, were over 400 feet long and had

seven or more masts. You see that tiny little ship there in front of the

treasure ship?

That's a to-scale rendering of Christopher Columbus's flagship, the

Santa Maria.

Zheng He wasn't an explorer.

The Indian Ocean trade routes were already known to him and to other

Chinese sailors.

He visited Africa, India, and the Middle East, and in a way, his journeys were

trade missions, but not in the sense of filling his ships up with stuff to be

sold later for higher prices.

At the time, China was the leading manufacturer of quality goods in the

world, and there wasn't anything they actually needed to import.

What they needed was prestige and respect, so that people would continue

to see China as the center of the economic universe. So there was a

tribute system.

through which foreign rulers or their ambassadors would come to China and

engage in a debasing ritual called the kowtow, wherein they acknowledged the

superiority of the Chinese emperor and offered him, or her, but usually him,

gifts in exchange for the right to trade with China. The opportunity to humble

yourself before the Chinese emperor was so valuable that many a prince was happy

to jump on a treasure ship and sail back to China with Zheng He.

Also, these tribute missions brought lots of crazy things to China, including

exotic animals.

From Africa, Zhang Ha brought back a zoo's worth of rhinos, zebras, and even

giraffes. Basically, he was like the medieval Chinese gnome.

Thanks, ThoughtBubble. So the Chinese were world leaders in naval technology

and they wanted to dominate trade here in the Indian Ocean, so why then did

these voyages end?

One reason was that Zheng He couldn't live forever, and sure enough, he

didn't. Also, his patron, the Yongle Emperor, died. And the Emperor's

successors weren't as interested in maritime trade. They were more concerned

with protecting China against its traditional enemies.

Nomads from the steppe. To do this, they built a rather famous wall.

The Great Wall was mostly built under the Ming Dynasty using resources that

they only had because they stopped building gigantic ships.

And just imagine what might have happened if the Ming Emperors had

embraced a different strategy, one that was based on outreach instead of

isolationism. And now, to the blue corner representing Portuguese

exploration, we have Vasco da Gama.

Couple things about Portugal. First, it has a fair bit of coastline. Secondly,

it was relatively resource poor, which meant it relied upon trade in order to

grow. Also, the Iberian Peninsula peninsula was the only place in Europe

where Muslims could be found in large numbers in the 15th century, which meant

the Christian crusading spirit was quite strong there, presumably because Muslims

had brought so much stability and prosperity to the region. And chief

among these would-be crusaders was Prince Henry the Navigator, so-called

because he was not a navigator. He was, however, a patron not only of sailors

themselves, but of a special school at Sagres in which nautical knowledge was

collected and new maps were made and all kinds of awesome stuff happened.

And all that knowledge gave Portuguese sailors a huge competitive advantage

when it came to exploration.

Henry commissioned sailors to search for two things. First, a path to the Indian

Ocean so they could get in on the lucrative spice trade. And second, to

find the kingdom of Prester John, a mythical Christian king who was supposed

to live in Africa somewhere so that Henry could have Prester John's help in

a crusade. de Gama was the first of Henry's protégés to make it around

Africa and into the Indian Ocean. In 1498 he landed at Calicut, a major

trading post on India's west coast, and when he got there, merchants asked him

what he was looking for. He answered with three words.

Gold. and Christians.

Which basically sums up Portugal's motivations for exploration.

So once the Portuguese breached the Indian Ocean, they didn't create, like,

huge colonies, because there were already powerful empires in the region.

Instead, they apparently sat in the middle of the Indian Ocean doing

nothing. Actually, they were able to capture and control a number of coastal

cities, creating what historians call a trading post empire.

They could do this thanks to their well-armed ships, which captured cities

by firing cannons into city walls like IRL Angry Birds.

But since the Portuguese didn't have enough people or boats to run the Indian

Ocean trade, they had to rely on extortion.

So Portuguese merchant ships would capture other ships and force them to

purchase a permit to trade called a cartaz.

And without a cartaz, a merchant couldn't trade in any of the towns that

Portugal controlled.

To merchants who'd plied the Indian Ocean trade for years in relative

freedom, The Portuguese were just glorified pirates, extracting value from

trade without adding to its efficiency or volume.

So the Cartai strategy sort of worked for a while, but the Portuguese never

really took control of Indian Ocean trade.

But they were successful enough that their neighbors, Spain, became

interested in their own route to the Indies. And that brings us to Columbus.

But first, let's dispel some myths. One, Columbus and his crew knew the Earth was

round. He was just wrong about the Earth's size.

Columbus used Ptolemy's geography in the Imago Mundi, based on Muslim

scholarship, and ended up overestimating estimating the size of Asia and

underestimating the size of the oceans.

Two, Columbus never thought he'd made it to China. He called the people he

encountered Indians because he thought he'd made it to the East Indies, what we

now know as Indonesia.

And three, Columbus was not a lucky idiot.

He navigated completely unknown waters primarily by using a technique known as

dead reckoning in which you figure out your position based on three pieces of

information. The direction you're going, your speed, and the time, which you

figure out via hourglass.

With only that technology to guide you, it's not actually that easy to hit a

continent. Come here, people who are saying he didn't hit a continent, he

only hit some islands.

Come here.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to the line of demarcation. But first, let's see what's

in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's a globe.

Thanks, Stan. Just what I always needed. Dear Line of Demarcation, you have so

much to teach us about the way that the world used to work and the way that it

works now.

In 1494, Pope Alexander VI settled a dispute between Portugal and Spain by

dividing the world into two parts.

The Spanish part...

and the Portuguese part.

This whole thing, at least according to Pope Alexander VI, could be split

between Spain and Portugal.

At least when it came to so-called unclaimed land.

I mean, unclaimed by whom?

You know all the American Indians were like, wait, this land is available?

In that case, we'll just, we'll just keep it.

It's all the same to you. Anyway, line of demarcation, I have great news for

you. What Alexander VI did totally worked. We haven't had a problem since.

Best wishes.

John Green. So Columbus's first journey, he made four, the last three of which

were pretty calamitous, was tiny, and he initially landed on a small Caribbean

island he called San Salvador in search, like the Portuguese, of golden

Christians. He was able to convince Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to fund

his expedition by promising riches and conversions of the natives, hopefully to

sign them up for yet another crusade. And there's a long-standing myth that

Columbus tricked Ferdinand and Isabella into paying for his trip, but in fact,

they commissioned two different sets of experts to analyze his plans, both of

which agreed he was crazy. One called the plan impossible to any educated

person. But even so, Ferdinand and Isabella footed the bill, partly because

they were full of crusading zeal after expelling the Muslims from Spain, and

partly because they were desperate to get their hands on some of that pepper

richness. Columbus, of course, failed at finding riches. He returned with neither

spices nor gold. He did create some Christians, as we'll discuss in a future

episode, but in terms of goal accomplishment, Columbus was much less

successful than either Zheng He or Vasco da Gama. But within two generations of

Columbus, Spain would become fantastically wealthy, and for a time,

they were the leading power in Europe. Columbus's voyages also had a huge,

largely negative impact on the people the Spanish encountered in the Americas.

And excitingly, from my perspective, once Columbus returned from San

Salvador, we can speak for the first time of a truly world history.

Except for you, Australia.

So who is the greatest mariner of the 15th century? Well, as usual, it depends

on your definition of greatness.

If you value administrative competence over ill-advised adventure, then Zheng

He is certainly the winner. But the reason we remember Columbus over him or

Vasco da Gama is that Columbus' voyages had a lasting impact on the world, even

if it wasn't necessarily a positive one. And that makes me wonder what kind of

person you'd want to be. A capable administrator and brilliant sailor like

Zheng He? A daring captain like da Gamo?

or the bearer of a complicated but famous legacy like Columbus?

Let me know in comments. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next week.

And an architect.

He was quite a Renaissance rat.

Right, so the story goes that the Renaissance saw the rebirth of European

culture after the miserable Dark Ages, and that it ushered in the modern era of

secularism, rationality, and individualism. And those are all on the

list of things we like here at Crash Course. Mr. Green, I think you're

forgetting Cool Ranch Doritos.

Yeah, fair enough. Then what's so controversial?

Well, the whole idea of a European Renaissance presupposes that Europe was

like an island unto itself that was briefly enlightened when the Greeks were

ascendant, and then lost its way, and then rediscovered its former European

glory. Furthermore, I'm going to argue that the Renaissance didn't even

necessarily happen.

But first, let's assume that it did. Essentially, the Renaissance was an

efflorescence of arts, primarily visual, but also to a lesser extent literary,

and ideas in Europe that coincided with the rediscovery of Roman and Greek

culture. It's easiest to see this in terms of visual art.

Renaissance art tends to feature a focus on the human form, somewhat idealized,

as Roman and especially Greek art had. And this classicizing is also rather

apparent in the architecture of the Renaissance, which featured all sorts of

Greek columns and triangular pediments and Roman arches and domes. In fact,

looking at a Renaissance building, you might even be able to fool yourself into

thinking you're looking at an actual Greek building if you sort of squint and

ignore the fact that Greek buildings tend to be, you know...

ruins. In addition to rediscovering, that is, copying Greek and Roman art,

the Renaissance saw the rediscovery of Greek and Roman writings and their

ideas. And that opened up a whole new world for scholars. Well, not a new

world, actually, since the texts were more than a thousand years old, but you

know what I mean. The scholars who examined, translated, and commented upon

these writings were called humanists, which can be a little bit of a confusing

term because it implies that they were concerned with, you know, humans rather

than, say, the religious world.

Which can add to the common but totally incorrect assumption that Renaissance

writers and artists and scholars were, like, secretly not religious.

That's a favorite area of speculation on the internet and in Dan Brown novels,

but the truth is that Renaissance artists were religious.

As evidence, let me present you with the fact that they painted the Madonna over

and over and over and over and over and STAN! Anyway, all humanism means is that

these scholars studied what were called the humanities, literature,

philosophy, history.

Today, of course, these areas of study are known as the so-called dark arts.

What? Liberal arts?

Oh, Stan, you're always making history less fun! I wanna be a professor of the

dark arts!

A dark arts job, it's a dangerous position.

Yeah, I guess that's true. So, we'll stick with this. Right, so here at Crash

Course, we try not to focus too much on dates, but if I'm going to convince you

that the Renaissance didn't actually happen, I should probably tell you, you

know, when it didn't happen. So, traditionally, the Renaissance is

associated with the 15th and 16th centuries-ish. The Renaissance happened

all across Europe, but we're gonna focus on Italy, because I want to, and I own

the video camera. Plus, Italy really spawned the Renaissance.

What was it about Italy that lent itself to Renaissance-ing? Was it the wine, the

olives, the pasta, the plumbers, the relative permissiveness when it comes to

the moral lassitude of their leaders? Well, let's go to the Thought Bubble.

Italy was primed for Renaissance for exactly one reason.

money. A society has to be super rich to support artists and elaborate building

projects and to feed scholars who translate and comment on thousand-year

-old documents.

And the Italian city-states were very wealthy for two reasons.

First, many city-states were mini industrial powerhouses, each

specializing in a particular industrial product like Florence made cloth, Milan

made arms.

Second, the cities of Venice and Genoa got stinking rich from trade.

Genoa turned out a fair number of top-notch sailors, like, for instance,

Christopher Columbus, but the Venetians became the richest city-state of all.

As you'll remember from the Crusades, the Venetians were expert sailors,

shipbuilders, and merchants, and as you'll remember from our discussions of

Indian Ocean trade, they also had figured out ways to trade with Islamic

empires, including the biggest economic power in the region.

The Ottomans. Without trading with the Islamic world, especially in pepper,

Venice couldn't have afforded all those painters, nor would they have had money

to pay for the incredibly fancy clothes they put on to pose for their fancy

portraits. The clothes, the paint, the painters, enough food to get a double

chin, all of that was paid for with money from trade with the Ottomans. I

know I talk a lot about trade, but that's because it's so incredibly

awesome, and it really does bind the world together.

And while trade can lead to conflicts, on balance it is has been responsible

for more peaceful contacts than violent ones because, you know, death is bad for

business. This was certainly the case in the Eastern Mediterranean, where the

periods of trade-based diplomacy were longer and more frequent than periods of

war, even though all we ever talk about is war because it's very dramatic, which

is why my brother Hank's favorite video game is called Assassin's Creed, not

Some Venetian Guys Negotiate a Trade Treaty.

Thanks Thought Bubble. So here's another example of non-Europeans supporting the

Renaissance. The Venetians exported textiles to the Ottomans. They were

usually woven in other cities, like Florence, and the reason Florentine

textiles were so valuable is because their color remained vibrant.

That was because they were dyed with a chemical called alum, which was

primarily found in Anatolia.

In the Ottoman Empire.

So to make the textiles the Ottomans craved, the Italians needed Ottoman

alum, at least until 1460, when Giovanni de Castro, Pope Pius II's godson,

discovered alum in Italy, in Torfa. And he wrote to his godfather, the Pope,

seven worlds.

If you will give orders to engage workmen, build furnaces, and smelt the

ore, you will provide all Europe with alum and the Turk will lose all his

profits. Instead, they will accrue to you." So the Pope was like, heck yeah!

More importantly, he granted a monopoly on the mining rights of alum to a

particular Florentine family.

the Medicis. You know, the ones you always see painted. But vitally, Italian

alum mines didn't bring victory over the Turks or cause them to lose all their

profits, just as mining and drilling at home never obviate the need for trade.

Okay, one last way the Islamic world helped to create the European

Renaissance, if indeed it happened, the Muslim world was the source of many of

the writings that Renaissance scholars studied. For centuries, Muslim scholars

have been working their way through ancient Greek writings, especially

Ptolemy and Aristotle, who despite being consistently wrong about everything

managed to be the jumping off point for thinking both in the Christian and

Muslim worlds. And the fall of Constantinople in 1453 helped further

spread Greek ideas because Byzantine scholars fled for Italy, taking their

books with them, so we have the Ottomans to thank for that too.

And even after it became a Muslim capital, Istanbul was still like the

number one destination for book nerds searching for ancient Greek texts.

Plus, if we stretch our definition of Renaissance thought to include

scientific thought, there is a definite case to be made that Muslim scholars

influenced Copernicus, arguably the Renaissance's greatest Oh, it's time for

the open letter?

An open letter to Copernicus. But first, let's see what's in the secret

compartment today.

Wow! The heliocentric solar system?

Cool!

Earth in the middle! Sun in the middle! Earth in the middle! Sun in the middle!

Ptolemy!

Copernicus! Ptolemy!

Copernicus! Right, an open letter to Copernicus.

Dear Copernicus, why you always gotta make the rest of us look so bad? You

were both a lawyer and a doctor? That doesn't seem fair.

You spoke four languages and discovered that the Earth is not the center of the

universe? Come on!

But at least you didn't discover it entirely on your own. Now there's no way

to be sure that you had access to Muslim scholarship on this topic. But one of

your diagrams is so similar to a proof found in an Islamic mathematics treatise

that it's almost impossible you didn't have access to it. Even the letters on

the diagram are almost the same, so at least I can tell my mom- that when she

asks why I'm not a doctor and a lawyer and the guy who discovered the

heliocentric solar system. Best wishes!

John Green. Alright, so now having spent the last several minutes telling you why

the Renaissance happened in Italy and not in, I don't know, like India or

Russia or whatever, I'm going to argue that the Renaissance did not in fact

happen. Let's start with the problem of time. The Renaissance isn't like the

Battle of Hastings or the French Revolution where people were aware that

they were living amid history.

Like when I was 11, and most of you didn't exist yet, my dad made my brother

and me turn off the Cosby Show and watch people climbing on the Berlin Wall so we

could see history. But no one like woke their kids up in a Tuscan village in

1512 like Like, Mario, Luigi, come outside, the Renaissance is here!

Hurry, we're living in a glorious new era where man's relationship to learning

is changing!

I somehow feel a new sense of individualism based on my capacity for

reason. No, in fact, most people in Europe were totally unaware of the

Renaissance because its art and learning affected a tiny sliver of the European

population. Like, life expectancy in many areas of Europe actually went down

during the Renaissance.

Art and learning of the Renaissance didn't filter down to most people the

way that technology does today.

the Renaissance was only experienced by the richest of the rich and those

people, like painters, who served them. I mean, there were some commercial

opportunities, like for framing paintings or binding books, but the vast

majority of Europeans still lived on farms either as free peasants or

tenants. And the rediscovery of Aristotle didn't in any way change their

lives, which were governed by the rising and setting of the sun and

intellectually by the Catholic Church.

In fact, probably about 95% of Europeans never encountered the Renaissance as

opulence or art or modes of thought.

We have constructed the Renaissance as important, not because it was so central

to the 15th century, I mean at the time Europe wasn't the world's leader in

anything other than the tiny business of Atlantic trade.

We remember it as important because it matters to us now.

It gave us the Ninja Turtles. We care about Aristotle and individualism and

the Mona Lisa and the possibility that Michelangelo painted an anatomically

correct brain onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel because these things give

us a narrative that makes sense.

Europe was enlightened, and then it was unenlightened, and then it was re

-enlightened, and ever since it's been the center of art and commerce and

history. See that cycle of life and death and rebirth a lot in historical

recollection, but it just isn't accurate.

So it's true that many of the ideas introduced to Europe in the 15th and

16th centuries became very important.

But remember, when we talk about the Renaissance, we're talking about

hundreds of years. I mean, although they share ninja turtledom, Donatello and

Raphael were born 97 years apart.

And the Renaissance humanist Petrarch was born in 1304, 229 years before the

Renaissance humanist Montaigne. That's almost as long as the United States has

existed. So was the Renaissance a thing?

Not really, it was a lot of mutually interdependent things that occurred over

centuries. Stupid truth always resisting simplicity.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

consideration. I love it! Before 1492, we couldn't really talk about a world

history at all. We could only talk about the different histories of separate

regions, but Columbus changed all of that, and everything else. The Columbian

Exchange irrevocably homogenized the world's biological landscape. Since

Columbus, the number of plant and animal species has continually diminished, and

the variation in species from place to place has diminished dramatically.

I mean, the first European visitors to the Americas had never seen a tomato or

a catfish. Native Americans had never seen a horse.

And by making our planet biologically singular, the Columbian exchange

completely remade the populations of animals, particularly humans.

And vitally, this cross-pollination also made possible such wonders as

contemporary pizza.

So we're going to break Colombian Exchange down into four categories.

Diseases. Boy, you're looking good, smallpox. I'm glad you've been

eliminated. Animals, plants, and people. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, people are

animals. Yeah, that's true of me from the past, but just for the sake of

simplicity. Also, if you think about it, microbes are kind of animals, and plants

are too. I mean... Oh my god, shut up before I kill you and create a time

travel paradox.

Microbes, like those hairy blokes back there, were a definite negative in terms

of the Colombian Exchange.

Terminology is hard here, but the majority of Caribbean islanders or

Native Americans or Amerindians had... one response to the arrival of

Europeans.

death. We can't be sure how many natives died as a result of European arrival,

but it was definitely more than 50%, and some estimates place it as high as 90%.

Historians used to blame European brutality, which was definitely a

factor, but the main culprit was disease.

Smallpox is usually seen as the villain of the story, but it's more likely that

a series of diseases in combination did the damage.

Along with smallpox, Americans were killed by measles and mumps, typhus,

chicken pox, none of which they had been previously exposed to. This astonishing

decrease of population was definitely the worst effect of these diseases, both

psychologically and demographically, but the secondary effects were almost as

bad. For one thing, the deaths of Aztec and Incan rulers touched off wars, which

in turn made it easier to spread disease because, you know, the number one way to

catch smallpox is via hand-to-hand combat.

Plus, leaders kept dying. Huayna Capac, the leader of the Inca Empire, succumbed

to smallpox before Pizarro even arrived.

His death led to a violent succession struggle between his sons, which was won

by Atahualpa, who in turn was captured and killed by Pizarro. And without that

war, the Inca would have had a much better chance against the Spaniards,

whose numbers were comparatively tiny.

A similar thing happened to the Aztecs. The Moctezuma, who eventually lost to

Cortes, was the nephew of a much more powerful king, who died of smallpox.

And the death of that great king encouraged some of the smaller states in

the Aztec Empire to rebel, and some of them even fought for the Spaniards. And

another side effect of disease was starvation, because there simply weren't

enough people left to grow crops to feed the living. And then malnutrition made

survivors that much more susceptible to disease.

In short, it sucked.

The transmission of disease largely went one way, from the old world to the new,

but the Americans did have one gift for Europe.

venereal syphilis. It showed up in Europe around 1493, and even though

Europeans are very fond of ascribing syphilis to each other, Italians called

it the French disease, the French called it the disease of Naples, Poles called

it the German disease, Russians called it the Polish disease, the truth is

venereal syphilis was spread by sailors who'd returned from the Americas.

In fact, in his book The Columbian Exchange, Crosby tells it like this,

sailors by the nature of their profession are men without women.

and therefore men of many women. We can imagine no group more perfectly suited

for guaranteeing that venereal syphilis would have worldwide distribution.

Who says history books are boring?

Syphilis would go on to infect a veritable who's who of Europe, from

Baudelaire to Gauguin to Nietzsche, not to mention numerous family members of

the famously infertile Tudor and Valois families, meaning that syphilis may be

responsible for many of those miserably boring dynastic power struggles of post

-Columbus Europe.

Anyway, nothing against syphilis, but it pales in comparison to the devastation

wrought by old world diseases arriving in the new world, but the new world did

have one gift for the old world that was pretty destructive.

Tobacco. Oh, it's time for the open letter, and there's been a costume

change? That doesn't bode well.

An open letter to tobacco.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment.

Don't be cinnamon, don't be cinnamon, don't be... Dang it!

I guess that I'm going to do the cinnamon challenge.

I am not happy about this, Stan, for the record.

All right, I'm going to do the cinnamon challenge. One tablespoon of cinnamon in

my mouth, no water.

Oh

boy, that

sucked.

I regret doing that, to be honest with you. Dear Tobacco, I just did something

really stupid, but at least it was cheap.

I'm going to tell you two stories about smoking. The first comes from my high

school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, who also writes Crash Course. When I was a

senior in high school, he walked up to me and he said, I want you to keep

smoking. I want you to smoke until the day after your 65th birthday, and then I

want you to die so that I collect all of your social security.

That inspired me, Mr. Meyer, to quit smoking just eight short years later.

Here is an amazing statistic.

Cigarette. were handed out to American servicemen during World War II, and more

soldiers who started smoking during the war died from smoking than died from the

war. So if the New World was looking to extract some measure of revenge for

smallpox and measles and chickenpox, mission accomplished.

Best wishes.

John Green. Now onto animals. American animals like llamas and guinea pigs

never really caught on in Eurasia. But imports to the Americas, like pigs,

cows, and horses, were revolutionary.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

First of all, these animals, especially pigs, completely remade the food supply.

Pigs breed really quickly, they eat anything, and they turn into bacon,

which made them heroes to the New World, just as today they are heroes to the

Internet. Here's how quickly pigs breed. When Hernando de Soto arrived in Florida

in 1539, he brought 13 pigs.

By the time of his death, there were 700.

That was three years later.

The abundance of meat and plentiful land for agriculture and grazing meant that

Europeans in the Americas very rarely experienced famine, and despite what you

may have learned about religious and political freedom, the main reason

Europeans came to America was to eat.

Large European animals also changed the nature of work in the Americas. Before

Europeans, the largest beast of burden was the llama, and at best it could

carry like a hundred pounds.

This meant that for the long distance travel that the Inca engaged in, the

primary transportation animal was Incas.

Oxen, when combined with their plows, made it possible to bring more land

under cultivation and also made transportation easier and more

efficient, and plus European animals remade culture.

The grossly stereotypical American Indian, like from the movies, riding the

Great Plains with an eagle feather headdress and war paint, well he didn't

exist before the Columbian Exchange because there were no horses for him to

ride. And the introduction of horses allowed many Native Americans to abandon

agriculture in favor of a nomadic lifestyle because riding around hunting

buffalo made them far richer than farming ever had.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. While animals and diseases completely reshaped the New

World, it was New World plants that had the biggest effect on Eurasia. Sure,

Europeans brought over some crops that we now grow here in the Americas, like

wheat and grapes, both of which are necessary for Catholic Mass.

But New World plants radically changed the lives of millions, maybe hundreds of

millions of Africans, Asians, and Europeans, specifically by making pizza

possible.

I mean, until 500 years ago, Italians lived without tomatoes, without modern

pizza, or marinara sauce, or pizza, or ketchup, or pizza, or even pizza!

Indians lived without curry, which contains chilies, a New World food.

Persians lived without corn, which is a New World food, as are beans, and

potatoes, and avocados, and peanuts, and blueberries, the list goes on and on.

And these New World crops led to probably the greatest population

increase in history.

To quote Crosby,

he will somehow stagger to maturity.

and he will reproduce.

And New World food was far more caloric than Old World food, which is the

central reason that the world population doubled between 1650 and 1850.

Plants like corn and potatoes could grow in soils that were useless for Old World

crops. Potatoes were actually introduced to Europe as an aphrodisiac, but it

turns out that you have to distill those potatoes into vodka before they have the

desired effect.

Anyway, if potatoes are an aphrodisiac, the Irish quickly became the hottest

people on Earth.

An acre and a half of potato cultivation could feed an Irish family for a year,

and the average Irish worker often ate 10 pounds of potatoes every day.

Surviving primarily on potatoes, the Irish more than doubled their population

between 1754 and 1845, when the potato famine showed up and ruined everything.

And it wasn't just Europe. Manioc, or cassava, is a New World plant with roots

that provide more calories than any other plant on Earth, provided they are

properly processed, otherwise they're poisonous.

Manioc is so prevalent in Africa that many Africans swear the plant is native

to the continent, but it isn't. Nor are sweet potatoes, and while New World

grains never replaced rice in Southeast or East Asia, the sweet potato is so

common that it is known as the poor person's staple in China.

Even in Japan, the tomb of the farmer who is reputed to have first brought

them to the islands is known as the Temple of the Sweet Potato.

And it's also worth noting that corn, while it may not feature prominently in

European diets, has been the central source of food for animals in Europe for

centuries. And in fact, that's still the case. In 2005, 58% of the corn grown in

America went to animal feed, is the kind of thing you learn when you live in

Indiana. Alright, so last but not least, the Columbian Exchange involved the

transfer of lots of people.

In the early stages, this movement was mostly one way, with Europeans and

Africans, the Africans usually against their will, making their way to the

Americas. So the Columbian Exchange led to the repopulation of the New World

following the disease devastation of the initial encounter, and better nutrition

allowed the population of the Old World to grow, which in turn placed population

pressure on Eurasia, which led to more people coming to the Americas.

In the process, the world's human inhabitants became more genetically and

ethnically interconnected, but it also led to the horrors of Atlantic slavery,

which we'll be discussing next week. What are we to make of the Columbian

Exchange? It devastated the population of the Americas, it led to the

widespread slavery of Africans, but it also allowed for a worldwide population

increase, and the lives of some natives, including Plains tribes like the Lakota,

became better and more secure, at least for a while. Fewer people have starved

since the Columbian Exchange began, but the diversity of life on Earth has

diminished dramatically, and planting crops where they don't belong has hurt

the environment. So on the whole, should we be grateful for the Columbian

Exchange? And should we work to continue and deepen its legacy of globalism and

monoculture? Crosby didn't think we were better off. The Columbian Exchange has

included man and he has changed the old and new world, sometimes inadvertently,

sometimes intentionally, often brutally, it is possible that he and the plants

and animals he brings with him have caused the extinction of more species of

life forms in the last 400 years than the usual processes of evolution might

kill off in a million.

The Columbian Exchange has left us with not a richer, but a more impoverished

genetic pool, and we, all of life on the planet, are the less for Columbus, and

the impoverishment will increase.

But let's give you the last word today. Do you agree with Crosby? Are longer,

healthier lives for more humans worth the sacrifice of an impoverished

biosphere? And most importantly, how will your conclusions about those

questions shape the way that you live your life?

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

So today's episode is going to be a little light on the jokes, but I'm going

to help you understand what pre-Civil War Americans often euphemistically

referred to as the peculiar institution.

Slavery is as old as civilization itself, although it's not as old as

humanity, thanks to our hunting and gathering foremothers. But the numbers

involved in the Atlantic slave trade are truly staggering.

From 1500 to 1880 CE, somewhere between 10 and 12 million African slaves were

forcibly moved from Africa to the Americas.

And about 15% of those people died during the journey. I know you're

saying, that looks like a very nice ship. I mean, my god, it's almost as big

as South America, yet not to scale.

And those who didn't die became property, bought and sold like any

commodity. Where Africans came from and went to changed over time, but in all,

48% of slaves went to the Caribbean and 41% to Brazil.

Although few Americans recognize this, relatively few slaves were imported to

the US, only about 5% of the total. It's also worth noting that by the time

Europeans started importing Africans into the Americas, Europe had a long

history of trading slaves.

The first real European slave trade began after the Fourth Crusade in 1204,

the crusade that you will remember as the Crazy One. Italian merchants

imported thousands of Armenian, Circassian, and Georgian slaves to

Italy. Most of them were women who worked as household servants, but many

worked processing sugar. And sugar is of course a crop that African slaves later

cultivated in the Caribbean.

Camera 2 side note, none of the primary crops grown by slaves, sugar, tobacco,

coffee, is necessary to sustain human life.

So in a way slavery is a very early byproduct of a consumer culture that

revolves around the purchase of goods that bring us pleasure, but not

sustenance. You are welcome to draw your own metaphorically resonant conclusions

from this fact.

One of the big misconceptions about slavery, at least when I was growing up,

was that your The Europeans somehow captured Africans, put them in chains,

stuck them on boats, and then took them to the Americas.

The chains and ships bit is true, as is the America part, if you define America

as America and not as Merica.

But Africans were living in all kinds of conglomerations, from small villages to

city-states to empires, and they were much too powerful for the Europeans to

just conquer. And in fact, Europeans obtained African slaves by trading for

them. Because trade is a two-way proposition, this meant that Africans

were captured by other Africans and then traded to Europeans in exchange for

goods, usually like metal tools or fine textiles or guns.

And for those Africans, slaves were a form of property, and a very valuable

one. In many places, slaves were one of the only sources of private wealth

because land was usually owned by the And this gets to a really important

point. If we're going to understand the tragedy of slavery, we need to

understand the economics of it. We need to get inside what Mark Twain famously

called a deformed conscience.

We have to see slaves both as they were, as human beings, and as they were viewed

as an economic commodity.

Right, so you probably know about the horrendous conditions aboard slave

ships, which at their largest could hold 400 people.

But it's worth underscoring that each slave had an average of four square feet

of space.

That is four square feet. As one eyewitness testified before for

Parliament in 1791, they had not so much room as a man in his coffin.

Once in the Americas, the surviving slaves were sold at a market very

similar to the way cattle would be sold.

After purchase, slave owners would often brand their new possession on the

cheeks, again, just as they would do with cattle. The lives of slaves were

dominated by work and terror, but mostly work. Slaves did all types of work, from

housework to skilled crafts work, and some even worked as sailors, but the

majority of them worked as agricultural laborers. In the Caribbean and Brazil,

most of them planted, harvested, and processed sugar working 10 months out of

the year, dawn until dusk. The worst part of this job, which is saying

something because there were many bad parts, was fertilizing the sugar cane.

This required slaves to carry 80 pound baskets of manure on their heads up and

down hilly terrain.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, isn't there a poop joke in there somewhere? No, me from the

past because this whole thing is too depressing.

When it came time to harvest and process the cane, speed was incredibly important

because once cut, sugar sap can go sour within a day. This meant that slaves

would often work 48 hours straight during harvest time working with Without

sleep in the sweltering sugar press houses where the cane would be crushed

in hand rollers and then boiled, slaves often caught their hands in the rollers

and their overseers kept a hatchet on hand for amputations.

Ugh, I told you this wasn't going to be funny. Given these appalling conditions,

it's little wonder that the average life expectancy for a Brazilian slave on a

sugar plantation in the late 18th century?

was 23 years.

Things were slightly better in British sugar colonies like Barbados and in the

US living and working conditions were better still. So relatively good that in

fact slave populations began increasing naturally meaning that more slaves were

born than died.

This may sound like a good thing but it is of course its own kind of evil

because it meant that slave owners were calculating that if they kept their

slaves healthy enough they would reproduce and then the slave owners

could steal and sell their children.

Or use them to work their land, either way.

Anyway this explains why even though the percentage of slaves imported from

Africa to the United States was relatively small, slaves and other

people of African descent came to make up a significant portion of the U.S.

population. The brutality of working conditions in Brazil, on the other hand,

meant that slaves were never able to increase their population naturally,

hence the continued need to import slaves into Brazil until slavery ended

in the 1880s. So I noted earlier that slavery isn't new. It's also a hard word

to define. Like, Stalin forced millions to work in the gulags, but we don't

usually consider those people slaves.

On the other hand, many slaves in history had lives of great power,

wealth, and influence.

Remember Zheng He, the world's greatest admiral? He was technically a slave. So

were many of the most important advisors to Suleiman the Magnificent. So was

Darth Vader.

But Atlantic slavery was different and more horrifying because it was chattel

slavery, a term historians used to indicate that the slaves were movable

property. Oh, it's time for the open letter?

Ow! Oh!

Ah! An open letter to the word slave.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's Boba Fett.

Noted owner of a ship called Slave One. Apparently a ballet dancer.

That's a fine approximation of ballet music.

Thank you, Stan.

Alright. Dear slave as a word.

You are overused.

Like Britney Spears, I'm a slave number four letter U. No, you're not.

Boba Fett's ship, Slave 1. A ship can't be a slave.

But more importantly, slave, you are constantly used in political rhetoric

and never correctly.

There's nothing new about this. Witness, for instance, all the early Americans

claiming that paying the stamp tax would make them slaves. And that was in a time

when they knew exactly what slavery looked like.

Taxes, as I've mentioned before, can be very useful. I, for instance, like paved

roads. But even if you don't like a tax, it's not slavery.

Here, I have written for you a list of all the times that it is okay to use the

word slave. Oh, it is a one item long list!

Best wishes, John Green. So what exactly makes slavery so horrendous? Well,

definitions are slippery, but I'm going to start with the definition of slavery

proposed by sociologist Orlando Patterson. It is the permanent, violent,

and personal domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored

persons. According to this definition, a slave is removed from the culture, land,

and society of his or her birth and suffers what Patterson called social

death. Ultimately then, what makes slavery slavery is that slaves are

dehumanized. The Latin word that gave us chattel?

also gave us cattle.

In many ways, Atlantic slavery drew from a lot of previous models of slavery and

took everything that sucked about each of them and combined them into a big

ball so that it would be the biggest possible ball of suck.

Stan, am I allowed to say suck on this show?

Nice. Okay, to understand what I'm talking about, we need to look at some

previous models of slavery. Let's go to the Thought Bubble. The Greeks were

among the first to consider otherness a characteristic of slaves.

Most Greek slaves were barbarians, and their inability to speak Greek kept them

from talking back to their masters, and also indicated their slave status.

Aristotle, who despite being spectacularly wrong about almost

everything, was incredibly influential, believed that some people were just

naturally slaves, saying,

slaves by nature.

and it is both to their advantage and just for them to be slaves.

This idea, despite being totally insane, remained popular for millennia. The

Greeks popularized the idea that slaves should be traded from far away, but the

Romans took it to another level. Slaves probably made up 30% of the total Roman

population, similar to the percentage of slaves in America at slavery's height.

The Romans also invented the plantation, using mass numbers of slaves to work the

land on giant farms called latifundia, so-called because they were not fun.

The Judeo-Christian world contributed as well, and while we are not going to

venture into the incredibly complicated role that slavery plays in the Bible,

because I vividly remember the comment section from the Christianity episode,

the Bible was widely used to justify slavery, and in particular the

enslavement of Africans, because of the moment in Genesis when Noah curses Ham,

saying, This encapsulates two ideas vital to

Atlantic slavery.

One, that slavery can be a hereditary... status passed down through generations,

and two, that slavery is the result of human sin.

Both ideas serve as powerful justifications for holding an entire

race in bondage. Thanks, Thought Bubble. But there were even more contributors to

the ideas that led to Atlantic slavery.

For instance, Muslim Arabs were the first to import large number of Bantu

-speaking Africans into their territory as slaves.

The Muslims called these Africans Zanj, and they were a distinct and despised

group distinguished from other North Africans by the color of their skin. The

Zanjian territory held by the Abbasids staged one of the first big slave

revolts in 869 CE.

And it may be that this revolt was so devastating that it convinced the

Abbasids that large-scale plantation-style agriculture on the

Roman model just wasn't worth it. But by then they'd connected the Aristotelian

idea that some people are just naturally slaves with the appearance of sub

-Saharan Africans.

The Spanish and the Portuguese, you no doubt remember, were the Europeans with

the closest ties to the Muslim world because there were Muslims living on the

Iberian Peninsula until 1492.

So it makes sense that the Iberians would be the first to absorb this racist

attitude toward blacks.

And as the first colonizers of the Americas and the dominant importers of

slaves, the Portuguese and the Spanish helped define the attitudes that

characterized Atlanta. beliefs they'd inherited from a complicated nexus of

all the slaveholders who came before them. In short, Atlantic slavery was a

monstrous tragedy, but it was a tragedy in which the whole world participated.

And it was the culmination of millennia of imagining the other as inherently

lesser. It's tempting to pin all the blame for Atlantic slavery on one

particular group, but to blame one group is to exonerate all the others, and by

extension, ourselves.

The truth that we must grapple with is that a vast array of our ancestors,

including those we think of as ours, whoever they may be, believe that it was

possible for their fellow human beings to be mere property.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History and today we're going to

talk about the entire fracking globe over the course of several centuries. So

let's get right to it. Mr. Green!

Fracking? You don't know about Battlestar Galactica yet, me from the

past? Oh man, there are so many great things in your future. Today I'm going

to try to show you how tiny Spain's influence spread around the world and

shaped the lives of almost every human on the planet, generally in negative

ways. I know, everything is such a bummer on Crash Course recently. It's

the 16th century, people are getting richer, they're living more connected

lives, and all I can do is whine about how much better the old days were. What

am I, your grandpa?

Let's get festive!

Woo!

So the Aztecs weren't the first impressive polity in Mesoamerica. That

honor would go to the Olmecs or the Mayans, but they were probably the

greatest. The Aztecs formed out of an alliance of three major cities in modern

-day Mexico in about 1430, just 89 years before Cortes and his conquistadors

showed up. The Aztec state was very hierarchical, with an emperor at the top

and a group of unruly nobles beneath him, just like Europe.

And in addition, there was a class of powerful priests whose job it was to

keep order in the cosmos.

So Aztec religion held that history was cyclical and punctuated by terrible

disaster. and then would ultimately end with a massive apocalypse.

And the job of the priests was to avoid these disasters by appeasing the gods,

generally through human sacrifice.

The Aztecs extended their control over most of southern Mexico, parts of

Guatemala and the Yucatan, and they demanded tribute from conquered people

in the form of goods, precious metals, And people to sacrifice.

If you're familiar with The Hunger Games, it won't surprise you to learn

that this didn't sit very well with said conquered people. And the fact that the

Aztecs were basically ruling over thousands of people who hated them made

it a lot easier for Cortes to come in and find allies to overthrow them. All

that noted, in less than a hundred years, the Aztecs accomplished some

amazing things.

Especially the building of their capital city, Tenochtitlan, on the site of

modern-day Mexico City, which was like Venice in that it was divided and

serviced by canals. They also had floating gardens called chinampas, which

provided food for the city. Oh, it's already time for the open letter?

Alright.

An open letter to Human Sacrifice. But first, let's see what's in the secret

compartment today.

Oh, nice!

Come on, be a mushroom, be a mushroom, be a... Dear Human Sacrifice, look, I'm

not going to defend you. But if you really believe that the world is going

to end if the gods are not appeased, then Human Sacrifice...

Kind of makes sense.

And as evidence for this, let me submit to you that we engage in human sacrifice

all the time. Remember the movie The Dirty Dozen? No? Because you're too

young? That makes me hate myself.

Anyway, it was all about glorious sacrifice, and now sometimes a few have

to die in order for many to live. Did you at least see that, uh, that meteor

movie that Ben Affleck was in? What was that called, Stan?

Asteroid. Asteroid. Armageddon.

Armageddon. Armageddon. Right.

Like that.

Human sacrifice.

Best wishes.

John Green.

Alright, now let's head south to the Inca civilization, which was older than

the Aztecs and in some ways even more impressive.

Founded in the 13th century, the Inca Empire ruled between 4 and 6 million

people by the time the Spanish showed up in 1532.

Trade and a very effective administrative structure held the empire

together, which was even more impressive when you consider all the roads and

temples that were built atop mountains with nothing to haul things up those

mountains except for llamas and people.

The Inca had no written language, but they were able to keep records with

knotted strings called quipus, and they were really good at inter- integrating

conquered people into the empire, mandating that people learn the Incan

language. And vitally, they ordered every male peasant under Inca control to

do unpaid work for the Inca government for a specified period of time each

year. This system, which the Inca called Mita, allowed them to build all those

roads and temples.

The Spanish would later adopt this system and the hierarchical system with

the emperor at the top, except they would make it all, you know, much

suckier. And yes, that is a technical historian term.

So the Spanish arrived in Mexico in 1519 and in Peru in 1532, benefiting in both

cases from total chaos. due to disease.

And after conquering the Inca and the Aztecs, they created an empire with two

administrative divisions.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain, founded in 1521, and the Viceroyalty of Peru,

founded in 1542.

In some ways, the Aztec and Inca empires were perfect for Spanish conquest.

Their administrative structures were similar, there was a similar link

between secular and religious power, albeit different religions.

All of which made it relatively easy for the Spanish crown to step into the void

left by those two great empires and send their own administrators to run the

place. While most of the Spanish aristocrats who came over ran large

agricultural operations, you don't see a lot of movies called, like, Indiana

Jones and the Search for a Nice Farm in the Countryside.

The real glory for conquistadors was gold.

Initially they found some, both in the Caribbean and in Mexico, but never

enough to get, like, super rich.

Fortunately, or as I will argue, unfortunately, they did find a mountain

made of silver.

So the Spanish adopted the mita, which the Incas had used to build roads and

public buildings, to mine and process that silver. So one-seventh of the adult

male Indian population from each district was required to work in the

silver mines for a year, being paid only subsistence wages.

Now you might wonder why the Spanish didn't purchase African slaves to work

in the mines. They did in Mexico, but in South America it was cheaper to use

indigenous labor.

Purchasing slaves was inefficient because one, they didn't have experience

working at high altitudes, and two, mine work was super deadly.

Mercury, which can be used to refine silver ore, was found at the mountain of

Juan Cavalica.

And mercury poisoning among miners was so common that parents would often maim

their children to keep them from having to work in the mines.

why I'm struggling to be festive. Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

So Spanish mines in the Americas produced over 150,000 tons of silver

between the 16th and the 18th centuries, over 80% of the world's supply.

Spain became the richest nation in Europe, and Spanish silver pesos became

the de facto currency.

But the Spanish royal family does not appear to have understood inflation, and

the huge influx of silver caused skyrocketing inflation, and since they

never set tax rates to account for it, they collected the same amount of money

60 years after the discovery of silver, but that money was worth a fraction of

what it once had been. And in general, it's not clear that Spain benefited much

from the discovery of silver. Rich countries have a way of finding their

way into expensive and not totally necessary wars, and Spain was no

exception. While empire wasn't the central cause of Spain's many 16th

century wars, It sure did fund them.

So in 1519, which was a heck of a year for Spain, Charles V united the kingdoms

of Spain and Austria by being named head of the Holy Roman Empire, so-called

because it was not holy, not Roman, and not an empire.

Charles had this dream of a unified Central Europe, which was constantly

being thwarted by German nobles who had a dream of a non-unified Central Europe.

And eventually, Charles V's ambitions were shattered, and he gave the Austrian

half of his kingdom to his son Ferdinand and gave Spain the American stuff. to

Philip in 1556.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. So Philip II didn't only inherit all of Spain's

holdings in the Americas, and in Europe, and in the Philip-not-a-coincidence

-eens. He also inherited a rebellion in the Netherlands because the Dutch were

like, we're gonna be Protestant.

Also, you guys know nothing about economics, which incidentally the Dutch

are still saying to the Spanish.

And then the English sided with the Dutch and there was a war featuring a

disastrous invasion of England called the Spanish Armada in 1588.

England's success against the Spanish, even though it can largely be chalked up

to weather, was credited to Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth I.

That led to a period of wealth and national pride, which meant that people

had both the money and the desire to see, I don't know, plays about old

English kings named Richard?

And that, my friends, is how the discovery of silver in Bolivia

contributed to the genius of William Shakespeare.

Anyway, American silver didn't cause these wars any more than it wrote

Hamlet, but the new wealth made both more possible. Knowing that they had

this enormous silver war chest at their disposal made them much more inclined to

build all those ships that got sunk in 1588.

And soon enough, even a mountain of silver couldn't pay for all their

warring, and the Spanish crown had to borrow money, which they couldn't pay

back, so they defaulted on their debts several times in the 17th century. Yay,

silver! So most of the silver mined in the Americas went to Europe, but at

least a third of it went to China, either directly on Spanish galleons or

indirectly through the purchase of Chinese goods.

China had encountered inflation of its own after printing the world's first

paper money in the 12th century, so they switched back to coins.

Initially, Chinese coins were made out of copper or bronze, but their economy

was so big they were the leading producer of consumer goods until the

19th century that they ran out. So they went to silver. Now China didn't have a

lot of silver itself, but Japan did, so they traded manufactured goods for it,

but soon even that wasn't enough.

This was mostly because in the 16th century China changed its tax structure.

Taxes, man!

They're at the center of human history.

In the early part of the Ming Dynasty, Chinese farmers paid their taxes in

goods, mainly grain and labor.

But as more silver entered the economy, the Ming government changed its policy

and required taxes to be paid in silver.

This meant that almost everyone in China had to produce something that could be

sold for silver, which usually meant silk.

In fact, the Ming government often required people to make silk. That glut

of silk inevitably led to a price drop, which hurt the Chinese economy, but not

nearly as much as it hurt the Spanish economy, where almost every silk

producer was put out of business.

So much for the idea that global outsourcing is a new problem.

You'd think that all this silver would make the Chinese incredibly rich, just

like the Spanish, right? Well, yes, just like the Spanish, in that they got rich,

but they didn't stay rich.

The Ming government also failed to peg taxes to inflation and spent too much on

defense, notably the Great Wall.

And by the 17th century, the Ming were overthrown by the Fu Manchus.

Oh, it's just the Manchus?

Gah! History always disappoints.

As the historian Dennis Flynn put it,

Think about what else those resources could have been used for.

The Spanish Empire's silver trade was the first truly global market. Even

India was involved, but we're really out of time. And its consequences were dire,

even if it did make some people rich.

Both Spain and China experienced inflation that weakened their

governments. The environment suffered. The search for precious metals led the

Spanish to find and eventually destroy two of the world's great empires, the

Aztecs and the Inca. And many thousands were killed mining silver and the

mercury used to refine it. But before you say it wasn't worth it, remember

that This process led to the life that you have today, one where I can teach

you history through the magic of the internet.

Worth the sacrifices?

Human and otherwise?

I don't know. You tell me. Thanks for watching. See you next week.

Hi, my name is John Green. This is Crash Course World History. Oh my gosh!

Today we're going to talk about war.

Ah! Explosions everywhere!

So traditionally, historians are pretty keen on wars because they feature

clearly delineated beginnings and middles and ends, and because they

always have a fair bit of death and drama and mortally wounded generals who

have great last words like, let us cross over the river and rest under the shade

of those trees.

Whereas the last words of plague victims are always like, ugh.

Sorry, plague victims. As if you don't have enough troubles, now you've got me

teasing you about your uninspired death throes.

Wars have easy whens, wheres, whos, and whys.

1861 to 1865, the United States, the North versus the South to end slavery

and save the Union.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, are you going to show us the hidden complexities behind

something we already think we understand again?

Sorry, me from the past, but yes. However, to placate you, here are some

more explosions.

The 17th and 18th... century saw a bunch of top-notch wars, but today we're going

to focus on the Seven Years War, also called the French and Indian Wars,

because it was the first truly global war.

In fact, no less a historian than Winston Churchill called it the First

World War.

But we've been so Eurocentric here on Crash Course that all we are going to

say about the entire war in Europe is that Prussia and Great Britain fought

France and Austria, and that the Austrian Habsburgs wanted to win back

Silesia, which they failed to do there. That's all you get, Europe!

So the Seven Years War lasted for anyone?

Anyone? 23 years?

I hate you, me from the past. But as it happens, by sheer coincidence, you are

not necessarily wrong.

So the when. The Seven Years War began in 1756 and ended in 1763.

Unless you believe, as many historians do, that the Seven Years War lasted 23

years because it was really a continuation of the war for Austrian

succession. Then you have the fact that much of the information in today's

episode is taken from a book called The Global Seven Years War, 1754-1763.

a nine-year period.

As for the Who, it was mainly fought between the British and the French, seen

here reenacting the knife fight from either Beat It or West Side Story,

depending on your age.

But some of the British were actually Americans, and both the British and the

French were supported by American Indians.

And there was fighting in India between Indian Indians, the British, and the

French. And as previously noted, the French were fighting the Prussians, and

the British were fighting the Austrians.

The where? Europe, the continental US, the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of

Africa, India, basically the world.

And the why?

ostensibly land.

British colonists wanted to expand into land west of the original 13 colonies.

And that land was technically held by the French, who left it alone except for

a bunch of trading posts, and they were like, je ne veux pas l'anglais. Thank

you, four years of high school French.

Anyway, the war wasn't really about land. It was really about our old

friend... The British wanted to expand into the American interior to allow for

more colonists, because the British benefited both from the export of raw

materials from the Americas and the import of British consumer goods to the

Americas. So more colonists meant more trade, which meant more wealth, which

meant ever fancier hats.

And the French realized that this British Atlantic maritime trade was

making Britain so rich that Britain might come for France's actually

valuable colonies, which were not in the continental U.S., but those slave-based

sugar plantations. in the Caribbean.

So the fighting began around here, and while the British did send over actual

British troops, much of the early fighting was done by colonial militias.

Probably the most famous commander of British troops was a Virginia colonel

named George Washington.

In fact, he may have actually started the shooting at the Battle of Fort

Necessity in May of 1754.

Washington was captured in that battle, but then he was immediately released

because 18th century war was super weird.

Anyway, the real North American action was in New York and Canada. At the

Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, for instance, the British defeated the

French and captured the city of Quebec.

Both the British commander General Wolfe and the French commander General

Montcalm were killed in that battle, with the death of the former being

immortalized in this famous painting by Benjamin West.

As indicated by the picture, almost all the battles in North America featured

significant participation by Native Americans.

Different Native tribes sided with both the British and the French, but as a

broad generalization, Native Americans were more likely to support the French.

Up to this point, shrewd Indian tribes had been able to play the British and

the French off each other and maintain a degree of autonomy for themselves.

And as long as the French were present, the British were prevented from

encroaching too much on lands Native Americans were using for hunting and

agriculture. Now, we haven't talked much about American Indians, mostly because

they were geographically isolated and didn't have a written language, but

let's at least give them a thought bubble. Before the arrival of the

Europeans, most Native Americans lived in tribal groups, and they subsisted on

a combination of small-scale agriculture and hunting and gathering, depending on

where they were situated.

There were too many tribes to generalize about specific social structures, but

it's probably safe to say in terms of gender, they were much more egalitarian

than the Europeans who they met up with, which may explain why European women who

were taken captive by Indians sometimes preferred to stay with the tribe rather

than be rescued, although that's somewhat controversial.

One thing we can say about the Indians, their notions of what it meant to hold

property were very different from those of the Europeans.

Individual Indians did not own land in the European sense.

They used it, and not always particularly intensively.

Europeans, when they came to North America, had a hard time even

recognizing that the Indians were raising crops, because their forms of

farming were so different from European agriculture.

So the French, and especially the English, just assumed that the Indians

weren't improving the land, which meant that they didn't own the land, so that

meant that it was okay for Europeans to take it.

As you might imagine, that was problematic for the Indians.

In general, Indian tribes initially got along better with the French than with

the Dutch or English, because one, the French did not settle in large numbers,

as they were mostly traders and fur trappers, and two, French missionaries

who made the journey to the Americas were Catholic, often Jesuits, who were

so intent on converting the Indians that they took the time to learn Indian

languages and try to make Catholicism more amenable to Indian religion.

The end result of the war, a greatly reduced French presence on the American

mainland, meant that Indians could no longer easily play the British and

French off each other, which opened the floodgates of British settlers.

In the end, the American Indians were perhaps the biggest losers of the seven

years. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So 2,000 miles south in the Caribbean, there was

also quite a lot of fighting between the British and the French over sugar

colonies. Most of these were naval battles, and by 1761, Spain got involved

because, you know, they had some sugar colonies of their own. While these

battles get a lot of ink, it's interesting to note that by far the

greatest threat to combatants was disease.

By October of 1761, the British had lost about 1,000 men to war and 5,000 to

disease. Meanwhile, in West Africa, the British and the French were fighting

there too, because, you know, why not?

The British attacked the French at a trading post called St. Louis.

Well, Stan, don't make me say it right.

Fine.

and at a town called Gorée, both in Senegal. Why?

Well, trade, of course. Senegal was the main source of gum arabic, which is

notable for many reasons, but most importantly, it is a key ingredient in

the Diet Coke and Mentos phenomenon.

So, of course, the British wanted lots of it. And the French were also fighting

the British in India.

In the 18th century, India was nominally ruled by the Mughal Empire.

I bet I'm saying that wrong, aren't I?

Yeah, that sounds more plausible.

But as throughout most of its history, the real power in India lay with local

kings and princes, sometimes called Nawabs. And these princes, just like

their European counterparts, were constantly vying for power and control

over more territory.

And to get it, they often enlisted the help, especially the military help, of

Europeans. This is what happened in the most notorious event in the Seven Years'

War in India, the Black Hole of Calcutta. In June of 1756, the British

governor of Calcutta, Roger Drake, made the mistake of insulting the emissaries

sent by the Nawab Siraj-ad-Dulla, who duly besieged and captured the English

garrison of 500 with his own army of 30,000.

Drake escaped to nearby ships with the town's women and children. You know the

old saying, women, children, and governors first.

But the town's defenders remained and the survivors were imprisoned in a small

windowless room that came to be known as the Black Hole. And 40 of 63 prisoners

suffocated overnight.

This story is mostly famous and a war that killed a million people because the

British press exaggerated the numbers in order to build support for the war in

India. Not the last time that exaggerations of enemy brutality would

be used to gin up support for a war.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the military campaigns in this part of

the world is that, at least initially, they were not undertaken by governments

themselves, but by corporations that had their own armies.

The British East India Company was the most successful of these corporations,

primarily because of the military skill of its leader, Robert Clive.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to Robert Clive. But first, let's see what's in the secret

compartment today.

Oh, bubbles.

That makes sense, Stan. The British Eats India Company was involved in several

early market bubbles.

Bubbles. Dear Robert Clive, you were a complicated man and not entirely

likable, but you did win a very important battle at Plassey in 1757.

And the way you won it says a lot about the relationship between Europe and its

colonies. So the key to your success was a conspiracy to overthrow the existing

Nawab orchestrated by a Bengali banking family called the Seths. No, Stan.

The Seths.

Yes.

Come on.

And in thanks for your support of their conspiracy, the new Nawab quickly signed

a treaty with your company, the East India Company.

And thereafter, the British had effective control over trade in Bengal

and the French were excluded from it. This was an incredibly valuable region

because it produced silk and inexpensive cotton cloth for export and it gave the

British a decisive advantage over the French and eventually allowed them to

control all of India.

And you accomplished this, Robert Clive, primarily by fomenting revolution.

Why does this work for you and it never works for the CIA?

Best wishes.

John Green. So by now you've probably figured out that since the French kept

losing battles, they eventually lost the war.

The Maine Peace Treaty signed in Paris in 1763 limited French presence in the

Caribbean, in India, and in North America.

Although not completely, otherwise they couldn't have sold Louisiana to Thomas

Jefferson in 1803.

So France was obviously dramatically weakened, but overall, so was Britain.

One thing rarely mentioned is the actual human cost of war. As many as a million

combatants died in the Seven Years' War, but even that doesn't tell the whole

story. In the 18th century, armies usually fed themselves by foraging,

which really meant just pillaging the countryside.

In Europe, a single Prussian province lost a fifth of its population to

pillaging, and in North America, settlers in frontier regions lived in

constant fear of raids.

And one of the perhaps lesser known outcomes of the war was the systematic

deportation of French Acadians from Maine to Louisiana, where they became

Cajuns. Meaning that the stars of the television shows Lobster Wars and Swamp

Wars are basically the same people.

What's that?

There's no television show called Swamp Wars?

Stan, cancel everything and get me on the phone with the Discovery Channel!

One last thing about wars, they are expensive.

In 1756, the British national debt was 75 million pounds. In 1763, it was 133

million pounds.

Someone had to pay for this, and the British felt it was only fair that the

American colonists should foot the bill. And those taxes, which helped fuel the

American Revolution, were a direct result of the Seven Years' War.

So in one way, winning the Seven Years' War cost Britain its first empire.

But when we remember that it was a global war, and especially when we think

about what happened in India, then the Seven Years' War also begins to look

like the beginning of Britain's second and much greater empire.

Winning is losing is winning is losing. Such is life, and such is history.

Thanks for watching. See you next week.

James Cook?

There's no crocodiles?

Stupid history always disappointing me. Well, Captain Cook is pretty interesting

too, and his death is a nice entree into one of the great historian feuds of

recent times. God, I love historian feuds!

So Captain Cook was born in 1728. He was a sailor and eventually a British naval

officer who saw action in the Seven Years' War, which you will no doubt

remember from last week. But he's best known for his three voyages of

exploration and scientific discovery that took place in the Pacific Ocean.

The first was between 1768 and 1771, the second between 1772 and 1775, and the

third between 1776 and 1780, although on the last one, Cook's journey ended in

1779 because he died. And as you can see from the map, Cook pretty much owned the

Pacific. He mapped the coast of Australia, paving the way for British

colonization and also paving the way for the near destruction of Aboriginal

peoples and their culture. As with the Columbian Exchange, Cook's voyages to

Australia remade the biological landscape.

He introduced sheep, which paved the way for Australia's huge wool industry.

Right, there was a penal colony established in Australia, but the real

story of Australia is its success as a colony.

Within 80 years, Australia went from 1,000 Anglo-Australians to 1.2 million.

Equally important, Cook explored and mapped out New Zealand, again paving the

way for colonization and paving the way for Crash Course World History to make

an announcement!

We did it! We finally talked about Australia and New Zealand! We're a real

world history class!

Huzzah!

Now all you Australians have to shut up about how we've never mentioned you.

Right, so in his voyages, Cook also determined that there was no such thing

as the mythical continent of Terra Australis, said to exist here, and he

helped to dispel the idea of a Northwest Passage, which Europeans had been

obsessed with for centuries.

He was the first European to describe Hawaii, and also the first to keep his

ship's crews free of scurvy. Cook and his successors were part of the middle

wave of European colonization, the one that took place after Europeans settled

in the Americas, but before they set their sights on Africa.

One more thing to mention about the context of these voya- or, rather, their

impact. Besides huge territorial gains and increased wealth, exploration of the

Pacific contributed to Europe's romantic fascination with science.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans became obsessed with mapping

and charting and classifying the world, which maybe isn't like candlelight

dinner romantic, but if you think about visiting never-before-seen lands and

bringing back odd life forms, well, I mean, think about how we feel about

space. And then, of course, as they colonized people, Europeans portrayed

themselves as a civilizing force bringing both science and religion.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to the white man's burden.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's a mustache so I can look like Kipling.

Dear White Man's Burden. I'm gonna go ahead and take this off, Stan. I think

Tumblr has had enough to get their gifs. So White Man's Burden, you're a poem.

And more than a century after Kipling wrote you, scholars still disagree over

whether he was kidding.

And this speaks to how weird and insane imperialism really was. Europeans seemed

to genuinely believe that it was their unfortunate duty to extract massive

wealth from the rest of the world.

Seriously, were you kidding when you called natives half-devil and half

-child? Because in retrospect,

That seems to describe, you know, you.

Best wishes, John Green. Right, so now having discussed the life of Captain

Cook, we shall turn to the most controversial thing he ever did, die.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So Cook landed in Hawaii at Kealakekua Bay in

early 1779 and explored the islands.

While he was ashore, he was greeted by an important person, either a chief or a

god. And then, in early February, he left. But the ship had trouble and was

forced to return to the bay for repairs.

During the second visit, he had difficulty with the Hawaiians, who'd

previously been pretty hospitable. And there was a fracas in which Captain Cook

was killed by at least one Hawaiian.

We know this from journals kept by various crewmen, but the historical

controversy arises from the details and interpretation of his death.

Why, in short, was Cook killed?

The traditional view is that Cook was killed for some religious reason,

although what isn't always clear.

One of the most fleshed-out versions of this story comes from the anthropologist

Marshall Solins in his book Islands of History.

So in the Hawaiian religious system, Ku, the god of war and human sacrifice,

rules for eight or nine months out of the year. The other months are reserved

for the fertility god, Lono.

The season-long festival for Lono is called Makahiki, and during this, the

Hawaiian king, who is associated with Ku, is ritually defeated.

During the Makahiki, an image of Lono tours the island, gets worshipped, and

collects taxes.

And at the end of the Makahiki period, Lono is ritually defeated and returned

to his native Tahiti. The thinking goes that because Cook arrived in the middle

of the Makahiki, the Hawaiians perceived him as Lono, so Cook took part in the

rituals and sacrifices that were made as part of the Makahiki. And in Salen's

view, Cook was killed as a ritual murder to mark the end of Makahiki. For Ku to

return, the festival to end, and the normal political order to be restored,

Lono had to be defeated. and presumably killed.

For Sollins, Cook's death fits perfectly with the ritual structure of Hawaiian

culture. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So the big problem with this interpretation,

which admittedly sounds pretty cool, is that we don't have much evidence that

Hawaiians would have actually seen Cook this way. We find a really interesting

opposing view from Gnanath Obeyesikere, and I will remind you that

mispronunciation is my thing!

Sorry, Gnanath. Anyway, he criticized Salen's interpretation of Cook's death

for looking a lot more like European myth than like a Hawaiian ritual.

First off, Obeyesikere argues that Cook himself would not easily be confused

with Lono. In fact, if you were taken for a god, it would probably be Ku, war

god, what with all the cannons and muskets. Also, there's the fact that the

name Cook sounds more like Coo than Lono.

Also, arguing that native Hawaiians would see a European and think him a god

has all kinds of troubling implications, one of them being that native Hawaiians

aren't terribly smart, when in fact we know that they are very smart, because

unlike the rest of us, they live in Hawaii.

And last but definitely not least, lono is associated with fertility, and the

Hawaiians would have associated the Europeans with the exact opposite of

fertility because they introduced gonorrhea to Hawaii.

And there's a further problem with the Cook equals lono equation, which is that

nothing in Hawaiian religion has any of their gods being ritually killed.

Part of their mythology can be seen as sanctioning a ritual killing of the

king, but not of a god. And also, it's a long way from ritual killing to actual

killing. The truth is probably a lot less spectacular, which is that Cook was

probably killed during a melee in which a bunch of Hawaiians were also killed.

Before his death, Cook had attempted to take a Hawaiian king hostage in response

to Hawaiians taking a bunch of stuff from Cook's boats.

This was common practice for Cook. He had done the same thing in Tahiti and

other Polynesian islands after islanders had taken European goods.

Which by the way, happened everywhere Cook went in the Pacific, so maybe he

should have figured out that it was like a thing, that you were allowed to take

stuff off boats in exchange for the right to hang out there.

Great sailor, terrible anthropologist, although to be fair, anthropology hadn't

been invented.

Additionally, right before Cook was killed there were rising tensions

between the Hawaiians and the Europeans, even though at first their relationship

had been quite cordial, as evidenced by all that gonorrhea. So why the tension?

Probably because the Europeans dismantled the Hawaiian ritual space,

some sources call a temple and used it for firewood. Cook attempted to pay for

it, but his lowball offer of two hatchets was refused.

I'm sorry we destroyed your temple, but I'll give you two hatchets, one for each

hand. I mean, what would you even do with a third hatchet? So unfortunately,

the earliest Hawaiian account offering this explanation for why Cook was killed

comes well after the accounts, but at least it's a Hawaiian explanation.

Of course, it's also possible that the Hawaiians were just upset that Cook had

attempted to kidnap their king.

Most accounts from the time portray a chaotic scene in which Cook himself

fired at least two shots, probably killing at least one islander? And one

thing that seems pretty clear, even as described by European chroniclers, is

that Cook's death does not look premeditated, and it sure doesn't look

like a ritual. But even so, the idea that the Hawaiians saw Cook as a god has

ended up in a good many accounts of his demise.

Why? Well, one explanation is that it fits in with other stories of explorers.

You've all probably heard that the Tainos thought Columbus was a god, and

that the Aztecs supposedly thought Cortes was a god.

And this just makes Captain Cook one in a long line of Europe- who were thought

to be gods by people who Europeans felt were savages.

And making Cook a god also sets up a stark contrast between the enlightened

West and primitive Polynesia, because Captain Cook often appears in history

books as a model man of the Enlightenment. Sure, he never had much

formal schooling, but his voyages were all about increasing knowledge and

scientific exploration.

And having him die at the hands of a people who were so obviously mistaken in

thinking him a god makes an argument for the superiority over the intellectualism

of the Enlightenment versus the so-called primitive religion of the

colonies. But whenever a story seems to fit really well into such a framework,

we need to ask ourselves, who's telling that story?

One of the reasons we know so much about Captain Cook and the reason he shows up

in so many history textbooks is because we have tons of records about him, but

they're almost all European records.

Even the Hawaiian records we have about Cook have been heavily influenced by

later contact with Europeans.

So if we cast Cook's death as part of a native ritual, we're implying that

Hawaiians were just performing a ritual script, which takes away all their

agency. as human beings?

Are we making them recognizable, having them respond as we think Europeans would

by flying off the handle? I don't have an answer, but the debate between these

two historical anthropologists brings up something that we need to keep in mind.

Very often in history we make statements about people who haven't written their

own story, whether it's Hawaiians or Native Americans or working class

people. And we try to imagine that we're seeing the world as they have seen it,

but the best we can really do is offer an approximation.

So is it really possible to present a Hawaiian version of Captain Cook's

death? Or is the exercise inherently condescending and paternalistic.

And most importantly, is our inability to escape our biases a good excuse for

not even trying?

As usual, those aren't rhetorical questions.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

What we're concerned with here is why the American Revolution happened and the

extent to which it was actually revolutionary.

Plus, for the first time in Crash Course history, I have a legitimate chance of

getting through an entire episode without butchering a single

pronunciation. Unfortunately, next week we will be in France and je parle

français comme un idiot.

So intellectual historians might put the roots of the American Revolution

earlier, but I'm going to start with the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763,

which, as you will recall from last week, was one, expensive, and two, a

victory for the British, including British subjects living in America, who

now had more land and therefore more money. Right, so in 1765, the British

government was like, hey, since we went into this debt to get you all this new

land, we trust that you won't mind if we pass the Stamp Act, in which we place a

fancy stamp on your documents, newspapers, playing cards, cards, etc.,

and in return, you give us money." Well, it turns out the colonists weren't so

keen on this, not so much because the tax was high, but because they had no

direct representation in the Parliament that had levied the tax.

And plus, they were cranky about the Crown keeping large numbers of British

troops in the colonies even after the end of the Seven Years' War.

And then the British government was like, you are inadequately grateful, and

the colonists were like, shut up, we hate you, and the British government was

like, as long as you live under our roof, you live by our rules, and so on.

But eventually, the British backed down and repealed the Stamp Act. The repeal

inspired a line of commemorative teapots, thereby beginning America's

storied tradition of worthless collectible ceramics. But in the end,

this only emboldened the colonists when the British tried to put new taxes on

the Americans in the form of the Townshend Act.

These led to further protests and boycotts, and most importantly, more

organization among the colonists. The protests escalated.

1770 saw the Boston Massacre, which with its sum total of five dead, was perhaps

the least massacry massacre of all time. And in 1773, a bunch of colonists dumped

about a million dollars worth of tea into Boston Harbor in protest of British

government decisions that actually would have made British tea cheaper. Oh, it's

time for the open letter?

Ow! Oh, that did not go well. An open letter to tea.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh.

It's a gigantic tea bag.

Hmm.

Let's see what flavor it is.

Bitter tyranny variety.

Dear tea, like all Americans who love justice and freedom, I hate you. But I

understand you're quite popular in the UK where the East India Company would

periodically go to war for you. But what fascinates me about you tea, I mean

aside from the fact that people choose to drink you when there are great

American refreshments available like Mountain Dew, is that even though you're

stereotypically English, you're not English.

It's Chinese or Burmese or Indian, no one really knows, but it's definitely

not English. You didn't even have tea until like the 1660s, posers.

Best wishes.

John Green. So the Boston Tea Party led to further British crackdowns, and then

mobilization of colonial militias, and then Paul Revere, and then actual war,

but you can hear all about that stuff on, like, TV miniseries.

I want to focus on one of the ways that colonists protested on taxation. Let's

go to the Thought Bubble. As previously noted, the English crown benefited

tremendously from the import of consumer goods to the American colonies, and one

of the most effective ways American colonists could protest taxation without

representation was by boycotting British products.

In order to enforce these boycotts, the pro- protesters created committees of

correspondence, which spread information about who was and was not observing the

boycotts, and these committees also could coerce non-compliers into

compliance, which is to say that they were creating and enforcing policy.

kind of like a government does. The Maryland Committee of Correspondence, in

fact, was instrumental in setting up the first Continental Congress, which

convened to coordinate a response to the fighting that started in 1775. This was

back when Congresses did things, by the way. It was awesome. Anyway, the

Continental Congress is most famous for drafting and approving the Declaration

of Independence.

No, Thought Bubble, that's the Will Smith vehicle Independence Day. I mean

the Declaration of Independence. Right, that one. It's not your fault. You guys

are Canadian.

You've never declared independence.

Worth noting, by the way, that the Congress edited out more than a quarter

of Jefferson's original Declaration, and he forever after insisted that they'd,

quote, mangled it.

Anyway, I would argue the heavy lifting of the American Revolution was already

done by the Declaration.

In truth... By the time the shooting started, most of the colonists were

already self-governing and had developed a sense of themselves as something

separate and different from Great Britain, as evidenced by these

committees of correspondence, which functioned as shadow governments,

eventually reaching out to foreign governments, establishing an espionage

network, tarring and feathering loyalists and royal officials, which, by

the way, is incredibly painful and dangerous to the victim, and even

recruiting physicians to tell American men that drinking British tea would make

them weak and effeminate.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Now, despite all this, about 20% of colonists remained

loyal to Great Britain throughout the war, especially in the major cities that

Britain occupied.

Also, lots of slaves continued to support the British, especially after

Britain promised that any slaves who fought with them would be freed.

And it's worth noting that while we generally celebrate the Revolution and

see it as a step toward justice and equality, the people who most needed the

protection of a government might have been better off and more free if Britain

had won. Especially since Britain ended slavery well before America did and, you

know, without a civil war.

Even though most Americans had come to see themselves as separate from Britain

before 1776, the British certainly didn't see it that way. They continued

to fight either until 1781 or 1783, depending on whether you calculate by

when they actually gave up or when the peace treaty was signed.

So you can't really say the American Revolution was won before the fighting

even started, but the truth is the American Revolution and the War for

Independence weren't like this.

They were like this.

So here's what was pretty revolutionary about the American Revolution.

The colonists threw off the rule of an imperial monarchy and replaced it with a

government that didn't have a king, a radical idea in a world that didn't

feature many non-monarchical forms of government.

And if you look at the explanations for the Revolution, especially those

contained in, like, the Declaration of Independence and in pamphlets like

Thomas Paine's Common Sense, there's definitely a revolutionary zeal that's

informed by the Enlightenment.

And that's especially true if you focus on the idea of liberty, as many of the

pamphleteers did. That said, if you look at the actual outcome of the Re- aside

from the whole no king thing, it wasn't that revolutionary.

Let's look for instance at two ideas central to the revolution, property

rights and equality.

So the Articles of Confederation gave the government no power to tax, which

had the effect of making sure that people who had property were able to

keep it because they never had to pay the government anything in exchange for

the right to own and use it. And that's very different from taxation systems

dating all the way back to like Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

And it's probably not a coincidence that most of the writers and signers of the

Declaration of... independence were men of property.

And they wanted to keep it that way. So basically, the white guys who controlled

the land and its production before the American Revolution were the same white

guys who controlled it after the American Revolution.

And this leads us to the second and more important way that as a revolution, the

American one falls a bit short. So if you've ever studied American history,

you're probably familiar with the greatest line in the Declaration of

Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal. Sorry, ladies. And you also may know that at the time those words were

written, a large segment of the American population, perhaps as much as 30%, were

slaves of African descent who were held as property and were definitely 100% not

treated as equal to whites. In fact, the guy who wrote those words held slaves

and was fighting against a government who promised to free any slaves who

supported it. Furthermore, women couldn't vote, and neither could white

men who didn't own enough property, meaning that the government of for and

by the people was in fact of, for, and by about 10-15% of the people. But

here's the real question. Was the American Revolution what the historian

Jonathan Israel called a revolution of mind?

Did it change the way we think about what people are and how we should

organize ourselves?

Addressing those questions will involve a brief foray into the history of ideas.

Let's study the Enlightenment!

The Enlightenment was primarily a celebration of humans' ability to

understand and improve the natural world through reason.

The Enlightenment had a number of antecedents, including the European

Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.

But what made it special was that some of its more radical proponents, like

Immanuel Kant for instance, went so far as to argue that human reason rendered a

belief in God unnecessary and, by extension, proclaimed that any belief in

divine intervention or a divine plan for humanity was just superstition. Given

that this was coming out of an overwhelmingly Christian Europe, this

was a pretty controversial suggestion and not all Enlightenment thinkers would

go that far. And more moderate Enlightenment thinkers were also more

willing to countenance hierarchical social and political structures.

Like John Locke, a major Enlightenment thinker, formulated his version of

inalienable rights as life, liberty, and property.

And that's much more traditional than arguing, for instance, that property

should be held communally. And it's no coincidence that the more moderate

Enlightenment thinkers, like Locke and Adam Smith, happened to be British, and

the real radicals were French.

And the founders of the United States were far more closely linked to those

British Enlightenment thinkers than to the French, who influenced the French

Revolution, which as we will see next week... goes swimmingly. But even if the

government that America's revolutionaries came up with didn't

overturn privilege or tear apart the social order as the French Revolution

tried to do, it did make significant changes.

America made sure that there would never be a formal nobility except for the

Count of Chocula. And it recognized the equal rights of daughters and widows

when it came to inheriting and possessing property.

Also, it created a world in which future countesses could rehabilitate their

reputations in New York.

But the real seismic change was that after the Revolution, Americans came to

view themselves as equal to each other. And in the context of the 18th century,

that was pretty radical.

Ordinary Americans came to believe that no one in a basic down-to-earth and day

-in and day-out manner was really better than anyone else. That was equality as

no other nation had ever quite had it. And in the end, the ideas of the

American Revolution, ideas about property and equality and

representation, are still hugely important in shaping political discourse

around the world and particularly in America.

And by America, I mean the United States. I'm sorry Canadians and Mexicans

and Central Americans.

and South Americans. We're provincial, okay?

I mean, here in the United States, our presidential candidates must both know

how to wear a suit and how to bowl. But the American Revolution also reminds us,

as the French one will next week, that revolutionary ideas and values are not

always easy to live up to. Nothing challenges one's belief in equality

quite like becoming rich and powerful.

Indeed, rare is the revolutionary who doesn't become on some level like

Orwell's pigs, insisting that while all animals were created equal, some were

created more equal than others. In short, if you're going to base your new

society on philosophy, you should try to found it on ideals that are as inclusive

and humanistic as possible, because the people executing those ideas will never

be ideal.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're

going to talk about the French Revolution.

Admittedly, this wasn't the French flag until 1794, but we just felt like he

looked good in stripes.

As does this guy, huh?

So while the American Revolution is considered a pretty good thing, the

French Revolution is often seen as a bloody, anarchic mess in the... Mr.

Green! Mr. Green! I bet, like always, it's way more complicated than that.

Actually, no, it was pretty terrible. Also, like a lot of revolutions, in the

end, it exchanged an authoritarian regime...

for an authoritarian regime.

But even if the revolution was a mess, its ideas changed human history far

more, I will argue, than the American Revolution.

Right, so France in the 18th century was a rich and populous country, but it had

a systemic problem collecting taxes because of the way its society was

structured. They had a system with kings and nobles we now call the Ancien

Régime.

Thank you, three years of high school French.

And for most French people, it sucked because the people with the money, the

nobles and the clergy, never paid taxes.

So by 1789, France was deeply in debt thanks to their funding the American

Revolution. Thank you, France, we will get you back in World Wars I and II. And

King Louis XVI was spending half of his national budget to service the federal

debt. Louis tried to reform this system under various finance ministers, even

called for democracy on a local level, but all attempts to fix it failed and

soon France basically declared bankruptcy.

This nicely coincided with hailstorms that ruined a year's harvest, thereby

raising food prices and causing widespread hunger, which really made the

people of France angry because they loved to eat. Meanwhile, the king

certainly did not look broke, as evidenced by his well-fed physique and

fancy footwear.

He and his wife Marie Antoinette also got to live in the very nice palace at

Versailles thanks to God's mandate, but Enlightenment thinkers like Kant were

challenging the whole idea of religion, writing things like,

primarily in matters of religion.

So basically, the peasants were hungry, the intellectuals were beginning to

wonder whether God could or should save the king, and the nobility were

dithering about, eating foie gras and songbirds, failing to make meaningful

financial reform.

In response to the crisis, Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General,

the closest thing that France had to a national parliament, which hadn't met

since 1614.

The Estates General was like a super parliament, made up of representatives

from the First Estate, the nobles, the Second Estate, the clergy, and the Third

Estate. Everyone else. The Third Estate showed up with about 600

representatives, the First and Second Estates both had about 300, and after

several votes everything was deadlocked, and then the Third Estate was like, you

know what, forget you guys, we're gonna leave and we're gonna become our own

National Assembly.

This did not please King Louis XVI, so when the new National Assembly left the

room for a break, he locked the doors and he was like, sorry guys, you can't

go in there, and if you can't assemble, how are you gonna be a National

Assembly? Shockingly, the Third Estate representatives were able to find a

different room in France, this time an indoor tennis court where they swore the

famous tennis court oath.

And they agreed not to give up until a French constitution was established.

So then Louis XVI responded by sending troops to Paris, primarily to quell

uprisings over food shortages, but the revolutionaries saw this as a

provocation. So they responded by seizing the Bastille prison on July

14th, which coincidentally is also Bastille Day. The Bastille was stormed

ostensibly to free prisoners, although there were only seven in jail at the

time, but mostly to get guns.

But the really radical move in the National Assembly came on August 4th

when they most of the Ancien Regime.

Feudal rights, tithes, privileges for nobles, unequal taxation, they were all

abolished in the name of writing a new constitution.

And then, on August 26th, the National Assembly proclaimed the Declaration of

Rights of Man and Citizen, which laid out a system of rights that applied to

every person and made those rights integral to the new constitution.

That's quite different from the American Bill of Rights, which was like

begrudgingly tacked on at the end and only applied to non-slaves. The DOROMAC,

as I called it in high school, declared that everyone had the right to liberty,

property, and security, rights that the French Revolution would do an

exceptionally poor job of protecting.

But as noted last week, the same could be argued for many other supposedly more

successful revolutions.

Okay, let's go to the Thought Bubble. Meanwhile, back at Versailles, Louis XVI

was still king of France, and it was looking like France might be a

constitutional monarchy, which might have meant that the royal family could

hang on to their awesome house.

But then, in October of 1789, a rumor started that Marie Antoinette was

hoarding grain somewhere inside the palace, and in what became known as the

Women's March, a bunch of armed peasant women stormed the palace and demanded

that Louis and Marie Antoinette move from Versailles to Paris, which they did

because everyone is afraid of armed peasant women.

And this is a nice reminder that to many people at the time, the French

Revolution was not primarily about fancy Enlightenment ideas.

It was mostly about lack of food and a political system that made economic

contractions hardest on the poor.

Now, a good argument can be made that this first phase of the revolution

wasn't all that revolutionary. revolutionary. The National Assembly

wanted to create a constitutional monarchy, they believed that the king

was necessary for a functioning state, and they were mainly concerned that the

voters and office holders be men of property.

Only the most radical wing, the Jacobins, called for the creation of a

republic. But things were about to get much more revolutionary, and also worse

for France.

First, the Jacobins had a huge petition drive that got a bit unruly, which led

troops controlled not by the king, but by the National Assembly, to fire on the

crown, killing 50 people. And that meant that the National Assembly, which had

been the revolutionary voice of the people, had killed people in an attempt

to reign in revolutionary fervor. You see this a lot throughout history during

revolutions. What looked like radical hope and change suddenly becomes the man

as increasingly radical ideas are embraced.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Meanwhile, France's monarchical neighbors were

getting a little nervous about all this Republic business, especially Leopold

II, who in addition to being the not-holy, not-Roman, and not-imperial

Holy Roman Emperor, was Marie Antoinette's brother.

I should note, by the way, that at this point the Holy Roman Empire was

basically just Austria. Also, like a lot of monarchs, Leopold II liked the idea

of monarchies, and he wanted to keep his job as a person who gets to stand around

wearing a dress pointing at nothing, owning winged lion monkeys made out of

gold. And who can blame him? So he and King William Frederick II of Prussia

together issued the Declaration of Pilnitz, which promised to restore the

French monarchy. At this point, Louis and the National Assembly developed a

plan. Let's invade Austria.

The idea was to plunder Austria's wealth and maybe steal some Austrian grain to

shore up French food supplies and also, you know, spread revolutionary zeal. But

what actually happened is that Prussia joined Austria in fighting the French.

And then Louis encouraged the Prussians, which made him look like an enemy of the

revolution, which of course he was.

And as a result, the assembly voted to suspend the monarchy, have new elections

in which everyone could vote, as long as they were men, and create a new

Republican constitution.

Soon, this convention decided to have a trial for Louis XVI, who was found

guilty, and by one vote sentenced to die via guillotine, which made it difficult

for Austria and Prussia to restore him to the throne.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to the guillotine.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, there's nothing.

Oh my god, Stan!

Gee, that's not funny!

Dear guillotine, I can think of no better example of enlightenment thinking

run amok. Dr. Joseph Guillotine, the inventor of the guillotine, envisioned

it as an egalitarian way of dying. They said the guillotine was humane and it

also made no distinction between rich or poor, noble or peasant.

it killed equally.

You were also celebrated for taking the torture out of execution, but I will

remind you, you did not take the dying out of execution.

Unfortunately for you, France hasn't executed anyone since 1977, but you'll

be happy to know that the last legal execution in France was via guillotine.

Plus, you always got a future in horror movies.

Best wishes, John Green.

The death of Louis XVI marks the beginning of the Terror, the best known,

or at least the most sensational phase of the Revolution.

I mean, if you can kill the king, you can kill pretty much anyone, which is

what the government did under the leadership of the Committee of Public

Safety, motto, we suck at protecting public safety, led by Maximilien

Robespierre. The Terror saw the guillotining of 16,000 enemies of the

Revolution, including Marie, I never actually said let them eat cake,

Antoinette, and Maximilien Robespierre himself,

was guillotined in the month of Thermidor in the year 2.

Oh right, so while France was broke and fighting like 9 wars, the Committee of

Public Safety changed the measurements of time because, you know, the

traditional measurements are so irrational and religion-y. So they

renamed all the months and decided that each day would have 10 hours and each

hour 100 minutes.

And then after the Terror, the Revolution pulled back a bit and another

new constitution was put into place, this one giving a lot more power to

wealthy people.

At this point, France was still at war with Austria and Britain, wars that

France ended up winning largely thanks to a little corporal named Napoleon.

Bonaparte. The war was backdrop to a bunch of coups and counter-coups that I

won't get into right now because they were very complicated, but the last coup

that we'll talk about in 1799 established Napoleon Bonaparte as the

First Consul of France.

And it granted him almost unlimited executive power under yet another

constitution. And when he was declared First Consul of France, Napoleon

proclaimed, citizens, the revolution is established on the principles with which

it began.

It is over. By which he presumably meant that France's government had gone all

the way from here to here.

As with the American Revolution, it's easy to conclude that France's

revolution wasn't all that revolutionary. I mean, Napoleon was

basically an emperor, and in some ways he was even more of an absolute monarch

than Louis XVI had been. Gradually, the nobles came back to France, although

they had mostly lost their special privileges. The Catholic Church returned

too, although much weaker, because it had lost land and the ability to collect

tithes. And when Napoleon himself fell, France restored the monarchy, and except

for a four-year period between 1815 and 1870, France had a king who was either a

Bourbon or a Bonaparte. Now these were no longer absolute monarchs who claimed

that their right to rule came from God, they were constitutional monarchs of the

kind that the revolutionaries of 1789 had originally envisioned.

But the fact remains that France had a king again, and a nobility, and an

established religion, and it was definitely not a democracy or a

republic. And perhaps this is why the French Revolution is so controversial

and open to interpretation.

Some argue the Revolution succeeded in spreading Enlightenment ideals even if

it didn't bring democracy to France.

Others argue that the real legacy of the Revolution wasn't the enhancement of

liberty, but of state power. Regardless, I'd argue that the French Revolution was

ultimately far more revolutionary than its American counterpart.

I mean, in some ways, America never had an aristocracy, but in other ways, it

continued to have one. The French Enlightenment thinker Diderot felt that

Americans should fear a too unequal division of wealth, resulting in a small

number of opulent citizens and a multitude of citizens living in misery.

And the American Revolution did nothing to change that polarization of wealth.

What made the French Revolution so radical was its insistence upon the

universality of its ideals.

I mean, look at Article 6 of Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen.

Law is the expression of the general will.

Every citizen has a right to participate personally or through his representative

in its foundation.

It must be the same for all.

whether it protects or punishes. Those are radical ideas, that laws come from

citizens, not from kings or gods, and that those laws should apply to everyone

equally? That's a long way from Hammurabi, and in truth, it's a long way

from the slave-holding Thomas Jefferson.

In the 1970s, Chinese President Zhao Enlai was asked what he thought the

effects of the French Revolution had been, and he said, It's too soon to say.

And in a way, it still is.

The French Revolution asked new questions about the nature of people's

rights and the derivation of those rights. And we're still answering those

questions and sorting through how our answers should shape society today.

Must government be of the people to be for the people? Do our rights derive

from nature or from God or from neither?

And what are those rights? As William Faulkner said, the past is never dead.

Not even past.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and apparently it's

Revolutions Month here at Crash Course, because today we are going to discuss

the oft-neglected Haitian Revolutions.

The Haitian Revolutions are totally fascinating, and they involve two of my

very favorite things.

One, ending slavery, and two, Napoleon getting his feelings hurt. I can't help

myself, Napoleon.

I like to see you suffer.

So the French colony in San Domingo began in the 17th century as a pirate

outpost. And its original French inhabitants made their living selling

leather and a kind of smoked beef called boucan.

All that beef actually came from cattle left behind by the Spanish, who were the

first Europeans to settle the island. But anyway, after 1640, the boucan

sellers started to run low on beef. And they were like, you know what would pay

better than selling beef jerky? Robbing Spanish galleons, which, as you'll

recall, were loaded with silver mined from South America.

So by the middle of the 17th century, the French had convinced many of those

buccaneering captains to give up their pirating and settle on the island.

Many of them invested some of their pirate treasure in sugar plantations,

which by 1700 were thriving at both producing sugar and working people to

death. And soon, this island was the most valuable colony in the West Indies

and possibly in the world.

It produced 40% of Europe's sugar, 60% of its coffee, and it was home to more

slaves than any place except Brazil.

And as you'll recall from our discussion of Atlantic slavery, being a slave in a

sugar production colony was exceptionally brutal. In fact, by the

late 18th century, more slaves were imported to San Domingo every year, more

than 40,000, than the entire white population of the island. By the 19th

century, slaves made up about 90% of the population, and most of those slaves

were African-born because the brutal living and working conditions prevented

natural population growth. Like, remember Alfred Crosby's fantastic line,

it is crudely true that if man's caloric intake is sufficient, he will somehow

stagger to maturity and he will reproduce?

Yeah, well, not in 18- century Haiti, thanks to yellow fever and smallpox and

just miserable working conditions.

So most of these plantations were pretty large. They often had more than 200

slaves, and many of the field workers, in some cases a majority, were women.

Colonial society in San Domingo was divided into four groups, which had

important consequences for the revolution.

At the top were the big white planters who owned the plantations and all the

slaves. Often these Grands Blancs were absentee landlords who would just rather

stay in France and let their agents do, you know, the actual brutality.

Below them were the wealthy free people of color. Most of the Frenchmen who came

to the island were, you know, men, and they frequently fathered children with

slave women. These fathers would often free their children. Wasn't that

generous of them. So by 1789, there were 24,800 free people of color, along with

about 30,000 white people in the colony. The free people of color contributed a

lot to the island's stability.

They served in the militia and in the local constabulary, and many of the

wealthier ones eventually owned plantations and slaves of their own. And

then below them on the social ladder were the poor whites, or the Petit

Blancs, who worked as artisans and laborers. And at the bottom were the

slaves, who made up the overwhelming majority.

I know what you're thinking. This is a recipe for permanent social stability.

No, it wasn't. Okay, so when the French Revolution broke out in 1789, all these

groups had something to complain about. The slaves obviously disliked being

slaves. The free people of color were still subject to legal discrimination no

matter how wealthy they became.

And the poor whites, in addition to being poor, were resentful of all the

privileges held by the wealthy people of color. And the Grand Blancs were

complaining about French trade laws, and the government's attempts to slightly

improve the living and working conditions of slaves.

Basically, they were saying that government shouldn't be in the business

of regulating business.

So everyone was unhappy, but the slaves were by far the worst of all. Mr. Green,

Mr. Green, you're always saying how much slavery sucks, but is it really any

worse than having to work for, like, subsistence? Yeah, I'm gonna stop you

right there, me from the past, before you further embarrass yourself.

You often hear from people attempting to comprehend the horrors of slavery that

slavery couldn't have been all that bad, and that it wasn't that different from

working for minimum wage, and that we know that because if it had been so bad,

slaves would have just revolted, which they never did.

Yeah, well, one, equating slavery to poor working conditions ignores the fact

that if you work at, like, Foxconn, Foxconn doesn't get to sell your

children to other corporations.

And two, as you're about to see, slaves did revolt.

So the unrest in what became Haiti started in 1789, when some slaves heard

a rumor that the King of France had freed them. Even though it was across

the ocean, word of the changes in France reached the people of Haiti, where the

Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, while terrifying to planters,

gave hope both to free people of color and to slaves.

At the same time, some Petit Blancs argued that there was inadequate

discrimination against blacks.

They identified with the Third Estate in France, and they called for interest

rates to be lowered so they could more easily pay their debts, and they began

lobbying for colonial independence.

The psychology here shows you the extent to which slaves were not considered

people. I mean, these radical Petit Blancs thought that they were the

oppressed people in San Domingo because they couldn't afford to own slaves.

And they thought if they could become independent from France, they could take

power from the people of privilege and institute a democracy where everyone had

a voice, except for the 95% of people who weren't white. Then, in 1791, these

radical petit blancs seized the city of Port-au-Prince.

You'll remember that by 1791, France was at war with most of Europe, and just

like with the Seven Years' War, the wars of revolutionary France played out in

the colonies as well as at home. So the French government sent troops to San

Domingo. Meanwhile, urges toward liberty, fraternity, and equality were

only growing in France, and it didn't seem very equitable to grant citizenship

based solely on race.

So in May of 1791, the National Assembly gave full French citizenship to all free

men of color. I mean, if they owned property and had enough money and

weren't the children of slaves.

The Petit Blancs weren't thrilled about this, and that led to fighting breaking

out between them and the newly French free people of color. And then in August

of 1791, the slaves were like, um, hi, yes, screw all of you.

And a massive slave revolt broke out. Among the leaders of this revolt was

Toussaint Breda, a former slave of full African descent who later took the name

Toussaint Louverture.

Louverture helped mold the slaves into a disciplined army that could withstand

attacks from the French troops.

But again, the context of the wider revolution proves really important here.

So the Spanish had consistently supported slave revolts in San Domingo,

hoping to weaken the French. But by 1793, they were offering even more

support. In fact, Louverture became an officer in the Spanish military because

the emancipation of the slaves was more important to him than maintaining his

rights as a French citizen.

So then in October of 1793, the British, whom as I'm sure you'll recall were also

at war with France, decided to invade San Domingo. And at that point the

French military commanders were like, we are definitely going to lose this war if

we fight the British, the Spanish.

And the slaves, so let's free the slaves.

So they issued decrees freeing the slaves, and on February 4th, 1794, the

National Convention in Paris ratified those decrees. By May, having learned of

the convention's actions, Louverture switched allegiances to the French and

turned the tide of the war.

Thus the most successful slave revolt in human history won freedom and

citizenship for every slave.

in the French Caribbean.

But emancipation didn't end the story, because the French were still at war

with the Spanish and the English in San Domingo. Luckily for France, Louverture

was an excellent general, and luckily for the people of the island, Louverture

was also an able politician, and between 1794 and 1802, he successfully steered

the colony toward independence.

So although slavery was abolished, this didn't end the plantation system,

because both Louverture and his compatriot André Rigaud believed that

sugar was vital to the economic health of the island.

But now at least people were paid for their labor. and their kids couldn't be

sold, now you can compare it to Foxconn. But soon Louverture and Rigaud came into

conflict over Rigaud's refusal to give up control over one of the southern

states on the island and there was a civil war, which Louverture, with the

help of his able lieutenant Jacques de Salines, was able to win after 13 months

of hard fighting. Louverture then passed a new constitution and things were going

pretty well on San Domingo, with the small problem that it was still

technically part of France, which meant that it was about to be ruled by

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. So in 1799, Napoleon seized power in France in

a coup, and his new regime, called the Consulate, because he was the first

consul, a la the Roman Republic, established a new constitution that

specifically pointed out its laws did not apply to France's overseas colonies.

Napoleon had plans to reconstruct France's empire in North America that it

had lost most of during the Seven Years' War, and to do this, he needed tons of

money from France's most valuable colony.

San Domingo.

And the best way to maximize profits?

Why, to reintroduce slavery, of course.

That's certainly what the former slaves thought was the plan, when in 1802, a

French expedition commanded by Napoleon's brother-in-law, Charles

Victor Emmanuel, I have too many names, Leclerc, showed up in San Domingo.

This started the second phase of the Haitian Revolution, the fight for

independence. So Leclerc eventually had Louverture arrested and shipped to

France, where he died in prison in 1803, but this itself did not spark an

uprising against the French, because Louverture wasn't actually that popular,

largely because he wanted most blacks on the island to continue to grow sugar.

Instead, the former slaves only started fighting when Leclerc tried to take away

their guns, thus beginning a guerrilla war that the French, despite their

superior training and weapons, had absolutely no chance of winning.

Although the French were exceedingly cruel, executing women as well as men

and importing man-eating dogs from Cuba, the Haitians had the best ally of all.

disease, specifically in the form of yellow fever, which killed thousands of

French soldiers, including Leclerc himself.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

Stan, where is my chair?

Stan, you're telling me the yellow chair has been lost?

The yellow chair is the star of the show. The stars in order are one me, two

yellow chair, three the chalkboard, four Danica, five Meredith the intern, sixth

you, Stan, you're sixth!

Oh, I'm mad. Let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

That's a giant squid of anger! I am a giant squid of anger!

Oh no, it broke.

An open letter to disease.

Dear disease, Why do you always put yourself at the center of human history?

Most of you are just tiny little single-celled organisms, but you're so

self-important and self-involved that you're always interfering with us.

Admittedly, sometimes you work for the good guys, but usually you don't. It

seems like even though you're constantly interfering with human history, you

don't even care about it. I just hate when people, and also microbes, are

super self-involved. Like, don't tell me you gotta take a day off to go to your

mom's birthday party stand. That's not imagining me complexly. I've got needs

over here.

Best wishes.

John Green. So continued defeat and the death of his troops eventually convinced

Napoleon to give up his dreams of an American empire and cut his losses.

He recalled all his surviving troops of the 40,000 who left, only 8,000 made it

back, and then he sold Thomas Jefferson, Louisiana.

And that is how former slaves in Haiti gave America All of this.

On January 1st, 1804, Dessalines, who had defeated the French, declared the

island of San Domingo independent and renamed it Haiti. Which is what the

island had been called by native inhabitants before the arrival of

Columbus. The Haitian Declaration of Independence was a rejection of France

and to a certain degree of European racism and colonialism.

It also affirmed, to quote from the book Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, a

broad definition of the new country as a refuge for enslaved peoples of all

kinds. So why is this little island so important that we would devote an entire

episode to it. First, Haiti was the second free and independent nation state

in the Americas.

It also had one of the most successful slave revolts ever. Haiti became the

first modern nation to be governed by people of African descent, and they also

foiled Napoleon's attempts to build a big new world empire.

Of course, Haiti's history since its revolution has been marred by tragedy, a

legacy of the loss of life that accompanied the revolution.

I mean, 150,000 people died in 1802 and 1803 alone.

But the Haitian revolutions matter.

They matter because the Haitians more than any other people in the age of

revolutions, stood up for the idea that none should be slaves, that the people

who most need the protection of a government should be afforded that

protection. Haiti stood up for the weak when the rest of the world failed to.

The next time you read about Haiti's poverty, remember that.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today things are

going to get a little bit confusing because we're going to talk about

revolution and independence in Latin America.

It's a bit confusing because one, Latin America is big.

Two, it's very diverse.

Three, Napoleon makes everything complicated.

And four, as we've seen in the past, sometimes revolutions turn out not to be

that revolutionary.

Witness, for instance, the New England Revolution, who instead of like trying

to form new and better governments are always just kicking balls around like

all the other soccer teams.

Right, so before independence, Latin American society was characterized by

three institutions that exercised control over the population.

The first was the Spanish Crown, or if you were Brazilian, the Portuguese

Crown. So as far as Spain was concerned, the job of the colonies was to produce

revenue in the form of a 20% tax on everything that was called the Royal

Fifth. So government administration was pervasive and relatively efficient

because it had to be in order to collect its Royal Fifth.

Then there was the Catholic Church. Even more than royal officials, the Church

exercised influence over people's everyday lives.

I mean, the church even controlled time. The church bells told out the hours, and

they mandated a seven-day work week so that people could go to church on

Sunday. And finally, there was patriarchy. In Latin America, like much

of the world, husbands had complete control over their wives, and any extra

or premarital scoodily-pooping was severely punished.

I mean, when it was the women doing the illicit scoodily-pooping, men could

basically get up to whatever.

This was mainly about property rights, because illegitimate children could

inherit their father's property, but it was constructed to be about, you know,

purity. To get a sense of how patriarchy-shaped Latin American lives,

take a gander at Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, whose name I'm actually

abbreviating. A child prodigy who spoke five languages by the age of 16, de la

Cruz wanted to disguise herself as a boy so she could attend university, but she

was forbidden to do so. Still, she wrote plays and poetry, she studied math and

natural science, and for being one of the leading minds of the 17th century,

she was widely attacked and eventually forced to abandon her work and sell all

4,000 of her books.

shame, because she had a great mind, once writing that Aristotle would have

written more if he'd done any cooking. Couple other things. First, Latin

America led the world in transculturation, or cultural blending.

A new and distinct Latin American culture emerged, mixing one, whites from

Spain called peninsulares, two, whites born in the Americas called creoles,

Three Native Americans and four African slaves.

This blending of cultures may be most obvious when looking at Native American

and African influences on Christianity.

The Virgin of Guadalupe, for instance, was still called Tenochtitlán, the

indigenous earth goddess, by Indians, and the profusion of blood in Mexican

iconography recalls the Aztec use of blood in ritual.

But transculturation pervaded Latin American life, from food to secular

music to fashion.

Somewhat related, Latin America had a great deal of racial diversity and a

rigid social hierarchy to match.

There were four basic racial categories, white, black, mestizo, a mix of white

and American Indian, and mulatto, a mix of white and black. We try not to use

that word anymore because it's offensive, but that's the word they

used. And from the 16th century on, Latin America had a huge diversity of

mixed race people, and there were constant attempts to classify them and

divide them into castes. You can see some of these in so-called casta

paintings, which attempted to establish in a very weird and enlightenment-y way

all the possible racial combinations.

But of course, that's not how race works, as evidenced by the fact that

success successful people of lower racial castes could become legally white

by being granted gracias al sacar.

So by 1800, on the eve of Latin America's independence movements,

roughly a quarter of people were mixed race.

Alright, now let's have us some revolutions. How should we organize

this, Stan? Let's begin with Latin America's most successful country as

defined by quality of soccer team. So Brazil, he said as thousands of

Argentines booed him, is obviously different because it was ruled not by

Spain, but by Portugal.

But like a lot of revolutions in Latin America, it was fairly conservative.

The Creoles wanted to maintain their privilege while also achieving

independence from the peninsulares. And also, like a lot of Latin American

revolutions, it featured Napoleon.

Freakin' Napoleon.

You're everywhere.

He's behind me, isn't he?

So when Napoleon took over Portugal in 1807, the entire Portuguese royal family

and their royal court decamped to Brazil.

And it turned out, they loved Brazil.

King João loved Brazil so much, off-topic, but do you think that J. João

named herself after King João?

I mean...

Does she have that kind of historical sensibility?

I think she does. So King João's life in Rio was so good that even after Napoleon

was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, he just kind of stayed in Brazil.

And then by 1820, the Portuguese in Portugal were like, hey, maybe you

should come back and like, you know...

Govern us, King of Portugal.

So in 1821, he reluctantly returned to Lisbon, leaving his son, Prince Pedro,

behind. Meanwhile, Brazilian Creoles were organizing themselves around the

idea that they were culturally different from Portugal, and they eventually

formed a Brazilian party.

Stan, not that kind of party. Come on. Yes.

That kind.

A Brazilian party to lobby for independence.

Then in 1822 they convinced Prince Pedro of boring old Portugal that he should

just become King Pedro of sexy big Brazil.

So Pedro declared Brazil an independent constitutional monarchy with himself as

king. As a result, Brazil achieved independence without much bloodshed and

managed to hold on to that social hierarchy with the plantation owners on

top. And that explains why Brazil was the last New World country to abolish

slavery, not fully abandoning it until 1880. Right, so even when Napoleon

wasn't forcing Portuguese royals into an awesome exile, he was still messing with

Latin America.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

So Latin America's independence movements began not with Brazil, but in

Mexico, when Napoleon put his brother on the Spanish throne in 1808. Napoleon

wanted to institute the liberal principles of the French Revolution,

which angered the ruling elite of the peninsulares in what was then called New

Spain. They were aristocrats, and they just wanted to go back to some good old

fashioned divine right monarchy with a strong church.

So the Mexican creoles seeking to expand their own power at the expense of the

peninsular elite, saw an opportunity here. They affirmed their loyalty to the

new king, who was French, even though he was the king of Spain. I told you this

was complicated.

Then a massive peasant uprising began, led by a renegade priest, Padre Hidalgo,

and supported by the Creoles, because it was aimed at the peninsulares, even

though they weren't actually the ones who supported Spain.

This was further complicated by the fact that to the mestizo peasants led by

Hidalgo, Creoles and peninsulares looked and acted basically identical.

They were both white and imperious, so the peasants often attacked the Creoles,

who were technically on their side in trying to overthrow the ruling

peninsulares. Even though it had tens of thousands of supporters, this first

peasant uprising petered out. But a second peasant revolt, led by another

priest, Father Moreles, was much more revolutionary.

In 1813, he declared independence, and the revolt lasted until his death in

1815. But since he was a mestizo, he didn't gain much Creole support, so

revolutionary fervor in Mexico began to fade. until 1820, when Spain, which was

now under the rule of a Spanish rather than a French king, had a real liberal

revolution with a new constitution.

that limited the power of the church.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. So in the wake of Spain's liberalizing movements, the

Mexican elites who had previously supported Spain switched sides and made

common cause with the Creoles in the hopes that they could somehow hold on to

their privileges.

And pushing for independence together, things went very well. The Creole

General Iturbide and the rebel mestizo Commander Guerrero joined forces and won

independence with most of the peninsulares returning to Spain.

Iturbide, the whiter of the two generals, became king of Mexico in 1822.

Remember, this was a revolution essentially against representative

government. But that didn't work out and within a year he was overthrown by the

military and a republic was declared.

Popular sovereignty was sort of victorious, but without much benefit to

the peasants who actually made independence possible.

This alliance between conservative land-owning elites and the army,

especially in the face of calls for land reform or economic justice, would happen

over and over again in Latin America for the next century and a half. But before

we come to any conclusions, let's discuss one last revolution.

So Venezuela had a cadre of well-trained Creole revolutionaries, who by 1811 had

formed a revolutionary junta that seized power in Caracas and formed a republic.

But the interior of Venezuela was home to mixed-race cowboys called llaneros

who supported the king.

They kept the Caracas revolutionaries from extending their power inland, and

that is where Simón Bolívar, el libertador, enters the picture.

Bolívar realized that the only way to overcome the various class divisions,

like the one between the Caracas Creoles and the llaneros, was to appeal to a

common sense of South American-ness.

After all, the one thing that almost all South Americans had in common, they were

born in South America.

Not Spain.

So then, partly through shows of toughness that included, like, crossing

flooded plains and going without sleep, Bolívar convinced the Llaneros to give

up fighting for Spain and start fighting against them. He quickly captured the

viceregal capital at Bogotá, and by 1822 his forces had taken Caracas and Quito.

Hold on, hold on. Lest I be attacked by Argentines who are already upset about

what I said about their really good soccer team, I want to make one thing

clear. Argentina's General José de San Martín was also vital to the defeat of

the Spanish. He led expeditions against the the Spanish in Chile, and also a

really important one in Lima. And then in December of 1824, at the Battle of

Ayacucho, the last Spanish viceroy was finally captured and all of Latin

America was free from Spain.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

That's a chair, Stan, but it's not THE chair.

An open letter to Simón Bolívar.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, Yanero!

I wonder if his hips swivel when I wind him up.

Context is everything.

They do.

Hey there, cowboy.

Dear Simone Bolivar, first, you had fantastic mutton chops. It's as if

you're some kind of handsome Martin Van Buren.

You were a man of immense accomplishments, but those

accomplishments have been richly rewarded.

I mean, you have a country named after you. Not to mention two different

currencies. But for my purposes, the most important thing you ever did was

die. You may not know this, Simone Bolivar, but when I am not a world

history teacher sitting next to a fake fireplace, I am a novelist. And your

last words, damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth, feature

prominently in my- first novel looking for Alaska, except it turns out those

weren't your last words!

Your last words were probably, Jose, bring the luggage.

But I decided to use your fancy, romantic, inaccurate last words. It's

called artistic license.

Put that in your luggage.

Anyway, Fantastic Life, I just wish you'd nailed it a little bit better with

your last words.

Best wishes.

John Green. So by 1825, almost the entire Western Hemisphere, with a few

exceptions in the Caribbean, was free from European rule.

Oh, right, and Canada.

I'm just kidding, Canadians. It's so easy to make fun of you because you're

so nice, and so I tease you, and then you're like, oh, thanks for noticing

that we exist!

My pleasure! Anyway, this is pretty remarkable, especially when you consider

that most of this territory had been under Spanish or Portuguese control for

almost 300 years.

The most revolutionary thing about these independence movements were that they

enshrined the idea of so-called popular sovereignty in the New World. Never

again would Latin America be under the permanent control of a European power,

and the relatively quick division of Latin America into individual states,

despite Bolivar's pan-South American dream, showed how quickly the people in

these regions developed a sense of themselves. as nations distinct from

Europe? and from each other. This division into nation states prefigures

what would happen to Europe in the mid-19th century, and in that sense,

Latin America is the leader of 19th century world history. And Latin

American history presages another key theme in modern life, multiculturalism.

And all of that makes Latin America sound very modern, but in a number of

ways, Latin American independence wasn't terribly revolutionary.

First, while the peninsulares were gone, the rigid social hierarchy with the

wealthy creoles at the top remained.

Second, whereas revolutions in both France and America weakened the power of

the established church, in Latin America, the Catholic Church remained

very powerful in people's everyday lives.

And then there is the patriarchy. Although there were many women who took

up arms in the struggle for independence, including Juana Azurduy,

who led a cavalry charge against Spanish forces in Bolivia, patriarchy remained

strong in Latin America.

Feminist ideas like those of Barry Wollstonecraft would have to wait. Women

weren't allowed to vote in national elections in Mexico until 1953, and Peru

didn't extend voting rights to women until 1955.

Also, Latin America revolutionary wars were long and bloody.

425,000 people died in Mexico's War for Independence.

And they didn't always lead to stability.

Venezuela, for instance, experienced war for much of the 19th century, leading to

as many as a million deaths.

And it's important to note that fighting for freedom doesn't always lead to

freedom. The past two centuries in Latin America have seen many military

dictatorships that protect private property at the expense of egalitarian

governance. Freedom, independence, and autonomy are complicated terms that mean

different things to different people at different times.

So too with the word revolutionary.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

discuss the series of events that made it possible for you to watch Crash

Course. And also made this studio possible.

And made the warehouse containing the studio possible.

A warehouse, by the way, that houses stuff for warehouses.

That's right, it's time to talk about the Industrial Revolution.

Although it occurred around the same time as the French, American, Latin

American, and Haitian revolutions between, say, 1750 and 1850, the

Industrial Revolution was really the most revolutionary of the bunch. No way,

dude, all those other revolutions... resulted in like new borders and flags

and stuff.

We've studied 15,000 years of history here at Crash Course Me from the past

and borders and flags have changed plenty and they're gonna keep changing.

But in all that time, nothing much changed about the way we disposed of

waste or located drinking water or acquired clothing.

Most people lived on or very close to the land that provided their food,

except for a few exceptions. Life expectancy never rose above 35 or below

25. Education was a privilege, not a right. In all those millennia, we never

developed a weapon that could kill more than a couple dozen people at once or a

way to travel. faster than horseback?

For 15,000 years, most humans never owned or used a single item made outside

of their communities.

Simone Bolivar didn't change that, and neither did the American Declaration of

Independence. You have electricity?

Industrial Revolution.

Blueberries in February?

Industrial Revolution.

You live somewhere other than a farm?

Industrial Revolution.

You drive a car?

Industrial Revolution.

You get 12 years of free formal education?

Industrial Revolution.

Your bed, your antibiotics, your toilet, your contraception, your tap water, your

every waking and sleeping second.

Industrial Revolution.

Here's one simple statistic that sums it up. Before the Industrial Revolution,

about 80% of the world's population was engaged in farming to keep itself and

the other 20% of people from starving. Today, in the United States, less than 1

% of people list their occupation as farming. I mean, we've come so far that

we don't even have to farm flowers anymore. Stan, are these real, by the

way? Can't tell if they're made out of foam or digital.

So what happened?

Technology. Here's my definition.

The Industrial Revolution was an increase in production brought about by

the use of machines and characterized by the use of new energy sources.

Although this will soon get more complicated, for our purposes today,

industrialization is not capitalism.

Although, as we will see next week, it is connected to modern capitalism.

And the Industrial Revolution began around 1750 and it occurred across most

of the Earth, but it started in Europe, especially Britain. What happened? Well,

let's go to the Thought Bubble. The innovations of the Industrial Revolution

were intimately interconnected.

Like, look for instance at the British textile industry.

The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1733 dramatically increased

the speed of weaving, which in turn created demand for yarn, which led to

inventions like the spinning jenny and the water frame.

Soon these processes were mechanized using water power until the steam engine

came along to make flying shuttles really fly in these huge cotton mills.

The most successful steam engine was built by Thomas, they didn't name

anything after me, Newcomen, to clear water out of mines, and because water

was cleared out of those mines, there was more coal to power more steam

engines, which eventually led to the fancying up of the Newcomen steam engine

by James, I got a unit of power and a university named after me, Watt, whose

engine made possible not only railroads and steamboats, but also ever more

efficient cotton mills. And for the first time, chemicals other than stale

urine, I wish I was kidding, were being used to bleach the cloth that people

wore. The first of which was sulfuric acid, which was created in large

quantities only thanks to lead-lined chains. chambers, which would have been

impossible without lead production rising dramatically right around 1750 in

Britain, thanks to lead foundries powered by coal.

And all these factors came together to make more yarn that could be spun and

bleached faster and cheaper than ever before, a process that would eventually

culminate in $18 Crash Course Mongol shirts, available now at DFTBA.com.

Thanks Thought Bubble for that shameless promotion of our beautiful, high-quality

t-shirts, available now at DFTBA.com.

So the problem here is that with industrialization being so deeply

interconnected, it's really difficult to figure out why it happened in Europe,

especially Britain. And that question of why turns out to be one of the most

contentious discussions in world history today. For instance, here are some

Eurocentric reasons why industrialization might have happened

first in Europe. There's the cultural superiority argument that basically

holds that Europeans are just better and smarter than other people. Sometimes

this is formulated as European possessing superior rationality. By the

way, you'll never guess where the people who make this argument tend to come

from, unless you guess that they come from Europe. And then others argue that

only Europe had the culture of science and invention that made the creation of

these revolutionary technologies possible.

Another argument is that freer political institutions encouraged innovation, and

strong property rights created incentives for inventors. And finally,

people often cite Europe's small population, because small populations

require labor-saving inventions.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to the steam engine.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh! It's a TARDIS! Truly the apex of British industrialization.

Dear steam engine, you know what's crazy?

You've never really been improved upon.

Like this thing, which facilitates time travel, probably runs on a steam engine.

Almost all electricity around the world, whether it's from coal or nuclear power,

is just a steam engine. It's all still just water and heat, and it speaks to

how truly revolutionary the Industrial Revolution was, that since then...

It's really just been evolution.

Best wishes, John Green. So you may have heard any of those rationales for

European industrialization, or you may have heard others. The problem with all

of them is that each time you think you're at the root cause, it turns out

there's a cause of the root cause.

To quote Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron, and coal mine operators, we

have to go deeper.

But anyway, the problem with these Eurocentric why answers is that they all

apply to either China or India or both. And it's really important to note that

in 1800 it was not clear that Europe was going to become the world's dominant

manufacturing power in the next hundred years.

At the time, China, India, and Europe were all roughly at the same place in

terms of industrial production.

First, let's look at China. It's hard to make the European cultural superiority

argument because China had been recording its history since before

Confucius and plus there was all that bronze and painting and poetry.

It's also kind of difficult to make a blanket statement that China was

economically inferior to Europe since they invented paper money and led the

world in exports of everything from silk to China. I mean, pre-industrial

revolution, population growth was the surest sign of economic success, and

China had the biggest population in the world. I guess that answers the question

of whether they're digital.

It's also difficult to say that China lacked a culture of invention when they

invented gunpowder and printing and paper and arguably compasses. And China

had more free enterprise during the Song Dynasty than anywhere in the world. Some

argue that China couldn't have free enterprise because they had a long

history of trying to impose monopolies on items like salt and iron. And that's

true, but when it comes to enforcing those monopolies, they also had a a long

history of failure.

So really, in a lot of ways, China was at least as prime for an industrial

revolution as Britain was.

So why didn't it happen? Well, Europeans, specifically the British, had

two huge advantages.

Coal. When you trace the story of improved transportation, or

communication, or industrial efficiency, or better chemical manufacturing, it

always comes back to coal.

Because the Industrial Revolution was all about using different forms of

energy to automate production.

And England had large supplies of coal that were near the surface, which meant

that it was cheap to mine, so it quickly replaced wood for heating and cooking

and stuff. So that encouraged the British to look for more coal. The only

problem with coal mining, aside from it being, you know, like, deadly and

everything, is that the coal mines flooded all the time. I guess coal Coal

mining is also a little problematic for the health of the planet.

But because there was all this incentive to get more coal out of the ground,

steam engines were invented to pump water out of the mines.

And because those early steam engines were super inefficient, they needed a

cheap and abundant source of fuel in order to work, namely coal, which meant

they were much more useful to the British than anyone else.

So steam engines used cheap British coal to keep British coal cheap, and cheap

British coal created the opportunity for everything from railroads to steel,

which like so much else in the Industrial Revolution created a positive

feedback loop.

Because they run on rails, railroads need steel, and because it is rather

heavy, Steel needs railroads.

Secondly, there were wages.

Britain, and to a lesser extent the Low Countries, had the highest wages in the

world at the beginning of the 18th century.

In 1725, wages in London were the equivalent of 11 grams of silver per

day. In Amsterdam, they were 9 grams.

In Beijing, Venice, and Florence, they were under 4. And in Delhi, they were

under 2.

It's not totally clear why wages were so high in Britain. Like, one argument is

that the Black Death lowered population so much that it tightened labor markets,

but that doesn't explain why wages remained low in, like, plague-ravaged

Italy. Mainly, high wages combined- with cheap fuel costs meant that it was

economically efficient for manufacturers to look to machines as a way of lowering

their production costs.

To quote the historian Robert Allen, wages were high and energy was cheap.

These prices led directly to the Industrial Revolution by giving firms

strong incentives to invent technologies that substituted capital and coal.

Ah, Stan, I'm a little worried that people are still going to accuse me of

Eurocentrism. Of course other people will accuse me of an anti-European bias.

I don't have a bias against Europe. I love Europe. Europe gave me many of my

favorite cheeses and cross-country skiing and Charlie Chaplin who inspired

today's Danica drawing.

Like the fact of coal being near the surface in Britain can't be chalked up

to British cultural superiority.

But the wages question is a little different because it makes it sound like

only Europeans were smart enough to pay high wages.

But here's one last thing to consider.

India was the world's largest producer of cotton textiles, despite paying

basically the lowest wages in the world. Indian agriculture was so productive

that laborers could be supported at a very low cost.

And that, coupled with the large population, meant that Indian textile

manufacturing could be very productive without using machines, so they didn't

need to industrialize. But more importantly from our perspective,

there's a strong argument to be made that Indian cotton production helped

spur British industrialization.

It was cotton textiles that drove the early Industrial Revolution, and the

main reason that Britain was so eager to produce cottons was that demand was

incredible. incredibly high.

They were more comfortable than woolens, but they were also cheaper because

cottons could be imported from India at such a low cost.

So Indian cottons created the market, and then British manufacturers invested

in machines and imported Indian know-how to increase production so that they

could compete with India. And that's at least one way in which European

industrialization was truly a world phenomenon.

For those of you who enjoy such highly contentious and thorny cultural

-historical debates, good news!

Next week we'll be talking about capitalism.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you then.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

talk about capitalism.

Yeah, Mr. Green.

Capitalism just turns men into wolves. Your purportedly free markets only make

slaves of us all.

Oh God, Stan, it's me from college. Me from the past has become me from

college. This is a disaster.

The reason he's so unbearable, Stan, is that he refuses to recognize the

legitimacy of other people's narratives, and that means that he will never, ever

be able to have a productive conversation with another human in his

entire life. So listen, me from the past, I'm gonna disappoint you by being

too capitalist, and I'm gonna disappoint a lot of other people by not being

capitalist enough, and I'm gonna disappoint the historians by not using

enough jar- But what can I do? We only have 12 minutes.

Fortunately, capitalism is all about efficiency.

So let's do this, me from college.

Randy Riggs becomes a best-selling author. Josh Radnor stars in a great

sitcom. It is not going to work out with Emily. And do not go to Alaska with a

girl you've known for 10 days. Okay, let's talk capitalism.

So capitalism is an economic system, but it's also a cultural system. It's

characterized by innovation and investment to increase wealth, but today

we're going to focus on production and how industrial capitalism changed it.

Stan, I can't wear these emblems of the bourgeoisie while Karl Marx himself is

looking at me. It's ridiculous.

I'm changing.

Very hard to take off a shirt dramatically.

So let's say it's 1200 CE, and you're a rug merchant.

Just like merchants today, you sometimes need to borrow money in order to buy the

rugs you want to resell at a profit, and then you pay that money back, often with

interest, once you've resold the rugs.

This is called mercantile capitalism, and it was a global phenomenon, from the

Chinese to the Indian Ocean Trade Network to Muslim merchants who would

sponsor trade caravans across the Sahara. But by the 17th century,

merchants in the Netherlands and in Britain had expanded upon this idea to

create joint stock companies.

Those companies could finance bigger trade missions and also spread the risk

of international trade.

But the thing about international trade is sometimes boats sink, or they get

taken by pirates, and while that's bad if you're a sailor because, you know,

you lose your life, it's really bad if you're a mercantile capitalist because

you lost all your money. But if you own one tenth of ten boats, your risk is

much better managed. That kind of investment definitely increased wealth,

but it only affected a sliver of the population, and it didn't create a

culture of capitalism.

Industrial capitalism was something altogether different, both in scale and

in practice. Let's use Joyce Appleby's definition of industrial capitalism.

An economic system that relies on investment of capital in machines and

technology that are used to increase production of marketable goods.

So imagine that someone made a stand machine. By the way, Stan, this is a

remarkable likeness. And that stand machine could produce and direct ten

times more episodes of Crash Course than a human stand.

Well, of course, even if there are significant upfront costs, I'm going to

invest in a stand machine so I can start cranking out ten times the knowledge.

Stan, are you focusing on the robot instead of me?

I am the star of the show!

Stan Butt, you're going behind the globe. So when most of us think about

capitalism, especially when we think about its downsides, long hours, low

wages, miserable working conditions, child labor, unemployed stans, that's

what we're thinking about. Now, admittedly, this is just one definition

of industrial capitalism among many, but it's the definition we're going with.

Alright, let's go to the Thought Bubble. Industrial capitalism developed first in

Britain in the 19th century.

Britain had a bunch of advantages.

It was the dominant power on the seas, and it was making good money off of

trade with its colonies, including the slave trade. Also, the growth of

capitalism was helped by the half century of civil unrest that resulted

from the 17th century English Civil War.

I'm not advocating for civil wars or anything, but in this particular case,

it was useful, because before the war, the British crown had put a lot of

regulations on the economy.

Complicated licenses, royal monopolies, etc.

But during the turmoil, it couldn't enforce them, which made for freer

markets. Another factor was a remarkable increase in agricultural productivity in

the 16th century.

As food prices started to rise, it became profitable for farmers, both

large and small, to invest in agricultural technologies that would

improve crop yields. yields.

Those higher prices for grain probably resulted from population growth, which

in turn was encouraged by increased production of food crops.

A number of these agricultural improvements came from the Dutch, who

had chronic problems feeding themselves and discovered that planting different

kinds of crops, like clover that added nitrogen to the soil and could be used

to feed livestock at the same time, meant that more fields could be used at

once. This increased productivity eventually brought down prices, and this

encouraged further innovation in order to increase yield to make up for the

drop in prices. Lower food prices had an added benefit since food cost less and

wages in England remained high, workers would have more disposable income, which

meant that if there were consumer goods available, they would be consumed, which

incentivized people to make consumer goods more efficiently and therefore

more cheaply. You can see how this positive feedback loop leads to more

food and more stuff.

culminating in a world where people have so much stuff that we must rent space to

store it, and so much food that obesity has become a bigger killer than

starvation. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So this increased productivity also meant

that fewer people needed to work in agriculture in order to feed the

population. To put this in perspective, in 1520, 80% of the English population

worked the land. By 1800, only 36% of adult male laborers were working in

agriculture. And by 1850, that percentage had dropped to 25.

This meant that when the factories started humming, there were plenty of

workers to hum along with them. Especially child laborers.

So far all this sounds pretty good, right? I mean, except for the child

labor. Who wouldn't want more cheaper food?

Yeah, well, not so fast.

One of the ways the British achieved all this agricultural productivity was

through the process of enclosure, whereby landlords would reclaim and

privatize fields that for centuries had been held in common by multiple tenants.

This increased agricultural productivity, but it also impoverished

many tenant farmers, many of whom lost their livelihoods. Okay, for our

purposes, capitalism is also a cultural system rooted in the need of private

investors to turn a profit.

So the real change needed here was a change of mind.

People had to develop the capitalist values of taking risks and appreciating

innovation. And they had to come to believe that making an upfront

investment in something like a stand machine could pay for itself and then

some. One of the reasons that these values developed in Britain was that the

people who initially held them were really good at publicizing them. Writers

like Thomas Munn, who worked for the English East India Company, exposed

people to the idea that the economy was controlled by markets. And other writers

popularized the idea that it was human nature for individuals to participate in

markets as rational actors.

Even our language changed.

The word individuals did not apply to persons until the 17th century.

And in the 18th century, a career still referred only to horses racing lives.

Perhaps the most important idea that was popularized in England was that men and

women were consumers as well as producers, and that this was actually a

good thing because the desire to consume manufactured goods could spur economic

growth. The main spur to trade, or rather to industry and ingenuity is the

exorbitant appetite of men, which they will take pain to gratify." So wrote

John Kerry, one of capitalism's cheerleaders in 1695.

And in talking about our appetites, he wasn't just talking about food.

That doesn't seem radical now, but it sure did back then. So here in the 21st

century, it's clear that industrial capitalism, at least for now, has won.

Sorry buddy, but you know.

You gave it a good run. You didn't know about Stalin.

But capitalism isn't without its problems or its critics, and there were

certainly lots of shortcomings to industrial capitalism in the 19th

century. Working conditions were awful. Days were long, arduous, and monotonous.

Workers lived in conditions that people living in the developed world today

would associate with abject poverty.

One way that workers responded to these conditions was by organizing into labor

unions. Another response was in many cases purely theoretical.

Socialism. Most famously Marxian socialism.

I should probably point out here that socialism is is an imperfect opposite to

capitalism, even though the two are often juxtaposed. Capitalism's defenders

like to point out that it's natural, meaning that if left to our own devices,

humans would construct economic relationships that resemble capitalism.

Socialism, at least in its modern incarnations, makes fewer pretenses

toward being an expression of human nature. It's the result of human choice

and human planning. So socialism as an intellectual construct began in France.

How'd I do, Stan?

the border between Egypt and Libya.

There were two branches of socialism in France, utopian and revolutionary.

Utopian socialism is often associated with Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles

Fourier, both of whom rejected revolutionary action after having seen

the disaster of the French Revolution.

Both were critical of capitalism, and while Fourier is usually a punchline in

history classes because he believed that in his ideal socialist world the seas

would turn to lemonade, he was right that human beings have desires that go

beyond basic self-interest and that we aren't always economically rational

actors.

were the revolutionaries, and they saw the French Revolution, even its

violence, in a much more positive light. The most important of these

revolutionaries was Auguste Blanqui, and we associate a lot of his ideas with

communism, which is a term that he used.

Like the Utopians, he criticized capitalism, but he believed that it

could only be overthrown through violent revolution by the working classes.

However, while Blanqui thought that the workers would come to dominate a

communist world, he was an elitist. And he believed that workers could never on

their own overcome their superstitions and their prejudices in order to throw

off bourgeois oppression.

And that brings us to Karl Marx, whose ideas and beard cast a shadow over most

of the 20th century. Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to Karl Marx's beard.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, robots?

Stanbots? Two Stanbots, one of them female. Now I own all the means of

production. You're officially useless to me, Stan. Now turn the camera off.

Turn the ca- I'm gonna have to get up and turn the camera off?

Stanbot, go turn the camera off!

Hey there, Karl Marx's beard. Wow!

You are in- Karl Marx, these days there are a lot of young men who think beards

are cool. Beard lovers, if you will. Those aren't beards, they're glorified

milk mustaches. I mean, I haven't shaved for a couple weeks, Karl Marx, but I'm

not claiming a beard.

You don't get a beard by being lazy, you get a beard by being a committed

revolutionary. That's why hardcore Marxists are literally known as bearded

Marxists. These days that's an insult, but you know what, Karl Marx, when I

look back at history, I prefer the bearded communists.

Let's talk about some communists who didn't have beards. Mao Zedong, Pol Pot.

Kim Jong Il, Joseph freakin' Stalin with his face caterpillar. So yeah, Karl

Marx's beard, it's my great regret to inform you that there are some paltry

beards trying to take up the class struggle these days.

Best wishes.

John Green. Although he's often considered the father of communism

because he co-wrote the Communist Manifesto, Marx was above all a

philosopher and a historian.

It's just that unlike most philosophers and historians, he advocated for

revolution. His greatest work, Das Kapital, sets out to explain the world

of the 19th century in historical and philosophical terms.

Marx's thinking is deep and dense and we're low on time, but I want to

introduce one of his ideas, that of class struggle.

So for Marx, the focus isn't on the class, it's on the struggle.

Basically, Marx believed that classes don't only struggle to make history, but

that the struggle is what makes classes into themselves.

The idea is that through conflict classes develop a sense of themselves,

and without conflict there is no such thing as class consciousness.

So Marx was writing in 19th century England, and there were two classes that

mattered, the workers and the capitalists. The capitalists owned most

of the factors of production, in this case land and the capital to invest in

factories. The workers Just had their labor. So the class struggle here is

between capitalists who want labor at the lowest possible price and the

workers who want to be paid as much as possible for their work.

There are two key ideas that underlie this theory of class struggle. First,

Marx believed that production, or work, was the thing that gave life material

meaning. Second is that we are by nature social animals.

We work together, we collaborate, we are more efficient when we share resources.

Marx's criticism of capitalism is that capitalism replaces this egalitarian

collaboration with conflict, and that means that it isn't a natural system

after all. And by arguing that capitalism actually isn't consistent

with human nature, Marx sought to empower the workers.

That's a lot more attractive than Blanqui's elitist socialism, and while

purportedly Marxist states like the USSR usually abandon worker empowerment

pretty quickly, the idea of protecting our collective interest remains

powerful. That's where we'll leave it for now, lest I start reading from the

Communist Manifesto. But ultimately, socialism has not succeeded in

supplanting capitalism, as its proponents had hoped. In the United

States, at least, socialism has become something of a dirty word.

So industrial capitalism certainly seems to have won out. And in terms of

material well-being and access to goods and services for people around the

world, that's probably a good thing.

Ugh, you keep falling over! You're a great bit, but a very flimsy one.

Actually, come to think of it, you're more of an 8-bit. But how and to what

extent we use socialist prin— principles to regulate free markets remains an open

question, and one that is answered very differently in, say, Sweden than in the

United States.

And this, I would argue, is where Marx still matters.

Is capitalist competition natural and good, or should there be systems in

place to check it for the sake of our collective well-being? Should we band

together to provide healthcare for the sick or pensions for the old? Should

governments run businesses?

And if so, which ones? The mail delivery business?

The airport security business?

The education business?

Those are the places where industrial capitalism and socialism are still

competing. And in that sense, at least, the struggle continues.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

talk about nationalism, the most important global phenomenon of the 19th

century, and also the phenomenon responsible for one of the most

commented upon aspects of Crash Course, my globes being out of date. U.S.S. are

not a country.

Rhodesia? South Vietnam?

Sudan with no South Sudan?

Yugoslavia?

Okay, no more inaccuracies with the globes.

Ah, the little globes! This one doesn't know about Slovakia. This one has East

Frack in Pakistan.

And this one identifies Lithuania as part of Asia. Okay, no more globe

inaccuracies. Actually, bring back my globes. I feel naked without them.

So if you're into European history, you're probably somewhat familiar with

nationalism and the names and countries associated with it. Bismarck in Germany,

Mazzini and Garibaldi in Italy, and Mustafa Kemal, aka Ataturk, in Turkey.

But nationalism was a global phenomenon, and it included a lot of people you may

not associate with it, like Muhammad Ali in Egypt, and also this guy.

Nationalism was seen in the British dominions as Canada, Australia, and New

Zealand became federated states between 1860 and 1901.

I would say independent states instead of federated states, but you guys still

have a queen- It was also seen in the Balkans, where Greece gained its

independence in 1832, and Christian principalities fought a war against the

Ottomans in 1878.

In India, where a political party, the Indian National Congress, was founded in

1885. And even in China, where nationalism ran up against a dynastic

system that had lasted more than 2,000 years.

And then of course there are these guys, who in many ways represent the worst of

nationalism. The nationalism that tries to deny or eliminate difference in the

efforts to create a homogenous, mythologized, unitary polity.

to them later, but it's helpful to bring them up now just so we don't get too

excited about nationalism.

Okay, so before we launch into the history, let's define the modern nation

-state. Definitions are slippery, but for our purposes, a nation-state

involves a centralized government that can claim and exercise authority over a

distinctive territory.

That's the state part.

It also involves a certain degree of linguistic and cultural homogeneity.

That's the nation part.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, by that definition, China was a nation-state by,

like, probably the Han Dynasty.

Dude, me from the past, you're getting smart.

Yeah, it could be, and some historians argue that it was.

Nationhood is really hard to define.

Like in James Joyce's Ulysses, the character Bloom famously says that a

nation is the same people living in the same place, but then he remembers the

Irish and Jewish diasporas and adds, or also living in different places.

But let's ignore diasporas for the moment and focus on territorially

bounded groups with a common heritage.

Same people, same place.

So how do you become a nation? Well, some argue it's an organic process

involving culturally similar people wanting to formalize their connection.

Others argue that nationalism is constructed by governments building a

sense of patriotism through compulsory military service and statues of national

heroes. Public education is often seen as part of this nationalizing project.

Schools and textbooks allow countries to share their nationalizing narratives.

Which is why the once and possibly future independent nation of Texas

issues textbooks literally whitewashing early American history.

Still other historians argue that nationalism was an outgrowth of

urbanization and industrialization since new urbanites were the most likely

people to want to see themselves as part of a nation.

For instance, Prague's population rose from 157,000 to 514,000 between 1850 and

1900, at the same time that the Czechs were beginning to see themselves as

separate from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Which is a cool idea, but it doesn't explain why other, less industrialized

places like India also saw a lot of nationalism.

The actual business of nationalization involves creating bureaucracies, new

systems of education, building a large military, and often using that military

to fight other nation states, since nations often construct themselves in

opposition to an idea of otherness.

A big part of being Irish, for instance, is not being English.

So emerging nations had a lot of conflicts, including the Napoleonic

Wars, which helped the French become the French, the Indian Rebellion of 1857,

which helped Indians to identify themselves as a homogenous people, the

American Civil War. I mean, before the Civil War, many Americans thought of

themselves not as Americans, but as Virginians or New Yorkers or

Pennsylvanians. I mean, our antebellum nation was usually called these United

States. after it became the United States.

So in the US, nationalism pulled a nation together, but often nationalism

was a destabilizing force for multi-ethnic, land-based empires. This

was especially the case in the Ottoman Empire, which started falling apart in

the 19th century as first the Greeks, then the Serbs, Romanians, and

Bulgarians, all predominantly Christian people, began clamoring for, and in some

cases winning, independence.

Egypt is another good example of nationalism serving both to create a new

state and to weaken an empire.

Muhammad Ali, who was actually Albanian and spoke Turkish, not Egyptian Arabic,

and his ruling family encouraged the Egyptian people to imagine themselves as

a separate nationality. But okay, so nationalism was a global phenomenon in

the 19th century, and we can't talk about it everywhere, so instead we're

going to focus on one case study. Japan. You thought I was going to say Germany,

didn't you? Nope. You can bite me, Bismarck. Japan had been fragmented and

feudal until the late 16th century, when a series of warrior landowners managed

to consolidate power.

Eventually power came to the Tokugawa family, who created a military

government, or bakufu.

The first Tokugawa to take power was Ieyasu, who took over after the death of

one of the main unifiers of Japan, Tiatomi Hideyoshi, sometimes known as

the Monkey, although his wife called him, and this is true, the Bald Rat.

In 1603, Ieyasu convinced the Emperor, who was something of a figurehead, to

grant him the title of Shogun. And for the next 260 years or so, the Tokugawa

Bakufu was the main government of Japan.

The primary virtue of this government was not necessarily its efficiency or

its forward-thinking policies, but its stability.

Stability, the most underrated of governmental virtues.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. The Tokugawa bukufu wasn't much for

centralization, as power was mainly in the hands of local lords called daimyo.

One odd feature of the Tokugawa era was the presence of a class of warriors who

by the 19th century had become mostly bureaucrats. You may have heard of them,

the samurai.

One of the things that made this hereditary class so interesting was that

each samurai was entitled to an annual salary from the daimyo called a stipend.

This privilege basically paid them off and assured that they didn't become

restless warriors plaguing the countryside, that is, bandits.

We tend to think of samurai as noble and honorable, but urban samurai, according

to Andrew Gordon's book A Modern History of Japan, were a rough-and-tumble lot.

Samurai gang wars, a West Side story, and the shadows of Edo Castle were

frequent in the early 1600s. And you still say that history books are boring.

As with kings and lesser nobles anywhere, the central bakufu had trouble

controlling the more powerful daimyo, who were able to build up their own

strength because of their control over local resources.

This poor control also made it really difficult to collect taxes, so the

Tokugawa were already a bit on the ropes when two foreign events rocked Japan.

First was China's humiliating defeat in the Opium Wars, after which Western

nations forced China to give Europeans special trade privileges.

It was a wake-up call to see the dominant power in the region so humbled.

But even worse for the Tokugawa was the arrival of Matthew Perry.

No, Thought Bubble, Matthew Perry.

Yes, that one.

The Tokugawa are somewhat famous for their not-so-friendly policy toward

foreigners, especially Western Christian ones for whom the penalty for stepping

foot on Japanese soil was death.

The Tokugawa saw Christianity in much the same way that the Romans had, as an

unsettling threat to stability.

And in the case of Matthew Perry, they had reason to be worried. Thanks,

Thought Bubble. So the American naval commodore arrived in Japan in 1853 with

a flotilla of ships and a determination to open Japan's markets.

Just the threat of American steam-powered warships was enough to

convince the bakufu to sign some humiliating trade treaties that weren't

unlike the ones that China had signed after losing the opium wars.

And this only further motivated the daimyo and the samurai, who were ready

to give the tokugawa the boot, within a few years, they would.

So what does this have to do with nationalism?

Well, plenty. First off, even though the Americans and the Japanese didn't go to

war, yet, the perceived threat provided an impetus for Japan to start thinking

about itself differently.

It also resulted in the Japanese being convinced that if they wanted to

maintain their independence, they would have to reconstitute their country as a

modern nation-state.

This looks a lot like what was happening in Egypt, or even in Germany, with

external pressures leading to calls for greater national consolidation.

So the Tokugawa didn't give up without a fight, but the civil war between the

stronger Daimyo and the Bokufu eventually led to the end of the

shogunate. And in 1868, the rebels got the new newly enthroned Emperor Meiji to

abolish the bukufu and proclaim a restoration of the imperial throne.

Now the emperor didn't have much real power, but he became a symbolic figure,

a representative of a mythical past around whom modernizers could build a

sense of national pride.

And in place of bukufu, Japan created one of the most modern nation-states in

the world.

After some trial and error, the Meiji leaders created a European-style cabinet

system of government with a prime minister, and in 1889 promulgated a

constitution that even contained a deliberative assembly, the Diet,

although the cabinet ministers weren't responsible to it. Samurai were

incorporated into this system as bureaucrats, and their stipends were

gradually taken away, and soon the Japanese government developed into,

like, something of a meritocracy.

Japan also created a new conscript army. Beginning in 1873, all Japanese men were

required to spend three years in the military.

The program was initially very unpopular. There were more than a dozen

riots in 1873 and 1874 in which crowds attacked military registration centers.

But eventually, serving in the army created a patriotic spirit and a loyalty

to the Japanese emperor.

leaders also instituted compulsory education in 1872, requiring both boys

and girls to attend four years of elementary school.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to public education.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's a graduation hat.

Thanks, Meredith the intern, for letting me borrow your graduation hat.

Dear public education, when you were introduced in Japan, you were very

unpopular because you were funded by a new property tax.

In fact, you were so unpopular that at least 2,000 schools were destroyed by

rioters, primarily through arson. Stan, it doesn't look good when you bring it

in close like that. I look like a 90-year-old swimmer. And even though

public education has proved extremely successful, lots of people still

complain about having to pay taxes for it. So let me explain something.

Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or for the benefit

of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order. We have

discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population.

You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from

public education.

Every second of every day of your life you benefit from public education.

So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools even though I don't

personally have a kid in school.

It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.

Best wishes.

John Green. In Japan, nationalism meant modernization, largely inspired by and

in competition with the West.

So the Meiji government established a functioning tax system, they built

public infrastructure like harbors and telegraph lines, invested heavily in

railroads, and created a uniform national currency.

But the dark side of nationalism began to appear early on. In 1869, the Meiji

rulers expanded Japan's borders to include the island of Hokkaido. And in

1879, they acquired Okinawa after forcing its king to abdicate.

In 1874, Japan even invaded Taiwan. on with an eye toward colonizing it,

although they weren't successful.

And in these early actions we already see that nationalism has a habit of

thriving on conflict.

And often the project of creating a nation-state goes hand in hand with

preventing others from doing the same.

This failure to imagine the other complexly isn't new, but it's about to

get a lot more problematic, as we'll see next week when we discuss European

imperialism. Thanks for watching.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

discuss 19th century imperialism. So the 19th century certainly didn't invent the

empire, but it did take it to new heights.

By which we mean lows.

Or possibly heights. I don't know, I can't decide. Roll the intro while I

think about it.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm still undecided. Let's begin with China.

When last we checked in, China was a thriving manufacturing power about to be

overtaken by Europe, but still heavily involved in world trade, especially as

an importer of silver from the Spanish Empire.

Europeans had to use silver because they didn't really produce anything else the

Chinese wanted, and that state of affairs continued through the 18th

century. For example, in 1793, the McCartney Mission tried to get better

trade conditions with China and was a total failure.

Here's the Qianlong Emperor's well-known response to the British.

barbarian merchants have carried on their trade with our celestial empire at

Canton. Such has been the procedure for many years, although our celestial

empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within

its own borders." But then Europeans, especially the British, found something

that the Chinese would buy.

Opium. By the 1830s, British free trade policy unleashed a flood of opium in

China, which threatened China's favorable balance of trade. It also

created a lot of drug addicts. And then in 1839, the Chinese responded to what

they saw as these unfair trade practices with A stern letter that they never

actually sent. Commissioner Lin Jie-shu drafted a response that contained a

memorable threat to cut off trade in rhubarb silk and tea, all valuable

products of ours without which foreigners could not live.

But even if the British had received this terrifying threat to their precious

rhubarb supply, they probably wouldn't have responded because selling drugs is

super lucrative.

So the Chinese made like tea partiers, confiscating a bunch of British opium

and chucking it into the sea.

And then the British responded to this by demanding compensation and access to

Chinese territory where they could carry out their trade.

And then the Chinese were like, man, that seems a little bit harsh.

Whereupon the British sent in gunships, opening trade with Canton by force.

Chinese General Yi Qing made a counterattack in 1842 that included a

detailed plan to catapult flaming monkeys onto British ships. Stan, is

that true? Alright, apparently the plans actually involved strapping fireworks to

monkeys' backs and were never carried out, but still.

Slightly off topic, obviously I don't want anyone to light monkeys on fire.

I'm just saying that flaming monkeys lend themselves to a lot of great band

names, like the Sizzling Simeons, Burning Bonobos, Immolated Marmoset.

Stan, sometimes I feel like I should give up teaching world history and just

become a band name generator.

That's my real gift.

Anyway, due to lack of monkey fireworks, the Chinese counterattacks were

unsuccessful, and they eventually signed the Treaty of Nanjing, which stated that

Britain got Hong Kong and five other treaty ports as well as the equivalent

of two billion dollars in cash.

Also, the Chinese basically gave up all sovereignty to European spheres of

influence, wherein Europeans were subject to their laws, not Chinese laws.

In exchange for all of this, China got a hot slice of nothing.

You might think the result of this war would be a shift in the balance of trade

in Britain's favor, but that wasn't immediately the case.

In fact, the British were importing so much tea from China that the trade

deficit actually rose more than $30 billion.

But eventually, after another war and one of the most destructive civil

rebellions in Chinese and possibly world history, the Taiping Rebellion, the

situation was reversed and Europeans, especially the British, became the

dominant economic power in China. Okay, so when we think about 19th century

imperialism, we usually think about the way that Europe turned Africa from this

into this, the so-called scramble for Africa.

Speaking of scrambles and the European colonization of Africa, you know what

they say, sometimes to make an omelet you gotta break a few eggs. And then

sometimes you break a lot of eggs and you don't get an omelet. Europeans had

been involved in Africa since the 16th century when the Portuguese used their

cannons to take control of cities on coast to set up their trading post

empire. But in the second half of the 19th century, Europe suddenly and

spectacularly succeeded at colonizing basically all of Africa.

Why? Well, the biggest reason that Europeans were able to extend their

grasp over so much of the world was the same reason they wanted to do so in the

first place.

Industrialization. Nationalism played its part, of course. European states saw

it as a real bonus to be able to say that they had colonies, so much so that

a children's rhyme in an ABC for baby patriots went, C is for colonies,

rightly we boast, that of all the great countries, Great Britain.

has the most.

But it was mostly, not to get all Marxist on you or anything, about

controlling the means of production.

Europeans wanted colonies to secure sources of raw materials, especially

cotton, copper, iron, and rubber, that were used to fuel their growing

industrial economies. And in addition to providing the motive for imperialism,

European industrialization also provided the means.

Europeans didn't fail to take over territory in Africa until the late 19th

century because they didn't want to. They failed because they couldn't.

This was mostly due to disease.

Unlike in the Americas, Africans weren't devastated by diseases like smallpox

because they'd had smallpox for centuries and were just as immune to it

as Europeans were. Not only that, but Africa had diseases of its own,

including yellow fever, malaria, and sleeping sickness, all of which killed

Europeans in staggering numbers.

Also, nagana was a disease endemic to Africa that killed horses, which made it

difficult for Europeans to take advantage of African grasslands and also

difficult for them to get inland because their horses would die as they tried to

carry stuff.

Also, while in the 16th century Europeans did have guns, they were

pretty useless, especially without horses, so most fighting was done the

old-fashioned way, with swords.

That worked pretty well in the Americas, unless you were the Incas or the Aztecs,

but it didn't work in Africa, because the Africans also had swords and spears

and axes.

So as much as they might have wanted to colonize Africa in the 16th, 17th, and

18th centuries, Africa's mosquitoes, microbes, and people were too much for

them. So what made the difference?

Technology. First, steamships made it possible for Europeans to travel inland,

bringing supplies and personnel via Africa's navigable rivers, no horses, no

problem. Even more important was quinine medicine, sometimes in the form of tonic

water mixed into refreshing, quintessentially British gin and tonics.

Quinine isn't as effective as modern anti-malarial medication, and it doesn't

cure the disease, but it does help moderate its effects.

But of course, the most important technology that enabled Europeans to

dominate Africa was guns.

By the 19th century, European gun technology had improved dramatically,

especially with the introduction of the Maxim machine gun, which allowed

Europeans to wipe out Africans in battle after battle. Of course, machine guns

were effective when wielded by Africans too, but Africans had fewer of them. Oh,

it's time for the open letter? And my chair is back!

An open letter to Hiram Maxim.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh! It's Darth Vader!

What a great reminder of imperialism. Dear Hiram Maxim, I hate you. It's not

so much that you invented the Maxim machine gun, although obviously that's a

little bit problematic, or even that you look like the poor man's Colonel

Sanders. First off, you're a possible bigamist. I have a long-standing

opposition to bigamy. Secondly, you were born an American but then became a Brit,

thereby metaphorically machine gunning our founding fathers.

But most importantly, among your many inventions was the successful amusement

park ride, the Captive Flying Machine.

Mr. Maxim, I hate the Captive Flying Machine. The captive flying machine has

resulted in many a girlfriend telling me that I'm a coward. I'm not a coward! I

just don't want to die up there!

It's all your fault, Hiram Maxim, and nobody believes your story about the

light bulb. Best wishes, John Green. Alright, so here is something that often

gets overlooked. European imperialism involved a lot of fighting...

and a lot of dying. And when we say that Europe came to dominate Africa, for the

most part that domination came through wars which killed lots of Africans and

also lots of Europeans, although most of them died from disease.

It's very, very important to remember that Africans did not meekly acquiesce

to European hegemony. They resisted, often violently, but ultimately they

were defeated by a technologically superior enemy.

In this respect they were a lot like the Chinese and also the Indians and the

Vietnamese and you get the picture. So by the end of the 19th century most of

Africa and much of Asia had been colonized by European powers. I mean,

even Belgium got in on it, and they weren't even a country at the beginning

of the 19th century. I mean, Belgium has enjoyed like 12 years of sovereignty in

the last three millennia. Notable exceptions include Japan, which was

happily pursuing its own imperialism, Thailand, Iran, and of course

Afghanistan, because no one can conquer Afghanistan unless you are, wait for it,

the Mongols.

It's tempting to imagine Europe ruling their colonies with the proverbial topaz

fist, and while there was always the threat of violence, the truth is a lot

more complicated.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

In most cases, Europeans ruled their colonies with the help of, and sometimes

completely through, intermediaries and collaborators.

For example, in the 1890s in India, there were fewer than 1,000 British

administrators supposedly ruling over 300 million Indians.

The vast majority of British troops at any given time in India, more than two

-thirds, were in fact Indians under the command of British officers.

Because of their small numbers relative to local populations, most European

colonizers resorted to indirect rule, relying on the governments that were

already there but exerting control over their leaders.

Frederick Lugard, who was Britain's head honcho in Nigeria for a time, called

this rule through and by the natives.

This worked particularly well with British administrators, who were

primarily middle-class men but had aristocratic pretensions and were often

pleased to associate with the highest echelons of Indian or African society.

Now, this isn't to say that indigenous rulers were simply puppets. Often, they

retained real power.

This was certainly true in India, where more than a third of the territory was

ruled by Indian princes.

The French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia were ruled by Arab monarchs, and

the French also ruled through native kings in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

For the most part, Europeans could almost always rely on their superior

military technology to coerce local rulers into doing what the Europeans

wanted, and they could replace native officials with Europeans if they had to,

but in general, they preferred to rule indirectly.

It was easier and cheaper.

So while we can't know why all native princes who ruled in the context of

European imperialism put up with it, we can make some pretty good guesses.

First of all, they were still rulers. They got to keep their prestige and

their fancy hats, and to some extent their power. Many were also able to gain

advantages through their service, like access to European education for

themselves and for their children.

Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, was the son of an Indian high official, which

made it possible for him to study law in England.

And we can't overlook the sheer practicality of it. The alternative was

to resist, and that usually didn't work. work out well. I'm reminded of the

famous couplet. Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun.

And they have not. But even with this enormous technological advantage, it

wasn't always easy. For example, it took 25 years from 1845 to 1870 for the

British to fully defeat the Maori on New Zealand because the Maori were kick-ass

fighters who had mastered musketry and defensive warfare.

And I will remind you, it is not cursing if you're talking about donkeys. In

fact, it took them being outnumbered three to one with the arrival of 750,000

settlers for the Maori to finally capitulate.

And I will remind you that the rule against splitting infinitives is not an

actual rule.

Those of you more familiar with U.S. history might notice a parallel between

the Maori and some of the Native American tribes, like the Apaches and

the Lakota, a good reminder that the United States did some imperial

expansion of its own as part of its nationalizing project in the 19th

century. But back to Africa, sometimes African rulers were so good at adapting

European technology that they were able to successfully resist imperialism.

Ethiopia's Menelik II defeated the Italians in battle, securing not just

independence but an empire of his own.

But embracing European-style modernization could also be problematic,

as Hadid Ismail of Egypt found out during his rule in the late 19th

century. He celebrated his imperial success by commissioning an opera,

Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, for the opening of the Cairo Opera House in 1871.

Giuseppe Verdi, by the way. No relation.

to John Green. And Ismail had ambitions of extending Egypt's control up the Nile

west toward Lake Chad, but to do that he needed money, and that's where he got

into trouble. His borrowing bankrupted Egypt and led to Britain's taking

control over the country's finances and its shares in the Suez Canal that Ismail

had built with French engineers and French capital in 1869.

The British sent in 1,300 bureaucrats to fix Egypt's finances, an invasion of red

tape that led to a nationalist uprising, which brought on a full-scale British

intervention after 1881 in order to protect British interests.

This business imperialism, as it is sometimes known, is really at the heart

of the imperialistic impulse.

Industrialized nations push economic integration upon developing nations, and

then extract value from those developing nations just as you would from a mine or

a field you owned.

And here we see political history and economic history coming together again.

As Western corporations grew in the latter part of the 19th century, their

influence grew as well, both in their home countries and in the lands where

they were investing.

But ultimately, whether the colonizer is a business enterprise or a political

one, the complicated legacy of imperialism survives.

It's why your bananas are cheap, why your call centers are Indian, why your

chocolate comes from Africa, and why everything else comes from China. These

imperialistic adventures may have only lasted a century, but it was the century

in which the world as we know it today began to take shape.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Great War?

World War I wasn't the most destructive war or the first total war, and it

certainly wasn't, despite its billing the war to end all wars, but it was the

war to change all wars.

World War I changed our outlook. It normalized cynicism and irony, which I

think you'll agree are the dominant lenses for describing our world today.

Basically, I'd argue that World War I helped make possible everything from The

Simpsons to intentionally unattractive mustaches. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, are you

referring to me?

Oh, me from the past. You're an embarrassment to our fam- also to all

our other selves.

Most people think of World War I as a tragedy because it didn't need to happen

and it didn't accomplish much except for creating social and economic conditions

that made World War II possible.

So when we're talking about causes of the war, inevitably we're also assigning

blame. The immediate cause was of course the assassination in Sarajevo of the

Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 by a Bosnian Serb

nationalist named Gavrilo Princip.

Quick aside, it's worth noting that the first big war of the 20th century began

with an act of terrorism.

So Franz Ferdinand wasn't particularly well-liked by his uncle, the Emperor

Franz Joseph.

Now that is a mustache.

But even so, the assassination led Austria to issue an ultimatum to Serbia,

whereupon Serbia accepted some, but not all, of Austria's demands, leading

Austria to declare war against Serbia. And then Russia, due to its alliance

with the Serbs, mobilized its army, Germany, because it had an alliance with

Austria, told Russia to stop mobilizing, which Russia failed to do, so then

Germany mobilized its own army, declared war on Russia, cemented an alliance with

the Ottomans, and then declared war on Fra- because, you know, France.

Germany's war plan, the Schlieffen Plan, required that it invade France in the

most expedient way possible, which as you can see is via Belgium. And Great

Britain was a friend of Belgium, I mean as much as anyone can be a friend of

Belgium, and so they declared war on Germany.

So by August 4th, all the major powers of Europe were at war with each other.

By the end of the month, Japan, honoring its alliance with Britain, would be at

war with Germany and Austria as well. When all was said and done, counting

colonies and spheres of influence, the world map would eventually look like

this. You'll never guess who wins.

So there were many opportunities not to mobilize and declare war, none of which

were taken.

Some blamed the web of alliances itself, which is what Woodrow Wilson wanted to

fix with the League of Nations.

Some blamed Russia, the first big country to mobilize.

Some blamed Germany for the inflexibility of the Schlieffen Plan.

Leninists claimed the war grew out of imperialism and was fueled by capitalist

rivalries. And others claimed it was a war between Germany's radical modernism

and Britain's traditional conservatism. But if I had to assign blame, I'd go

with the alliance system and the cultural belief that war was, in

general, good. for nations.

War helped define who was them and who was us, and doing that strengthened the

idea of us. And before World War I, war was perceived to be necessary and often

even glorious.

The trench warfare on the Western Front is most famous for its brutal futility.

Great Britain and France on one side, Germany on the other, with no man's land

in between.

World War I was a writer's war, and there's a lot of metaphorical resonance

in living men digging holes where they would in time die.

The lines of trenches on the Western Front covered only about 400 miles as

the crow flies, but because of the endless zig-zagging, the trenches

themselves may have run as much as 25,000 miles.

But the stalemate of trench warfare wasn't seen on every front. Especially

at the beginning of the war, there was a lot of offensive movement, especially in

the initial German strikes.

Especially on the eastern front, where the Germans were very successful against

the Russians, who had a large but pretty hapless army. Also, for the blessed few

of you who sat through all of Lawrence of Arabia, you'll remember that T.E.

Lawrence's exploits took place in the context of World War I, with the British

battling the Ottomans.

up an important point. World War I featured combatants from around the

world. Britain's army especially included soldiers from India, Africa,

Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, who was just happy to be invited.

Africans also served with the French, and for a lot of these people, their

experiences helped build nationalist movements when the survivors returned

home after the war. That's about as close as we get to a silver lining. The

war itself was incredibly destructive.

Over 15 million people were killed and over 20 million wounded. In France, 13.3

% of the population between the age of 15 and 49 died in the war. The war also

saw a lot of civilians die, especially in the Ottoman Empire where more than 2

million of the 3 million people killed were non-combatants. But like so many

other wars, World War I's most efficient killer was disease.

Stupid disease, always hijacking history.

Dysentery, typhus, and cholera were rampant, and otherwise minor injuries

would prove fatal when gangrene set in. I mean, 25% of arm wounds among German

soldiers were fatal. And that's not even to mention the famous influenza epi-

epidemic that broke out toward the end of the war, which killed more than three

times as many people as the war itself.

The main reason the war was so deadly was the combination of new technology

and outdated tactics.

While we may think about tanks, airplanes, and poison gas, all of which

made their debut in the First World War, the two most devastating technologies

were American machine guns and barbed wire.

Attempting to march in lines toward an enemy's trench, soldiers of both sides

were mowed down by machine gun fire.

According to one German machine gunner at the Battle of Somme in 1916,

At

the

Somme, the British lost 60,000 men in the first day of fighting. Remember the

old colonialist verse, whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun and they have

not? Yeah, well...

Now everybody had machine guns. One of the things we try to remember here at

Crash Course is that people both make history and are made by it. World War I

brings this fact into stark relief because we know so much about the

soldiers who fought in it, and how they wrote about the war really changed our

relationship with systemic violence.

For most soldiers, there was nothing glamorous or heroic about this war. For

the British, for example, the trenches were two things above all, wet and

smelly. The dampness came from the fact that the British trenches were in the

wettest part of Flanders. The smell was mainly de- decomposing flesh.

Nothing glorious about that. On the upside, soldiers were at least rarely

hungry, and there was a lot of food from home, which is worth underscoring

because it reminds us that home wasn't very far away.

Even for the British, at their closest, the front was only 70 miles from

England. They could read newspapers from London one day later than Londoners

could. While going over the top- Stan, no puns in this episode!

Right. While going over the top of the trench to cross no man's land and attack

the enemy trench is what lights our romantic imagina- most soldiers' lives

were dominated by the fear of shelling.

According to a journal published by French soldiers,

Although

soldiers

then, as now, lived under conditions it's difficult to imagine, there was

more than the threat of death to distress them. According to German

officer Ernst Junger, it was not danger, however extreme, that depresses the

spirit of men so much as over-fatigue and wretched conditions.

And for most soldiers, especially the British and French, the pay for their

efforts was pitiful, so why did they even keep fighting? Duty, nationalism,

loyalty to comrades, and fear of being shot for desertion all played a role,

but so did alcohol.

As one British medical officer said, Ernst Junger also remarked on the

propensity of soldiers to drink their troubles away.

two, as sure as death, were to be found on the first evening of rest over the

bottle, drinking a silent health to their dead companions.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

Whew! An open letter to alcohol.

I wonder what's in today's secret compartment.

Oh!

Shocking! It's a golf club!

And an actual disco golf ball made by a Crash Course fan!

Dear alcohol!

Oh, that's...

Like disease, you've been a key figure in human history, despite not actually

being a person. And for millennia, you've played an important role in war,

often helping soldiers do their duty, often distracting them from it. But

here's the thing, alcohol.

In my experience, which is extensive, if you need to be drunk to do something,

you should maybe not do the thing. Unless, of course, the thing is golf.

Best wishes, John Green.

So what did we take away from the so-called Great War?

Well, not much.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, fixed the blame for the war

on Germany, which proved ruinous to the German economy and destructive to its

political institutions.

And unless you're really nostalgic for totalitarian communism, you've got to

say that World War I was also a disaster for Russia, because it facilitated the

rise of the Bolsheviks.

The Russian Revolution had two phases. In the first phase, called the February

Revolution, because get this, it occurred in February, Army mutinies and

civil unrest forced the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, which had been in power

in Russia since, like, forever, to use a proper historian term. The monarchy was

replaced by a provisional government, led eventually by Alexander Kerensky,

who made the terrible decision to keep Russia in the war, which led to the

October Revolution, so-called because it happened in October, in which Vladimir

Lenin and his Bolsheviks took over, famously promising the Russian people

peace, bread, and land.

To which the Russian people responded, hey!

you just named three of our favorite things.

Lenin's first big achievement was signing a separate peace with Germany

and getting Russia out of the war, which was helpful to him since he needed to

fight a civil war that wouldn't end until 1922.

This might have helped Germany too, except the US entered the war on the

side of the British and the French, which led to another outcome of the war,

increased geopolitical influence for the US.

The US was already becoming a major economic power, and being able to avoid

the destruction and loss of manpower associated with World War I certainly

didn't hurt.

The war helped catapult the US from being a debtor nation to a creditor one.

And Wilson's leading role in negotiations at Versailles, even though

he didn't actually get what he wanted, made America a big player on the world

stage for the first time.

Thanks, Oddbubble. So just so we don't get completely Eurocentric, another

major outcome of the war was the end of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of

the nation-state of Turkey.

The rest of the world saw some change too, but not much for the better. In

Africa, Britain took Germany's colonies, and even though Indians fought and died

in a higher percentage than Americans in World War I, India didn't gain any real

autonomy. All these terrible outcomes led to a general sense of disappointment

in literary circles.

And this feeling of pointlessness and cynicism was expressed by the writers of

The Lost Generation.

full of loss.

Millions of people were lost.

Traditional ideas of war's nobility and heroism were lost as well. I mean, what

is heroism when you're just sitting in a trench waiting to be blown up? And after

World War I, war might be necessary?

but it would never again be glorious.

We see this shift in the writing and art that emerged from the Great War, as

artists transitioned from romanticism to modernism. Think of Hemingway's The Sun

Also Rises, which is about a man rendered not noble, but impotent by war.

The dark, cruel irony there that you go to war to become a man, and then war

takes away the organ often called your manhood? That defined Hemingway's

worldview, and it also defines ours.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

return, sadly for the last time on Crash Course, to China. By the way, Stan

brought cupcakes.

That's good.

I wish I could draw some.

Parallel between this and China, but I got nothing. They're just delicious.

I'll sure miss you piece of felt Danica cut out in the shape of China using blue

because we felt like red would be cliche.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, Mr. Green! You don't get to talk until you shave the

mustache, me from the past.

So the 20th century was pretty big for China because it saw not one, but two

revolutions. China's 1911 revolution might be a bigger deal from a world

historical perspective than the more famous communist revolution of 1949, but

you wouldn't know it because one, China's communism became a really big

deal during the Cold War, and two, Mao Zedong, the The father of communist

China was really good at self-promotion. Like you know his famous book of

sayings? Pretty much everyone in China just had to own it. And I mean had to.

So as you no doubt recall from past episodes of Crash Course, China lost the

opium wars in the 19th century, resulting in European domination,

spheres of influence, etc.

All of which was deeply embarrassing to the Qing Dynasty and led to calls for

reform. One strand of reform that called for China to adopt European military

technology and education systems was called self-strengthening, and it

probably would have been a great idea considering how well that worked for

Japan. But it never happened in China. Well, at least not until recently.

Instead, China experienced the disastrous anti-Western Boxer Rebellion

of 1900, which helped spur some young liberals, including one named Sun Yat

-sen, to plot the overthrow of the dynasty.

Oh, it's already time for the open letter?

An open letter to Sun Yat-sen.

Oh, but first let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, more champagne poppers.

Stan, at this point aren't we sort of belaboring the fact that China invented

fireworks?

Wow. That is innovation at work right there. We used to not be able to fire

off one of these. Now we can fire off six at a time if you count the two

secret ones from behind me. Dear Sun Yat-sen, you were amazing.

I mean, the Republic of China calls you the father of the nation. The People's

Republic of China calls you the forerunner of the democratic revolution.

You're the only thing they can agree on.

You lived in China, Japan, the United States. You converted to Christianity.

You were a doctor. You were the godfather of an important science

fiction writer.

The infuriating thing is that you never actually got much of a chance to rule

China, and you would have been great at it! I mean, your three principles of the

people, nationalism, democracy, and the people's livelihood, are three really

great principles!

I mean, the problem, aside from you not living long enough, is that you just

didn't have a face for Warhol portraits.

It's too bad.

Best wishes, John Green. So the 1911 revolution that led to the end of the

Qing Dynasty started when a bomb accidentally exploded, at which point

the revolutionaries were like, we're probably going to be outed, so we should

just start the uprising now.

The uprising probably would have been quelled, like many had before, except

this time the army joined the rebellion because they wanted to become more

modern. The Qing Emperor abdicated and the rebels chose a general, Yuan Shikai,

as leader, while Sun Yat-sen was declared president of a provisional

republic on January 1, 1912.

A new government created with a Senate and a lower house, and it was supposed

to write a new constitution.

And after the first election, Sun Yat-sen's party, the Guomindang, were

the largest, but they weren't the majority.

So Sun Yat-sen deferred to Yuan, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because

he then outlawed the Guomindang party and ruled as dictator.

But then, when Yuan Shikai died in 1916, China's first non-dynastic government in

over 3,000 years completely fell apart.

Localism reasserted itself, with large-scale landlords, with small-scale

armies ruling all the parts of China that weren't controlled by foreigners.

I remember this phenomenon from earlier in Chinese history, first during the

Warring States Period, and then again for 300 years between the end of the Han

and the rise of the Shui. So the period in Chinese history between 1912 and 1949

is sometimes called the Chinese Republic, although that gives the

government a bit too much credit.

The leading group trying to reform China into a nation-state was the Guomindang,

but after 1920, the Chinese Communist Party was also in the mix. And for the

Guomindang to regain power from those big landlords and reunify China, they

needed some help from the CCP. Now, if an alliance between communists and

nationalists seems like a match made in hell, well...

Yes, it was.

That said, the two did manage to patch things up for a while in the early

1920s, you know, for the sake of the kids.

But then Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, and the alliance fell apart in 1927 when

Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek got mad at the communists for trying to

foment socialist revolution, to which the communists were like, but that's

what we do, man! We're communists!

Anyway, this turned out to be a bad breakup for a bunch of reasons, but

mainly because it started a civil war between the communists and the

nationalists. We're not going to get into exhausting detail about the civil

war, but spoiler alert! Killer alert, the communists won.

There are a few things to point out. First, even though Mao emerged

victorious, he and the communists were almost wiped out in 1934, except that

they made a miraculous and harrowing escape, trekking from southern China to

the mountains in the north in what has become famously known as the Long March,

a great example of historians missing an opportunity since it could easily have

been called the Long Ass March as it featured donkeys. Second, for much of

the time the Guomindang was trying to crush the CCP, significant portions of

China were being occupied and invaded by Japan.

Thirdly, the communists were just better at fighting the Japanese than the

nationalists were, in spite of the fact that Chiang Kai-Shek had extensive

support from the U.S. And each time the nationalists failed against the

Japanese, their prestige among their fellow Chinese diminished.

And it wasn't helped by nationalist corruption or the collection of onerous

taxes from peasants, or stories about nationalist troops putting on civilian

clothing and abandoning the city of Nanking during its awful destruction by

the Japanese army in 1937.

Meanwhile, the communists were winning over the peasants in their northwestern

enclave by making sure that troops didn't pillage local land and giving

peasants a greater say in local government.

Now that isn't to say that everything was rosy under Mao's communist

leadership, even at its earliest stages. By the way, that is an actual chalk

illustration.

Very impressed.

In a preview of things to come in 1942, Mao initiated a rectification program,

which basically meant students and intellectuals were sent down into the

countryside to give them a taste of what real China was like in an effort to re

-educate them. We try to be politically neutral here on Crash Course, but we are

always opposed to intellectuals doing hard labor.

But anyway, within four years of the end of World War II, the communists routed

Chiang Kai-Shek's army and sent them off to Taiwan, and these military victories

paved the way for Mao to declare the People's Republic of China on October

1st, 1949.

So once in power, Mao and the PRC were faced with the task of creating a new

socialist state.

And Mao declared early on that the working class in China would be the

leaders of a people's democratic dictatorship.

Oh democratic dictatorships, you're the best.

It's all the best parts of democracy and all the best parts of dictatorship.

You get to vote, but there's only one choice. It takes all the pesky thinking

out of it. The PRC promised equal rights for women, rent reduction, land

redistribution, new heavy industry, and lots of freedoms.

thought, speech, publication, assembly, association, correspondence, person,

domicile, moving from one place to another, religious belief, and the

freedom to hold processions or demonstrations.

Yeah, no.

Even putting aside the PRC's failure to protect any of these rights, Mao's China

wasn't much fun if you were a landlord, or even if you were a peasant who'd done

well. Land redistribution and reform meant destroying the power of landlords,

often violently.

But centralizing power and checking individual ambition proved difficult for

the government, and it was made harder by China's involvement in the Korean

War, which helped spur the first mass campaign of Mao's democratic

dictatorship. Designed to encourage support for the war, the campaign was

called the Resist America and Aid Korea Campaign, and it resulted in almost all

foreigners leaving China.

A second campaign, against counter-revolutionaries, was much worse.

People suspected of sympathizing with the Guomindang, or anyone insufficiently

communist, was subject to humiliation and violence.

Between October 1950 and August 1951, 28,332 two people accused of being

spies or counter-revolutionaries were executed in Guangdong city alone.

A third mass campaign, the Three Anti-Campaign, was aimed at reforming

the Communist Party itself.

And the final mass campaign, the Five Anti-Campaign, was an assault on all

bourgeois capitalism, which effectively killed private industry in China.

Very few of the victims of this last campaign actually died, but capitalism

was weakened and state control bolstered. Okay, let's go to the Thought

Bubble. Mao and the CCP set out to turn China into an industrial powerhouse by

following the Soviet model. We haven't really talked about this, but under the

Soviet system, Russia was able to accomplish massive industrialization,

not to mention tens of millions of deaths from starvation, through

centralized planning and collectivization of agriculture,

following what were known as five-year plans.

The Chinese adopted the model of the five-year plans beginning in 1953, and

the first one worked, at least as far as industrialization was concerned. In

fact, the plan worked even better than expected, with industry increasing 121%

more than projected.

In order for this to work, though, the peasants had to grow lots of grain and

sell it at extremely low prices.

This kept inflation in check, and saving was encouraged by the fact that the Five

Year Plan didn't have many consumer goods, so there was nothing to buy.

For urban workers, living standards improved, and China's population grew to

646 million. So far, Mao's plan seemed to be working.

But there was no way that China could keep up that growth, especially without

some backsliding into capitalism.

So Mao came up with a terrible idea called the Great Leap Forward. Mao

essentially decided that the nation could be psyched up. into more

industrial productivity.

Among many other bad ideas, he famously ordered that individuals build small

steel furnaces in their backyard to increase steel production.

This was not a good idea. First off, it didn't actually increase steel

production much. Secondly, it turns out that people making steel in their

backyard who know nothing about making steel make bad steel.

But the worst idea was to pay for heavy machinery from the USSR with exported

grain. This meant that there was less for peasants to eat, and as a result,

between 1959 and 1962,

20 million people died, probably half of whom were under the age of 10. Jeez,

Thought Bubble, that was sad.

And then in happier news came the Cultural Revolution.

Just kidding, it sucked.

By the middle of the 60s, Mao was afraid that China's revolution was running out

of steam, and he didn't want China to end up just a bureaucratized police

state, like, you know, most of the Soviet bloc. And the Cultural Revolution

was an attempt to capture the glory days of the revolution and fire up the

masses, and what better way to do that than to empower the kids?

Frustrated students who were unable to find decent filling jobs jumped at the

chance to denounce their teachers, employers, and sometimes even their

parents, and to tear down tradition, which often meant demolishing buildings

and art. The ranks of these Red Guards swelled, and anyone representing the so

-called Four Olds, old culture, old habits, old ideas, and old customs, was

subject to humiliation and violence.

Intellectuals were again sent to the countryside, as they were in 1942.

Millions were persecuted, and countless historical and religious artifacts were

destroyed. But the real aim of the Cultural Revolution was to consolidate

Mao's Revolution, and while his image still looms large, it's hard to say that

China these days is a socialist state.

Many would argue that Mao's Revolution was extremely short-lived, and that the

real change in China happened in 1911.

That's when the Chinese Republic ended 3,000 years of dynastic history and

forever broke the cyclical pattern the Chinese had used to understand their

past. I mean, at least in some senses, those nationalist revolutionaries

literally put an end to history.

That sense of living in a truly new world has made many great and terrible

things possible for China.

But the legacy of China's two revolutions is mixed at best. China, for

instance, made most of the camera we're using to film this video. And China made

most of the computers we use to edit it. But no one in the People's Republic of

China will legally be able to watch this video, because the government blocks

YouTube. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

talk about World War II, finally a war with some color film.

So here at Crash Course, we try to make history reasonably entertaining, and

fortunately, World War II was hilarious, said no one ever.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, is this like going to be one of the unfunny ones where you

build to the big melodramatic conclusion about how I have to imagine the world

more complexly? Me from the past, as long as you have that eighth-rate soup

strainer, I'm not even going to acknowledge your existence.

Right, so you've probably heard a lot about World War II from movies and

books, the History Channel before it decided that swamp people were history,

the incessant droning of your grandparents, etc.

We're not going to try to give you a detailed synopsis of the war today.

Instead, we're going to try to give a bit of perspective on how the most

destructive war in human history happened and why it still matters

globally. So one of the reasons history classes tend to be really into wars is

that they're easy to put on tests.

They start on one day and they end on another day, and they're caused by

social, political, and economic conditions that can be examined in a

multiple-choice kind of manner? Except not really.

Like, when did World War II start?

In September 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland? I'd say no, it actually

started when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, or at the very latest, when the

Japanese invaded China in 1937, because they didn't stop fighting until 1945.

Then again, you could also argue 1933, when Hitler took power, or 1941, when

America started fighting. It's complicated.

But anyway, in China the fighting was very brutal, as exemplified by the

infamous Rape of Nanking, which featured the slaughter of hundreds of thousands

of Chinese people, and is still so controversial today that one, it affects

relations between Japan and China, and two, even though I have not described it

in detail, you can rest assured that there will be angry comments about my

use of the word slaughter.

But the World War II we know the most about from movies and TV is primarily

the war in the European theater, the one that Adolf Hitler started.

Hitler is the rare individual who really did make history, specifically he made

it worse. And if he hadn't existed, it's very unlikely that World War II would

have ever happened. But he did exist, and after coming to power in 1933 with

the standard revolutionary promises to return the homeland to its former glory,

infused with quite a bit of paranoia and anti-Semitism, Germany saw rapid

remilitarization and eventually, inevitably, war.

In the beginning, it was characterized by a new style of combat, made possible

by the mechanized technology of tanks, airplanes, and especially trucks.

This was the Blitzkrieg, a devastating tactic combining quick movement of

troops, Tanks and massive use of air power to support infantry movements.

And in the very early years of the war, it was extremely effective.

The Nazis were able to roll over Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and

then all of France, all within about nine months between the fall of 1939 and

the summer of 1940.

So after knocking out most of Central Europe, the Nazis set their sights on

Great Britain. But they didn't invade the island, choosing instead to attack

it with massive airstrikes.

I mean, you look at this poster and think, man, the Queen wants me to finish

my term paper, so I can do it, but when this poster was first produced in 1939,

it was to quell terror in the face of bombardment. The Battle of Britain was a

duel between the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe, and while the RAF denied the

Nazis total control of British airspace, the Nazis were still able to bomb Great

Britain over and over again in what's known as the Blitz. Stan, no, no- No

jokes this time. Yes, the Blitz. Meanwhile, Europeans were also fighting

each other in North Africa.

The Desert Campaign started in 1940 and lasted through 1942.

This is where British General Monty Montgomery outfoxed Erwin the Desert Fox

Rommel. It's also the place where Americans first fought Nazis in large

numbers, but most importantly, it's where Indiana Jones discovered the Ark

of the Covenant.

Okay, let's go to the Thought Bubble. 1941 was a big year for World War II.

First, the Nazis invaded Russia, breaking a non-aggression pact that the

two powers had signed in 1939.

This hugely escalated the war and also made allies of the most powerful

capitalist countries and the most powerful communist one an alliance that

would stand the test of time and never end until like three seconds after the

defeat of the Nazis. The Nazi invasion of Russia opened the war up on the so

-called Eastern Front, although if you were Russian it was the Western Front,

and it led to millions of deaths, mostly Russian. Also, 1941 saw a day that would

live in infamy when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, hoping that such an

audacious attack would brighten the Union. United States is staying neutral.

Which was a pretty stupid gamble, because one, the US was already giving

massive aid to the Allies and was hardly neutral, and two, the United States is

not exactly famed for its pacifism or political neutrality.

1941 also saw Japan invading much of Southeast Asia, which made Australia and

New Zealand understandably nervous. As part of the British Commonwealth, they

were already involved in the war, but now they could fight the Japanese closer

to home. And shut up about how I never talk about you Australians, I just gave

you 1.5 sentences.

But by the time the Ameri- and Australians started fighting the

Japanese, it was already a world war.

Sometimes this meant fighting, or starving, or being bombed. Other times

it meant production for the war.

You don't think of Argentina as being a World War II powerhouse, for instance,

but they were vital to the Allies, supplying 40% of British meat during

World War II.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. So not to sound jingoistic, but the entry of the U.S.

into the war really did change everything, although I doubt the Nazis

could have taken Russia regardless.

No one conquers Russia in the wintertime, unless you are, wait for it,

the Mongols.

Okay, we're gonna skip most of the big battles of 1942, like the Battle of

Midway, which effectively ended Japan's chance of winning the war, and focus on

the Battle of Stalingrad.

The German attack on Stalingrad, now known as Volgograd because Stalin sucks,

was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of war, with more than two

million dead.

The Germans began by dropping more than a thousand tons of bombs on Stalingrad,

and then the Russians responded by hugging the Germans, staying as close to

their front lines as possible so that German air support would kill Germans

and Russians alike.

It kind of worked, although the Germans still took most of the city, but then a

Soviet counterattack left the 6th Army of the Nazis completely cut off.

And after that, due partly to Hitler's overreaching megalomania and partly to

lots of people being scared of him, the 6th Army slowly froze and starved to

death before finally surrendering. And of the 91,000 Axis POWs from Stalingrad,

only about 6,000 ever returned home.

Stalingrad turned the war in Europe, and by 1944 the American strategy of island

hopping in the Pacific was taking GIs closer and closer to Japan, Rome was

liberated in June by Americans and Canadians, and the successful British,

Canadian, and American D-Day invasion of Normandy was the beginning of the end

for the Nazis.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to Canada.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh!

It's Canadian mittens!

I want to thank the Canadian Crash Course fans who sent us these mittens.

Canadians are just so nice, Stan. Like, all we ever do on this show is make fun

of them, and they're just like, it's so kind of you to mention us. Here's some

mittens! Dear Canada, we're not always nice to you here on Crash Course, but

you are awesome. I'm pointing, but you can't tell because I'm wearing mittens.

45,000 Canadians died fighting for the Allies in World War II, which means that

per capita, Canada lost more people than the United States.

You fought with the Royal Air Force to defend Great Britain from the beginning

of the war, and you were there on D-Day successfully invading Juneau Beach.

And as many of you have pointed out in comments, you defeated the United States

in the War of 1812, meaning that arguably, Canada, you are the greater

military power.

Plus, you have lumberjacks, and excellent beer, and hockey, and

universal healthcare, and Justin Bieber!

I'm jealous!

That's what it is!

I'm jealous!

Best wishes.

John Green. So by the end of 1944, the Allies were advancing from the west, and

the Russian Red Army was advancing from the east, and then the last ditch German

offensive at the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944 and 1945.

failed. Mussolini was executed in April of 1945, Hitler committed suicide at the

end of that month, and on May 8, 1945, the Allies declared victory in Europe

after Germany surrendered unconditionally.

Three months later, the United States dropped the only two nuclear weapons

ever deployed in war, Japan surrendered, and World War II was over. The war had a

definite cause, unbridled military expansion by Germany, Japan, and to a

small extent Italy.

Now it's easy to claim that Hitler was crazy or evil, and in fact he was

certainly namely both, but that doesn't explain the Nazis' decision to invade

Russia, and it sure doesn't explain Japan's decision to bomb Pearl Harbor.

And there are many possible explanations beyond mere evil, but the most

interesting one to me involves food.

Hitler had a number of reasons for wanting to expand Germany's territory,

but he often talked about Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people.

German agriculture was really inefficiently organized into lots of

small farms, and that meant that Germany needed a lot of land in order to be self

-sufficient in food production.

The plan was to take Poland, the Ukraine and Eastern Russia and then resettle

that land with lots of Germans so that it could feed German people.

This was called the Hunger Plan because the plan called for 20 million people to

starve to death.

Many would be the Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians who'd previously lived on the

land. The rest would be Europe's Jews who would be worked to death.

Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, many by starvation, but many

through a chillingly planned effort of extermination in death camps.

These death camps can be distinguished from concentration camps or labor camps.

in that their primary purpose was extermination of Jews, Roma people,

communists, homosexuals, disabled people, and others that the Nazis deemed

unfit. Some historians believe that the Nazis opened the death camps because the

Jews weren't dying as fast as the hunger plan had intended.

This was a sickening plan, but it made a kind of demented sense. Rather than

becoming more involved in global trade as the British had, the Germans would

feed themselves by taking land and killing the people who'd previously

lived there.

Similarly, Japan at the beginning of the war was suffering from an acute fear of

food shortage because its agricultural sector was having trouble keeping up

with population growth.

And the Japanese too sought to expand their agricultural holdings by, for

instance, resettling farmers in Korea.

So while it's tempting to say that World War II was about the Allies fighting for

democratic ideals against the totalitarian, militaristic imperialism

of the fascist Axis powers, It just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

For instance, a hugely important Allied power, Stalin's Soviet Union, was like

the least democratic place ever.

Stan just said that was hyperbole, but it's not. Stalin's Soviet Union is tied

with all of the other completely undemocratic countries for last place on

the democracy scale.

It's a big community there at last place, but they're definitely in there

somewhere. And by far the biggest imperialists of the war were the

British. They couldn't have fed or clothed themselves or resisted the Nazis

without their colonies and commonwealth.

So why is World War II so important?

Well, first it proved the old Roman adage, homo homini lupus.

Man is a wolf.

to man.

This is seen most clearly in the Holocaust, but all the statistics are

staggering. More than a million Indian-British subjects died, mainly due

to famine that could have been avoided if the British had redistributed food.

And their failure to do so helped convince Indians that the so-called

superior civilization of the British was a sham.

More than a million Vietnamese died, mainly due to famine.

418,000 Americans.

More than a million non-combatants in both Germany and Japan, and 20 million

people in the Soviet Union, most of them civilians.

These civilians were targeted because they helped sustain the war, mostly

through industrial and agricultural production.

In a total war, when a nation is at war, not just its army, there's no such thing

as a non-military target.

From the firebombing of Dresden, to Tokyo, to Hiroshima, the line between

soldier and civilian blurred.

And then of course there is the Holocaust, which horrifies us because

the elements of Western progress, record keeping, industrial production,

technology,

were used to slaughter millions.

World War II saw modern industrial nations, which represented the best of

the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, descend into once

unimaginable cruelty.

And what makes World War II such a historical watershed is that in its

wake, all of us, in the West or otherwise, were forced to question

whether Western dominance of this planet could or should be considered progress.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you next week.

And I was like, whoa, dude, calm down, you're in a room full of third graders.

And then for months afterward, on the playground, we'd play Regan Gorbachev

and spit in each other's faces. Those were the days. Sometimes I forget that

you're me, me from the past. Yeah, it's just really nice to talk to you and feel

like you're listening. You're boring. Cue the intro.

So the Cold War was a rivalry between the USSR and the USA that played out

globally. We've tried to shy away from calling conflicts ideological or

civilizational here on Crash Course, but in this case, the clash of civilizations

model really does apply.

Socialism, at least as Marx constructed it, wanted to take over the world, and

many Soviets saw themselves in a conflict with bourgeois capitalism

itself. And the Soviets saw American rebuilding efforts in Europe and Japan

as the US trying to expand its markets, which, by the way, is exactly what we

were doing. So the US feared that the U.S. USSR wanted to destroy democratic

and capitalist institutions, and the Soviets feared that the US wanted to use

its money and power to dominate Europe and eventually destroy the Soviet

system. And both parties were right to be worried. It's not paranoia if they

really are out to get you. Now, of course, we've seen a lot of geopolitical

struggles between major world powers here on Crash Course, but this time

there was this special added bonus that war could lead to the destruction of the

human species.

That was new for world history, and it's worth remembering.

It's still new. Here's the period of time we've discussed on Crash Course,

and this is how long we've had the technological capability to exterminate

ourselves.

So that's worrisome. Immediately after World War II, the Soviets created a

sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, dominating the countries where the Red

Army had pushed back the Nazis.

Which is why Winston Churchill famously said in 1946 that an iron curtain had

descended across Europe.

While the dates of the Cold War are usually given between 1945 and 1990, a

number of historians will tell you that it actually started during World War II.

Stalin's distrust of the US and Britain kept growing as they refused to invade

Europe and open up a second front against the Nazis.

And some even say that the decision to drop the first atomic bombs on Japan was

motivated in part by a desire to intimidate the Soviets.

That sort of worked, but only insofar as it motivated the Soviets to develop

atomic bombs of their own. They successfully tested their first one in

1949. From the beginning, the U.S. had the advantage because it had more money

and power and could provide Europe protection, what with its army and one

-of-a-kind nuclear arsenal, while Europe rebuilt.

The USSR had to rebuild itself, and also they had the significant disadvantage of

being controlled by noted asshat Joseph Stalin.

Remind you, it's not cursing if he's wearing an ass for a hat. Oh, I guess

it's time for the open letter.

An open letter to Joseph Stallman. But first, let's see what's in the secret

compartment today.

Oh! It's silly putty. Silly putty. The thing that won the Cold War.

This is exactly the kind of useless consumer good that would never have been

produced in the Soviet Union. And it is because we had so much more consumer

spending on stuff like silly putty that we won the Cold War.

Go team!

Dear Joseph Stalin, you really sucked.

There was a great moment in your life at your first wife's funeral when you said,

I don't think I shall ever love again. And then later, you had that wife's

whole family killed. Putting aside the fact that you're responsible for tens of

millions of deaths, I don't like you because of the way you treated your son,

Yakov. I mean, you were really mean to him, and then he shot himself, and he

didn't die, and you said, he can't even shoot straight.

And then later, when he was captured during World War II, you had a chance to

exchange prisoners for him, but you declined.

And then he died in a prison camp. You were a terrible leader, a terrible

person, and a terrible father.

Best wishes.

John Green. Alright, let's go to the Thought Bubble. Europe was the first

battleground of the Cold War, especially Germany, which was divided into two

parts, with the former capital, Berlin, also divided into two parts. And yes, I

know the western part was divided into smaller occupation zones, but I'm

simplifying. In 1948, the Soviets tried to cut off West Berlin by closing the

main road that led into the city, but the Berlin Airlift stopped them. And

then in 1961, the Soviets tried again, and this time they were much more

successful, building a wall around West Berlin, although it's worth noting that

the thing was up for less than 30 years. I mean, Meat Loaf's career has lasted

longer than the Berlin Wall did. The US response to the Soviets was a policy

called containment.

It basically involved stopping the spread of communism by standing up to

the Soviets wherever they seemed to want to expand.

In Europe, this meant spending a lot of money. First, the Marshall Plan spent

$13 billion on rebuilding Western Europe with grants and credits that Europeans

would spend on American consumer goods and on construction.

Capitalism's cheap food and plentiful stuff, it was hoped, would stop the

spread of communism.

The US also tried to slow the spread of communism by founding NATO and with CIA

interventions in elections where communists had a chance, as in Italy.

But despite all the great spy novels and shaken not stirred martinis, the Cold

War never did heat up in Europe. Probably the most important part of the

Cold War that people just don't remember these days is the nuclear arms race.

Both sides developed nuclear arsenals, the Soviets initially with the help of

spies who stole American secrets. Eventually the nuclear arsenals were so

big that the US and USSR agreed on a strategy appropriately called MAD, which

stood for Mutually Assured Destruction. Thanks, Thought Bubble. And yes, nuclear

weapons were and are capable of destroying humanity many times over.

But only once or twice did we get close to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban

Missile Crisis, and then again in 1983 when we forgot to give the Russians the

heads up that we were doing some war games which made it look like we had

launched a first strike. Our bad!

But even though Mutually Assured Destruction prevented direct conflict,

there was plenty of hot war in the Cold War.

The Korean War saw lots of fighting between communists and capitalists, as

did the Vietnam War.

I mean, these days we remember the domino effect as silly paranoia, but

after Korea and especially China became communist, Vietnam's movement toward

communism seemed very much a threat to Japan, which the U.S. had helped remake

into a vibrant capitalist ally.

So the U.S. got bogged down in one of its longest wars while the Soviets

assisted the North Vietnamese Army in the Viet Cong, but then we paid them

back by supporting the anti-communist Mujahideen after the Soviets invaded

Afghanistan in 1979.

Of course, as we now know, nobody conquers Afghanistan unless you are the

Mongols.

So after ten disastrous years, the Soviets finally abandoned Afghanistan.

Some of those mujahideen later became members of the Taliban, though, so it's

difficult to say that anyone won that war.

But it wasn't just Asia. In Nicaragua, the US supported rebels to overthrow the

leftist government.

In El Salvador, the US bolstered authoritarian regimes that were

threatened by left-wing guerrillas.

The United States ended up supporting a lot of awful governments, like the one

in Guatemala, which held onto power through the use of death squads.

Frankly, all our attempts to stabilize governments in Latin America led to some

very unstable Latin American governments and quite a lot of violence.

And then there were the lukewarm conflicts, like the Suez Canal crisis,

where British and French paratroopers were sent in to try to stop Egypt from

nationalizing the Suez Canal.

Or all the American covert operations to keep various countries from falling to

communism. These included the famous CIA-engineered coup to overthrow Iran's

democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after his government

attempted to nationalize Iran's oil industry, and the CIA helping Chile's

General Augusto Pinochet overthrow democratically elected Marxist president

Salvador Allende in 1973.

And lest we think the Americans were the only bad guys in this, the Soviets used

force to crush popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in

1968. So you may have noticed that our discussion of the Cold War has branched

out from Europe to include Asia and the Middle East and Latin America.

And in fact, almost every part of the globe was involved in some way, with the

planet being divided into three worlds.

The first world was the US, Western Europe, and any place that embraced

capitalism and a more or less democratic form of government. The second world was

the Soviet Union and its satellites, mostly the Warsaw Pact nations China and

Cuba. The third world was everyone else, and we don't use this term anymore

because it lumps together a hugely diverse range of countries.

We'll talk more about the specific economic and development challenges

faced by the so-called third world countries, but the big one in terms of

the Cold War was that neither the US nor the Soviets wanted any of these

countries to remain neutral.

Every nation was supposed to pick sides, either capitalist or communist, and

while it seems like an easy choice now, in the 50s and 60s it wasn't nearly so

clear. I mean, for a little while it seemed like the Soviets might come out

ahead, at least in the Third World. For a while capitalism, and especially the

United States, seemed to lose some of its luster. The US propped up

dictatorships, had a poor civil rights record, we sucked at women's gymnastics,

plus the Soviets were the first to put a satellite, a man, and a dog into space.

Plus, Marxists just seemed cooler, which is why you never see Milton Friedman t

-shirts. Until now, available at DFTBA.com.

I like that, Stan, but I'm more of a centrist. Can I get a Keynes shirt?

Yes!

Ah, now that's hot.

But Soviet socialism did not finally prove to be a viable alternative to

industrial capitalism.

Over time, state-run economies just generally don't fare as well as private

enterprise, and people like living in a world where they can have more stuff.

More importantly, Soviet policies were just bad.

Collectivized agriculture stymied production and led to famine,

suppression of dissent and traditional cultures made people angry, and no one

likes suffering the humiliation of driving a Yugo.

But why the Cold War ended when it did is one of the most interesting questions

of the 20th century. It probably wasn't Ronald Reagan bankrupting the Soviets,

despite what some politicians believe.

The USSR had more satellite states that it needed to spend more to prop up than

the US had to invest in its allies.

And the Soviet system could never keep up with economic growth in the West. But

probably the individual most responsible for the end of the Cold War was Mikhail

Baryshnikov. No? Mikhail Gorbachev? Well, that's boring.

I always thought the Soviets danced their way to freedom. No?

It was glasnost and perestroika?

Alright. Right, but Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost opened up the

Soviet political and economic systems with contested local elections, less

restricted civil society groups, less censorship, more autonomy for the Soviet

republics, more non-state-run businesses, and more autonomy for state

-run farms.

Glasnost, or openness, led to more information from the West, and less

censorship led to a flood of criticism as people realized how much poorer the

Second World was than the First.

And one by one, often quite suddenly, former communist states collapsed.

In Germany, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and East and West Germany were

reunited in 1990.

In Poland, the Gdansk dockworkers' union Solidarity turned into a mass political

movement and won 99 of the 100 seats it was allowed to contest in the 1989

election. Hungary held multi-party elections in 1990.

The same year, mass demonstrations led to elections in Czechoslovakia. In 1993,

that country split up into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the happiest and

most mutually beneficial divorce since Scheer left Sunni. Of course, sometimes

the transition away from communism was violent and painful.

In Romania, for instance, the communist dictator Ceausescu held onto power until

he was tried and put before a firing squad at the end of 1989.

And it took until 1996 for a non-communist government to take power

there. And in Yugoslavia, well, not so great.

And in Russia, it's a little bit Putin-y. Yeah!

Putin! But just 20 years later, it's hard to believe that the world was once

dominated by two superpowers held in check by mutually assured destruction.

What's really amazing to me, though, is that until the late 1980s, it felt like

the Cold War was going to go on forever.

Time seems to slow as it approaches us, and living in the post-Cold War nuclear

age, we should remember that the past feels distant even when it's near, and

that the future seems assured even though it isn't.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to

talk about decolonization.

The empire's European states formed in the 19th century proved about as stable

and long-lasting as Genghis Khan's, leading to so many of the nation-states

we know and love today.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Burundi. Did you ever know you're my Burundi?

You're everything- Stan, don't cut to the intro! I sing like an angel!

So unless you're over 60, and let's face it internet, you're not, you've only

ever known a world of nation states.

But as we've seen from Egypt to Alexander the Great to China to Rome to

the Mongols, who for once are not the exception here, to the Ottomans and the

Americas, empire has long been the dominant way we've organized ourselves

politically, or at least the way that other people have organized us.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, so to them Star Wars would have been like a completely

different movie. Most of them would have been like Go Empire!

Crush those rebels!

Yeah, also they'd be like, what is this screen that displays crisp, moving

images of events that are not currently occurring?

Also, not to get off topic, but you never learn what happens after the rebel

victory in Star Wars, and as we've learned from the French Revolution to

the Arab Spring, revolution is often the easy part.

I mean, you think destroying a Death Star is hard? Try negotiating a trade

treaty with... Gungans.

Right, anyway, so the late 20th century was not the first time that empires

disintegrated. Rome comes to mind, also the Persians, and of course the American

Revolution ended one kind of European imperial experiment.

But in all those cases, empires struck back.

You see what I did there? I mean, Britain lost its 13 colonies, but later

controlled half of Africa and all of India. And what makes the recent

decolonization so special is that at least so far, no empires have emerged to

replace the ones that fell. And this was largely due to World War II, because on

some level, the Allies were fighting to stop Nazi imperialism. Hitler wanted to

take over Central Europe, and Africa, and probably the Middle East. And the

Allied defeat of the Nazis discredited the whole idea of empire.

So the English, French, and Americans couldn't very well say to the colonial

troops who'd fought alongside them, thank you so much for helping us to

thwart Germany's imperialistic ambitions as a reward.

Please hand in your rifle and return to your state of subjugation. Plus, most of

the big colonial powers, especially France, Britain, and Japan, had been

significantly weakened by World War II, by which I mean that large swaths of

them looked Like this.

So post-war decolonization happened all over the place. The British colony that

had once been India became three independent nations. By the way, is this

Gandhi or is this Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi?

In Southeast Asia, French Indochina became Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

And the Dutch East Indies became Indonesia.

But of course, when we think about decolonization, we mostly think about

Africa going from this...

to this.

So we're going to oversimplify here because we have to, but decolonization

throughout Afro-Eurasia had some similar characteristics.

Because it occurred in the context of the Cold War, many of these new nations

had to choose between socialist and capitalist influences, which shaped

their futures.

While many of these new countries eventually adopted some form of

democracy, the road there was often rocky.

Also, decolonization often involved violence, usually the overthrow of

colonial elites.

For now, let's turn to the most famous non-violent decolonization, or

supposedly so anyway, that of India.

The story begins, more or less, in 1885 with the founding of the Indian National

Congress. Congress party leaders and other nationalists in India were usually

from the elite classes.

Initially, they didn't even demand independence from Britain. But they were

interested in creating a modern Indian nation rather than a return to some

ancient pre-colonial form, possibly because India was, and is, hugely

diverse, and really only unified into a single state when under imperial rule by

one group or another, whether the Mauryans, the Guptas, the Mughals, or

the Okay, let's go to the Thought Bubble. The best-known Indian

nationalist, Mohandas K. Gandhi, was a fascinating character.

A British-educated lawyer born to a wealthy family, he's known for making

his own clothes, his long fasts, and his battles to alleviate poverty, improve

the rights of women, and achieve a unified Indian independence from

Britain. In terms of decolonization, he stands out for his use of nonviolence

and his linking it to a somewhat mythologized view of Indian history.

I mean, after all, there's plenty of violence in India's past and in its

heroic epics, but Gandhi managed to harken back to a past that used non

-violence to bring change.

Gandhi and his compatriot Jawaharlal Nehru believed that a single India could

continue to be ruled by Indian elites and somehow transcend the tension

between the country's Hindu majority and its sizable Muslim minority.

In this, they were less practical than their contemporary, Muhammad Ali Jinnah,

the leader of the Muslim League, who felt, to quote historian Ainsley Embry,

that the unified India of which the Congress spoke was an artificial one,

created and maintained.

by British bayonets.

Jinnah proved correct, and in 1947, when the British left, their Indian colony

was partitioned into the modern state of India and West and East Pakistan, the

latter of which became Bangladesh in 1971.

While it's easy to congratulate both the British and the Indian governments on an

orderly and non-violent transfer of power, the reality of partition was

neither orderly nor non-violent.

About 12 million people were displaced as Hindus in Pakistan moved to India and

Muslims in India moved to Pakistan as people left their home, sometimes

unwillingly, there was violence, and all told, as many as half a million people

were killed, more than died in the bloody Indonesian battle for

independence. So while it's true that the massive protests that forced Britain

to end its colonization of India were non-violent, the emergence of the

independent states involved really wasn't. Thanks, Thought Bubble. All this

violence devastated Gandhi, whose lengthy and repeated hunger strikes to

end violence had mixed results, and who was eventually assassinated by a Hindu

nationalist who felt that Gandhi was too sympathetic to Muslims.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to hunger strikers.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

A cupcake?

Stan, this just seems cruel.

These are from Meredith the Intern to celebrate Marabration, the holiday she

invented to celebrate the anniversary of her singleness.

Dear hunger strikers, do you remember earlier when I said that Gandhi harkened

back to a mythologized Indian past?

Well, it turns out that...

Hunger striking in India goes back all the way to like the fifth century BCE.

Hunger strikes have been used around the world, including British and American

suffragettes who hunger struck to get the vote. And in pre-Christian Ireland,

when you felt wronged by someone, it was common practice to sit on their doorstep

and hunger strike until your grievance was addressed.

And sometimes it even works. I really admire you hunger strikers, but I lack

the courage of your convictions. Also, this is an amazing cupcake.

Since independence, India has largely been a success story, although we will

talk about the complexity of India's emerging global capitalism next week.

For now, though, let's travel east to Indonesia, a huge nation of over 13,000

islands that has largely been ignored here on Crash Course World History due

to our long-standing bias against islands.

Like, we haven't even mentioned Greenland on this show. The

Greenlanders, of course, haven't complained because they don't have the

So the Dutch exploited their island colonies with the system of

culturstessel, in which all peasants had to set aside one-fifth of their land to

grow cash crops for export to the Netherlands. This accounted for 25% of

the total Dutch national budget, and it explains why they have all kinds of

fancy buildings despite technically living underwater.

They're like sea monkeys.

This system was rather less popular in Indonesia, and the Dutch didn't offer

much in exchange.

They couldn't even defend their colony from the Japanese, who occupied it for

most of World War II, during which time the Japanese furthered the cause of it

Indonesian nationalism by placing native Indonesians in more prominent positions

of power, including Sukarno, who became Indonesia's first prime minister.

After the war, the Dutch, with British help, tried to hold on to their

Indonesian colonies with so-called police actions, which went on for more

than four years before Indonesia finally won its independence in 1950.

Over in the French colonies of Indochina, so-called because they were

neither Indian nor Chinese, things were even more violent.

The end of colonization was disastrous in Cambodia, where the 17-year reign of

Noradom Sihanouk gave way to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, which massacred a

stunning 21% of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.

In Vietnam, the French fought communist-led nationalists, especially

Ho Chi Minh, from almost the moment World War II ended until 1954, when the

French were defeated.

And then the Americans heard that there was a land war available in Asia, so

they quickly took over from the French, and communists did not fully control

Vietnam until 1975.

Despite still being ostensibly communist, Vietnam now manufactures all

kinds of stuff that we liken America, especially sneakers.

More about that next week too, but now to Egypt. You'll remember that Egypt

bankrupted itself in the 19th century trying to industrialize, and ever since

had been ruled by an Egyptian king who took his orders from the British.

So while technically Egypt had been independent since 1922, it was very

dependent independence.

But that changed in the 1950s when the king was overthrown by the army. The

army commander who led that coup was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who proved brilliant

at playing the US and the USSR off each other to the benefit of Egypt.

Nasser's was a largely secular nation. nationalism, and he and his successors

saw one of the other anti-imperialistic nationalist forces in Egypt, the Muslim

Brotherhood, as a threat. So once in power, Nasser and the army banned the

Muslim Brotherhood, forcing it underground where it would disappear and

never become an issue again. Wait, what's that?

And finally, let's turn to Central and Southern Africa.

One of the most problematic legacies of colonialism was its geography.

Colonial boundaries became redefined as the borders of new nation states, even

where those boundaries were arbitrary or, in some cases, pernicious.

The best known example is in Rwanda, where two very different tribes, the

Hutu and the Tutsis, were combined into one nation. But more generally, the

colonizers' focus on value extraction really hurt these new nations. Europeans

claimed to bring civilization and economic development to their colonies,

but this economic development focused solely on building infrastructure to get

resources and export them. Now whether European powers deliberately sabotaged

development in Africa is a hot-button topic we're going to stay well away

from, but this much is inarguably true.

When the Europeans left, African nations did not have the institutions necessary

to thrive in the post-war industrial world. They had very few schools, for

instance, and even fewer universities.

Like when the Congo achieved independence from Belgium in 1960, there

were 16 Congolese college graduates in a nation of 14 million people.

Also, in many of these new countries, the traditional elites had been

undermined by imperialism. Most Europeans didn't rule their African

possessions directly, but rather through the proxies of local rulers. And once

Europeans left, those local rulers, the upper classes, were seen as illegitimate

collaborators. And this meant that a new group of rulers had to rise up to take

their place, often with very little experience in governance.

I mean, Zimbabwe's long-serving dictator Robert Mugabe was a high school teacher.

Let that be a lesson to you. your teachers may have dictatorial ambitions.

But most strongmen have emerged, of course, from the military.

Joseph Mobutu seized power in the Congo, which he held from 1965 until his death

in 1997.

Idi Amin was military dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979.

Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya from 1977 until 2011.

The list goes on, but I don't want to give you the wrong impression about

Africa. Because while the continent does have less freedom and lower levels of

development than other regions in the world, many African nations show strong

and consistent signs of growth despite the challenges of decolonization.

Botswana, for instance, has gone from 70% literacy to 85% in the past 15 years

and has seen steady GDP growth over 5%. Benin's economy has grown in each of the

past 12 years, which is better than Europe or the US can say. In 2002,

Kenya's life expectancy was 47.

Today, it's 63.

Ethiopia's per capita GDP has doubled over the past 10 years, and Mauritania

has seen its infant mortality rate fall by more than 40%. Now, this progress is

spotty and fragile, but it's important to note that these nations have existed

on average about 13 years less than my dad.

Of course, past experience with the fall of empires hasn't given us much cause

for hope, but many citizens of these new nations are seeing real progress.

That said, disaster might lurk around the corner.

It's hard to say. I mean, now more than ever, we're trying to tell the story of

humans from inside the story of humans.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today is the

penultimate episode of Crash Course. We're going to talk about globalization.

This was going to be the last episode, but I just can't quit you, world

historians. So today we're going to talk about globalization, and in doing so,

we're going to talk about why we study history at all. Ooh, ooh, Mr. Green!

Yes, me from the past? We study history to get a good grade, to go to a good

college, to get a good job. So you can make more money than you would otherwise

make and be a slightly larger cog among the seven billion gears that turn the

planet's economic engine, right? And that's fine, but if that's why you

really study history, and you need to understand all the ways that the t-shirt

you're wearing is both the cause and result of your ambition.

This t-shirt contains the global economy, its efficiency, its massive

surplus, its hyper-connectedness, and its unsustainability. This t-shirt tells

one story of globalization, so let's follow it.

So globalization is a cultural phenomenon. It's reflected in

contemporary artwork and population migration and linguistic changes.

But we're going to focus, as we so often have during Crash Course, on trade.

So the world today, as symbolized by our international felt melange, experiences

widespread global economic interdependence. Now, of course,

economic interdependence and the accompanying cultural borrowing are

nothing new. You'll remember that we found trade documents from the Indus

Valley civilization all the way in Mesopotamia. But for a few reasons, the

scale of this trade has increased. dramatically.

One, multinational corporations have global reach and increasing power.

Two, travel and shipping are cheap and safe.

It took about two months to cross the Atlantic in 1800.

Today, it takes about five hours by plane and less than a week by ship.

Three, governments have decreased tariffs and regulations on international

trade, leading to what is sometimes called, euphemistically, free trade.

To which I say, if this trade is so free, how come BBC America is in the

premium tier of my cable package?

To understand the role that governments play in international trade, let's look

again at this t-shirt. This t-shirt, like most t-shirts made in the world,

contains 100% American cotton.

And that's not because the US makes the best cotton or the most efficient

cotton, it's because the US government subsidizes cotton production.

And that's what makes this cotton cheaper than cotton of similar quality

from Brazil or India.

But in the last 30 years, the US's share of cotton exports has gone down as

Brazil, India, and Africa's cotton exports go up. And that trend will

likely continue as the US moves away from its expensive cotton subsidies.

In fact, these days it's already possible to find t-shirts with

Brazilian, Indian, or Ugandan cotton, or a mixture of cottons from all around the

world. But because the American government doesn't subsidize industry in

the way it does agricultural production, the actual spinning and weaving of the

cotton takes place in lower wage countries. Mexico, Guatemala, Vietnam,

China, India, China, China, sometimes even China.

And then the finished shirts, called blanks, are usually sent to Europe or

the United States for screen printing and then sold. You would think the most

expensive part of this process is the part where we ship this across the pac-

Pacific Ocean, turn it into this and then ship it back across the Pacific

Ocean. But you'd be wrong.

Wholesale t-shirt blanks can cost as little as $3.

The expense is in the printing, the retail side of things, and paying the

designer at Thought Bubble who was tasked with the difficult job of

creating a Mongol who is at once cute and terrifying.

So contemporary global trade is pretty anarchic and unregulated, at least by

international institutions and national governments.

Much of this has to do with academic economists, mostly in the US and Europe,

who have argued with great success that governmental regulation diminishes

prosperity by limiting growth.

Now some nations in Latin America the Caribbean, and Africa haven't been

particularly keen to pursue free trade, but they've been bullied into it by

larger economies with whom they desperately need to trade.

So in the past 30 years, we've seen all these emerging markets lowering their

tariffs, getting rid of regulation, and privatizing formerly state-run

businesses. And they often do that to appease the International Monetary Fund,

which offers low-interest loans to developing world economies with the

motto, Many Strings Attached. Now whether these decreased regulations have

been a net positive for these developing world economies is a subject of much

debate, and we will wade into it, but not until next week. First, we need to

understand more about the nature of this trade. So you'll remember from the

Industrial Revolution episode that industrial Western powers produced most

of the manufactured goods, which were then sold in international markets. But

you'll also remember that domestic consumption was extremely important.

I mean, almost all early Model Ts were built by Americans.

and bought by Americans.

But since the 1960s, and especially today, former non-industrialized parts

of the world have been manufacturing consumer goods for domestic markets,

yes, but primarily for foreign ones.

This t-shirt, made in China and the Dominican Republic before being imported

to Mexico and then to the United States, is a primary example of what I'm talking

about, but so is the computer that you're watching me on. Your computer was

probably manufactured in China, but with parts from all over the world,

especially Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

And this international Manufacturing is always finding, like, new markets, too.

Like, Brazil, for instance, has a huge technology sector. They make iPads

there, actually.

Sorry, I'm trying to play Angry Birds. But what all these countries have in

common is that while there is a domestic market for things like iPads and t

-shirts, the foreign markets are much, much bigger.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to Cookie Monster.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh, it's a cookie dough flavored balance bar.

For people who love cookies and pretending to be healthy. Dear Cookie

Monster, here's the thing, man. You don't have a stomach. That's why when

you put a cookie in your mouth, it crumbles up and then it just falls out

of your mouth.

But here's what fascinates me, Cookie Monster.

I believe you when you say you love cookies. It doesn't matter that you

can't actually eat cookies, because where you would have a stomach, you

instead have someone's arm. And that, Cookie Monster, is what makes you a

beautiful symbol for contemporary consumption.

You just keep eating, even though you can't eat.

Cookie Monster.

You are the best and the worst of us.

Best wishes, John Green.

So although die-hard Marxists might still resist this, by 2012 it's become

pretty obvious that global capitalism has been good for a lot of people.

It's certainly increased worldwide economic output, and while American

autoworkers may suffer job loss, moving manufacturing jobs from high-wage to

lower-wage countries allows a greater number of people to live better than

they did when the first and second worlds monopolized manufacturing.

And while I don't want to conflate correlation and causation, some 600

million people have emerged from poverty in the last 30 years, at least according

to the World Bank's definition of poverty, which is living on less than $1

.25 a day.

Americans can argue about whether absurdly inexpensive clothes, shoes, and

televisions are worth the domestic, economic, and social dislocation, but

for the Vietnamese worker stitching a pair of sneakers, that job represents an

opportunity for a longer, healthier, and more secure life than she would have had

if those shoes were made in the USA.

But before we jump on the celebratory globalization bandwagon, let's

acknowledge that this brave new world has some side effects.

For instance, it maybe hasn't been so good for families, it definitely has not

been good for the environment, and also there's a chance that globalization will

spark, like, the end of the human species.

But we're going to talk about all that next week. For today, let's bring on the

bandwagon and ride straight for the Thought Bubble.

So these days, people move more than they ever have.

21% of people living in Canada were born somewhere else, as was an astonishing 69

% of Kuwait's current population.

Migration has become easier because, one, air travel is pretty cheap,

especially if you only take a few plane trips in your life. And two, it's

relatively easy and inexpensive to stay in touch with relatives living far away,

thanks to Skype, mobile phones, and inexpensive calling cards.

Also three, even with increased industrialization in the developing

world, economic opportunities are often much better in wealthy countries.

Remittances, money sent home by people working abroad, are now a huge driver of

economic growth in the developing world. Like in Tajikistan, for instance,

remittances are 35% of the country's total growth. domestic product.

With all these people moving around the world, it's not surprising that

globalization also means cultural blending.

When people move, they don't just give up their literary, culinary, artistic,

and musical traditions.

Globalized culture is a bit of a paradox, though, because some people see

culture today as increasingly Americanized, right?

Like, Friends is currently broadcast in over 100 countries.

You can find Diet Coke for sale deep in the jungles of Madagascar. The NBA is

huge in China. There are fewer languages spoken today, and probably less cultural

diversity. But on the other hand, an individual's access to diverse cultural

experience has never been greater.

Bollywood movies, Swedish hip-hop, Brazilian soap operas, highlights from

Congolese football matches. These are all available to us. Culinary cultural

fusion is all the rage.

More novels are translated from languages than ever before, although

fewer actually read. And in the surest sign of cultural globalization,

football, the world's game, has finally reached America, where broadcasts of the

greatest collective enterprise humanity has ever known, Liverpool Football Club,

got record ratings in 2020.

Thanks, Thought Bubble. Hey, one last request.

Could you put me in a Liverpool jersey on the pitch at Anfield?

Raising the Premier League trophy with Steven Gerrard hugging me? Yes! Just

like that! Oh Thought Bubble, I love you so much!

Okay, so this all brings us to how globalization has changed us and whether

it's for the better. Assuming you make the minimum wage here in the United

States, this t-shirt, purchased at your friendly neighborhood e-tailer DFTBA

.com, will cost you about three hours worth of work. And yes, that does

include shipping.

By the time it arrives at your door, the cotton within that t-shirt will have

traveled by truck, train, ship, possibly even an airplane if you opt for priority

shipping. And it will probably have traveled further than Magellan did

during his famous circumnavigation of the globe.

You get all that for three hours of work. By contrast, a far less

comfortable garment several hundred years ago would have cost you ten times

as much work. But these improvements have been accompanied by change so

radical that we struggle to contextualize it. Like, the human

population of our planet over time looks like this.

Dang. Like, in 1800, there were a billion human beings on this planet, and

that was more than had ever been seen before.

And we live more than twice as long on average as humans did just two centuries

ago, largely due to improved healthcare for women in childbirth and their

infants, but also thanks to antibiotics and the second agricultural revolution

that began in the 1950s, the so-called Green Revolution, that saw increased use

of chemical fertilizers lead to dramatically higher crop yields.

Of course, these gains haven't been evenly distributed around the world, but

chances are, if you're watching this, you ace.

survive childbirth, and feel reasonably confident that your children will as

well. That's a new feeling for humans, and as a parent I can assure you, it's a

miracle, and one to be celebrated.

We study history so that we can understand these changes, and so that we

can remember both what we've gained and lost in getting to where we are. Next

week, our last week, we'll look at the many facets of globalization that aren't

causes for celebration.

But for today, let's just pause to consider how we got from here to here.

How the relentless and unquenchable ambition of humans led to a world where

the entire contents of the Library of Alexandria would fit on my iPhone, along

with recordings of everything Mozart ever composed.

In such a world, it's easy to feel that we are big and powerful, maybe even

invincible. It's easy to feel that, and also dangerous.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

Hi, I'm John Green and this is the final episode of Crash Course World History.

Not because we've reached the end of history, but because we've reached the

particular middle where I happen to be living. Today we'll be considering

whether globalization is a good thing, and along the way we'll try to do

something that you may not be used to doing in history classes.

Imagining the future. Mr. Green! Mr. Green! In the future, I'm going to get

to second base with Molly Brown.

No you won't, me from the past. But the fact that when asked to imagine the

future, you imagine your future says a lot about the contemporary... And listen

to me from the past. While there's no question that your solipsistic

individualism is bad both for you and for our species, the broader

implications of individualism in general are a lot more complex.

Man, I'm gonna miss you intro. So last week, ta-da, we discussed how global

economic interdependence has led, on average, to longer, healthier, more

prosperous lives for humans, not to mention an astonishing change in the

overall human population.

In the West, globalization has also led to the rise of a service economy.

In the US and Europe, most people now work not in agriculture or

manufacturing, but in some kind of service sector.

Healthcare, retail, education, entertainment, information technology,

internet videos about world history, And that switch has really changed our

psychology, especially the psychology of upper classes living in the

industrialized world.

I mean, to quote Frederick Jameson, we are so far removed from the realities of

production and work that we inhabit a dream world of artificial stimuli and

televised experience.

Think of it this way, if you had to kill a chicken every time you visited KFC,

you would probably eat fewer chickens.

Another change in psychology?

Many historians of the now note that globalization has also led to a

celebration of individualism.

particularly in the wake of the failures of the Marxist collectivist utopias. The

generation that lived through the Depression and World War II saw large

-scale collectivist responses to both those crises.

And they were responses that limited freedom, like the military draft, for

instance, which limited your freedom, you know, not to be a soldier. Or the

collectivization of health insurance seen in most of the post-war West, which

limited your freedom to go bankrupt from healthcare costs.

Or also government programs like Social Security, which limit your freedom not

to pay for old people's retirement. But since the 1960s, the ascendant idea of

personal freedom minimally limited by government intervention has become very

powerful. Even the Catholic Church was part of this new search for individual

freedom, as the Second Vatican Council relaxed church rules in ways that

weakened central authority, made concessions to individual styles of

worship, even said that people of different religions could go to heaven.

What good is heaven if it's gonna be full of Protestants? It's just gonna be

like Minnesota.

So here in the last episode of Crash Course World History, in the last 30

seconds, I've offended, uh...

Five-sixths of the world's population in the form of non-Catholics and all

Republicans and probably some political moderates who are confused about what

Obama's health care law will and will not do.

Stan,

maybe I should just make this episode just an extended rant.

Where I reveal all of my political biases, and also my personal biases.

Look, you're never going to meet a historian who doesn't have biases, but

good historians try to acknowledge their biases, and I am biased toward Canada

and its awesome healthcare system. I can't lie, I'm very jealous of you guys.

But perhaps the greatest effect of the victory of individualism was on sex and

the family.

We haven't talked much about sex because my brother's teaching biology, which is

basically just sex, but sex is pretty important historically because it's how

we keep happening.

But in the 20th century, This greater variety and availability of

contraception made it possible for people to experiment with multiple

sexual partners and help to uncouple sex from childbearing, which was awesome,

but individualism also had a destabilizing effect on families.

As the great Leo Tolstoy put it, all happy families are alike, but each

unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

But when your individual fulfillment trumps all, you needn't live amid your

uniquely unhappy family, you can just leave.

So divorce rates have skyrocketed in the past few decades, and not just in the

US. During the turn of the 21st century, divorce rates in China reached nearly

25%, with 70% of those divorces initiated by women. Technology has also

driven families apart, as parents and children spend increasing time alone in

front of their individual screens, sharing fewer experiences.

That's individualism too, but not of a kind that we usually celebrate.

But probably the biggest consequence of globalization and the ensuing rise in

human population has been humanity's effect.

on the environment.

While populations have increased partly thanks to better yields from existing

farmland, much more land has also been brought under cultivation in the past

half century.

Often this meant cutting down trees and valuable rainforests. The best known

example of this is what's going on in the Amazon, but it happens worldwide.

And we're losing land not just for food, but also to grow the global economy.

Oh, it's time for the open letter?

An open letter to flowers.

But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh. It's fake flowers.

Thank you, Stan.

One for behind each ear.

Dear flowers, you capture the best and the worst of the globalized economy.

You're so pretty, even the fake ones are pretty, but the real ones are constantly

dying. They've got to be harvested and shipped and cut very efficiently, and

it's a global phenomenon, like there are flowers in my corner market from Africa.

These are from China, but because they are plastic, they could just be shipped

in a shipping container.

More people can afford to apologize by giving their romantic partners

professionally cut and arranged roses. than in any time in human history, but

in that we have lost something, which is that the whole idea of flowers is that

you had to go out into the field and, like, cut them and arrange them yourself

to apologize.

It's not supposed to be, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday, here's $8 worth of

work that was done in Kenya. It's supposed to be, I'm sorry I forgot your

birthday, so I went into the fracking forest and got you some fracking

flowers. Anyway, flowers, best wishes.

John Green.

Aww, you guys got me flowers for my last episode of World History.

Okay, let's go to the Thought Bubble.

As worldwide production and consumption increases, we use more resources,

especially water and fossil fuels.

Globalization has made the average human richer, and rich people tend to use more

of... everything, but especially energy.

This has already resulted in climate change, which will likely accelerate.

The global economy isn't a zero-sum game, like, I don't need to become more

poor in order for someone else to become more rich.

But growth, at least so far, has been dependent upon unsustainable use of the

planet's resources.

The planet can't sustain seven billion automobiles, for instance, or seven

billion frequent flyers, although most of us who can afford to drive or fly

feel entitled to do so.

You'll remember that when we talked about the Industrial Revolution, we

discussed the virtuous cycle of more efficiency making things cheaper, which

in turn made them easier to buy, which increased demand, which increased

efficiency. But from the perspective of the planet, each turn in that cycle

takes something.

More land under cultivation, more carbon emissions, more resource extraction.

That can't go on forever, but worryingly, our current models of

economic growth don't allow for any other way. Thanks, Thought Bubble. And

then there is our astonishingly robust Health. Although much of the world has

been ravaged by HIV-AIDS for the past three decades, there's been a relative

lack of global pandemics since the 1918 flu.

And that's particularly surprising given increased population density and more

travel between population centers.

China has seen 150 million people leave the countryside for cities in the last

20 years. This was Shanghai in 1990?

And this is Shanghai in 2010.

The population of Lagos was 41,000 in 1900.

Today, it's almost 8 million.

Of course, people have been moving from country to city for a long time.

Remember Gilgamesh? But the pace of that change has dramatically accelerated.

Similarly, there's nothing new about international trade, but its pace has

also increased dramatically.

In 1960, trade accounted for 24% of the world's GDP.

Today, it's more than doubled that. Almost no human being alive today lives

with stuff only manufactured in their home country.

But a thousand years ago, only the richest of the rich could benefit from

the Silk Road.

Still, trade isn't new, and while it's tempting to say that the types of goods

being traded – pharmaceuticals, computers, software, financial services

– represent something wholly new, you could just as easily see this as part of

the evolution of trade itself.

At some point, silk was seen as a new trade good, as taste change and

consumers become more affluent, the things they want to buy change.

So is anything really different, or is it all just accelerated?

Well, some historians argue that an economically interdependent world is

much less likely to go to war. And that may be true, but increasing global

cultural and economic integration hasn't led to an end to violence.

I mean, we've seen large-scale ethnic and nationalistic violence from Rwanda

to the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic Republic of Congo to

Afghanistan.

Globalization has not rid the world of violence. But there is an ideological

shift in the age of globalization that does seem pretty new, and that's the

turn to democracy.

Now, this isn't the limited democracy of the ancient Greeks or the quirky

Republican system originally developed in the U.S. There are almost as many

kinds of democracies as there are nations experiencing democracy.

The fact is, however, that democracy and political freedom, especially the

freedom to participate in and influence the government, have been on the rise

all over the world since the 1980s, and especially since 19- For instance, if

you looked at the governments of most Latin American countries during most of

the 20th century, you would usually find them ruled by military strongmen. Now,

with a couple of exceptions, Fidel...

Hugo? Stan, are they behind me right now? Because if they're behind me, I am

in favor of collectivizing oil revenue and distributing it to the poor.

If they're not behind me, that's a terrible idea. Right, but anyway,

democracy is now flourishing in most of Latin America.

Probably the most famous democratic success story is South Africa, which

jettisoned decades of apartheid in the 1990s and elected former dissident

Nelson Mandela as its first black president in 1994.

It also adopted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world,

but it's worth remembering that democracy and economic success don't

always go hand in hand as much as some Americans wish they would. Many new

African democracies continue to struggle, the same is true in some Latin

American countries, and China has shown that you don't need democracy in order

to experience economic growth.

But for a few countries, especially Brazil and India, the combination of

democracy and economic liberalism has unleashed impressive growth that has

lifted millions out of poverty.

So can we say that it's good then? Can we celebrate globalization in spite of

its destabilizing effect? on families and the environment?

Well, here's where we have to imagine the future, because if some superbug

shows up tomorrow and it travels through all these global trade routes and kills

every living human, then globalization will have been very bad for human

history, specifically by ending it. If climate change continues to accelerate

and displaces billions of people and causes widespread famines and flooding,

then we will remember this period of human history as short-sighted, self

-indulgent, and tremendously destructive.

On the other hand, if we discover an asteroid hurtling toward Earth and

mobilize global industry and technology in such a way that we lose Bruce Willis

but save the world, then globalization will be celebrated for millennia. I

mean, assuming we have millennia and can convince Bruce Willis to go. In short,

to understand the present, we have to imagine the future.

That's the thing about history. It depends on where you're standing.

From where I'm standing, globalization has been a net positive, but then again,

it's been a pretty good run for heterosexual males of European descent.

Critics of globalization point out that billions haven't benefited much, if at

all, from all this economic prosperity, and that the polarization of wealth is

growing, both within and across nations. And those criticisms are valid, and they

are troubling.

But they aren't new. Disparities between those who have more and those who have

less have existed pretty much from the moment agriculture enabled us to

accumulate a surplus.

And sometimes this inequality has been a big concern, as it was with Jesus and

with Muhammad.

At other times, not so much.

Inequalities are as old as human history, and almost as old as the debate

about them. One thing that is new, however, is our ability to learn about

them, to discuss them, and hopefully to find solutions for them together as a

global community that is better integrated and more connected than it

has ever been before.

Because here's the other thing about history.

You are making it. That old idea that history is the deeds of great men? That

was wrong.

Celebrated individuals do shape history, but so do the rest of us. And while it's

true that many historical forces – malaria, meteors from space – aren't

human, It's also true that every human is a historical force.

You are changing the world every day, and it is our hope that by looking at

the history that was made before us, we can see our own crucial decisions in a

broader context.

And I believe that context can help us make better choices and better changes.

Thanks for watching.

Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is

Meredith Danko, the associate producer is Danica Johnson, the show is written

by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, and our graphics team

is Thought Bubble. Thanks for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't

forget to be awesome.