The REAL reasons European colonialism was possible
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- čas přidán 19. 12. 2021
- Contrary to popular belief, the European colonization of the Americas was made possible not by the Europeans having superior technology, but by the inadvertent introduction of pathogens from the Eastern Hemisphere that had not previously been present in the Americas.
This accounts for the fact that when the Europeans were colonizing the Americas in the 1500s and 1600s, they were not also colonizing Africa and Asia (with a few exceptions). It was not possible for the Europeans to colonize most parts of Africa and Asia at the time, because the people there already had the same technologies and the same diseases that the Europeans had.
Of course, Europeans did end up colonizing Africa and Asia, but not until the 1800s. This was suddenly possible then, when it hadn't been earlier, because the Industrial Revolution happened to begin in Europe then. Within just a few generations, industrial technology also spread to the rest of the world, but by then the Europeans and people of European descent had managed to establish their preeminence in world affairs.
The economic, military, and technological superiority of the countries of Europe and of people of European descent traces back only as far as the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. Before that, Europeans had no advantages over the countries of Asia and Africa.
Based on the comments, it appears that some viewers don't understand how colonization of the Americas happened or what the battles between settlers and natives looked like. It wasn't big European field armies with heavy cavalry and artillery going up against bows and arrows. The Europeans were not shipping armies across the ocean to the Americas, and the natives did in fact use firearms from an early date. I recommend watching the video "Indigenous Weapons and Tactics of King Philip's War" on the channel Atun-Shei Films for an example of what the natives were working with.
czcams.com/video/VMXKXoA1_gQ/video.html
Bro is a fraud - ain’t no fucking way guns and ships were a minor factor to this situation
I find this video too simplistic. It's a resonable argument, that diseases were an important factor in conquering Americas, it's a good point because it isn't something people usually bring up. But saying that lack of diseases prevented Europeans from conquering Africa and Asia is just bollocks. What made China so easy to conquer, was it's disfunctional, not working goverment system, corrupt in every way possible. China throughout the history almost didn't change in terms of the way it's goverened, hence it has been conquered multiple times by different other nations: Mongols, Manchus, even Japanese more recently. Conquering people, after the conquest were always assimilated into Chinese culture, after time and generations repeating the exact same govermental errors, leading to another downfall.
On the other hand, in Africa, there weren't a centralized goverment, people were split into multiple smaller groups, divided so much, the land was easily conquered by more coordinated forces from abroad, especially when you could play warring factions against each other. Both situations had nothing to do with diseases, nor the technology was a major factor, it had to do with disfunctional goverments on both continents. I would like to remind everyone, that battle at Lake Poyang in China took a place at 1363, where two different Chinese factions used gunpowder, canons and grenades on board of ships extensively on tens of thousands of ships. It's not that the technology was not present there, it's that it has not been properly utilized on a govermental level, and hundreds year from this, proper military gunpowder usage was less, not more popular. Financial, organizational and corruption issues again.
@@dziku2222 Ah yes the notorious "coordinated forces" of the 19th century who managed to march through the entirety of the central african rainforest battling any native soldiers they came across, the african soldiers who somehow were technologically at the same level but never managed to have the same amount of coordination because of infighting. Where can i find more information on this event in history?
@@cazek445 upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Scramble-for-Africa-1880-1913-v2.png
No you’re just completely wrong.
A society that has not discovered metallurgy can only beat the advanced society numerologically.
The societies of Europe and Asia were exponentially more advanced than those of the Americas and Africa.
Actually, in the 1500's the Europeans were more technologically advanced than the New World peoples in one, specific way: they had far superior transportation. European sailboats were able to cross the Atlantic which meant that Europeans could get to the Americas but not vice versa. This ability incentivized Europeans to keep crossing the Atlantic, not just for conquest, but for economic development. This cannot be overstated. The Spanish Galleons that the conquistadors sailed in were a recent development and were state of the art.
Yes, this is even more striking with the Portuguese, whose colonial expansion was mostly in the Indian Ocean. Even though they were facing people of an otherwise similar technological level, their powerful ships allowed them to dominate the sea lanes and impose their will on kingdoms half the world away.
and metal working...
Wrong. The Spanish did NOT take down the Aztec Empire; their TLAXCALAN allies did. Nor did the Spanish have the man power to subjugate and ethnically cleanse the natives from Mexico and South America, which is WHY there's so many brown mixed race MESTIZOS in Latin America.
The Spaniards would have liked it to be all Spanish blood Europeans living there if they could, BUT the natives' populations were still high and in full force. They HAD to interbreed with them to at least get them to become culturally Spanish, since it was impossible to make them genetically so. This was especially true in my family's home state of Zacatecas. The "Chichimeca" were a group of nomads that were the ONLY Indians that the Spanish never outright conquered. Their ability to live off the desert land and know where to ambush supply lines and civilian homesteads made it impossible for them to conquer the area and safely move north, so they recruited some of their Tlazcalan allies and mestizos to go to Zacatecas in order to interbreed with the locals and make them culturally Spanish in exchange for land and money. And it worked! They gave up their nomadic ways and adopted Catholicism along with their new mestiza wives.
The early interbreeding with the Spanish gave the natives in Latin America the immunity from European diseases, and since mixed blood mestizos were already discriminated against they would tend to breed more with other natives or mestizos, which only boosted the number of brown people instead of whites.
The English however didn't have this problem because they arrived literally one hundred years later, and by that time Smallpox, plague, and all other European diseases wiped out the natives to literally only 10% of their former population. Making it easier for the British to take their land and push them out without having to interbreed or culturally assimilate them.
And don’t forget the horses, donkeys and mules when talking about transportation.
Cortez said him self if each of his mean killed killed 20,000 Aztecs in battle they would still lose because there was so many Aztecs ..they left went back to Spain came back yo America to find disease had killed millions of poeple
In the case of Mexico, one could add consideration of the poor diplomatic and political approach of the Aztec Empire. The fact that they relied on a tributary system and allowed their Tlaxcallan rivals to survive gave the Spanish plenty of allies - in that sense, it was more the Tlaxcallans who conquered Mexico with the Spanish help for Cortez. Had the Aztecs produced a unified state (perhaps the direction they were heading, but they weren't there yet), the Spanish would have faced a large and unified army with no allies. Even if the disease would have eventually facilitated their conquest, it would have taken much longer.
Worth also considering the survival of the rump Inca state for several decades after Cusco fell and the survival of some Mayan and Central American states for even longer in the deep jungle.
The Tlaxcalans were so influential and tied up in Spanish colonial activity, that there are Nahua loanwords in Phillipino languages from how many of them travelled to help the Spanish across the Pacific
I don't think it was inevitable that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and the Inca. The Spanish was always incredible outnumbered, but the Spanish made the right decision at the right time by allying with the Aztecs' tributaries and by kidnapping the Inca emperor. Both empires were in shambles mainly due to losing 90% of their population but also due to internal division.
@@8is you are right, it wasn't inevitable at all. There were several moments when either the Tlaxcallans or Aztecs would have wiped Cortez's army off the face of the earth had slightly different decisions been made. The Conquistadors were almost entirely wiped out in la noche triste for instance (a battle which the Aztecs unambiguously won)
@@sankarchaya It's honestly one of the more absurd events in history. No one could've predicted that after a several centuries long conquest, the Spanish would discover an entire new continent on the other side of the world, go there, just barely be able to conquer two larger empires, complete and utterly consolidate their gains and eradicate nearly all previous culture replacing it with what's essentially an extension of western civilization.
colonisation is always a story about of divide et impera, no large European army set sail to conquer and colonize
Videos with this title have a 50/50 chance of being so racist it would make mein kampf look like a kids story. Happy to say it’s not
Sorry to break it to you but most of history is "racist" lol
@@maxwillis3840there’s a difference between actual history being that way and glorifying it.
@HighFlySoyGuy an accurate retelling of history isn't necessarily glorifying it; but even so, there is plenty within European history to worthily glorify.
@@HighFlySoyGuy Europeans have every right to be proud of our history and our ancestors
@@enochpowellwasright899 I was specifically talking about glorifying racism so how’d you go there from that?
A key thing about the industrial revolution: while it provided a significant advantage in technology, e.g. better rifles, better cannons, steam engines, etc. what industrialization REALLY provided was a huge amount of technological goodies. Mass production was decisive in colonization, and later it was decisive in conflicts between the industrial powers.
The industrial revolution also provided a lot of excess population. Compared to pre-industrial agriculture, where the vast majority of people were growing food, industrial agriculture leaves a lot of people free for the army or resettlement.
@@nikolatasev4948 True. Ironically though, most migration of Europeans was to colonies that were established before the industrial revolution (with the exception of Australia/New Zealand, possibly South Africa). Equatorial Africa, India, and China saw almost no migration of Europeans, probably due to disease. I think the later, industrial phase of colonization able to happen because the Europeans figured out how to do it, after practicing in the Americas on a population decimated by disease. Thus, after using the big armies, they could maintain control with small administrations.
@@mliittsc63 Equatorial Africa and China are a matter of how the Europeans were starting to exhaust themselves, they already had their settlement phase, hard to continue the mass spree, and how do you even colonise China en masse? Too many people. India meanwhile is also the same, too many people, not empty enough for settling down en masse.
A lot of the population growth in the 19th century was possible because of potatoes. And those were first found in south america, wouldn't have come to Europe without the early conquest and colonization period.
@@nahblue pretty sure you could've just... imported the potato without colonisation, mind you disease.
Disease was a big part, but there were other factors, specifically the inter fighting among American natives and the willingness of the Spanish to absorb the native nobility into its own. The latter is a massively overlooked factor, when the Incan and Aztec royalties are still part of the Spanish nobility to this day.
evidence?
@@michaelsonsarmiento5943
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonor_Cort%C3%A9s_Moctezuma
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionisio_Inca_Yupanqui
@@michaelsonsarmiento5943 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo
es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_real_incaica
@@michaelsonsarmiento5943 I gave you a couple links, there have been several presidents in Latin America who are descended from Inca nobility too, including the current queen of the Netherlands.
Spain and England had very different patterns of colonization. As you say, in Spain's case, there was a lot of intermarriage with natives. Spain's expeditions were almost always state-funded and military in nature, lots of single men and few families. So Spaniards settling in the Americas married locals and changed the racial makeup. England transported entire communities across the ocean, funded by early forms of venture capitalism. There was far less intermarriage with locals because the families had moved from England.
In the Americas, it wasn't just the natives in direct contact with the Europeans that suffered those diseases. There were existing native trade routes throughout the Americas. When the English reached New England, the indigenous population, there, already had declined greatly, from European diseases that worked their way up from Mexico.
And down from French Canada, which was colonized before the English arrived. Also north from Florida and New Mexico. Plus de Soto's travels from the Carolinas west to the Mississippi River and north along the river to southern Illinois. Cabaza de Vaca trip from Texas to Arizona.
According to Charles Mann, an area 200 miles long and 40 miles wide had been emptied by disease before the Mayflower arrived. In response to the kidnapping of several Wampanoag young people, the tribe kidnapped the crew of the next ship and distributed the captives. Historians suspect that the disease that killed up to 90% of the tribe was hepatitis A. While this outbreak burned itself out without spreading the length and breadth of the Americas, other outbreaks did.
Check out "Pox Americana" by Elizabeth A Fenn. She writes of the early 18th century outbreak of smallpox. This outbreak began in the Spanish empire and spread north to both the French and English colonies. The French and Indian War only spread it more.
I read somewhere, that an English colonist guest through were 300,000 natives I have hear of an anthropologist estimate of 3,000,000. Why the difference, my guess is the loss to disease between Spanish exploration and English colonization.
Yeah I heard some people say native Americans in the us were the way they were not just because of frugal living but because when the British arrived they encountered the remains of basically a zombie apocalypse
It’s estimated that 50 years after first contact with Europeans, the population of North and Central America was halved by disease
Going from your Library of Alexandria video where you point out that major events that resonate through history did not generally come from one simple factor but from a complex web of incidences... to this one where the European conquest of the Americas, compared against Asia/Africa is answered entirely and almost wholly with "Disease" is some real whiplash.
Yes, obviously the diseases were a massive factor, but the technological advantage was enormous (if nothing else, it was why they were there instead of vice versa) and the industrial revolution only made it completely insurmountable.
The issue with your comment being that technological advantage couldn’t have amounted to much of anything without the massive population wipes from disease. Disease is almost certainly the most dominant factor which allowed for any of any of the others to be close to relevant
@@domgaar9933 Without the mentality, the moves (different, at that; the spanish or portuguese colonizers weren't like the english colonizers), the technological superiority etc the natives wouldn't have been colonized and the europeans wouldn't have retained control. Diseases or not.
Technological superiority? Yes, in many respects, the colonizers were technologically advanced; BUT, the indigenous (especially in the Northeastern Woodlands) also used firearms, and had far more advanced tactics in respect to guerilla warfare, than the Europeans. In many colonial wars, the native peoples actually had superior arms from their decades of trading with people like the Dutch!
I disagree, the Technological advantage was minimal particularily in the Central and South America, where the terrain was not favourable to either guns or Horses, disease was the major cause for their downfall, not only in terms of the death caused but also in how disorderly a society becomes after losing so much population in such short time. Then there was also the incredible amount of infighting in the America's that helped Europe.
@@masterdclone2172
why didn't the diseases go both ways? what immunity did the European explorers have to immunize themselves against the American masses?
the superiority in European medicine clearly was more important that the inferiority in medical care care. This is made all the more apparent when reviewing the accounts of the injured.
People used to sleep in barns so the crossover must have been pretty thorough over the centuries. I've had to huddle against my horse for warmth while lost in the forest and ended up clinging to him like a spider. The risk of him rolling on me during the brief periods of managing to get some sleep simply wasn't enough to dissuade me. Literally couldn't get closer. So I definitely comprehend the desire to huddle with animals when you're cold and hungry.
Yes, that was the norm. That was how poor people (i.e. most people) kept warm. Pretty much impossible not to share germs with the animals doing that.
That's simply not true? As a rule people didn't do that, they had houses and beds to sleep in.
@@jackwalters5506Yeah but in the colonial era you actually had to construct those houses and beds since there wasn't that many settlements.
@@napoleonbuonaparte8975 yeah, people still had beds. They aren't exactly very hard to make. Having beds was absolutely the norm for basically everyone across all of time
@@jackwalters5506 Yeah, but it's not the same sleeping in a hand-made bed in the middle of a forest than sleeping in a house.
Here is a big difference between the first period of colonialism and the second period of colonialism that isn’t pointed out. The first era was largely accidental on the part of European governments. These were largely true colonies, essentially similar to how the Greeks and Phoenicians settled the Mediterranean - essentially, scattered settlements. European governments largely outsourced the creation of these colonies to individuals or groups, and stepped on to control them once societies were created - sometimes to clean up a mess (like in India), sometimes to merely reap the benefits (like New Spain, the 13 colonies).
The second era was deliberate. It was empire building - it was genuinely imperialism. The European governments went out to conquer these lands with their own militaries. This era also was less permanent - in the former the residents are in societies that are evolved extensions of the colonial relationship, in the second instance, the indigenous people are the society. We can see this with Africa - it has been independent almost as long as the colonies existed there.
These misconceptions are created because we haven’t had time to intellectually digest this information. Mass decolonization only occurred 60-70 years ago, this being too close in time to develop an attempt at an honest assessment of what occurred.
very well said
There's definitely evidence of trans Atlantic trade before Columbus.
The 19th century colonisation of Africa was spectacular, but it lasted barely a century. Livingstone trekked through Africa in the 1850's, the Berlin Congress was in 1878, Africa became independent in the early 1960's. That is less than a century of effective colonial rule. Barely two generations. A wink of an eye.
@@theo-dr2dz Yet still the Africans and left wing psuedo intellectuals blame the evil white men for all their misfortunes, conveniently forgetting that they are still tribal societies and each tribe tries to suppress it's neighbour. Not to mention dictatorial governments that have emerged after the European countries tried their best to leave these countries with some sort of democratic process and a civil administration. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Why is Botswana doing so well and neighbouring Zimbabwe one of the poorest countries in the world. That is a question that the Africans themselves must answer to one another if this impoverished but potentially wealthy continent is ever going to advance.
The 1800s massive colonial expansion was brought about by britain becoming the dominant power creating peace in europe allowing all of europe to redirect their efforts outwards for 100 years
This was so enlightening, thanks.
I think you may be underestimating how industrialized pre-industrial Europe was. Europe made significant use of water wheels for iron production through smelting, transporting, and pumping. It also made a huge difference that ships and carts were used when metals were commoditized, and pack animals simply cannot carry that weight.
While Europe’s technologies may not have been substantially more advanced, they were dramatically more synergistic. This synergy produced the enormous economic productivity that made even the early colonial efforts possible. It’s unlikely that an African or Asian nation had the surplus to afford to sustain colonies for 100+ years before seeing meaningful benefit. China maybe, but still not at the scale of the combined European efforts.
It is also true that technologies arise from previous technologies generally speaking. Coke blasting furnaces give way to the Bessemer process. This is usually incremental.
... Which were mostly all technologies from ancient roman times...
Why does that matter? Its interesting surely. But most technological advancement happens in spurts and then stagnates for a time. @@cazek445
“Combined European efforts” the Europeans fought each other over their empires for centuries. European cooperation is a myth
True enough. But the video wasn't comparing various civilizations' abilities to colonize, but the question of what gave the Europeans the advantage once they had the ability (what you are describing) to project colonies overseas.
the diseases was the gap that I had in my knowledge of history. and now suddenly every thing makes sense
I think it's also important to understand that at the time, people had no idea of such things as germs and diseases. Let alone how to tackle it.
The inverse was true as well. Europeans had a hard time dealing with African borne diseases. Although the Europeans kept sticking their noses into everyone’s businesses, which is why they were so immune to most diseases and suffered all of them themselves. Keep in mind he sites that 90% of the Indian population were deceased from 1500 to 1650 (1776 colonies were still on the eastern seaboard) due to diseases which meant that the small colonies in the Americas which at the time had no grand designs we’re just spreading diseases by accident, they were not deliberate.
It had a large impact, but the technological gap is massively underplayed in this video. Firearms vs no firearms. Standing army vs no standing army. Cavalry vs no cavalry. Organized society vs unorganized societies. Nevermind the massive massive gap in warship technologies. All pre-industrialization. EDIT: spelling mistake
@@mrcrowley109 That is true. But disease was still a more important factor than technology.
Diseases were more important. I think that was because the Europeans never entered America in enough numbers for their technological advantage to really play out in those early centuries
It's also worth noting that Europeans couldn't have colonized the interior of Africa before industrialization due to disease. The same way the natives of the Americas didn't have as deadly diseases, Europe didn't have as deadly diseases as Africa did. This is due to the tropical climate in sub-Saharan Africa, which was too infested with tropical diseases for the Europeans to control it. This relegated the Europeans to controlling small ports on the coast (Portugal is the most famous example), but Europeans still died in droves due to disease. It was only due to stable production of quinine, which allowed the Europeans due deal with malaria, that made the colonization of the interior of Africa possible.
Another thing worth noting is that the invention of the railroad was critical in the colonization of interior Africa since Africa has very few navigable rivers and horses died due to disease, which meant that there weren't any real alternatives for transportation until the railroad.
It should also be clear that Europe already had a technological advantage before the industrial revolution, much of the interior of sub saharan africa consisted of iron age societies. With industrialization, it wasn't just possible for Europe to colonize the continent, it was actually really easy.
This is a much better explanation for why Europeans only colonized much of Africa in the 1800's. Note that they had already established a foothold in what is now South Africa much earlier than that, due to it having a much milder climate and being largely free of malaria. So the technological advantages of 1500's and 1600's Europe were enough - except for the matter of African diseases which killed European explorers and settlers.
I've learned that for the French part, they worked with Lebanese to settle there in Africa, because French didn't want too (because of disease and all...). The Lebanese wanted to settle in America but the French drop them in Senegal and other place as they will do business for the french here...
The industrialization played a larger part than you are implying. If not then Africa would've been colonized in the 1500s. The technology they had back then was not effective on the Continent. Even in the 1700s (think about loading a musket and fighting in the thick bush). African societies had organization, experienced armies and tactics. Now if you were to say the established rivalries amongst nations that existed in Africa already may have been an additional factor. I could take that argument. There were many competing kingdoms and of course Africa did not have a view of "pan-africanism" or a fluid racial identity at that time.
Portugal didn’t colonize Africa because it would be impossible, they only had 1 million citizens in Portugal! They weren’t interested in colonization, their main goal was to establish outposts in order to support their ships going back and forward from India. Of course the explorers and representatives spoke as equals with African kingdoms, they had much much more people than the few hundreds of a portuguese outpost, it has nothing to do with not being more technological… do you honestly believe Africans were technologically more advanced than the Portuguese???
@@Cobalt1520 The Kingdom of Benin, Meroe, Axum and Mali were superior to Portugal in the 1400.
You're still not answering why the industrial revolution happened in Europe first
Because of capitalism
Narrow it down, why did it happen In Britain first ?
The lust for wealth and power combined with the genius of autistic men. Still true today, just most evident in the US currently.
@@visorij3374The major theory is that the large amount of coal is the reason.
Steam engines could be used to pump water out of coal mines and because the coal is already there they were cheap enough to run.
This meant people had an incentive to improve and build more of them.
That was the largely the 1800s.
Europeans did have a technological advantage during the 1500-1600s as they had better metallurgy and metal working which contributed to better armor and weapons. They also had better ships. The two keys factors here being that while their technology was better it was not so significant that they could win with a significantly smaller force like in the 1800s. The ratio of troops needed to win/occupy would’ve been higher and as such make it rather impractical if not logistically unfeasible to do. Also even if they could move a larger army they would be vulnerable to an invasion or uprising which was particularly common in the 1500-1600s considering the whole Reformation going on
Let's remember that some areas of Asia were colonized earlier than the 19th century. Generally, areas of endemic warfare were easier to takeover. When small kingdoms with a lot of violent conflicts are temporarily exhausted, outsiders can step in and take control.
India was under British control before the 1800's - but largely because of historical accidents such as the collapse of the Mughal Empire, after Delhi was sacked by some Persians in 1721. This allowed the East India company merchants to use the age-old tactics of divide and conquer, setting various disaffected factions against each other, and accidentally creating an empire that the stock holders back in England had neither requested, desired, nor expected.
Right. Also, a lot of parts of Asia that are currently united into one country were not that way prior to the era of European colonialism. Places like the Philippines and Indonesia had countless numbers of local rulers and chieftains alongside larger kingdoms. As with India, the Europeans were often able to use local disputes and rivalries to their advantage.
@@davidbarry6900 You absolutely forget that England was the place where the Industrial revolution started the earliest and where this technological superiority was actually already present in the late 18th century, before it was the case in the rest of Europe. So the conquest of India already kind of happened in this window of opportunity of emerging technological superiority, and the consolidiation of British rule over India certainly happened during that time of technological superiority.
@@mardasman428 wrong, the consolidation of India IS the direct cause of technological ascendancy via economic supremacy.
@@davidbarry6900 Yes, this is important. The role of stochastic events in human history likely had a huge impact on outcomes. I don't say that lightly, because I also consider material factors (e.g., regional and local ecologies, food availability and procurement technology, demography) to have been of high significance.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're making, I think the idea of this "gap" your pointing out, where Europeans "left" the Americas around 1800 and then colonized Africa and Asia around 1850 is wrong.
By 1808, when the Spanish Empire began falling apart the British had already conquered large parts of India and of course the Europeans never really left the Americas either, though the biggest Colonies did gain independence.
What I know is that Africans had a lot of diseases dangerous to us Europeans, but due to the industrialization we managed to create more effective medicine. Is what I've heard.
Crazy stupid, the VOC (dutch) was abolished in 1796, thats 200 years of colonization before this dude talks about this "gap".
@@fivepack3887 Watch the video again and then read up on history of Asia in the 1600s and 1700s. Trade (monopolies) was not colonialization. Europeans had only tiny footholds in Asia and Africa in those times. Yes they dominated long distance trade, but did not excercise local politcal power outside a few coastal cities.
No the British had NOT conquered large parts of India. They had vasalized large parts of India. The local political structures were still intact self ruled. Britain had merely managed to dominate the power euqilibrium and control foreign politics of most of those entities. Thats not (yet) colonialization.
PS: Watch carefully what the Chinese will (try to) do in Africa in the next 20 years.
@@michaelrenper796 More like "not colonialization". They whole company stuff were more or less being used to fool the locals so that the Dutch didn't seems appear as invading country. They already killing and controlling the local monarchs during VOC reign.
When the diseases Europeans introduced in the Americas started decimating native population, Spaniards had already conquered the local empires with smarts and alliances with subjected ethnic groups that had grievances against those empires. They replaced the local royals and started ruling those empires and it was then when diseases reduced population in a significant ammount, but not as much as some historians try to propagate. Countries in Central and South America keep having between 60 and 95 % of native DNA nowadays, quite different proportion of what you can find in Northamerican lands invaded by the USA in the last two centuries.
" Countries in Central and South America keep having between 60 and 95 % of native DNA nowadays".
That is very much false, and the reality is the opposite. Most of the ancestry of Latin Americans is European. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Latin_America#Genetic_studies
I started watching your videos a few days ago and I've just been binging them in the evenings. Some of the best history content I've seen in terms of choice of topics and presentation!! Keep up the good work.
I really second this
I think another advantage the Europeans had was investment banking, somewhat crude in 1500's but still more advanced than other regions. While monarchs might sponsor an expedition of discovery, investors would step in afterwards to maintain the process of exploiting those discoveries. That's why colonies were economically possible.
Another point, the native peoples may have acquired European weapons, but they lacked the means of production of those same or similar weapons. The natives didn't know how to make gun powder or metal based projectiles.
Some might argue commercial institutions like banking were what separated Europe from the rest of the world. Banking changes one's frame of reference for economic endeavors. Suddenly "investment" becomes the default way of thinking. Now you have people inventing things, sailing to find new markets to trade, opening new lands for settlement.
Interesting, I haven't heard of banking being instrumental in the pursuit of knowledge and progress! Makes sense though, I'll have to do more research
And le'ts not overlook the fact that the rise of banking was made possible thanks to the accumulation of wealth created by the slave trade and the exploitation of slaves. Anthropologist Sydney Mintz's book Sweetness and Power greatly explain the links between slavery, wealth and the industrial revolution.
I think that's mostly true of English and Dutch colonies. Spain's colonization took a very different form. It was almost entirely state-sponsored and consisted of military expeditions. English settlements transplanted entirely communities to the Americas and relied on the crude system of venture capitalism that you described.
@@liversuccess1420Yes its true, while Spain and Portugal were entirely state sponsored there were many limited stock companies in the colonial business, the VOC, the British East India Company, Hudsons Bay, the Virginia co etc. All the way down to DeBeers.
This is too simplified. There were already European strongholds in Africa and Asia prior to 1700s. Europeans were far away from their homeland but they were able to wreak havoc on ottoman and other native fleets. Their forts were strong. Even though we could see certain black holes and certain Chinese fleets kicking Dutch ass kind of thing, in general it was shown that the presence of European powers in the old world did not go insignificant prior to the industrialization. In fact in the 1600s the not a single of the major maritime routes of the whole world was untouched by the Europeans. By the 1600s many of the things we take for granted are now already not on par at all. Technology certainly played a part, as with other financial and political tools. "Disease" Itself is not sufficient. And of course unlike the American theatre where colonising whole continents was the way to go, the old world theatre saw the trend of setting up ports and strongholds along the coasts. This itself is phenomenal on its own. Certainly this had not been tried to such an extent by any civilisation in any time period. And at least they made it profitable and sustainable. It's remarkable to observe that at that time no other tribes and kingdoms had the courage and skill to attempt such a thing.
Yes, "disease" is a coping mechanism. As if the numbers of colonists weren't exposed to the exact same scenario, if not much worse since these diseases were native to the land and not allegedly inhabiting some blankets.
The Catholic church who chooses the kings in Europe already knew about germ warfare as early as the 12th century flinging corpse's over besieged city walls.
"the old world theatre saw the trend of setting up ports and strongholds along the coasts. This itself is phenomenal on its own. Certainly this had not been tried to such an extent by any civilisation in any time period."
*Cough* the Phoeniciens *cough* and the greeks *cough* and something something *cough* cartaginians.
@@ihabhatim5825All belonging to what we would call Europe.
@@ihabhatim5825 if phoenician and Greek were phenomenal enough for you, then the Arabic and Hindu ports in the medieval era should count too. But it's my bad. I forgot to emphasize the scale.
you're such a better teacher than my socials teacher (he got fired after doing some nono thing to a student last year as well)
Why didn't Africa and Asia colonize the Americas in the fifteenth century when they were as technologically advanced as Europe?
Because conquests are typically motivated by economic incentives. Africans or the Chinese would not be incentivized to expand if they already control important trade network that generate wealth.
@@noelyanes2455 then why did african and asian nations war amongst each other and conquer territory locally?
half of the african economy was literally built on selling slaves they captured during conquest of neighboring tribes.
you simple or something?
Differences in culture and incentives.
The discovery of America only happened because Europeans wanted another route to Asia.
Maybe they thought it wasen't a good idea. Im an not even sure if it did europe and europans any good in the long run
@@rudynathan8852 That's true actually. Europe colonized primarily for prestige.
China I guess didn't because it had no one to compete with.
Man i love history. Nearly unlimited content (depending how deep you dive in). Absolutely enjoying your content!
Just be careful! There is a lot of information that's biased or false especially on a platform like CZcams. I'm not talking about this video by amy means but in general.
@@vlody33 half the enjoyment of studying history is sorting through the myths and misconceptions to find something close to the "truth" on a subject.
"This gave Europeans an enormous advantage over everyone else who had not yet gone through industrialisation"
The implicit assumption is that everyone else would have gone through industrialisation, but this is wrong. Industrialisation requires belief in economic growth and therefore investment, and science to occur, and these things were basically exclusive to Europe and North America. The fact that out of the entire world, only Japan managed to catch on to how important this would be is very telling that there were broader cultural reasons as to why these things weren't adopted.
I would say its the opposite, belief in economic growth and investment came as a consequence of capitalism and industrialization. Sure you had banks in europe in medieval times but power was centralized in the hands of the king and as such economic and politican power was one whereas today it exists in seperate but interconnected spheres.
@@Windsofchange99 The main reason Great Britain was the first country to industrialize was because of its unique culture. As soon as it caught on, the countries that was the most culturally similar to Britain adapted the same technology and also started industrializing. Economic growth didn't really exist before the industrial revolution, so that was certainly a new concept, but private markets and investors had already existed for centuries at that point. The Dutch became famously successful due to their advances in markets and investments in the 1600s. An entire class of adventure capitalists created the Dutch empire.
Indeed and Britain needed machinery because of its cripplingly high cost of labour. Qing China would never have had that problem. Why invest in labour saving devices when peasants owe you free labour?
After the plauge (and losing 50% of its population) europe did something unepected, the renaissance. The renaissance would build the foundament for everything that would come later. The other great civilisations would go down even more conservative and/or fundamentalist paths at the same time. The islamic world would be become extreme fundamenalistic, the indians would become ultra conservative and the chinese would become isolanistic.
The video is good, but I would add two more reasons; the western state and the way war was waged. The european state was consolidated at that specific time and it provided a great way to ideologicaly motivate people, something very few other systems at the time did. On the other side, the lack of a belief in a central political entity ment, that a divide and conquer strategy was possible(see India). On the second, war, Europeans were some of the few at the time to fight in order to kill. For most cultures war was waged in order to capture enemies(see precolombian civilazations). There was a limited number of colonies in Asia and Africa but the population density prevented the pace of colonazzation that happenned in the Americas. In short, I don t think that "cultural reasons" were insignificant in a broader sense, but I would be more careful with the term since it is so broad.
Don’t mention Britain leading industrialization will you.
Read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, he goes over this in detail and his latitude/longitude hypotheses are thought provoking
Jared's books problem is that they are 80% facts and 20% total bullshit.
The video is a very, very simplified version of Jared Diamonds "Guns, Germs and Steel" (highly recommended).
And while Germs (ie. diseases) certainly played a role, they were by no means the reason that a handful of Conquistadors was able to defeat the Aztec- and the Inca Empire.
In the first case the Europeans basically helped other tribes and peoples to get rid of the hated Aztec ruling elite and replaced them, and the Inca fell victim to a civil war and underestimating the military power of the Conquistadors.
But the Spanish fe. were never able to defeat the Maya completely. Regardless of Germs Guns and Steel. And the same was true for other indigenous peoples.
On other continents it were the Europeans that fell easier victim to infections then the indigenous populations. Like in Asia and Africa.
Still didn't held them back - because technology. Also Europe at that time had a relative high and young population compared to other regions of the world. So they also had the manpower for colonization.
Why Europeans had the need to even start exploring and finding other trading routes (sailing West and also around Africa) is a whole different story altogether. Basically it was because the Ottomans and Arabs blocked the trading routes to the east, especially since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Making trade on the Silk route and through the Red Sea either to expensive or even impossible.
Before that time some Italian city states even had trading outposts at the Black Sea.
You touch on two important points, each of which would be a good topic for a stand-alone video: (1) The Spanish didn't defeat the Aztecs single-handedly but were in coalition with a very large number of indigenous allies, and (2) The European conquest of the Americas was not total in the early modern period (e.g. the Maya). They would both be important correctives to widely held historical misconceptions.
With regard to the second point, it is worth noting that the period in which Europeans and people of European descent finally did attain complete mastery of the Americas was in the late 19th century, in the wake of industrialization.
Regarding the Aztecs and Incas, just to clarify -- I'm not saying that they fell simply because of disease. You and I seem to agree that European technology was not an important factor in their fall. I didn't mention the Spaniards' indigenous allies in Mexico in 1519-21 because I was making a wider point about the Americas in general. That said, disease did in fact play a role in the conquests of both the Aztecs and Incas. Tenochtitlan was hit by a smallpox outbreak prior to the final siege, and the Inca civil war you mentioned was precipitated by the Sapa Inca dying of smallpox. (Smallpox was one of the diseases inadvertently introduced from Europe.)
Disease in Africa DID hold back the Europeans. They did not go into the interior of Africa until modern drugs started becoming available in the late 19th century. The modern pharmaceutical industry was made possible by industrialization.
I think someone would sooner or later still find America even if trade wasn't blocked. It was just going to happen I think. Maybe Europeans but later like in 1600s or maybe Chinese or Russians as they started to expand in Siberia. Someone would find it I think. Just like Vikings managed to find it
@@premodernist_history sure it held back Europeans somewhat. But Europeans also didn't need to go to the interior of Africa.
@@skeletorlikespotatoes7846 The why is a lot more difficult to answer than the how.
@@8is why what?
I've been getting a lot of pushback in the comments for my claim that Europeans did not enjoy technological superiority over Africans in the early modern period. Here is a video from HomeTeam History that gives more context: czcams.com/video/vn6xcwn30GU/video.html
By the way, I know Europe had technologies that other parts of the world didn't have. That's not the point. The point is that Europeans' technologies did not make them OP until the 19th century.
Disease is only 1 small fraction of the puzzle!
Most over emphasize western European technology which was more advanced than any in the globe in the high Middle Ages in the (Proto-Renaissance) in the 1300's after the black plaque & it would be a travesty to leave unmentioned the earlier Carolingian renaissance in the late 8th century through the 9th century unmentioned.
The Italian Renaissance was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries this changed Europe beyond recognition more advanced than anywhere on the globe undoubtably but only gets less attention due to the English Renaissance a cultural & artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century that gave rise to Britain- the United Kingdoms of Comprised Scotland, Wales, Ireland now slit & of course England that would be the 1st to industrialize.
Without England later the UK there is no Industrialization & all 3 industrial revolution had England & the Uk at the helm, of it though the USA had as much a part play in the 3rd post WW2 in 1947 that can't be ignored!
you are trying to summarise over 1/2 a millennia of human history into less then 10 minutes pushing ideological nonsense as you obviously know very little on the matter you claim knowledge upon.
Beyond technology & disease Europe succeeded through maritime knowledge having an age of exploration no other society outside Europe would replicate in history.
Europe desired the unknown for adventure-riches while the rest of the world for the most part knew little of what lied beyond their borders that where often unstable if even drawn on a map!
Beyond technology any knowledge be it economics, cartography & so forth it gives no technology but it's management for massive operation rivalled anything the world could hope to muster when compared to western Europe in the 1500's.
Administration of western Europe was an enterprising company to compared to wares seller out of a cart.
Only thing more competitive than war is business!
western Europe was playing a different game to the rest of the world that couldn't compete & beside the USA, Canda & Japan as well as horribly China few to no nations are worth mentioning on the global power be it by any means virtuous or otherwise.
Less than 20 nations account for 1/2 the worlds wealth & it's for more reasons than just colonies for their geography blessed them & they were adaptive-innovative while the rest of the world lazed about for the most part with exceptions
Everyone likes to think their Land & people great, but someone has to draw the short straw of life & that is just a hard unpleasant truth few want to accept.
Who ever said life was meant to be easy? ;)
''Hell is full of good meanings and wishes"
Africans, most Asian & south Americans always talk of good X while wishing X but nothing to show for it.
They work hard rather than smart & this is what separates them from the western civilization that got to what it is through sceptic scrutiny & rational while the 3rd world believed in nonsense clinging to faith along with superstitious jabber even today for the most part!
Mentality-culture determines success.
A plain & simple truth few want to admit!
True, in military technology they were equal or inferior to North Africans and Arabs, and probably inferior to Chinese at the time. But Europeans did have vast superiority in military technology over the Native Americans. Steel and horses did make them OP against the Aztecs and Incas.
@@arnijulian6241 Yes, mindset is everything, which was amply demonstrated by the Chinese deliberately destroying their huge fleet of ocean ships because they considered exploring the world to be 'unnecessary'.
That is why the Portuguese soon ended up on their doorstep instead of the other way around.
It is also why Europeans needed to inform the Chinese that the Earth is a globe.
What kept most Europeans out of Sub-Saharan Africa for centuries was the fact that Europeans had no resistance to Africa's Tropical diseases. Sub-Saharan Africa was literally "the white mans grave". In the second half of the 19th century medical advances changed this, and the African land rush was on. Also, by that time the gap between European technology and Sub-Saharan Africa had widened so much that the native African peoples had no chance to turn back the European tide. Match locks and Flint locks don't stand much chance against breach loading cartridge guns and light artillery. And many African populations still relied on edged hand weapons or hand or bow thrown weapons. Once again, the outcome was never in doubt.
I m not surprised at all. This is the result of the self serving inflated golfed history being fed to the West for at least a century -- makes them think that they are/were the center of the universe. It takes a bit of time I guess to come to terms with the real history.
I think that kinin a substance from South America’s plant that protected against malaria was one of the main reasons why Europeans were able to penetrate Africa’s interior.
Great Video. You won a follower from Portugal. I am happy with the video, because it's crucial to explain this old reality. Africa had huge kingdom's when portugueses arives, and they already had a slavery market to asia.
The Age of Imperialism was not only enabled by a technological advantage, it was brought on by one too. European economies looked overseas for resources, and this was a big part of what helped drive colonialism in the first place.
europeans looked to traverse the atlantic because constantinople fell to the turks
@@lost524 OP was talking about the 19th century tho. 1453 helped plant the seed, but it wasn't until much, much later that it would grow into the classic European imperialism.
@@lost524 also because the ottomans were cockblocking the spice trade route
@@marusdod3685they didn't block it but took their cut what increased the price and scarcity. So european traders and their patrons (nobilty) funded the discovery of direct trade routes. This problem persisted even in 20th century like the suez canal crisis.
@@farkasabel That is blocking it dummy. They block it, and force you to pay in order to pass through.
4:18 The European ships were vastly superior to any other ships at the time. So they had that huge advantage. Navel power = power
Spot on. Europeans being able to travel entire world is a sign of superiority, Europeans are excellent sailors and shipbuilders.
@@rimiserk8277 True. As far as I can remember, I have heard of European ships fighting on the other side of the globe for 500ish years, but I have never heard of the Chinese, Persians, Indians coming anywhere close, until now in these resent decades
@@RandomNorwegianGuy. I only heard of Ottomans raiding Ireland and Iceland for slaves, for example. In reality, Ottomans are kinda white and have been exposed to European technology, beside that, never heard of anyone else.
@@rimiserk8277 " Ottomans are kind white " lmao , what European technogy they were oxposed to at the time tell me ?
But the Chinese and Malaysian kingdoms traded with us in South East Africa from about 600AD, a full 1000 or so years before Europeans arrival. And yes they came here by boat, take a look at Madagascar for example it is racially the way it is because of Malay traders settling it, yet it is more than 3000miles from the Malay peninsular.
People are actually underestimate how big was a gap between Europe and America. Not just in technology (guns and ships) - but also in the developement of law and institutions. Like some indian tribes were defeated by quill, not gun.
Can you cite your sources? I think these videos are great, but I’d love to do some additional reading for context. If you did not use specific sources for this video, can you at least mention the teacher/course/website from which you learned these topics?
Another great video! (these videos are so good I'm trying to get your engagement stats to go up!!!)
Yeah, my channel's been kind of under the radar. Thanks for helping!
90% of the entire native South American population just gone is so hard to wrap ones head around. It's apocalyptic, a borderline extinction event.
50% of the European population went extinct in the 12th and 13th century because the Mongold brought the Bubonic Plague to Europe. These disease extinction events has happend more times in human history
Every topic you touch on makes me think of Oswald Spengler
Pizarro and his 300~ men taking power in the inca empire hearing a guy saying it was just for diseases:
That was 1532, 40 years after plagues had begun to ravage the continent, remember the natives had no access to any large domesticated animals, they had no mules, no horses, no oxen, no cattle, no chickens (the aztecs had some ducks), there's a point where advancing your civilization becomes very difficult when the fastest way to get a message across is a guy physically running over to the other side of your empire
This is a perspective I haven't really ever conciddered.
Good job
It's humbling to think how many major historic events were caused, aided, or prevented by viruses and other outbreaks of disease.
In reality, this video author left only one detail aside.
Most natives died out of disease, yes. But the contamination happened on purpose, by use of biological warfare.
In some cases, they gave clothes infected with smallpox to the natives. This, alone, have wiped out the entire Goitacá tribe (which consisted of many villages)
Europeans also used smallpox, flu and yellow fever, and have usually poisoned the waters of the natives.
There’s a famous documented case where they used a catapult to throw dead infected HUMAN bodies in the middle of a fortified city.
So natives died due to disease, yes, but not “naturally” like on the Black Plague.
It was very, very intentional.
Considering germ theory didn't even exist at the time its very, very unlikely that there was any intentional biological warfare. It certainly helped hasten colonization but wasn't a primary weapon, just an unexpected bonus.
@@NathanHenriquefaso europeans learned something from mongols.
Well now I can agree that they didn't know what a virus/germ is but they know that throwing rotting bodies at the enemy makes them ill, that was know and used by the romans and mongols half a millennium early.
@@tau-5794 I'd say wiping out 90% of the population was more than an unexpected bonus. It was the main factor that enabled colonization.
Also, it doesn't matter whether or not people knew germ theory (seriously?). You don't need to know germ theory to know that diseases are contagious . The Mongols knew this as they catapulted bodies over city walls to spread diseases among the inhabitants under siege. Quarantine and isolation were also practiced in Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages.
That being said, Europeans didn't generally spread diseases intentionally in the Americas. Some did (smallpox blankets), but for the most part it was unintentional.
Explain total Portuguese and then European dominance in the Indian sea as early as the 1500s
Fantastic summary!
I'll give a brief and abrupt timeline of Western powers in Southeast Asia, 'cause I'm from there:
Early 16th century - The Portuguese came first. The Spanish also came first.
Mid-16th century - The Spanish came again.
17th century - The Dutch came second.
18th century - The British came third.
19th century - The British came again. The French came.
Late 19th century-Early 20th century - The Americans came.
20th century - Countries in Southeast Asia gained independence one by one.
I apologize if I miss some of the more equally important details here, but this is the general timeline I learned at school.
Great video, but one comment: British and dutch company rule in South Asia began as early as 1600. Obviously this was greatly expanded in the early 1800s, but I don't think its entirely accurate to say that European imperialism was not felt in Asia before the industrial revolution.
They had to negotiate, get leaders on their side, provide land, protection etc. That’s vastly different than what happened later.
@@godofthisshit Europeans seeking to get natives on their side is "The French & Indian War" got its name. It's just a sensible thing to do, and the important thing is that the Europeans kept growing in power.
@@godofthisshitSpain conquered the philippines in the 1500s and 1600s
Same with the Philippines. Spain has already begun their conquest of the Philippines in 1565 and by the end of 1800 we are are already fighting for our independence.
Exactly, basically European increase in colonisation of the Americas happened at the same time as Asia and Africa. The colonies only expanded inland in 1800s, same as Africa and Asia. The Portuguese sailed around the tip of Africa at the same time they discovered Americas. They were successfull in Africa in the same way that they were in the Americas
The population of large unified European countries needs to be talked about more. Proto industrialized farming made Germany, England and France have massive populations in relation to the total amount of people on earth. For example in 1914 nearly 1 in 20 people on earth were germans and majority of the populations outside Europe were either in the splintered Indian sub continent or in the the declining Qing Empire. I always hypothesized that one of the main reasons that the Ottoman empire declined was because it was very under populated. During 1914 The Ottoman empire could only draw troops from Turkish, Kurdish and some arab muslims. There was 67-70 Million Germans in 1914 and only 11-14 Million Turks/Kurds. Larger land masses, Larger sustainable populations means more industry, technology and war capabilities.
How do you account for the Industrial Revolution happening where it did, and not simultaneously elsewhere? How did Europeans develop the ability to cross the seas? with enough army to, if not conquer. then to at least greatly subdue? Portugal on one side of the Straits of Gibraltor was completely, utterly different from Morocco, on the south side of the straits. I am curious how that is interpreted.
The British had worked out their mines as deep as they could. Deeper needed steam powered pumps. Steam power instantly made it possible to retrieve masses of valuable minerals, but also made it possible to have stem powered weaving mills, metal pressing plants, weapons factories, and metal fittings for ships, steam tractors with steel ploughs and a lot of other volume manufactured stuff, all delivered by steam trains, and later, steam powered ships. (The UK had steam trains from 1860).
I read England had easy access coal mines, combine with invention of steam engine
On the same topic, I read about the widespread use of quinine in the xix century which made it possible for europeans to go into africa heartland minimizing the risks of death by malaria. While previously malaria and other tropical deseases were almost impossible to withstand for europeans.
Correct. Until then it was impossible for whites to enter Africa.
I've noticed that in the game of "we invented everything", these are the rules:
If we invented it and they adopted it and they adopted it, they are stupid for not inventing it.
If they invented it and we adopted it, we are clever for adopting it.
Heads we win, tails you lose.
Cope
@@Shrouded_reaperYes, that's what he is pointing out.
@@Ravi9A Should have tried inventing a wheel
@@Shrouded_reaperDid you invent the wheel?
@5even.1nches Your people didn't have a high enough IQ to either invent or utilise their alleged inventions to their capacity and so got rolled by my people. Sorry not sorry, that's just the grinding wheel of history and you lost.
thats a great video you made, really cleared out my misconceptions.
No it's not. It's sjw filth
Short and compelling! Good visuals too! Greets from Switzerland
The post industrial revolution advantage boils down to the rhyme:
Whatever happens
We have got
The gatling gun
And they have not.
This reminds me of the classic kids' story, "who sank the boat". I accept your premise that disease was more powerful than guns and technology, and that without, colonisation may have failed, but there were many other "happy coincidences" that worked in Europe's favour. One that I've been looking into has been the role of hopped beer and the still. Sailor's rations were crucial in convincing the poor to risk life and limb to take the helm of a ship, and it can't have been the food or the pay that convinced them! Spain had wine, which was quite stable, but it wasn't until England and the Netherlands started hopping their beer that their ships started making longer passages, add spirits, and you suddenly have more cargo space too.
Colonization may have still been successful in NA/SA, but it's interesting to think what mass migration would have done to Native American society. Would they have accepted immigrants en masse?
@@redryan20000no successful country takes in migrants en masse
@@redryan20000
There was already a collapse of some sort (disease?, Malthusian?) in the century before Columbus arrived. The Mississippian culture collapsed. Linguistic evidence suggests the Cree rapidly expanded and filled a void ~500 years ago. Cabot spent two summers in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (1497 +1498) and didn't see any natives, and only scant logging evidence of human activity. And of course the Mayans.
Where did you find the black and white footage?
The only amazing technology europeans had over everyone else was naval technology, but having superior ships isn't enough to invade a country and is absolutely not enough to invade a country across oceans.
Their artillery was markedly better by at least the late 18th century.
Yeh, the fact that Europe had metal didn't make a difference. OK.
I notice you refer to “Asians and Africans” without distinguishing the two. Are you really saying that Africa before the 18th century was as technologically developed as Europe and Asia?
Where is the African equivalent of Chartres Cathedral?
One word for you again industrialization. Africa is a rich continent with resources and knowledge. The object Europeans saw as resourceful and eloquent Africans had them in their one right. The key player that took effect wat industrialization and power drunk from the Europeans reshaping the world through this brutal ideology of greed at a whole new level. African resources is was held the world for thousand of years and still those.
Like very many people (Asian-Americans like myself and others), (sub-Saharan) Africans are given short shrift because of inherent biases. Also, to use an example of (impressive) Western architecture as a benchmark would mean that things that don't appear to be in form and function like Chartres Cathedral would be dismissed. There have several impressive African empires over the centuries including the Mali, Songhai and Zimbabwe empires. They had fairly advanced trade routes and economic systems. They traded with both Europe and Asia over several millennia. One of their kings, Mansa Musa, was the richest man in the world in his time. Timbuktu was an academic center with one of the world's largest libraries. Some of Africa's ancient architecture could benefit from restoration as was done for monuments around the world (e.g. Ellis Island, Knossos). Still, any Christian pilgrim visiting Ethiopia or traveler visiting Mali would see impressive spacious buildings that were temperature-regulated (in the hot desert) and used local materials.
As for cultural influence, the music of the Sahel, coupled with English folk music and music of the American delta is the basis of rock-and-roll. There is a reason why Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and other famous rock-and-rollers have spent so much time in the Sahel. They are going back to their musical roots.
Africa had suffered four centuries of disrepair for both internal and external reasons. That may change. It is expected that by the end of this century, half of all the world's people will be Africans. That is because the populations are crashing in Europe, the Americas and much of Europe. Overall, it is a truism... whoever has the most people ultimately ends up with the most power (most of the time).
@@arifshahabuddin8888 This is true, but not your last point. If African trends continue they might have half the worlds people but half of that half will be children. But people only = power when they can be effectively utilised and between ineffective governments and agragrian populations Africa is nowhere near close to doing that. And you're ignoring the real reason Africa will have half of the world's population: unsustainable growth. The average African women has 4.5 children. This is twice as much as most of the rest of the world. Some basic maths will tell you that this is not going to last forever without exponentially increasing resources.The populations of Asia, the America's and Europe are not "crashing" they're declining, and Japan is proof that population decline won't doom a nation instantly. But climate change will also have the largest effect on Africa compared to anywhere else, so don't assume population numbers will stay consistent.
@@user-cx9nc4pj8w This will be a very long reply so I apologize in advance.
It is true that Africa is starting at a disadvantage and that it has a long road ahead of it. You are absolutely correct that climate change will force many tremendous changes around the world. These changes will not occur in years but rather over decades and centuries.
Through most of the last three thousand years, China and India dominated the world economically along with secondary players like the the Roman Empire, Persian Empire and Incan Empire. Yet, one would hardly think that this was the case if one looks at China and India over the past three centuries. China has regained much of its luster despite internal political and social issues and the expected long decline in population exacerbated by the one-child policy. India is also advancing but it punches way below its weight and suffers from more hubris than substance (I'm speaking as an Indian-American). Yet, if one were to look at India or China around the year 1920, or South Korea around 1955, or Scandinavia around 1820, one would be struck by how impoverished and down on their luck these countries were in. Indeed, these countries looked somewhat worse than many African countries today. That is to say, things change based upon some combination of planning and luck.
In Africa, young people become older. Those without higher level skills, seek opportunities in any way that they can. No wall or strait would ultimately prevent desperate people from pushing through to streets of Madrid or Paris or Rome. If even 10% of these people make it to their destination, that would (have) changed the relationship between Europe and Africa. These people may sell trinkets and seem out of place in Europe, but their small incomes is transformative in bringing increased prosperity to their families back home. For those Africans with greater skills, they may end up in foreign lands and can bring even greater remittances back home. For those who stay in Africa, they will have the opportunity to manage their economies and polities.
Climate change is going to cause all kind of upheavals for everybody. The American South and Midwest is likely to have great internal migration to the north and east. In India, the pressures will come from the northeast westward. In Africa, it will just further force more migration. There will be a high cost in lives and limbs. Nonetheless, there will be a transformation in the relationship between the West and Africa. In 2100, half the world's people will be African (of whom half will be children, as you say). In 2050, these grown children, for good or bad, will have an outsized impact on world affairs.
@@user-cx9nc4pj8w Actually, if you look at the population figures for many african countries in a capita per arable land sense, they're almost comically _underpopulated_ when compared to europe or asia. South Sudan, for instance, is a whopping 90 percent arable, so really the population should be many orders of magnitude greater than it is now, if it matched the capacity of the landscape to feed the population.
A country like Germany, comparatively, is only 33 percent arable and half the size with 7 times the population. Idk you've ever heard of the logistic equation, but population growth models generally look something like this;
dN/dt = rN(1 - N/K)
Where N is population density and K is the carrying capacity. At very small N, the (1 - N/K) factor is approximately 1 and you get a high net growth rate rN. But as the population approaches carrying capacity that (1 - N/K) term starts to dominate until it zeros out the growth rate. Symbolically, we could say that N_Germany = K, whereas N_SouthSudan < < < < K.
(South sudan is pretty representative of the situation in a lot of these countries).
Anyway. Just looking at the numbers, the issue here can't be resource scarcity. It's gotta be instability. In fact, it's almost tautological that if the population is exploding, they are able to more-or-less feed themselves ( on average !). It takes a lot of food and energy to have a child, which is why populations that are genuinely in famine tend to decline. Conflict (especially internal civil conflict) doesn't affect everyone equally however; in practice you get subsets of the population that suffer disproportionately, which is generally who we're talking about when we consider hunger in africa.
The state of these countries, assuming civil strife is put to an end, can only improve with greater population. More people means more workers to build roads, hospitals, and schools. It means more farmers to exploit the vastly undertapped agricultural potential of a continent for which the term 'potential breadbasket' would be a ludicrous understatement relative to the rest of the world. It means more teachers to provide modern education.
I don't think it's hyperbolic to posit that the Africans might end up being more powerful than we are here in the west when all is said and done. I see a lot more of them getting into STEM now adays too when they come here for university. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Reject one word answers like disease, technology. Why does a people have superior technology? Why an industrial revolution on a single small damp island?
Easily accessible coal, a surplus of raw resources from colonies and good institutions like banks.
Europe got a head start mainly because of their geographic advantage. Guns, Germs and Steel explains this clearly.
@@Uarehere A major reason for European advantage was religion i.e. Christianity -the catholic church in particular was a total powerhouse of knowledge and creativity. The medieval church established the great universities such as Bologna (the first university)Padua, Rome, Paris and of course Oxford and Cambridge. The monasteries were powerhouses of knowledge and technology as well that can still be seen in the vast monastic libraries and even as late as the mid 19th century a monk in Austria called Gregor Mendel could kickstart the science of genetics.(Mendelian genetics)The Catholic church as a matter of fact formulated the scientific method -originally it was about forensic application when applied to canon law and the revival of Roman law as happened at Bologna (Gratian) but then got extended to scientific evidence.The scientific method got institutionalised at all the great universities -Latin being the medium and scholars and scientists all over could communicate and peer review each other in Latin. That's why Isaac Newton wrote his "Principia" in Latin. The number of Catholic priests and monks who were outstanding scientists and thinkers is absolutely astonishing and undeniable covering all the disciplines but especially in astronomy. The pope sent missions of Jesuit priests to China in order to convert China and the 'genius" level of the priests who were sent was off the planet especially in astronomy and chronology proving to the Chinese that their scientific competence was far inferior. Besides inventing the Gregorian calendar that the whole world uses today the Jesuits were even able to reform the traditional Chinese calendar! The clincher came with the Protestant reformation where the individualism of the Protestant ethic and the promotion of literacy because of the need to read the Bible gave this part of Europe a great advantage. Sweden became literate as early as the late 17th century. Protestantism however was far more flexible and pragmatic than Catholicism and set far less store on religious externals like building vast monasteries and cathedrals - they would rather invest in more material things like ships, guns and fortifications. Hence the Dutch and the English quickly overshadowed the Spanish and Portuguese.
@@andresano4545Lol, most cop out answer ever. The Americas and Africa are some of the most resource rich places on the planet. The native Americans had tens of thousands of years to industrialize, but failed! It’s even more ludicrous in the case of Africa because humanity allegedly started there! If any group of people had a chance to industrialize, it would be the Africans on their resource rich continent and thousands of years of a head start!
@@ASK-iz1pm What resources did Africans have that other continents didn't?
@premodernist_history
Interesting video! Whats your take on why the industrial revolution started in England as opposed to say Qing China (or other places) as often named contender?
The prevalence of coal in britain (unrivaled over such a small area) and Britain being the first truly capitalist nation
Someone said Qing China has so much labor an industrial revolution was not needed. Plus Europe had a belife in science from the Renaissance and smth abt believing in capitalism or some new concept of economic growth
Good video. Disease most definitely played a huge role in weakening and undermining native populations in the west. I remember watching something about the tribes in South America, notably the ones around the Amazon River recoiling from the devastation of disease. When the Europeans first arrived, there were huge population centers out there. Then disease ravaged them, an apocalypse for the locals. Survivors were trying to flee further west, away from it all.
I'd add however, that there's also the politics of the native population out west: They were divided just as much as Europe, Asia, Africa. There were many different kingdoms, tribes, etc. They had their own political games with each other. Alliances, enemies, etc. just like anywhere else. When the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire, the Spanish had a huge native following allied with them. Why? Because the Aztecs were the main power of the region, they were quite brutal in establishing and maintaining their supremacy over the weaker ones. So, when an outside power, i.e. the Spanish came in and started to disrupt things, and people started following them, it steamrolled into an alliance that toppled the Aztecs.
In North America, even before the United States even existed, the Native Americans were not one people. They had different dealings with the French, Spanish, and English. Later on even in the 1700s, they'd be aligned in different ways, i.e. some siding with the French and fighting against the English, etc.
I like your take in how Disease and then later Industrial Revolution and technology paved the way for European colonialism's success.
There’s one thing that is still missing from his explanation though.
Most natives died out of disease, yes. But the contamination happened on purpose, by use of biological warfare.
In some cases, they gave clothes infected with smallpox to the natives. This, alone, have wiped out the entire Goitacá tribe (which consisted of many villages)
Europeans also used smallpox, flu and yellow fever, and have usually poisoned the waters of the natives.
There’s a famous documented case where they used a catapult to throw dead infected HUMAN bodies in the middle of a fortified city.
while ironically, the diseases kept the Europeans from venturing further into subsaharan africa's interior until almost recently
False. If disease were so important a factor, then the Spanish allies who fought the Aztecs would have died from smallpox and thereby Hernan Cortes could not have conquered the Aztec Empire. Vaccination is a scam.
Between the Mexican tribes that immeditely joined Cortes' company of troops, there were others who repeatedly tried to defeat him in battle as a matter of honor, repeatedly failed, and then joined forces with him out of honor. Between Cortes' diplomatic ability, ability to force others to join him, and ability to convince a larger Spanish force to join him instead of arresting him, it's really quite an amazing story. It would make for a great TV series but you wouldn't be allowed to because muh noble savage.
@@C-Farsene_5Europeans faces alot of defeat in subsaharan Africa than anywhere in the world, entire European armies were destroyed by native tribes
Afaik the difference between 'countries with factories' versus 'countries which produce raw goods' also explains why Asia had a huge boom in the late 20th century while Africa had not.
Many east-asian countries who had fought themselves free of colonial empires made laws against the export of raw materials, only allowing the export of semi-finished or finished goods.
So in the mid 20th century all the offshoring of low-wage factory labor went to Asia (together with low-wage mining and agricultural jobs), whereas Africa was left doing only the low-wage mining and agricultural jobs.
Industrial revolution was one of the hardest periods of history for low and middle class Europeans , and those that were colonised alike. Most Europeans had horrible lives during the Industrial revolution
Interesting video, good to dispel misconceptions surrounding European technological advances around the time of colonization.
However isn't the elephant in the room on this topic, especially when viewing a chart like the one at 7:05, the rise of the US and the Monroe Doctine?
It's also the ability to get there to begin with. The western euros had access to the Atlantic, a convenient place to sail out once the navigation and ship building techs were in place. The Ottomans were confined to the Medi. They did have a presence in the Red Sea and Ind Ocean but it was a long stretch to sail across the Pacific. The Chinese were very inward looking and had no appetite to explore east. Zheng He's extravagant voyages bankrupted the Ming and Yongle's successors had to pick up the tab. Instead of a small and nimble exploration party they sent an armada, getting very little in return. Without boots on the ground, East African polities were hardly gonna pay heavy tribute. The Mughals and Qing were never much of maritime explorers to begin with. The Qing navy after defeating Koxinga was merely an anti-piracy coast guard.
I wonder if things like military doctrines and diplomatic skill count as technology? Because Europe sure had a lot more opportunity to develop those skills than other parts of the world due to their complex balance of powers.
Compared to China or Japan, Europe was pretty backwards when it came to military doctrine... compare 100 years war with Feudal Japanese squabbles.
European civilizations were really simplistic compared to Asia and Middle East until early modern era and Industrial revolution.
Lol😂 British literally copied Indian war tactics and navy building to make themselves stronger. Dutch were stronger than British but they were completely annihilated by India after which the water body was named the Indian Ocean.
@@divyavashisth4919Lmao no one is copying Indian doctrine
When one develops a culture of child sacrifice, one no longer needs unknown diseases to make oneself vulnerable.
The north american indians were comparatively better in that sense, but still history usually do not allow wrongness to triumph.
„uber-powerful“? What‘s that? Is it the English version of the German prefix „über-“ (meaning „over-“)? And how come it is used in English (and when)?
Thanks for the video! Just wondering, why did North America go through industrialization at the same time the europeans did? Did they have closer ties? It's a statement at the end of the video that I thought would've been interesting to explore.
There were some entrepreneurs who migrated from England to the US because of lower competition. And the US allowed these entrepreneurs/ businesses to grow unhindered.
I always thought it was because most Americans and proto-Canadians were English. England was the home of the Industrial Revolution, so the other Englishmen across the world could more easily implement English ideas.
More developed trade networks also
Better question: Why did China go through industrialization at that time? Because their elites were distrustful of merchants and would never allow them to have such power.
There's also two geographic reasons, I think :
First, European geography require a lot of boats. Small and big rivers, lakes, small and large sea, islands, ocean. No other continent is so "broken" between land and water.
Second, European needed to cross the oceans to find a new road to China and India for spices and silk.
Together this ended with Colombus able to cross the atlantic ocean and all western european countries following him : Portugal, Spain, UK, France, Belgium and Netherland.
All this is the result of european particular geography.
Nobody followed Columbus lol. Portugal was pioneer and then countries followed them. Columbus studied in Sagres Portugal.
@@BurniaccThat's true. Hi from Spain.
Europe geographically is adavantaged in some sense. The biggest civilaztions were stopped by geography. For example China has Siberian tundra in the north, the highest mountains on the world in the west, tropical forest in the south and the biggest ocean in the east. African kongdoms were stopped by the sahara but in the east coast could trade with muslims. Indian subcontinent is kinda delimited by the aIndus and Himalaya. But still the other places where they could go were already "occupied" by others
@@andreamarino6010 Yeap, geography makes history.
In terms of Geography and resources, there was also the fact that Europeans had access to larger trees and different types of useable wood that allowed them to manufacture fleets of ships. There is the misconception that the Iberian peninsula is dry and desert like but this isn’t true in the north of Spain and west in Portugal, where it is heavily forested. It was a major advantage compared to what was available in North Africa.
Combined with superior naval technology and improved map making, the Spanish and Portuguese also managed to bottle in the Turks and North Africans at Gibraltar and the various straights in the Indian Ocean, keeping them from expanding outward.
Thanks for this very interesting video. It raises another question though: why didn't African states actively participate in the colonization of the Americas? Asian ones, I suppose you could argue, were too far away or too undeveloped (what is now the Easternnost part of Russia ).
So your are saying the Europeans did not enjoy a technology advantage over people who hadn't even invented the wheel yet? LoL
The wheel was known it's just not conducive in every environment.
The discrepancy here is the conquest of India by the British, it started in 1760 when the Americas were still colonies but Britain wasn't completily industrilizated yet -it did so around 1840-. So no disease or technological advantage could explain that one.
It was a private company that conquered those nations that togheter make it the largest economy at that time (India has around 25~30% world GDP), it was an alliance of that company and Indian elites, and it was done with Indian soldiers, and even with Indian technology.
India suffered a massive de-industrialization trought the Biritsh dominion.
The industrial revolution does also have consequences as third world nations industrilizate, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, India, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Brasil, and in the future probably Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Algeria, some other American nations.
Being industrial societies, mean they make their own weapons, their economy does not rely exclusively on exporting to Europe or USA -so sanctions do not work-, so they will take their own geopolitcal paths independent of what Europe and America could say.
Just got into your channel through al-Muqqadimah, great videos! For this one though, I was a little surprised and wondered why you didn't discuss some of the ways the first wave colonial empires enabled the second. I'm thinking specifically of the Hobsbawm argument about British early industrialization: you couldn't have gotten such a massive explosion in supply of textiles without knowing that there'd be sufficient demand, and that demand was guaranteed by the literally captive market Britain had in its Indian colonies. India itself is sort of its own missing link in the video (maybe just for reasons of time?) but it also points back to the first wave colonialism: the Columbian encounter might not have happened if the Europeans hadn't been trying to do a maritime end-run around the Ottoman control of the Silk Road, and that end run wouldn't have been commercially successful if not for European access to American gold and silver, since there wasn't really anything else the Chinese wanted in return (I have Graber's "Debt" in mind here).
Thanks! It was just a matter of keeping the video simple, as an intro to the concept. I agree that India does not fit neatly into the chronology I presented (nor do a few other places). It was a generalization. I really just wanted to drive home that European technology was not superior as early as many people think it was.
I haven't read Hobsbawm's argument that you reference. I wonder why the British would need to have political/military control of India to be able to undercut the local textile manufacturers. Couldn't they just ensure that local princes would keep their markets open? But admittedly I don't know much about India's economic history.
Your point about India being the missing link in European activity in the two hemispheres is a good one, but I think it would have been outside the scope of this video. It'd be worth someone doing a video on it though, because I suspect a lot of folks don't necessarily connect the two in their minds. My impression is that American students are taught about colonialism in North America in isolation, without reference to how it connected to the rest of the globe. Maybe that kind of feeds into the American tendency to see the U.S. as distinct from and disconnected from the rest of the world.
@@premodernist_history funny thing is, during the early modern era, in certain areas (i.e. agriculture, urban planning, and a few others) Europeans were actually technologically behind the some of the people they conquered. As you said in the video it was only during the Victorian era that Europeans got ahead of everyone else.
To name an example the type of farming that the aztecs did was far more efficient that anything in Europe, and tenochtitlan was better designed than any city in Spain.
The biggest reason Europeans managed to conquer during that time period was due to their extensive use of divide and conquer strategy (whether it's in Asia or americas)
Yep, and not just India, but also Malaya, East Indies (modern day Indonesia), and the Philippines. Europeans begin the colonization of those regions in the 1600s, not 1800s.
The Portuguese defeated a coalition of Asian maritime empires to conquer Malacca (1511), and the Dutch later crushed successive local powers in the region (e.g. conquest of Batavia in 1619) to become the de-facto colonial overlord of majority (if not all) of the states/sultanates in East Indies by 1750s.
Fact is, Europeans did have significant technological advantage in the 1600s, even in the 1500s. Europeans (e.g. the Portuguese) had superior navigation, better ships, and better guns.
China (Ming Dynasty, and later Qing Dynasty) was the *ONLY* state in Asia that can compete with (or at least effectively resist) the Europeans till 1700s.
@@sasi5841 It is true that the Europeans were *NOT* universally superior in everything (at least not till mid/late 1700s). There are some aspects that they were behind, for example in chemistry and medicine, also, like you said, in agriculture (especially in some less advanced region).
But the Europeans were more advanced (or at least in relative parity with the then forerunner) in certain tech, like metallurgy, astronomy, navigation, and shipbuilding.
Above all, one thing that the Europeans were superior to everyone else was in *finance and economics.* Almost all of "modern" financial institutions and instruments were invented/founded in Europe. This enable European companies to absolutely outcompete their Asian and African rivals and dominate the market.
After all, the success of this "divide and conquer" strategy relies heavily upon *strong finance.*
@@ihl0700677525 true
Don't forget that some of the technologies were social, creating the structure for relatively independent human beings to be stripped of their ability to survive without committing to the horid and short life of a contemporary urban factory worker without direct threat of physical violence from the state.
Well summarized standard view. It glosses over the real technical advance in the West: the Europeans had writing that was only available to the Incas (in a different form); the Europeans had more advanced states (only the Inca and the Aztecs could compete); the Europeans were competing, largely, with stone tools; and the ships were key: the Europeans only had to play offense. But these mostly were puncture and clean-up: that is on the initial encounters and after the disease swamped the native population.
Can you cite a source that shows that writing had anything to do with the conquer of the Americas?
@@NanakiRowan Start with Guns, Germs, and Steel then look up The Americas in the Spanish World Order: The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century. Look up the Polynesian/Indigenous cross-pollination. It was not conquest, as the poster pointed out but resettlement after die out. The two worlds met at least 2 before, Vikings and Polynesians, but it was only with diseases, numbers, and technology that "conquest" took place.
@@SSNewberry Can you cite a source that shows that *writing* had anything to do with the conquest of the Americas?
@@NanakiRowan I did.
Interesting video, which explains why America could be conquered but not Africa nor Asia.
I think a step is missing there, the conquest of sea trade then of India. Perhaps due their peripheral position, Europeans had to make progress in naval technology that make their fleet nearly invincible from the 16th century on, seizing the control of world trade (Portuguese then Dutch).
Before the 19th c. industrial revolution, a military revolution made the conquest of India possible. Despite complex society, India could not face the better drilled and equipped European armies of 18th c. (French and British), making alliance with one European power the only escape - until submission.
IIRC it was more a change in the political situation in the Middle East (i.e. the rise of the Ottoman Empire, ending up in it controlling pretty much the eastern coast of the Mediterranean) leading to traders and governments feeling like the trade routes were pretty much either cut or prohibitively expensive that lead to Europe wanting to develop dominance in sea power rather than merely "a peripheral location"; otherwise why wouldn't they have focused on trying to go round the Cape to link up with the Maritime Silk Road earlier? But also this is just IIRC from what I've read, I haven't done any fact checking or research prior to posting this comment haha
Dutch navy was completely annihilated by Indian navy before even british arrived!!! And British never really fought India. East india company through land acquisition and controlled of industries managed to take control of decision making.
You are not quite correct about the African colonization - the timeline starts earlier. The Portuguese started colonizing Africa in the 15th century, establishing small presences in West Africa and full-scale colonization of the Cape Verde islands. After Bartolomeus Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, trading posts were established in East Africa (present day Mozambique) and Zanzibar. The French established trading posts in Senegal in 1638. The FIRST COLONY was established by the Dutch (Jan van Riebeeck) at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 with a colony being established in what is now known as Western Cape, South Africa. The Dutch colonists were joined by a large contingent of French Huguenots in 1688-89 in the Cape Colony.
The indigenous San people, the Khoekhoe/Khoikhoi (then called Hottentots - but one should avoid the term as it is considered pejorative), that lived in Western Cape were decimated by the Smallpox Epidemic of 1713, which enabled Dutch colonists to occupy the large area formerly inhabited by the Khoekhoe - a parallel of what happened in the New World.
The Trekboers (Dutch) started migrating further inland in the mid 18th century, but the much greater colonization drive, the Great Trek, was mostly spurned on by the British annexation of the colony in 1795 with farmers from Dutch and French descent trying to get away from the British. The British Settlers arrived in 1820, but remember, the Dutch and French were there for more than a century and a half!
Also malaria was too deadly in Africa before treatments in the 1800s after industrialization
Interesting video. This right here is why the CZcams can be useful at times.
Thanks for making this video! I really appreciate the clarity you provided. I'm now very very interested in studying the industrial revolution very deeply.
The moveable type printing press was the key component for the industrial revolution.
Should have mentioned how areas like central Africa couldn't be conquered by Europeans until the industrial revolution, because of lacking immunity to local diseases. Technology allowed them to conquer these areas, which otherwise could have been taken over centuries before
The machine gun is what did it. We saw the 19th century Brits take loses to the Zulus who weren’t even the most advanced in Africa. An 15th or 16th century england would’ve gotten annihilated in Africa.
@@godofthisshit That's not really painting the full picture, with the exception of a phase of incompetence the British pretty handily beat the Zulu's.
@@godofthisshitlol,Portugal was already colonising in XV century in Africa,we weren't whipped out all,Portugal conquered and vassalised many African kingdoom in the XVI century like Kongo,Sultanate of Sofala ,Sultanate of Kilwa,Sultanate of Mombasa,Sultanate of Mozambique Island.
Ps:We also conquered the Sultanate of Malindi
@@kermitthethinker1465 Kongo kicked the Portuguese out.
@@kermitthethinker1465this is cope, the Congo even kicked the Portuguese out, before the 19th century the Europeans would have had it handed to them
Europe's success was due to its political decentralization more than anything. While Feudalism is portrayed as a backwards political model, in reality it spurred intense competition that was a precursor to global capitalism. As a result, any time Europe absorbed a technology from China, the Europeans improved upon it drastically to gain an advantage over their neighbors. This intense competition led European rulers to tolerate the merchant class and free thinking in hopes of gaining an advantage in wealth or power, and this fundamental political difference was the force that persistently kept Europe ahead of the rest of the world. Even to this day there is a very wide technological gap between East and West, in fact it seems to be getting wider, though you won't hear about that on CNN.
The immaterial military technology of the Spanish and Portuguese (their battlefield tactics) were very different than those of mesoamerica and generally vastly superior for the purposes of fully defeating enemy armies (the Spanish were easily the leader in battlefield tactics in Europe as well)
Hello. I study mesoamerican military tactics and militant life of them in a professional way. Can you give me a genuine source that validates what you said about "the porpuses for fully defeating and army"?
Please i am eager to know how, in your words, the spanish and europeas were superior in that matter. The spanish sources tell kind of the opposite of what you said and the life style of the mesoamericans aswell; but maybe you have a reliable source i haven't read. Thanks.
Here you go
www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/aztec-tactics.pdf
@@jessalaguicia7088The Spanish were the few to be known to defeat the mighty Swiss in open battlefield before than the Swiss were considered the best infantry in the world other than foot knights.
@@landsknecht8654why did they got humiliated by the portuguese in the battle of Aljubarrota? where they had 37000 troops vs 7000 portuguese? the spanish had the numbers, not the tactics
@@Diogo_-tx1zi I am talking about the Spanish of the 16th century, such as the Tercios, not Spain from the 14th century. That is a pretty big difference. During that time of the battle of Aljubarrota, the Swiss were considered the best infantry in the world other than foot knights. The best overall warriors were the German Teutonic Knights from Prussia during that time.
Medieval & Renaissance Europe the population of quite hardy as well as many cases quite fierce group of people due to one of the reasons being the fact that they were less urbanized then the ancient era and especially the modern era other than the Barbarians from the ancient narrow of course.
A peasant can & was allowed to own weapons & armor in most places in Europe.
Spot on analysis of the historical analysis. The madingo empire of samori toure beat back several attacks of the French armies ..... until the maxin machine guns were introduced.
The guns made by local gun smiths were no match
The machine gun couldve been invented in Africa. the materials were there
@@ice8776 The gun powder technology arrived way later on because of the Saharan barrier. Eurasia had been sharing technology for a hundred years one upping each other on armaments tactics and so on. Remember gun powder and it's use in warfare is not European technology.
But Europeans quickly improved it much faster than anyone else…
Thank you! I always wondered how a small bunch of Spanischs could overwhelm the First Nation in Middle and South America! Now I know!🎉
Steel, ships, horses and gunpowder but predominately playing one faction off against another and the inadvertent exposure to pathogens (foreign and domestic) to mop up the survivors (both friend and foe). It also helps to be associated with the local deities, eh Peachy.
I think Wayne Lees theory in his book Waging War is a little bit more robust. Industrialization, for instance, doesn’t explain how the British were able to defeat the Qing dynasty with a handful of marines. The technological difference between the Qing and the British was essentially irrelevant. Sure British ships were far superior, but the Qing used fortified emplacements with canons. There is a deeper reason than industrialization, and this goes for basically every conflict. The moguls losing to the southern Indian tribes despite the Moguls having firearms and the Indians not, the Austrians with rifled breech-loading guns losing to Prussian smooth bore muzzle loading canons in 1866.
Hmm... I'd love to hear more, just don't have time to read a new book now, and the few reviews I just looked at were very vague - can you summarize some deeper reasons for me?
@@stephenmontague6930 The book goes through pre-history to counter insurgency tactics, its an 800 page book so unfortunately I can't really summarize it for you since so much changes. However, his main argument is that the reasons certain powers triumph over others is socio-cultural differences. Whether that be how certain cultures worldviews work, or how the society's view on warfare shapes their warfighting methods, and so on. I think the best point he makes regarding technology is that the technology only matters insofar as the society develops the proper tactics to employ them, and every culture and every society develops them differently.
@@TerryGruss Yeah a lot of people are going way too far to try and explain away why the Europeans were able to dominate the globe. They take away all the agency from the Europeans themselves and give them purely deterministic reasons, I think it falls really flat and I blame Guns, Gems, and Steel for it personally.
@@TerryGruss "You don’t conquer that entire globe by accident". You speak for yourself!
@@TerryGruss"Cultural superiority" 💀💀💀
Your analysis of a subject that I find fascinating makes a lot of sense. Your generalization about Asia misses India which was somehow subdued by the East India Company. On a sweeping scale, could their opium trade have had the impact of machined artillery/weapons in a later epoch?
Thanks for another informative video. There were two thoughts that came to mind while watching. The first is a question, if the Europeans, as you put it, saw the African continent as somewhat "equals, then how does that reconcile with slavery? The second is a thought, the success in the America's were also aided by infighting of the indigenous people which was somewhat encouraged, both directly and indirectly, by the Europeans. The indigenous people would fight for trade and alliances with the new Europeans and later they would also be aided with weapons from the Europeans.
Because obviously Europeans saw themselves as superior. The Europeans were more technologically advanced and saw Africans as lower humans.
@@jonnyd9351 Thanks for the reply. My question was referring to the statement in the video referring to why the African/Asia continents weren't colonized in the 1500's to 1800's. The statement was, and I'm adlibbing, that the Europeans (Portuguese) looked at the African kingdoms as "equals". Keep in mind, the time period is between the 1500's and 1800's. And as the video states, in the 1500's the Europeans were not that advance over the rest of the world with technology.
The development of the African kingdoms is consistently exaggerated, and while I'm not a historian of the Portuguese, I can't think of much where anybody was very awed by African kingdoms. You have the story of Mansa Musa, but that's more legend than anything else.
@@friendlyfire7861 History is distorted conveyance of flawed memories.
Slavery has existed for a long time and was practiced by the Romans on conquered peoples of, say, Greece, even though they greatly respected the Greeks. It faded out in western Europe, but was still being practiced in Africa when Europeans arrived.
Good content, but you should to update your microphone. There's noise in the background.
Interesting theories! However, how do we explain the colonization of the Philipines by Spain in the SXVI?
To my knowledge, disease was not a factor in the process.
Great thesis. I really liked Empires of the Weak by JC Sharman and it is a great book on the subject.
An often overlooked element of this period was indeed the role of local alliances in enabling Europeans to establish footholds in the Americas. Spain simply would not have defeated the Aztecs without co-opting the local native tribes to their side.
Yes they would have.
@@kaneanthony7724 No, they would not
@@kaneanthony7724They barely won and almost lost at several points in the war even with everything going in their favor. So how they could have won if everyone in the region was against them just doesn’t seem possible.
But let's not finger wag at the Europeans when the Mexihcah were the ones who conquered and subjugated the other tribes. Nobody forced them to. All is fair in war
@@kaneanthony7724But such a thing never happened, so...
Can you link sources in your videos?
Good presentation. Couple of questions.
1. If Europe, Africa and Asia were technologically equal in the 1500’s, why didn’t they colonize the Americas?
2. Why did the Industrial Revolution take place only in Europe and then spread to the world?
Thanks!
1. Why should they? Technology does not inevitably lead to colonization. See the Treasure Fleets of Zheng He.
2. There is a lot of debate over this question. Some historians think there were conditions specific to Europe that made industrialization inevitable there and impossible elsewhere (but they disagree about what those conditions were). Other historians think that China (and perhaps to a lesser extent Japan and India - though the latter is a very controversial claim) was on the brink of industrialization, too, and if it had been delayed in Britain then it would have happened in China first.
Either way, the Industrial Revolution was an *extremely* dramatic change. Europe was completely transformed by it, so it would be anachronistic to project back and say, "well, Europe was a certain way after industrialization, so it must have been like that before."
@@premodernist_historyI'm sorry are you implying Asian and Mesoamerican cultures did /not/ empire build in their regions? Why would they? Because it's human nature lol
Your channel is so good and I cannot wait till it blows up, you have great content.
Thanks!
Question. Why is being a supplier of raw materials automatically putting you in a subservient position? Like if I build chairs and my neighbor is a lumberjack, that means he has to bow before me when we trade?
You have missed the real plot: The one who can write and read contracts will beat the other, hands down - especially if his uncle is the judge in the local law court, or his sister is wife of the queen.
That's far from universal. Most obviously, enough oil wealth makes you a world power, even if you have nothing else to offer but sand and fundamentalists.
However, in your example the big difference is that cutting trees is relatively unskilled labor, and there are many forests, so there will probably be much competition in providing the raw timber. Joining (furniture-making) is a high-skilled craft, where it takes many years of practice to compete. All else being equal, the joiner can pick and choose suppliers and the lumberjacks have to take what they can get.
Great video!!
I think that what helped Europeans in this processus was the lack of unified and effective governments and leaders, with real visions and plans to develop the lands to support independence from foreign invasion.
Take the example of Medieval Lithuania. They hold against Teutonic Order and surrounding powers by developing economy, cities, administration, armies and hierarchy, allying with neighbours…
Centuries later in Asia, Japan emerged from centuries of isolation, and processed to develop a new form of government by observing the Western Powers and combining it intelligently with their own us…
Theres a definite sense of the Aztecs having no foreign affair experience when you read about how Cortez took Tenochtitlan.
Good video