The Roman Empire in Spain and Portugal
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2024
- The Roman Empire ruled over Hispania, modern-day Spain and Portugal, for 600 years. This video explores the history of the Roman conquest, geography of the region under Roman rule, and an overview of ancient sites that are can still be visited today.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:39 Early Peoples
2:06 Carthaginian Rule
3:31 Arrival of the Romans
4:38 General Geography
7:23 Roman Conquest of the Local Tribes
11:10 Hispania Tarraconensis
14:48 Hispania Baetica
17:13 Lusitania
18:48 Balearic Islands
19:53 Reorganization under Diocletian
20:52 Fall of the Western Roman Empire
21:38 Later Centuries
22:16 Conclusion
#romanempire #spain #portugal #carthage #sevilla #cordoba #lisbon #toledo #cadiz #tarragona #galicia
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love when roman history discussion isnt zeroed in on Marcus aurelius, germania. and caesar.
thanks, I feel the same way and like to explore less well-known topics, although those topics are justifiably famous too for good reasons.
Fascinating video. Don't think I've ever seen anyone do a comprehensive breakdown of a Roman province like this before and Iberia in general seems to get a lot less attention than Gaul, Italy or Britannia for some reason so I learned a lot from this video. Thank you once again for your consistently great content! Do you plan to do similar videos for other Roman or Chinese provinces/regions?
Thanks, I’m glad you’ve found it helpful. It’s my first foray into non-Chinese history and this one in particular is longer and geography heavy, so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out.
One of my main interests is historical geography (I basically grew up pouring over ancient maps for fun) so one of my goals for this channel is to show how these two subjects are interrelated.
For the Roman Empire I’m definitely interested in doing a series on all the provinces, starting with Hispania. I’m still trying to find a balance between video length and narrative - maybe break up a region like Gaul into several videos and do 10-15 minute ones so they’re a little shorter. I’m still trying to figure out my style.
For Chinese history, yes too. Right now my focus is to do videos on strategic cities, like Xuzhou or Xiangyang, and show what made them so important.
If there’s any topics you’re especially interested in let me know too and I can try my best to cover some of the materials.
And in general I’m still trying to experiment figuring out my style and workflow so I can make this channel sustainable over time
@@gatesofkilikien I for sure have a number of different questions I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on, but whether you feel they are worth addressing in videos is up to you. The biggest one would be, what does imperial china actually look like at a ground level? This is kind of a broad question, but to explain what I mean, for places like Ancient Rome, I fell like I have a much better grasp of how society is structured in a way I don't for East Asia. For example, for Rome and Ancient Mediterranean civilization generally, I think of a society organized around city states, resulting in influential urban populations and a lot of political energy getting put into keeping citizens happy, whether with votes or bread and circuses. And if leaders fail in that regard, a major urban riot is often enough to topple whole regimes.
administrative centers or military garrisons rather than organic socio-political units. A state with cities rather than a city state. From what I've seen, it feels like rural areas are a lot more powerful in China. You don't see many examples of Emperors bending over backwards to appease the urban poor or getting overthrown by rioting plebs, but instead you see massive peasant revolts that far surpass anything in the West in terms of their impact. A peasant rebel like Liu Bang or Zhu Yuanzhang successfully seizing power and setting up a long-lasting, legitimate government is just not something that happens in European history. Why exactly is that? Since the city state model is what I'm familiar with from Western history, I really have no idea what this kind of agrarian society looks like or how it works. What does local politics look like in a system like that and how does it interact with the central government? How does the social contract work? etc. Hope that makes some amount of sense.
@@laturnich9507 these are very interesting observations, and the type of themes I'd love to explore more on this channel. But some general thoughts though, Chinese dynasties tend to be very highly centralized states with magistrates appointed directly by the emperor, and these magistrates tend to have good control over the cities, making the sort of unrest you see in medieval cities less likely. But at the same time, because the empires were so centralized and utilization of natural resources already close to peak capacities, if things did go wrong it tended to go massively wrong, and peasants couldn't just pack up and move somewhere else, so rebellion became the only option. With that said, I'd say that the fact that peasants had to rebel is a sign that they didn't have much power, otherwise they could have had more bargaining powerful with the ruling elites without needing to resort to rebellion.
European societies were more decentralized, and to me the strength of individual cities may be emblematic of the strength of their local regions/hinterlands at self rule. Compared to their Ancient Chinese counterparts, European peasants seemed to have way more options, since conflicts with the local nobility could be mediated by other lords or the king, or the peasants could just pack up and leave, like what the Huguenots did when Louis XIV cracked down on them. There was also the option of colonizing new lands, especially the New World. So these things all took pressure out of the political pressure-cooker, so to speak.
With that said there's still all kinds of exceptions. There's been times in Chinese history when cities had more power too, and the urbanites did cause trouble for the authorities. There's also been decent sized peasant rebellions in Europe too, like the German Peasants' War in the 1500s.
@@gatesofkilikien Part 1 - I can't speak too much to the Chinese side of things, but your arguments about European peasants having more options don't necessarily square with my own observations. Firstly, I would point out that most of the examples you cite, like the case of the Huguenots or New World emigration stem from the Early Modern Period, when European society was experiencing unprecedented disruption on almost every level and that the situation in Ancient and Medieval times was significantly different. Also the Huguenot were a religious minority who were forcibly expelled from France from their beliefs. Their situation does not say much about what the average Catholic French peasant could or could not do. And as you point out major rebellions did still occur (besides the one you mentioned I can also point to the Peasant's Revolt in England, the Jacquerie in France, or going way back, the Roman Servile Wars to name just a few). So while I agree with you that the difference in the role and structure of the state is surely a key factor here, I'm not sold on the idea that the peasants were less rebellious because the weakness of central authority in Europe gave them more freedom. If anything I would argue the opposite: that the lack of central authority left the peasants completely under the thumb of local elites and with no legitimate avenues for political participation or social advancement.
To illustrate my point, let's compare the political structure of the Byzantine Empire to a Medieval Feudal kingdom like England or France. Since the Roman Empire in the east never collapsed, the Byzantines still have a functional central government with reasonably effective tax collection, a professional standing army, and a state bureaucracy. To make sure the provincial aristocracy don't get too powerful (and because small-time farmers are worse at tax evasion) the central government has an interest protecting the rights and freedoms of the peasantry and making sure their farms don't all get bought up by local magnates or the church. The landlords may grumble about this but they are nowhere near powerful enough to directly oppose the government, and besides, anyone who is truly ambitious is going to seek their fortune not out in some provincial backwater, but within the system itself, be that the clergy, the bureaucracy or the army. By the time you've made it big as a palace official, a general, etc. you probably own a nice portfolio of landed estates, but if some of the farmers run away to the next estate over the hill or they get captured and sold into slavery by the Turks, it's not the end of the world because as long as you stay in the Emperor's good graces and tapped into the government's patronage network there's plenty more where that came from. This system is very effective at making subjects loyal to the imperial institutions, but notably, despite the Emperor's protestations of divine authority, the Romans, originating as they do from a republican city state, have never really shaken the idea that the Emperor is ultimately just another civil servant who could and would be replaced if he failed to fulfill the duties of his office. All else being equal, if you are an imperial civil servant it's ultimately less important to you who the Emperor is then that whoever it ends up being can keep the tax receipts coming in and pay your salary. Thus throughout Byzantine history the imperial throne had been held at various times by generals, barbarians, barbarian generals, illiterate peasants, stable boys, a eunuch's brother, or even just the imperial princess's boyfriend. As long as they were able to keep the people happy it didn't matter. Loyalty was to the institution, not the person. Even so, none of these people came to power via a peasant rebellion. Palace coup, military coup, urban riot sure, but I'm guessing the reason a peasant revolt never set an Emperor on the throne was mostly because no peasant mob could hope to stand against the Roman army let alone storm the walls of Constantinople (an angry mob already inside the walls is another matter).
Part 2 - Contrast this situation with that in Western Europe during the same period. Central authority has been basically non-existent since the fall of Rome and if you're a feudal lord, outside of some mostly nominal concessions to king and church, on your estate your word is law. And you need that authority, because with no lucrative government postings available to get rich on, the income you collect from your lands is everything you got, and without hands to work it, your land is worthless. You and the neighboring lords are all part of the same zero sum game and any labor you lose is an advantage your rivals will use against you. That means you have to keep your serfs on your land and working no matter the cost. As far as you're concerned, these workers are as much a part of your property as your horse and house, and should they ever try to leave or withhold what is your due, not only would it be a breach of your God-given rights as their lord, but it would directly threaten your livelihood and everything you hold dear. With no state bureaucracy to command, the King is in pretty much the same boat, simply first warlord among equals. Although a good King should be able to reward your service with at least some new lands, titles, and spoils of war, you mostly follow him because you and the rest of the lords of the realm are all part of the same small, incestuous social circle that has monopolized secular power over these lands ever since your ancestors bashed in the heads of whatever poor saps were running the place before you showed up. You know the King personally, he's probably your cousin a couple times over, your father served his father and your grandfather served his grandfather before that. And if that's not enough to secure your loyalty there are another 50 burly warlords in the same room who would really like a piece of your land, and, unless you're the most popular guy there, things probably won't end well for you if you pick a fight. You and the rest of these sword wielding sociopaths are at each others' throats more often than not, but if there's one thing you can all agree on it's that the kingdom is your collective birthright and anyone you tries to infringe on the power of your murderous little clique is an enemy to all. Especially any challenge from the villainous peasants who dare transgress against the divinely ordained socially order must be crushed with extreme prejudice. That description is perhaps a bit cartoonish but the point is that in such a decentralized and oligarchic system politics were extremely personal and there were little to no opportunities for newcomers to enter the political arena. On top of that all members of the political class had a common interest in the continued brutal exploitation of the rural working class as the foundation of their own position in society and lived in mortal terror that their serfs might rise up against them. If you read translations of primary source documents it is quite striking the level of fear and hatred many of these people express towards the peasants. Some of it is almost on par with what you would think of in the context of American chattel slavey. In that environment it is not at all surprising that at the first sign of peasant unrest the nobility would close ranks and move rapidly to crush all resistance.
Sorry, that was very long. But the point I'm trying to make here is that, based on my understanding of the way political organization worked in Europe, for the kind of uprisings we see in China to succeed must require (1 that the political environment provides legitimate avenues for social mobility in the first place. Otherwise you end up in a situation like Western Europe where an uppity peasant the likes of Liu Bang could never have ingratiated himself into elite society and would probably have been killed on the spot for even trying. And 2) One of those legitimate avenues of social mobility (at least during a period of crisis) would have to be through leading a peasant uprising. This is the part that I find hard to explain. In just about every major European historical example I think of, even in periods of great turmoil like the Reformation or the French Revolution, as soon as the peasants get involved, everyone else basically stops what they're doing and teams up to stomp the farmers back into the dirt from whence they came. Even in the Byzantine example I talked about, although a peasant certainly could work their way to the top with a lot of ambition and even more luck, they'd have had to have worked their way up to a high position in the army or the court beforehand and if they'd had gone home and led they're neighbors in an uprising somewhere along the way, I can't see it working out for them. The situations are obviously not identical. For example the Chinese 皇帝 was certainly not conceived of as a readily transferable political office the way I argued the Roman/Byzantine Emperorship was treated. But I'm still unsure what is it about the political norms of China that leads to Liu Bang showing up at the King of Chu's camp with a peasant army and everyone deciding "that's someone we can work with". I suspect there may be an issue of confused terminology here in that, in the Western context, peasant rebellion almost always refers to an uprising along class lines with explicitly revolutionary goals such as drastically increasing the rights of the peasantry or just overturning the social hierarchy altogether. Of the few Chinese peasant rebels who were ultimately successful (Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang chief amongst them) their aims so far as my limited understanding goes seem to have been primarily political and broadly popular with large segments of society. It just so happened that they raised their troops from among the local peasantry. In that sense, I'm tempted to ask if "militia leader" is perhaps not a more accurate term to apply to these individuals. Then again, the fact that a lot of these groups were tied to religious movements would speak against them being purely political in nature, though I admit I don't know any details of what groups like the Red Eyebrows or the Yellow Turbans actually advocated in terms of a political or social program. But considering how much damage a lot of these rebellions caused, even if they were put down eventually, I have to imagine that either they received support from the gentry or other social elements at least some of the time, or the Chinese provincial aristocracy was a lot less effective at nipping these uprisings in the bud compared to their Western European contemporaries. That actually sounds quite plausible now that I think of it, given how much more militarized the feudal landlord class was in Europe. But let me know if that tracks with what you know from your research.
While the modern landscape of the Iberian Plateau is indeed windswept plains, this used to be different in the past, during Roman times the area used to be much more forested than it is nowadays, and it was a saying that a squirrel could pass from one extreme of Iberia to the other by merely jumping on trees. The afforestation of the area changed during medieval times, as the Mesta sheperds expanded southwards alongside the Christian kingdoms, and deforested many areas to allow their sheep grazing grounds, after which the interior started looking more like how it looks nowadays
Yeah same in Turkey. Byzantine historians mention how Tamerlane hid elephants in a forest during the battle of Ankara. If you look at Çubuk Valley today, where the battle took place, you can't see any trees. The theory is the same, turcoman shepherds deforested central anatolia for grazing their sheep and goats. Dramatically turning central anatolian plateau into what it is today. If only they knew how important forests were.
I think same dramatic change also happened in Ancient Italy. Romans cut most of the trees in apennine peninsula for farming and this caused soil erosion and increased rates of malaria.
a lot of Portugal was also deforested during the age of exploration , for the mass construction of the ships used for their empire
@@bconni2 It's also ironic because the most common last name in Portugal is "da silva" right?
Also Portugal is still very forested. I think a third of country is forest, mostly the northern regions. Y'all should protect it at all cost.
That’s amazing. Nobody ever mentions this.
Well done. 3 Roman sites in Portugal worth mentioning...
The Temple of Diana in Evora. The ruins of the amphitheatre and the Galerias Romanas in Lisbon. And the ruined city of Conimbriga near Coimhra, where you can visit the Casa das Suasticas, a Roman home with well preserved mosaic swasticas. The city is still being excavated.
La "capital" de Hispania estaba en Tarragona, Cataluña (España)
Ya sabemos que Spain, España, no existe😂 pero no es cierto.😊
Portugal sí, of course.
😂
there's also good examples of Roman swastikas at the ruins of Milreu , in the Algarve region of Portugal
It´s called "Casa da Cruz Suástica" (house of the swastika cross) or better known for "Casa dos Repuxos" (house of the waterspouts)
In 1996, during a driving tour in Europe, I visited Spain, then via Southern France, Italy. With the obvious exceptions of Pompeii & Herculaneum, I found Spain to have the best-preserved Roman building in Europe. The aqueduct of Segovia is marvellous, and Mérida has every Roman city's amenities still preserved: bridge, forum, aqueduct, theatre, circus, amphitheatre, Patrician's house, etc.
next time you're in the area, try and check out the countless Roman ruins in Portugal. they've got some great ones too. most notably the ruins of Conimbriga, among others
@@bconni2 Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm now retired and too old and poor to travel the furthest I can go, as Spain and Portugal are antipodal to my country, New Zealand.
Bro you deserve 1000x as much subscribers.
Thank you so much 😀; I'm still pretty new to being a TH-camr - hopefully one day!
Corrections:
@nixxxon18 pointed out that a few cities are placed in the wrong locations. Tarraco (Tarragona) is placed where modern-day Barcelona is, and the actual site of Tarragona should be further south near the mouth of the Ebro River - a very big brain fart on my part to misplace this. The other mistake is the location of Sagunto and Valencia - they both should be slightly north than where I placed them, so that Valencia is in the middle of its coastal valley and Sagunto is at the northern edge.
Tarragona should be more of less halfway between Barcelona and the Ebro. The city in the mouth of the Ebro is Tortosa, another very important roman site
One of the best history videos I have ever seen. Brilliant pace and attention to important detail. Honestly, having read A Brief History of Spain (Jeremy Black) I was not left with any real impression of the Carthaginian presence in Iberia - and as someone who is not usually interested in Rome I had not realized the sheer significance of the Second Punic war in turning Rome into THE Mediterranean superpower. I did not realize Lusitanians dated back as far as they did (I assumed the Portuguese were essentially similar to the rest of Hispania in this period and then diverged from them in many later centuries). Extremely interesting to see the administration and economy of RomanIberia too. The video was on exactly what the title described and exceeded all my expectations for TH-cam documentary video. Liked, subscribed, and rang the notification bell!
Extremely underrated keep it up
Thanks for your support, working on making it less so :)
This geopolitics/history format touches something in my soul
Glad you enjoy it! Yeah the two are so closely intertwined, and it's often hard to learn one without the other.
Would be cool to have a vid for each province
Yes my goal is to do something like this for all the Roman provinces. I have several different series on different optics in mind right now to produce alongside each other, and Roman geography is one of them.
Correction: Mauretania Tingitana was renamed Hispania Novo ulterior Tingitana (or just Hispania Novo) during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and was thus integrated into the diocese of spain under this name during Diocletian.
Thanks for the feedback. I've been trying to find sources to confirm this, but the most I could find are a few sources in Spanish with few citations (grant it my Spanish is not great). IIRC one of the sources I read even mentioned that a tablet was found somewhere in Morocco which referred to the province with a name similar to what you mentioned, but then I can't find any other references to this tablet either. My personal sense is to be skeptical, especially since given the history between Spain and Morocco, if there is such a tablet I would expect it to be quite famous and heavily researched.
El Norte de África e Iberia siempre tuvo relaciones comerciales con la península y viceversa, lo que les enfrentó fué el Islam. San Agustín de Hipona ,santo y sabio catolico, nació en la costa argelina en el 354. Ahí tiene un dato para que busque la relación de la Mauritania con Hispania. Antes del Islam.
If you only have sources in spanish, that means you have no real, proper sources, just mere tales as narratives , and all your research was a waste of time
@@xavisanchez7522te refieres a creerte solo a lo que digan los fantasiosos anglosajones. Ejemplo : Arturo y el mago Merlín, junto al Unicornio. Todo fantasía.😂😊
Excellent! Comprehensive and very clear at the same time. I will be back for more!
Thanks! And will be working on more in this series in the future too
Great video; really impressive for someone from so far away to highlight so many important details and also to tie them together and explain their relevance. Some may quibble with some finer details, but the overall big picture -- with lots of detail still -- is quite accurate and meaningful.
Thanks, appreciate the support and feedback. This was my first video for what I eventually want to be a series on all the Roman provinces, so it's been helpful to read all the feedback for when I start writing the future videos of the series.
This was satisfyingly in depth, thanks!
Thanks, glad you've enjoyed it!
Great video, thouroughly enjoyed it. Very clear and well organized.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Emperor Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule both the eastern and western portions of the empire simultaneously, was also from Italica in Baetica.
but he was a terrible ruler. that's why everyone only likes to remember Trajan and Hadrian
@@graccusbro2061También fueron terribles César, Nerón y Calígula y hay muchas películas de ellos.
Lo que sucede es que como era tan grande Teodosio I la Envidia a un Hispano....😂 y repartió el mundo entre sus 2 hijos Arcadio y Honorio....😊 no lo soportan.
@@anacasanova7350 Tedoosio era malisimo
Teodosio the great was from segovia area.
@@graccusbro2061Caligula, un santo a su lao 😂
This was great, thank you! Subscribed
Thanks for your support!
Excellent historic narrative and very informative about ancient roman structures geographically placed. Thank you.
Excellent. Very well done. Thanks
Great video!
Thanks!
Excellent. Please do more.
Ur content is crazy good man
Thanks, glad you've like it!
Cool stuff. Love Rome videos that aren't focused on the same old same old. Would love some info on diplomatic relations between all the empires of the East around this time.
Very good video!
Glad you liked it!
Concise video yet again! Fast pace documentaries just hits the spot. Also, can u do more in detail explanation of the eastern han dynasty of china, maybe make it into a series, it's not spoken enough in my opinion. Would love it if u doooo!
Thanks, yes I try to keep everything as concise and to the point as possible. And with the Chinese history videos my plan is to continue it so that eventually there can be a series that covers almost or almost all of Chinese dynastic history. The ensuing centuries are a lot more complicated to write about though, so it’s been taking longer than expected as I try to figure out how best to organize the info
@@gatesofkilikien Keep up the good work, take ur time on it, you got this!
@@tehkaihunganthony9179 yes will do, and looking forward to finally having end products on this
Great video, great channel
Thanks for your kind words and support!
very good vid. thanks
Glad you liked it!
Very interesting!
Cool video man
Thanks!
Great video
Thanks!
great video.
Thanks!
Lusitania forever!!
Even the Lusitanian horses are the best ones! Then and now!
For centuries, the Lusitanians were an elite force of the Roman Empire.
Cheers from Lisboa - Portugal.
Nice video, only sad that you skipped so much on Lusitania, one of the most well preserved Roman ruins of Portugal is Conímbriga and the monumental mine workings along the rivers.
I could listen to their kind of stuff all day
10/10 Good video.
Thanks, appreciate the support!
We have a huge statue of Viriato in my city. Even tho we are the result of a lot of different cultures the Portuguese will always be Lusitanos by heart.
Thanks for the tidbit, and it's always so cool to see statues in European cities of famous people from the past. I still haven't been to Portugal yet and have been wanting to do so for years now, so hopefully I can do so in the near future.
I am the 100th subscriber, it is an honor.
Thanks! I've been aiming for this milestone for a while so glad to finally have reached it
Great video! Earned a sub. Keep it up with the Roman provinces 👍
Thanks, will do! The Roman provinces is one of the series I'm working on in parallel with the others.
Your vid deserves more attention.
Thanks for the support!
@@gatesofkilikien You're welcome. Can I ask about the Cilician Connection?
@@davidrogers8030 I'm Chinese American, and my thought when picking a channel name was that if I were an ancient traveler traveling between China and the West, I would go through the Cilician Gates to get from one side to the other. The name also fits well with the strong emphasis I want to place on geography in my videos.
First of all, really good video, well informed and put together. There are not too many cities that have two throws to the dice of the light’s stage. Cordoba was the capital of the Baetica and then of the Caliphate of Al- Andalus. But it remained as inland sleepy city. In a Cadiz beach near Bolonia, there are the rests of a well preserved Roman ruins, Baelo Claudia. Garum was produced there, and there are still the rests of implements to produce it. It’s worth to visit it.
I'm just commenting for the algorithm
lol thanks, I've been trying to decipher it these past few months and it's harder to figure out than why the Roman Empire fell
10:02 when you hear “Augustus” you can already tell what happened 😂😂😂
cool
Its so fascinating that the umayyad caliphate in the 8th century had the exact same problem subduing cantabria and asturias as the romans had
Because in Asturias were the true visigothic warriors who defeated them and started Castilla
@@KevinLopez-pu7llthat would be Cantabria.
It was in Cantabria where the true precedents of Castille were forged, Asturias was, and still is, more linked to Leon. In fact Cantabria was part of Castille for all its history except for the last 40 years, and it was always known as the Province of Santander or as "La Montaña" (the mountain).
This is shown in the language, for example. Cantabria has always been spanish-speaking except for some regions in the frontiers, while Asturias language was mainly astur-leonese, also spoken in Leon. Though now Castilian has largely replaced it.
As a portuguese i approve this video.
Loves that you mentioned how the Romans subjugated native Iberians forcing them to work the mines to death and how in turn the descendants of all these people would do the same in the Americas to the Natives there.
It’s important to see the role Rome played in Iberia is very similar to the role Spain and Portugal played in the Americas. In many ways it was a continuation of the same initial thrust.
Thank you for the wonderful history of Spain, since I moved to Spain I always wondered what this vast country holds secret. I live in Andalusia at the coast, and also here you can see ancient history remains, there is a reason I'm am not allowed to search here in the region. Shame cuz I am a huge history buf😅, thank you and subscribed!
Can u include the sources for this video in the description? I always wanted to learn historical geography on my own but wasn’t sure where to start nor what to read
I've started to put sources for some of my most recent videos. For this video though most of my sources were just basic geography/history articles that I've pieced together, and also things I've learned when I visited some of the places I've talked about.
I'd say in general a good place to start with historical geography is to just spend a lot of time with historical atlases. You can always focus on topics that interest you, like for example wars or trade routes tend to be popular topics for these maps. Any historical geography book will still, in the end, make you look at the maps, there's just no way around it.
Another very important thing, which I try to emphasize in my videos, is to not let modern political boundaries, which can be quite arbitrary sometimes, distract you from how geography affects the bigger picture of the region. Spain and Portugal is especially tricky in this regard, because geographically they form one unit, but politically they are split, and their political boundaries are based just as much on political compromises during the Reconquista than on what made sense geographically. So if you were to only read about the geography of Spain or Portugal it's very easy to get confused, but if you were to take a step back and orient yourself to the geography of the peninsula as a whole and then from there understand how the modern borders were drawn, you'd have a much fuller understanding.
One more thing is to try not get bogged down with names. There are many general themes that play out in historical geography, and even if you don't remember all the names you can reason your way through. For example, peninsulas tend to have one (or multiple) mountain(s) running through their spine, rivers tend to occupy the space between mountains, and cities tend to develop at key points along rivers (usually in important locations like where the river meets the ocean/sea, or near a major mountain pass or mine, or in the middle of a rich agricultural region).
Excellent briefing. A bit slower next time. One needs time to look at the maps.
Thanks for your feedback. Yes for the upcoming videos I'll be making some modifications so the maps are easier to follow.
I liked the tie in to the modern colonial situation from the mineral extracting colonization of the Romans
Missed the Alans, one group came across the Pyrenees with the Vandals, and continued onto Carthage, the other settled in the NW.
Good video, would just say that you forgot to include Olisipo in the Greek and Phoenician colonies. The Phoenicians got at least until Scalabis (modern Santarém).
Not sure about Spain, but in Portugal, the biggest cities weren't founded by the Romans. Lisbon was founded by the Phoenicians. Porto wasn't even a relevant village by the time Portugal was founded. Coimbra is often mistakenly confused with Conimbriga, but they aren't the same, the later being founded by the Romans, the former preceded them. As for less relevant cities, most weren't also founded by the Romans, like Beja (preceded) or Faro (Phoenicians), but Braga and maybe Evora and Bragança.
Great video, keep it up!
Coimbra's name was Aeminium in Romans times and nowadays we can visit the Aeminium's Criptoportico at Machado de Castro Museum, in Coimbra.
Not sure about Braga being placed as less relevant. It's the same size if not larger than Coimbra today. It was settled by the celtiberian Bracari, was later urbanized by Rome, as Bracara Augusta, then it became capital to the Suebi Kingdom and a major religious center, seat of the Archbishop of Hispania. It could be argued Portugal's independence was concocted between Braga and Guimaraes, as they once stood as the religious and political hearts of the county. Definitely predates the Romans.
Conimbriga's ruins are located near Condeixa-a-Velha. This city was occupied by the Romans when they came to the Iberian Peninsula (who founded Conimbriga? The Romans or the people who lived there before the Romans? 🙋♂️ But we can see Romans legacy there.)
@@renatopinto3186 true, sometimes I forget Braga is one of the most important cities in Portugal.
@@g-ps sure, and that can be argued in relation to almost any settlement.
The building at 0:24 is a reconstruction of a Roman building from the original material
another important roman city was Braga in Portugal
Very interesting. I always assumed Iberia was a relatively peaceful and prosperous part of Rome, given its isolation on the Western edge of the world. I had no idea Roman rule was so brutal, especially the subjugation of Numantia and Lusitania. You draw parallels between this rule and later Spanish behavior in the New World, I wonder how much the Romans influenced the later Spanish people or if it was simply coincidence.
I was wondering if geographic features of europe, became more defensible over time as population sizes increased? China disintegrates and reunites many times. But after rome, nothing of that scale would ever happen again in europe. I know it cannot be explained by one singular factor. But i wondered what you thought about it?
This of course like you said is a complicated topic and has many factors affecting it, and I want to explore these factors in more detail down the line. But my general sense is that from a purely geographical standpoint, some parts of Europe, namely the North European Plain that opens into Eastern Europe, is way more open that just about anything in China, but then other parts of Europe like Scandinavia, the British Isles, Iberia, and Italy are either separated from the rest of Europe by the sea or are very mountainous peninsulas, all of which make them much more difficult to conquer than even the most remote regions in the Han part of China. So these outlying areas in Europe have been able to maintain their independence over centuries, whereas factions on the North European Plain had been at war for centuries until WW1 and WW2 (not that the outlying regions didn't fight among themselves either, of course).
And there's also the fact that Europe is surrounded by water on three sides, which adds another dimension of complexity to the geopolitical complexities there.
and also there's the fact that the Roman Empire was not a european one, but mediterranean. The core of the Empire was not the land, but the enclosed sea. Nowadays we tend to think about the Mediterranean sea as a frontier, but in the ancient times it was the main highway that connectect all the diferent civilizations, from the egipcians, to the fenicians and the greeks to the westwards.
Good video! But small mistake: You placed Tarraco/Tarragona where Barcino/Barcelona is. Also Sagunt is where Valencia should be and Sagunt is a bit more to the north.
Thanks for catching that, and both brain farts on my part, especially with Tarragona/Barcelona since I even did the train ride from Barcelona to Tarragona and back. I'll add a pinned comment to make this correction easily visible to future viewers.
Many Hispanic peoples around the world have significant amounts of Italian DNA , Romans definitely left a big footprint in hispania
Spaniards are italians that speak Spanish in truth
So the Moors took advantage of a old and weakening Rome to take over most of Iberia. Which they ruled for about 700 years. Fascinating history
The ones that took advantage of an old and weakening Rome where the Goths. The Moors took advantage of the decadent Byzantine Empire, who reconquered the southern parts of the Spain and northern parts of Africa to the European barbarians and ultimately failed to the moors and the goths in both sides of the sea. The Moors conquest of Iberia was on a fragmented gothic kingdomship, which was in a succession struggle for power.
👍👍👍
thanks!
Garum? Did I get that right? What is that?
It's a fish sauce that the Romans couldn't get enough of. There's some local modern successors but for the most part not used anymore.
Barcelona esta a cien km de Tarragona al norte.
Y Barcelona esta a 140 km, hoy, de Francia.
2:07 "The Aquitane were the Pre-cursors of The Basque Language"?
The Modern Basque Language in NOT Indo-European; It has NO relation to any other
European Language. Do you have any evidence to support your claim because I've never
heard anything about what you claim, & I've researched this.
Carthage, 2:14 -- "a south A phoenician colony" ? ? ? ¿Ché?
Was that 600 years BC or AD? There's no timeline to follow just that they ruled for 600 years.
Its around 200 BC to 400 AD. I am also planning to incorporate timelines into future videos to help make things easier to follow
Most Romance peoples of Europe (the Celts of Galicia and a few others notwithstanding) are basically just Romans who changed their name and speak a descendant language of Latin.
More like Romanized people, the original inhabitants were never fully replaced by Romans from Italy, they were just absorbed culturally.
At least in Iberia, same thing happened with the Arabs after centuries of rule in Southern Iberia.
@@mapache-ehcapam The Moors were expelled. Very little of them remains, genetically. As for the Romanized people, most of them are of blood descent from Italians.
@@Tawheed_Taqwa_Tawakkul Maybe 5% of Spanish is Arabic or gets worse through Arabic. 75% of the vocabulary is Latin.
@@Tawheed_Taqwa_Tawakkul Not that many, and most of those words have a Latin equivalent. "Barrio" can be easily and logically replaced with "vecindario".
@@Tawheed_Taqwa_Tawakkul It's still nowhere near Arabic. Only a very little bit of the vocabulary is anything but Latin, Greek, or other European languages.
Well almost half of Lusitania province was in Spain
After the Romans arrived, yes. And the capital was located in Merida (a Spanish city nowadays).
Before the Romans no (The Lusitanos lived between the rivers Douro and Tejo in nowadays Portugal territory - not spanish).
Romans reorganized the Iberian Peninsula territory and demarcated the Romans provinces: Lusitania, Terraconensis and Baetica.
The north of Portugal belonged to the Terraconensis province at the begging. Then new provinces appeared: Gallaecia and Chartaginensis ( at the beggining these provinces belonged to the Terraconensis).
@@g-ps The Lusitanians were a tribe that lived in Spain as well, in Salamanca and Extremadura western areas. Its boundaries unclear. Northern Portugal was part of Tarraconensis and then was alongside Galicia made into the Gallaecia province. So Portugal of today is made out of the lower section of Gallaecia province and the western Lusitania province. But a third of Lusitania is located in Spain (Modern Extremadura) alongside the provincia capital of Emerita Augusta (Modern Mérida).
@@Alejojojo6 You are somewhat wrong, the original Lusitanians were from the region of what is today's Portugal, only later the other tribes allied with them to fight the Roman expansion.
The Romans were aware of that alliance with the stronger group so they named all of that region Lusitania.
Check: Ethnographic Iberia 200 BCE
talk about north africa please
Will do. I'm planning to eventually go around the Roman Empire, although have been trying to get through backlog of Chinese history topics first before going back to Ancient Rome and Greece.
The Romans needed more than 200 years to conquer us the Celts Bragaerae from North Portugal.
I was born in the mountains where Viriatus used to live and today he is still celebrated as a national hero, and we curse the name of the traitor, Sartorius.
😮😮🗣️🇪🇸🇮🇹
Why is Extremadura not part of Portugal?
We have a portuguese estremadura.
Hispania 220 BC considered as the firist child of rome and also the sword of rome.
From where the latin tongue, somewhat transformed, is to have a brilliant future overseas. A future denied the italian, the german, and other central european idioms.
Es absurdo comparar a los esclavos hispanos en las minas, a la realidad de los indios 1500 años después en hispanoamerica, ellos tenían jornadas de trabajo reguladas y cobraban un sueldo. Y luego los sustituyeron africanos.
Hoy en África negra hay" esclavos "en las minas de diamantes y otros minerales . Así como hasta el s. XX en Europa en sus minas habían "esclavos " las huelgas de los Galeses son famosas.
Iberia the name was changed to Hispania (Spain) back in 218 b.c. Spania means Spain in English. Lusitania in Hispania later became Portugal. The name of Spain has been kept since for the rest of the country. Except for Portugal , Gibraltar, Andorra and part of its border that now belongs to France. But much of it is still Spain.
It´s not correct to say Hispania is the same as Spain, as the meaning changed along time ago.
Also the name Spain really doesn't hide the frustrated dream of having all the peninsula. jajaja
@@-meganeura Spania means Spain. It is the correct name.
@@-meganeura Romans 15:24
I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while
Ecclesiastes 7:6
Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools. This too is meaningless.
@@thespaceram2879 no it is NOT! Spania was a small roman province in the south of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands.
My father is from Hispania, i tested 53% on a DNA test.
Que nos devuelvan el oro
very interesting point you made that never occurred to me: the romans enslaved the iberians for gold, then the the iberians do the same exact thing 1500 years later across the ocean. us humans are not very kind to each other, are we?
Maybe the Iberians who did that across the ocean had Romans ancestry in their blood maybe that's why they like(d) gold so much.
But we all know that the ones who crossed the ocean were looking for the 'El Dorado' (not only the Iberians and the 'El dorado' can be a methaphor for something better).
@g-ps el dorado thing was far later and you both are assuming too much, It wasn't just about gold, at first It was about the expansion of religion and trading, in both cases, nor romans nor spanish knew that there was such amount of gold. Now, most people in Spain who went to the americas weren't rich people Who wanted more riches, most were low nobility, that typically struggled to even eat decently, as they were nobility they couldn't do certain jobs, like being a farmer, but also were so low in the nobility chain that they wouldn't own land and had to do Jobs like being a lawyer, escríbanos, etc. Which were badly paid jobs... So many tried and got Fortune when they worked for the crown or conquered a new territory, there were in the spanish infantry even black slaves that scaped to florida from the english colonies, people in need that tried for a better Life, probably something similar happened to the generals and soldiers that conquered Hispania but also we have to have in mind the wars against carthago... Also none of them enslaved the whole population, only the ones that were against them, Hispania wasn't a country, It was an amalgamation of different cultures that divided in small cities states or "kingdoms", same happened with america there wasn't a concept of Unity between the natives, they were different people with different views... When the spanish arrived some tribes were hostile, others weren't, most natives supported the spanish as they brought a religion that was pretty atractive to the oppresed smaller tribes and the oportunity of revenge or power, spanish took the oportunity and conquered, Who worked on the mines ? The ones Who Lost the war, like It has happened all over the world, not just spanish and romans, the natives that were in the spanish side were assimilated as spanish and married with spanish men and women, as happened with the romans in Hispania... Both conquest are really interesting, also natives didn't use the gold and in many areas gold was exchanged for mirrors, which at the time were very expensive to make
Woke academia often criticizes the Spanish and Portuguese for being cruel colonizers. but when you look at it from the context of their history, it becomes a little clearer as to why that might be the case.
the modern day Spanish and Portuguese are a mix of so many different people and cultures who endured thousands of years of brutal warfare. no surprise why they took that warrior mentality out into the lands and people they encountered overseas.
Iberic península always were a rich but strange therritory! The northern invasors easely get here but... and now where to go? Only sea ...
But One wise man said..." Why to go to another place if here we have the most precious things we need?" That wise man was correct, and abundance of food made this rectangule a spot of many wars! And hundreds of years later Portugal teached all of you what is the planet Earth! The romans were nothing compared to Portuguese
How Madri was founded? It was not by the romans as i see.
Madrid was a very tiny town until the 1500s when King Philip II made it his capital.
Madrid was founded by the Arabs under the name "maherit", which means "place rich in water" due to its rich aquifers.
It was just a village until Felipe II moved his Court from Toledo to Madrid.
@@adge5182The original place name of Madrid is Matrich or Matrice and it is mozarabic, not arabic, Mahrit is the arabization of the name.
Spanish are italians that speak Spanish in truth. Hence why a lot of Latinos and italians look similar. Roman italic genes
Fascinating, where’s my reparations? 😅
That’s how you pacify a people
You have an asian accent. I have never seen any ever Asian interested in European history. What is the explanation ?
I left China when I was pretty young and grew up in the US, where I still live now, so have been interested in both Chinese and non-Chinese history pretty equally.
You could’ve made an effort to learn how to pronounce correctly the names of all the people and places you mentioned…
The information on the Classical Iron Age civilization of Tartessos was disappointing.
The reference the the incorrect treatment of slaves in the Americas was disappointing.
You repeat the 'Black Legend.'
Which has been totally discredited around the world as the longest propaganda campaign in history.
From academics starting in the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, France, Spain, USA, the Americas and the Philippines.
If you doubt it.
I have dozens of historians and thier quoted works from around the world.
Thank you.
Tell me more about these “black legends”
@@noelyanes2455 I will let the direct male great grand son of Geronimo, Alfonso Borrego tell you about the Black Legend.
Apache Chief of his tribe, Historian academic and author.
th-cam.com/users/liveefF6Vh21Ox0?si=Rgi-W4oLrElYW3EK
If the Romans didnt bribe the hispanic soldiers to Kill Viriato while sleeping colonization in the north would take longer or would never happened like in scotland.
Those two cowards were killed after going to collect the reward.
Oils not stop spreading the Spanish black legend, regardless of the topic in question?
Huh?
"In a sad irony of History, the descendents of these subjugated peoples would in turn do the same thing, 15 CENTURIES LATER, to the native americans in the mines of Mexico, Peru and Bolivia"
- What a pathetic and xenophobic comment, the author should be ashamed. By this criteria, you can make ironic comments about any race or nation in the world, but you chose to single out the spanish ancestors. Native americans themselves practiced atrocities against each other, maybe the author finds that ironic too.
What? It’s the truth! Everybody should abhor slavery or enjoy the chance to practice it for yourself!
I suppose you did not include Bracara Augusta, the capital of Galleciae, because you are Spanish. Thank you for remind me why Portugal never should be joinned with Spain!
I'm not Spanish, although you do have a point - I've traveled around Spain a number of times but have yet to visit Portugal (it's near the top of my bucket list though), so in general feel more comfortable with Spanish geography than Portuguese geography. Hopefully I'll be able to correct this in the next few years though.
You need to practice your english and get a better mic and control your vocal chords.
Thanks for catching that. I've noticed I've been having some mic issues these past few videos too, I'll see what I can do to get it fixed soon
You need to find something better to do than troll.
You need to try to do something creative and usefull with your life.
Common roman L
Portugal no existía en tiempos de Viriato ,la Lusitania abarcaba territorio actual de España y Portugal ( parte de Portugal, Extremadura y León actual)
La capital de Lusitania era Mérida, Emérita Augusta, y es la capital hoy de Extremadura, región española. No está en Portugal.
Viriato nasceu onde hoje é território português e por isso, é símbolo da resistência e espírito lusitano na sua luta por independência contra inimigos estrangeiros: mouros, espanhóis, etc.
@@NazarioOrbe you are claiming, in the context of discussing Viriathus and the Lusitanian wars of defence against Rome, that the "most important part" of Lusitania was in modern-day Spain because that's where the Romans founded their administrative capital to rule over the region after they conquered it? The city didn't even exist before the Roman conquest and was therefore never culturally or genetically Lusitanian, and so could not possibly have been "the most important part" of the original Lusitania.
Irrelevant. The Portuguese, especially from the central region of the country, are the most directly descended, genetically and culturally, from the Lusitani than anyone else, anywhere else, including the descendants of invading / colonizing Romans in Merida, Spain, just as the French can claim Gaul as the biggest component of their pre-Roman cultural / biological / spiritual ancestry. By your logic, Portugal has a greater claim as the true descendants of pre-Roman Galicia because the Romans founded their capital of Roman Galicia in Bracara Augusta, which is now modern Braga, Portugal. Try telling that to the Galicians of Spain!
@@NazarioOrbe irrelevant. Your claim that the modern Portuguese have zero genetic link to the ancient Lusitani is ahistorical. Yes, of course, the Lusistani are not the only ancestral population of the modern Portuguese, but without question they are one of, if not the single, largest pre-Roman ancestral component, especially in Central Portugal. Genetic studies prove that modern Iberians are approximately 1/3 descendants of Italic peoples who moved there during the Roman period. The vast majority of the rest of Iberian ancestry was local populations who had been there for thousands of years. By your way of thinking, modern Galicians also have zero ancient Galician ancestry, and modern Castilians have zero Celtiberian ancestry.
@@NazarioOrbe PS Just read the article about the Lusitanians in wikipedia. It clearly indicates that their heartland was in Central Portugal (*not* anywhere in modern Spain), and that they continued resisting Roman rule for a while, but eventually were Romanized. They were not exterminated but absorbed into the Roman Empire, therefore their descendants live on today; in large numbers, in fact, most concentrated in Central Portugal, but dispersed (and diluted) in much larger numbers around the world, especially in Brazil. Even better, read the wikipedia article in *Spanish* its map is even clearer, showing that almost all the territory of the Lusitanians (not to be confused with the Roman province that borrowed the name) is in modern Portugal.
Viriathus is also celebrated by Spaniards, not just by the Portuguese. We hail from a common folk. We were separated by the internecine wars of the Goths, who caused the Muslim invasion. Those people were morons.
I went to Granada in 2019. Marxist history books in US never teach about the Reconquest perspective. Christians were enslaved at times under Muslim rule. Viva Spain . Interesting video on the Roman era of the Iberian Peninsula.
Eine oberflächliche und geirrte Geschichte.