Sorry for number 3 I made a mistake and left out the reason for the why we look down upon the Middle Ages. The big reason is that modern Western civilization came out of the failings of 14th century Medieval Civilization. Medieval Civilization lasted longer than it probably should have and thus collapsed spectacularly in the 14th century. Thus, since modern Western Civilization was formed out of Medieval Civilization, we remember it at its most brutal and dysfunctional and forget all the successes it had in the previous 500 years. The best source for #3 is "The Age of Faith" by Will Durant
When you talked about Europeans in Africa, why didn’t you speak about the Atlantic slave trade or Leopoldian Congo, or the apartheid. I feel like those are significant points made for the argument of exploitation of Africa that you didn’t mention
I’ve been wondering I had an argument with this guy about the German Army of World War II and saying that not all or at least less than half or more than half of the Germans that fight during World War II were not harmed by Nazis or radical Nazis most are just fighting for their country I would say about 35% were really hard line Nazis and from what the sources I seen I leave that to be true but is that just a misconception on my part
He explicitly did mention the slave trade and South Africa tho... And specifically clarified he was talking about the direct colonial period. As for the Congo. Though Belgium didn't help any it was just as murder heavy before and after.
Have you ever heard of struggle between Holy Roman Emperors and Popes? It lasted several centuries, and got to a point where one Emperor was exluded from the church.
I love how we moderns look down on tenement housing, poor farms and mental hospitals, while we are surrounded by thousands of people living in tents or just shelter less on the sidewalks.
7:12 I'm a culinary student, and I notice this about every time a professor talks about the past. A lot of assuming, without research or context. A common one is "the Egyptians accidentaly discovered beer, and had no idea how yeast worked" (seeing as beer is older than agriculture, it was already old news by the time of the pyramids), or even "they ate only meat, and only occasionally would feed on other things" (the societies that are literary called hunter-gatherers), or the opposite: "the Aztecs were incredible due to their highly vegetarian diet" (ignoring the fact that they had no choice, and even raised small dogs for protein).
@@fainitesbarley2245 people from incan empire, used to eat those cuyes, alpacas and llamas, but non different from other places: Wealthy people ate a lot and more variety more than the usual normal low class people.
Regarding the Aztecs, The bodies of the sacrificed did not go to waste. The grim details are laid out in the histories of the Conquest. The Spanish Conquistadores, in order to obtain grease to lubricate the hubs of their animal drawn wagons, had to render human corpses. The Meso American civilizations had no livestock. Meanwhile, introduced disease from humans and from imported animals killed beyond count. And cruelties willfully inflicted by the conquerors where recorded by some of the accompanying clergy as testimony for the future.
As far as the fetishization of the "noble savage" goes, Thomas Sowell writes of this as a recurring theme throughout (at least) Western history, as many Roman writers would glorify the Germanic tribes as well for rejecting corrupt urbanity and living in nature.
But there was a reason to glorify the Germans. They were not in fact savages. Note they used metal weapons and tools. As the uploader points out, Rome essentially was a state where the rural areas were taxed to support an urban civilization. (Hmmmmm.....sounds familiar...)
@@Fridaey13txhOktober They repeatedly lost, but due to shitty emperors got to keep their land. Large parts of Germany and Hungary were subjugated by Marcus Aurelius, but when he died Commodus just abandoned the conquests. Same with Germanicus's conquests being left behind by Tiberius and so on and so forth
Other popular myths: 1) Crusades happened purely because of religion. It is usually used in a "religion is bad" disputes. In reality, Crusades had certain political, social and economical benefits which could interest the rulers to go on Crusades. 2) When people make direct connections between the modern nation and some old one: Kievan Rus = Ukraine/Russia and not some other nation, Macedonian Empire = Macedonia and not some other nation. Such perception of history disregards the fact of migrations and cultural changes. These ideas are usually promoted to make people proud of their heritage.
Example of the second one Phoenicians and Lebanese people Thracians and Bulgarians Wessex and English people Vikings and Scandinavians Thirteen Colonies and Americans
yeah the use of crusades for religion is bad is really retarded, if the crusades was only motivated because of religion, the crusades could have happened earlier
Depending on how to define "direct,, I wouldn't argue for any form of English at all. I see his statement interpreted as regarding politeness and yeah okay Americans and Australians sure are rude but when giving criticism in a work environment America is much less direct compared to Germany. At least before everything was globalized. A few years ago Germans were still much more direct in terms of criticism and orders to an extent far greater than in any Anglo culture.
@@authenticbitterleben7434 probably true, you can see that on the chart with American English vs. French. The French are _not_ shy about giving negative feedback and being confrontational, lol. German culture/language is probably different than French, but they might be more similar to each other than either is to American English in that way.
@@RickJaeger I disagree. This is a cultural difference. You perceive the French as not shy. The French (and many others) perceive the Americans as rude. The difference is the French being polite and indirect while criticizing; the Americans shed politeness off and are brutally direct. The French also take a very generalist view, of reason A against reason B; the Americans take a view of "My American way or the highway", which is very confrontational. Isn't it curious that American presidents routinely say or mean "You're either with us or against us" (Bush, 2001, First Invasion of Irak) and put themselves in the same footing as dictators from China, North Korea, and Turkey, to name a few?
@L Dikx Not fully serios, but you do realize that Napoleon was a corsican, which is italian culture, and that Corsica was only recently occupied and not even properly annexed by France when Napoleon was born ? Napoleon's father was from Tuscany and his mother was genoese. His primary languages were corsican and italian and only at the age of 9 or 10 he learnt french. Not to mention that his family actually fought agaisnt the french, trying to maintain Corsica independent. In others words, he's not that much french in origin. Which explains his military prowess :P
Fellow historian here. On your point about Indian morality, I often wondered as a young lad why the Indians didn’t simply unite to fight the Europeans more than they inevitably did. I once asked my history teacher this question, since much of our lessons on Native Americans clearly portrayed Europeans in an evil light and the Indians as the good guys. My teacher told me Indians were too few, given the effects of the plague, which is partly true. I later learned through my own studies that Indian unity was an extreme rarity. Rather than being alarmed by the immorality of Europeans, Indians usually found them and their industrialized trinkets very alluring. They mostly enjoyed the Europeans, especially when the Europeans would trade them rifles and ammo, which the Indians could then point at their long time Indian rivals. This in-fighting amongst Indians is rarely ever spoken of.
European colonisation was not inherently profitable true, but that is WHY it became so exploitative. They had to force native men into labour camps to either work on massive plantations or mining for raw materials just so they could get some money back from the whole thing. And not to mention that, just because the colony wasn't worth it financially for the whole empire, it might have been for one person. Cecil John Rhodes (who you should definitely make a video of) became a billionaire, perhaps one of the richest men on earth, from colonialism and he for that reason continued to drive it forward.
I know african colonies were more of a tool to use in international relations and to keep concert of europe/League of Nations alive by making concessions when necessary (Britain-Italy border exchange 192X). They were also big tools for pride and was also source to conscript soldiers from. Unless you are talking about specific colonies like Leopolds Congo(Which was very bad) or some specific parts of British and French empire
"labors were forced to work in massive plantation and mine". Cool story bro, it was the same shit for most of Europeans at that times. My grand grand father worked it mines in north of France from 13 to 62, for almost nothing. And yes, some very rich get money from colonization, but again, same thing in Europe. Pretty sure that the mine where my grand grand father worked made someone very very rich too.
Coast of Africa was also important in strategic sense that your ships could get coal in middle of travel beetween european and more lucratice colonies. Thats why "unimportant" islands and coast's were "important" in age where your ships need a lot of coal to sail.
@@mrsupremegascon yes, essentially, the same thing that was done on Africa was first done on the peasants. But back in Africa it was part of a much larger cultural shift, which was, basically, forced.
There is very little hard evidence for the Congo Genocide. The colonial authorities would have had to kill more people than were actually living in the Congo. Each individual member of the small security force would have had to have killed tens of thousands himself for the narrative to be true. Surely there was cruelty, not doubt, but to call it a genocide of millions is a false narrative pushed by Black American intellectuals in the 20th century so they could have their own holocaust to guilt white people with.
ElCadejo172 When did I call it a genocide? Afaik, for the exploitation of the Congo to be a considered genocide it had to be the intentional extermination of the population. Millions definitely died, there's no question about that, but it was in the pursuit of the Belgian king's desire for profit and not for the mere extermination of an entire peoples. Not to mention many had their hands chopped off, which there's also plenty of proof. I'm not sure how anything you said refutes the fact Europeans exploited Africa.
@@SurprisinglyDynamicAnimeSideC I'm not sure if you're an American, but it is common for American children to be taught about the "Congo Genocide" even as most cannot find the Congo on a map. Your assertion of millions likens Leopold to Hitler, Stalin or Mao and it originated as ridiculous propaganda from professional "anti-racists".
ElCadejo172 Millions _did_ die in the Congo. And yes, I'm an American, and children are _not_ taught about the "Congo Genocide" until high school, and even then it's mostly glossed-over. So now I'm doubting that _you're_ American from how little you seem to know how broken and Americentric our education system is.
Omg. Your first part about getting upset when someone starts to frick with history is so true. I got way too heated the other night at a friend of mine when she started criticizing a bunch of aspects of Western Civilization and saying things that simply weren’t true.
@@tron1852 I don't know what documentary you are talking about but in the latter Empire almost all soldiers and plenty of generals and emperors were provincial, including of course the north african provinces. Would they look black in the modern sense? Maybe some of them. Would they be women? No
@@michaelpsellos2560 north African is definitely not black. Brown, sure, but if we're being honest you'd probably only see little difference from the north African Roman's to the Italian or Greek Roman's.
@@ncls.1371 Yeah I don't know how it was back then but nowadays there exist a pretty wide range of skin colors in north Africa. Probably no one you would mistake for sub saharan though you're right
The African one is a bit off to me. While economically speaking for an entire country European nations didn’t benefit however for private individual corporations they definitely benefitted. A perfect example would be in the diamond industry most of the diamond stores that we go to that are based in France and Switzerland were established in between 1875-1908 around the same time colonization started and and mining was going on. Just that industry alone had siphoned billions. And that’s just one industry let’s not even talk about rubber or Ore. not to mention that a lot of the same industries that were established during the colonial period are still there. Also Europe was very cost effective at how they ran their operations on the continent. For millions of Africans they built their houses out of recycled sheet metal as it was a way cheaper option the building proper buildings that were most likely only saved for important landmarks or for the very few European inhabitants.
@@dejankojic4293 that is an extremely romanticized view of African states and kingdoms, it's a lot more complicated then that, to deny otherwise is to play into the Noble Savage view of Africa. It really depends what region of Africa and who colonized it. Otherwise Ethiopia and Liberia should be the most advanced and happiest nations on the continent and not artificial states like Ghana and Botswana.
@@dejankojic4293 By saying "they would be happier", you are praising them. Humans are not happier because of the reality that surrounds them, it's biologically wired. We tend to idealise realities we don't live in, because they adjust more to our views and desires, but it's only that, an idea, reality is far different.
@@dejankojic4293 And no, their purpose was not exploitation, it ocurred, but was not the goal. The goal was more like "getting a girl because all the homies are married". Exploitation was more individually driven, like with King Leopold
It's probably worth mentioning that the growth of cities during the early and mid- industrial revolution was caused by immigration from rural areas due to surplus population there. Cities did not, as a rule, grow due to internal population growth. This does indicate something about the brutality of the industrial revolution, but it also does indicate something about the constant inability to support a growing population in rural areas.
No, cities were population sinks from the dawn of civilization until about 1900 or so (in the Western world) due largely to contagious diseases. Improved hygiene as a result of industrial era developments in soapmaking and plumbing, and the late-industrial innovations in water supply (chlorination) and sewage disposal (activated solids sewage treatment plants), are largely the things that have allowed urban populations to grow by natural increase. So actually, you're wrong about it indicating anything at all about industrialization.
??? Industrialization meant that machines could perform farm labor that had previously required many people to do, which is where your "surplus population" in rural areas came from. There were less farms, and less farm jobs, so people moved to cities to work in factories. The same thing happened in Mexico after NAFTA, corn prices dropped so much that it was cheaper to buy US corn than to grow it for themselves, and it led to millions of farmers seeking work in large cities, or across the border.
remember the thing that whatifallthist said about slavery likely being necessary to develop an advance society. even we today have slaves in third world countries and yet people say "the troops are heros"
@Luís Andrade i mean, in those days, there wasn't really a difference. Athens for instance, the most open society that we think of when thinking of ancient Greece had slaves atleast from what I've seen, so there wasn't much difference but it was the norm
Asdf He is wrong on that, poorly paid workers are enough, look at ancient Persia who despite having no proper slaves were able to build amazing architecture and roads which even the biased Herodotus said "were expertly maintained". And as he said, degree matters, the majority of Spartan slaves were poorly treated, routinely massacred, routinely beaten, routinely humiliated, and could be murdered or raped with no punishments. Compare that to pretty much the rest of the near east (there might be some exceptions I don't know about), the slaves where treated badly but at least they had rights and assaulting them could get you punished.
Number 7: “Industrialization was awful” is a markedly frustrating misconception. The ability to mass produce goods lowered the price of said goods, making them available for more people to obtain. I think part of this misconception also comes from idealizing a quaint past where the artisan gave his or her creation a unique quality that elevated it above the soulless creations of an assembly line. Of course, one forgets that if shoes were custom made, fewer people could afford shoes. It’s equally bizarre that the early, high, and late Middle Ages are sort of seen as a single period without consideration for geopolitics either. A person living in the Eastern Roman Empire would have had a very different life than one living in Brittany. There’s also, as you alluded to, a tendency to confuse the late Middle Ages with the counter-reformation. Even theologically 13th-century Catholicism looks more familiar to us than its 16th-century counterpart.
Industrialization was very awful, though. Immigrants were systematically exploited, being given poor-paying, labor-intensive jobs with very few rights, and not to mention that the work environments were incredibly hazardous. Industrialization was a crucial step for us to enjoy the world of mass production we live in today, but to say that initial conditions weren't horrid would be to downplay the limbs lost and the various horrors that needlessly fell upon factory workers (the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire arguably being the epitome of such).
@@sylvestergharold7265 Exactly, the whole industrial age was an multi-national social experiment; at no other point before in human history were so many crammed into such a small space as a city for so long, which is why thing like waste disposal to prevent cholera, plagues and diseases being part of daily life rather than occasional events, reliance on merchants for food rather than growing your own allowing scammers to cut foods like bread flour with non-edibles like plaster of paris or brick dust to reduce costs, creation of workers rights, child labour laws and health and safety protocols, pressure on doctors to perform sugeries and other medical procedures quickly rather than correctly so they can move onto the next patient not to mention the number of harmful chemicals whose effects only manifested after years of use - all mistakes that needed to be happen before we realised it was an issue and worked out ways to prevent it.
Proto industrialisation : little farm wokers would produce at home for merchant a certain amount of a certain patern. Almost self suffiscient, in the same time.
Some aspects of industrialisation were shit. Like working in dangerous factories, pollution etc Vs working on a farm. But yes it made goods way cheaps.
@@Neion8 No. Studies showing asbestos killed people were presented to that industry before 1900. We continued to use it, spray it etc. through the 1960s. It is still legally sold in India. Industrialization is not universally good. If technologies had rolled out in a different way, if the peasantry of England hadn't been driven to destitution through the late middle ages and the Renaissance industrialists would have had to earn their labor force by providing competetive wages and a better standard of living than owning your own farm or craft business.
@@appleslover It's simple, really. You said yourself just now that linguistic differences make one's identity, and this is how most Quebecers see it. There are about 8 million people descended from French-speaking catholic stock and who have been conquered 250 years ago by a British force. Attempts at assimilating them have been mostly unsuccessful for various reasons, so here we are today, you still have a ton of Quebecers who identify as such and not with the (rather artificial) Canadian identity. Of course there's a lot more nuance I could inject in it (the large amounts of French speakers outside Quebec, the Quebecers who reject the Quebecer identity for various reasons and prefer to call themselves Canadian, the immigrant population, the very word Canadian being used to refer to French-Canadians up until the end of the 19th century) but that's the gist of it. Or an even blunter way: a watermelon ≠ a pineapple a cat ≠ a dog Quebec ≠ Canada
@@appleslover Where are ya from, brother? The way I understand it, most French-Canadians refer to themselves as such, not just as Canadians. Almost like they're their own mini-nation inside a much larger one. It actually works, too! ...for The most part... 😆😆
Here's a question for ya, my northern compadre: I can read French fairly well, due to speaking native English, conversational Spanish, and beginner French, but I can somehow u understand spoken Québécois better than Parisian French. Why is that? It caught me off guard recently when a French-Canadian TH-camr busted out his Native tongue and I somehow understood the gist of what he was saying! I jumped out of my seat! It was weird!
I deeply appreciate the book recommendations, I'm studying history at uni and it gets real annoying with some groups judge the past peoples with modern standars for their political agendas.
That last part about judging peope by modern standards is so unbelievably true. I'm a member on quite a large AltHist forum,and we constantly have this debate, like, I joined late last year, and I've already been part of, or observed three different ones.
This guy have an aglo centered point of view. The reason why incas were fighting a civil war and their economy was on problems. Was becose their society colapsed by the plage. But in the views of this guys it was not related to the arrival of europeans.
@@nicolasignaciomerinonunez114 aglo? You mean Anglo? Because the Spaniards aren't Anglos my friend that's the English - totally different country. Also, blaming the plagues on Europeans is like blaming the plagues on the Asians; neither society had the technological advancement to know about disease control enough to prevent contamination. Plus, while Americans got Smallpox (which no longer exists outside of a lab) Europeans got Syphilis (which still exists and kills people to this day) so they got their own back in the long run lol.
@@trollerjakthetrollinggod-e7761 I mean, Louis Pasteur's Germ theory wasn't published until 1861 (and the link between Germs and infections was published in 1878) when beforehand then the prevailing theory among the educated about the spread of disease was split between 'spontaneous generation' and 'Miasma' - or 'bad air' causing disease. If you think that a bunch of soldiers knew more about infection than the best of pre-1861 scientists and doctors centuries beforehand, then it was certainly very selfish of them to keep that knowledge to themselves, and strange that they didn't protect themselves better. Catapulting dead bodies into cities is a millenia-old tactic to demoralise an enemy, the fact that the Mongolians used plague bodies is at best more akin to deductive-reasoning than outright knowledge of biological warfare (similar to how people used to poison wells by throwing a carcass into it) and plague-blankets are even more of a stretch for claims of intentional harm.
10:03 I think that is a missconception, too. The working-hours in an agricultural society was normaly lower than in the industrial age (harvest season not included). It just was not that well payed, especialy when the main farmland was occupied by big landlords. The reason that the farmes went to the cities was not the hard work on the land, it was because the hard work in the city was better payed.
Additionally, the closing of common lands forced a huge portion of farmers into poverty, where city/industrial jobs were a way to survive. I disagree with the video on that section from the study I've done on economic history in university.
In a factory you get payed every week or two while in agriculture the produce only grows every couple of months with varying degrees of success, not to mention having to go out and sell said produce.
"Immensely subtle regimes that could be very nice places to live." What a refreshing description about, for example, the Persian Empire. The phrase could be applied rather fittingly to more modern states too, I think.
>Immensly subtle regimes. >Ottomans stealing Christian children and indoctrinating them into becoming the Sultan’s personal death squad. >Islamic caliphates treated Christians subjects like second class citizens until they converted. I think the Islamophilic view that the Islamic empires were good places to live if you were non-Muslim is another viewpoint that needs to go.
@@megakillerx This. It's not even just the jizya tax on non-believers. The Islamic world also had laws prohibiting the marriage of Muslim women to non-Muslim men (but of course Muslim men were free to take non-Muslim women as wives.) While I'm not a fan of judging historical practices by modern morals, this kind of discrimination is still far from great and definitely not much better than how almost any other region treated conquered peoples.
@@megakillerx I would agree with you, if I didn't compare that to what it was like elsewhere. Europe in that time was a horrific bloodbath of religious extremism - protestant and catholic people were killing each other on mass. He never made the argument that they were good places by modern standards, just that they were the best during their time.
@@megakillerx so christians were treated like second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, how terrible. What do you think muslims were treated like in Western Europe at the same time? Way worse obviously.
@@jakub8782 Why yes, how else should you treat a foreign invader that tried to murder you, uproot your faith, you culture and your way of life? Give them a slap on the wrist? But then again, i still fail to see how the iberian ultimatum of “convert or be exiled into North Africa” is way worse than the Ottoman ultimatum of “convert or be taxed into oblivion and have your sons kidnapped and be indoctrinated into the Sultan’s personal death squad”.
Yep trying justify that they're native to North India(even though the majority haplogroup in North India is R1a and that haplogroup originated somewhere from the western or Central Asian steppe region)and that their culture and language isn't related to Europeans(even tho their language is apart of the branch of the Indo-Aryan which is a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian language family which also a sub-branch of the wait for it,wait for it.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Indo-European language family you know the language family that includes almost all of the European languages,Iranian&Aryan languages,Armenian languages,and the extinct Tocharian languages and they worship Indo-European Gods case close)
so do the san of southern africa, i am unfamilair with the pamiri but if they are anything the san people then largely extinct (being a meer shadow in terms of numbers and population spread) and politically irrelevant.
What if the Meiji Restoration failed? What if the Knights' Templar never fell? What if the Raid on Harper's Ferry succeeded? What if Bleeding Kansas never happened?
I can kind of answer #2. The Knights Templar were taken out by Philip the Fair primarily because they owned a lot of France's Debt, were a Papal force in country at a time when the King was trying to fight Papal influence, had ambitions to create a Papal state in country and were fabulously rich. Now, for the Templars to survive, that requires Pope Boniface VIII to survive and this isn't that difficult. When the Pope got word of what Philip was doing, he prepared to go down there to put a stop to it. Philip promptly sent thuggery commandos (yes I'm calling them that) to kidnap him (yes, I'm serious), which resulted in the Pope being decked across a room and dying a week later of a brain aneurysm. The result of this led to the French taking over the Papacy and rampant corruption that led to the Protestant Revolution. Now, if Boniface hadn't been decked across the face or was out of town, then he'd lead a Papal response to Philip. This likely would've led to France being invaded by militant orders and Papal loyalist countries, which Philip had no chance of winning. This would either lead to Philip being killed or deposed. This would mean the Papacy would still be in Rome, would not have taken such a massive reputation hit and such would not have suffered such massive corruption. While Protestantism likely would've risen eventually, it would've happened much later, since a lot of the issues that led to it occurring under Martin Luthor would not have been as exasperated. That means the 17th century would've completely altered. Likewise, Philip's line is completely derailed and France would've lost quite a bit of territory in the process. Now as for the Templars, they likely would've gotten a sizable chunk of France to rule for the Pope, essentially becoming akin to the Teutonic Knights. Like them, they would've lasted several centuries but probably would've been bested by the locals (either the Germans or French). They would continue to exist today as charity and honorary organization, much like the Hospitaliters. Hope this answers your question.
Aiden Wieder exactly my thoughts, with something like the Kansas Nebraska Act allowing the incoming settlers that populate the territories to decide if they will allow slavery or not some serious conflict was bound to happen
@Luís Filipe Andrade One point you're missing. If the Cotton Gin was never invented, slavery would have died out long before a Civil War even happened, because slavery would not have been a profitable economic system for the Southern landowners to latch onto. The South would have inevitably industrialized, like the North did. And African Americans would have been freed from slavery as early as 1840.
Well done. Facing our favorite misconceptions head on is the hardest thing, but the best way to deal with it. Truth is always better than the alternative, no matter how much we would prefer the alternative to be the truth. Very well done, indeed. Please keep the outstanding videos coming and God bless you, my friend!
They probably would have expanded more if it wasn’t for their inheritance laws/rules. Like most pre 17th 18th century successions laws are quite flawed and lead to usurpers like in Imperial Rome with a general on a winning streak of battles could be proclaimed Emperor by his legions
@@thomasalvarez6456 that's pretty dumb to devide the empire between generals. Why wouldnt they chose one sucessor to rule the empire like 90% of the empires?
Egypt was ruled by a Mongolian slave-soldier in the thirteenth century surprisingly. The Mongol overlords and troops would probably mix into the local mamluk elite and Egypt would become independent again
@@wirelessbluestone5983 i don't think that's how it works. It is the population that represents the country, it is not because the elite is semi egyptian that the country would become egyptian, it like the european royal families, they are often mixed but the kingdoms still independent from each other and that because the population is different from a kingdom to enother.
Bruh the intro is super relatable, I as well get fairly upset when a person makes a mistake about something historical. An example I remember is from a couple years ago when my class was learning about ww1, and I was making corrections left and right like "No one called the central powers axis" or "its pronounced Bulgaria not Buljaria".
This is obviously a sensitive issue and I should point out that I am not an expert on the subject. I just think that there are problems in the argument given in this video on this point, and I'm setting them out here. Moreover, "Europeans have exploited Africa" can be understood differently. If exploited is taken to mean that Europeans have done their utmost to extract as many resources as possible, I think that is wrong. As said in the video, there was no huge investment and industrialization would have made the exploitation of Africa much more efficient. I rather have the impression that the Europeans have mainly tried to extract as many resources as possible by relying almost exclusively on the local populations. In Madagascar, for example, slavery was massively used to build the infrastructure needed by Europeans, particularly for the transport of local production to the metropolis. There was therefore no cost to France apart from the deployment of the military, but there was a transfer of resources from the colony to Europe. It seems in fact that the wealth exploited in Africa is not so huge compared to other colonies or even to the resources present on the continent. If we take into account the fact that they have been exploited almost exclusively by the labour of local populations without modern tools, the term "exploitation" seems appropriate. Nor should it be forgotten that this is not the time of current liberalism. Empires tried to be as self-sufficient as possible and sought to obtain the resources necessary for their industries through colonisation. In this perspective, the colonies were mainly to produce enough resources to keep the industry of the mother country functioning, no more. In fact, the local populations were more or less (depending on the place and time) forced to produce various resources for the colonizer and used their pay to buy products sold by the colonizers (another considerable source of wealth for the industry of the colonizing countries). Anyway thank you for your very enjoyable videos.
Even to think that it was just Europeans is very ignorant, in the grand scheme of things the Islamic world exploited Africa for far longer, to a far greater extent and were far more brutal in doing it. At the end of the day every civilisation that beats another in the field of conflict have tended to go on to exploit and mistreat those they defeated, it's not just Europeans but humanity
I think the question can be broken into three parts: - Have the colonizers mistreated Africans for material gain? Yes, definitely. - Has this lead to a net benefit to the colonizing countries? Not really, trading for the needed resources would be more efficient in the long run. - Would Africans be economically better off if there had been no colonization? Only if they had adopted Western ideas and technologies on their own
@@TapOnX True, this whole thing is so deeply mixed with emotions and current narratives that we have forgotten what questions we actually are answering, moreover many people would answer yes to all 3, but when shown evidence to the contrary, would simply move the goal post by switching the question out with one that is easier to defend.
They tried twice actually. First France offered to change the Ivory Coast for The Gambia, but UK declined, lmao. And in the 1970s they tried out the Senegambia confederation, but it didn't work out, yeah.
@@haydenpack6947 While they theoretically could, since the colonization of Africa by Europeans, it practically has not. Furthermore, it is for all intents and purposed forbidden by international law. I suppose there could be some sort of peaceful land exchange between two countries, but I am not aware of even this happening anywhere in Africa.
@@skullcrusherm7425 The Caste system did achieve its current form during British rule. The Caste system started becoming more rigid during the Gupta Empire (220ce-550ce) but it became weaker over time until the 1200s due to the rise of Jainism and Veerashaivism which challenged Brahmanical society. However, it became more rigid again from the 1200s to 1450s due to early Islamic rule where highly influential Hindus made it rigid as a resistance to the early tyrannical Muslim rulers. However, from the 1450s to 1800s, the system became less rigid again due to Vijayanagara Empire, regional Sultanates and later Mughal Empire which all encouraged caste fluidity within communities and the administration. However, from the 1800s to early 1900s, caste became more rigid than ever before. This was because the British organised communities based on caste and religion in their censuses among other things that came under 'Divide and Rule'. From the 1900s onwards, due to the rise in free thinking amongst the Indian elite and intellectuals, caste became less rigid and social restrictions were gradually lifted. To be honest, the caste system wasn't as bad as people think it was; it was just as bad as the class systems used in other parts of the world at the time and fluidity between castes was just as common. Its just a shame that it still exists in India whilst other cultures have managed to almost completely get rid of it.
@@brownbricks6017 The Caste system did achieve its current form during British rule. The Caste system started becoming more rigid during the Gupta Empire (220ce-550ce) but it became weaker over time until the 1200s due to the rise of Jainism and Veerashaivism which challenged Brahmanical society. However, it became more rigid again from the 1200s to 1450s due to early Islamic rule where highly influential Hindus made it rigid as a resistance to the early tyrannical Muslim rulers. However, from the 1450s to 1800s, the system became less rigid again due to Vijayanagara Empire, regional Sultanates and later Mughal Empire which all encouraged caste fluidity within communities and the administration. However, from the 1800s to early 1900s, caste became more rigid than ever before. This was because the British organised communities based on caste and religion in their censuses among other things that came under 'Divide and Rule'. From the 1900s onwards, due to the rise in free thinking amongst the Indian elite and intellectuals, caste became less rigid and social restrictions were gradually lifted. To be honest, the caste system wasn't as bad as people think it was; it was just as bad as the class systems used in other parts of the world at the time and fluidity between castes was just as common. Its just a shame that it still exists in India whilst other cultures have managed to almost completely get rid of it.
My favorite example of how people of old times being introspective and intelligent is some people can observe their blind spots in their eyes. With know understanding of how the eye work seeing an object disappear and re appear in your peripheral vision would be confusing at best and possibly terrifying. Explains a few folk tales of demons or spirits that disappear and re appear in front of you.
The only historical misconception that really counts is the one where everyone thinks every other country/race/religion/gender is guilty of wrongdoing towards them whilst their own is oh so fluffy and cute and whimsical and innocent, always picked on and bullied by those other big meanies.
Well that kind of goes along with the age old ( but true) notion that "the winners write the history books". So if "your country" is one that has historically been one that has come out on top, then of course you are always the "good guys". Had Nazi Germany won WWII, people today would be reading texts speaking of the great benevolent Adolf Hitler. It's all a matter of perspective. Outside of a handful of historical martyrs, very few acts have been done for the good of everyone, just "our everyone".
When I was in the military, I became friends with a Jew who, while not my first Jewish friend, he was the first one really to tell me about their history. One thing I wasn't expecting was he said that the fanatical anti-Jewish attitude of the Arabs is actually a recent development, only really becoming a major force about 100 years ago. Before that, he said there would be isolated outbursts of persecution due to an emir or caliph having a personal grudge, but it would stop as soon as that ruler died or was out of power. Kind of like how Christianity was mostly tolerated by the Roman Empire, but you occasionally had someone like Nero come along.
@@ressljs as a Syrian I can tell you that eventhow it wasn't always perfect jews and Muslims all lived here in peace up until the conflict with Israel. Propaganda just spread fast and many became anti-semetic. There were definitely many Syrians who had nothing against jews but it wasn't socially acceptable.Although I have to say that the younger generation (luckily) is much more educated on the matter due to having the internet.
The oldest wheel currently was found in Slovenia, but yes we cant know where it came from, besides we dont know what else my lie underground somewhere, considering most finds are accidental
@@gajmlinar6950 i believe the idea that it was invented in modern day ukraine comes from indo-european invasions, which we know spread the wheel. although that doesn't mean they invented it.
1:30 - The Prussians did send observers to the American Civil War, but they looked down upon the American armies as undisciplined rabbles (in the first months of the war they were probably right if Mark Twain's account is any indication) so they probably didn't learn much.
Something you could add to a part 2: The Renaissance is a separate era that follows the Medieval era. The Late Medieval era is considered to be from mid 1200s to around 1500. The Italian Renaissance happened from the 1300s to 1500s. Donatello died the same year the War of the Roses ended. The period that involves European exploration and early colonization is the Early Modern era. Point of note: a lot of modern Medieval fantasy stories are set in the Renaissance. Organized armies, crossbows and realistic paintings
I know this video was posted two months ago, but I only discovered this channel recently (although I wish I'd learned of it sooner). I really like the way it works to present history with an authentisity-based, non-dogmatic lens--trying to speak the facts for the sake of speaking the facts. I really look forward to seeing more videos in the library.
Dude I've watched 12 of your videos in 2 days and I wanna watch more... I'm scared to check how many videos I have left but this content is amazing, thank you so much.
That was amazing. You managed to challenge a couple of my presumptions; I’m going to have to rethink my stance on the Middle Ages and their relationship to the Dark Ages.
I never could hold back chuckles when modern day activists behave as if atrocities are uniquely European and only exported to the rest of the world later on. There are segments In the ancient history of my people (Chinese) that always leave me disgusted when I happen upon them, where entire urban centers of men, women, and children got buried alive or otherwise executed _after they surrendered_ by hostile armies whose generals happened to have psychotic fits after conquering those cities, and rivalries between upper-echelon nobles often ended with entire families _and those of their friends_ massacred. It doesn't seem to occur to them that every country was draconian back then.
I disagree that people believe atrocities are uniquely European. However European atrocities are directly linked to our history in the united states. You are suffering from the straw man fallacy.
@@dy031101 1. What activists are you referring to? 2. Another straw man fallacy. I never claimed atrocities were not linked to all of human history. The history of our own country's founding is taught more in the united states than other elements of human history. Whether or not you or I agree with that being the right thing to do. Personally, with limited time, I would rather learn about our own countries history, and how it has shaped our country today, than that of ancient china, as an example. 3. I never attacked you personally. I never claimed to be special. This sounds like an ego attack, implying your ego may have been damaged by my comment. Apologies.
@@DOMOzCHANNEL >>What activists are you referring to?>I never claimed atrocities were not linked to all of human history.>The history of our own country and ancestors is taught more in the united states than all of human history.>Whether or not you or I agree with that being the right thing to do.
I wanna clarify something with the first myth, the way WW1 was fought was not new. In fact you could see mirrors in the American Civil War, especially towards the end. The technologies had advanced between the two, and WW1, was much more brutal, but in almost every way, the American Civil War was very much a proto-WW1. Point 1: Massive stalemat, with the exception of the Mississippi, no side was able to gain or lose much ground until the end of the war, especially in the main hotspots. When we are taught about the Civil War, we are taught about many offenses on both sides ultimately going nowhere for the better part of the war, such as the many attacks into the north, usually perpetrated by General Lee, or the initial failed attacks on Richmond. 2: Technological advancement, while not as extensive as WW1, the ACW used many new inventions or is one if not the earliest use of a preexisting invention in warfare, such as the repeater rifle, modern bullets, the ironclad, railways, gatling gun, and early submarines. There are a few other inventions that were new or untested in war at that point. 3: Shift in tactics, the Battle of Bull Run is famous for this combination of tactics that were slowly being dated and citizen naivety, but by 1864 with the Siege of Petersburg we start to see a full on trench warfare in the fashion of early to mid WW1 So, simply put, a precedent did exist, but everyone thought it would end up like the Franco-Prussian war, not the US Civil War
The Russo-Japanese war was even closer to WW1, being only 10 years before. Europeans watched it keenly (mostly because they were worried about possible Russian agression, and also because Japan had a "British" navy and "German" army so they could see tactics and ships in actual action), but don't seem to have noticed how grim the land campaign got (and how much worse it might be if, say, both countries had the majority of their armies on either side of a land border...)
I don’t buy this Petersberg-WW1 trench warfare statement. Armies have been fighting in trenches during sieges for hundreds of years. Nothing about Petersberg wasn’t seen in the second siege of Vienna, for instance.
I kinda feel the use of exploitation as synonymous with stealing of physichal resources for monetary gain is misleading. I understand the argument of europeans not having gained much monetary advantage from colonizing Africa, but there was clearly some form of resource that they were looking for - you even mention it actually: relative political power compared to other european rivals. Would you still argue that taking political and geographical power from the native population of Africa is not exploitative? It also seems like you are arguing that the europeans taking control over african geographical areas and implementing their governace (whether directly or not) has had an insignificant impact on history - which might be me misunderstanding your intentions, or might be a statement with which I cannot agree based on my understanding of our history. In either case, I still appreciate you having made this video. It is a good thing to challenge persistent ideas not based in the reality of history. Thank you!
I think his point was refuting the general idea Africa is poor because Europe ravaged it of all resources. In reality European colonialism in the late 18th & early 19th century introduced technology Africans wouldn't have acquired otherwise.
@@imoyabrax450 lol what geopolitical condition, every single African government before colonization is a joke and people lived like savages like Incas and they are real primitive compared to the average technology and considering that Europeans have actually modernized most of Africa, I don't see how it is wrong or a disadvantage to Africans, the governments which came after colonization are the ones that caused massive resource plundering for their own good and left people like slaves
...but, it would be amazing. It's mind blowing that one of the world's largest sky-bird preyed on the world's largest land-bird, in the land of the world's smallest land-birds.
I am reading Durant now along with the unabridged rereading of Gibbons Decline and Fall plus the Historia Augusta, and it is some of the most exciting portrayals of history I have ever read.
6:01 this is not entirely true. People did of course swear in the past, just not in the same way we do. Words and their meanings change over time and common words back in history might have a more serious meaning today. If you want to learn more about this watch this video by Simon Roper, an excellent anthropologist and historical linguist. th-cam.com/video/ARgGguQlQ0w/w-d-xo.html It's also important to note that more formal language was used in the literature from the past, and thus isn't truly representative of how people commonly spoke, meaning that we aren't getting what was actually spoken, but instead a formalization of it. It's not hard to realize that people didn't really speak like they do in Shakespeare. Another note is the inaccuracy of the point made at 6:30. Old English and Southern English are not incredibly close, they just share a few pronunciations. Simon Roper also has a video discussing this. th-cam.com/video/4rb0HPDnc8Y/w-d-xo.html
Interestingly enough in my language we still swear sometimes like people from medieval times. Ok, even in english there is "damn" and "in god's name", swears with a more religious context. But we swear on words like "sacrament", "cross- crucifix", "cross- cruzifiction" and so on. Even some class/caste related swear words like "one who got shorn up from behind" (i really have no clue how i should translate this), which describes the style of hair serfs had to have in medieval times, so you basically call him a serf, a rightless man on the lowest social level, even though this class system died in our society around 500 years ago. Another one is "crucify the turks", even though the thing you are swearing about has nothing to do with them or generally any person. Maybe because my ancestors saw the invading turks as kind of dark wizards who could hex people.
18:34 Oh wow! Look at the Ainu! I never new that they used to populate such a large area! Of course they were probably ancestors of the Ainu, but still.
You should have mentioned the Belgian Congo during your Africa segment. That was undeniably a brutal, exploitative slave state made entirely for profit EDIT: not made for profit. It was made because Belgium wanted to have an empire. It couldn't have been initially founded for profit because the Europeans thought nothing was there. It was when rubber was found that the congolese people were exploited
Whatifalthist as much as I like your videos there are countless instances where Europeans got more out of Africa than it put in. The French government extracted billions post independence from 14 of their former sub sharan colonies by dictating the financial guidelines of the separation of French rule and even have first claim to some of their natural resources. And by carving up the continent with no regard for ethnic differences when independence it created the space for civil wars,military dictatorship, ethnic cleansing and easier for neo-colonialism to start again. The Congo Is just one of the easiest explosions to cite due to the sheer brutality
Whatifalthist you forgot to mention how Africa was carved up for strategic reasons like the French control over the Sahara was used to link up their colonies in Algeria, Gabon, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. Many countries saw no economic investment other than military installations
While I absolutely agree that the number 1 misconception has to do with Indigenous American societies, and characterizing them as either Noble or barbaric savages, as somebody into Aztec history I've got some issues with some of the info you list in that part of the video. While i'm not able to speak for the Inca, I'm not aware of any sort of widespread environmental/agricultural sustainability issues the Aztec (I assume by "Aztec" here you mean Mexica, the specific subgroup of the Nahua civilization who lived in Tenochtitlan that the term "Aztec" is most associated with, with the Nahuas being the broader "Aztec culture" and the Aztec Empire being an alliance between Tenochtitlan and 2 other cities and their various subject states) had. I could just be not be informed on the topic of it being unsustainable (My interest is on Mesoamerica generally, not Chinampas speffically) but my understanding is that the Chinampa (artificial islands made in shallow lakebed via filling a staked out plot of lake with soil and then planting trees to anchor it, which were the primary farming method used in Tenochtitlan and one of the major methods used in the Valley of Mexico, which was where the Nahuas were centered in and was the political core of the Aztec Empire) agricultural model was very sustainable and agriculturally productive. In fact pretty much everything i've read on them stresses that fact: That it retains much of the elements of the areas's existing ecosystem and uses local soil, crops, and trees (the trees themselves also acting as wind breakage); that it re-uses human waste for fertilizers, that the existing lake irrigates the soil, and can produce as many as 7 harvests a year. In fact, I've even read that even using the traditional population estimate of 200,000 people in Tenochtitlan and 1.5 million people across the whole valley (which would have made it one of the most densely populated areas on the planet) in 1519, which resulted from a massive population explosion over a few centuries, it was still was far from it's total carrying capacity. I've also got some disagreements with what you state regarding the Mexica's institutionalized warfare. While the Mexica (and by extension the Aztrec Empire) absolutely had annual offensive military campaigns as an institutionalized practice, they did NOT systemically wage war against existing subject states. In fact, subject states in the Aztec Empire were generally left very hands off, keeping their rulers, laws, and customs; typically only having tax ("Tribute") burdens of economic goods, and/or burdens of supplying services, usually aid on military campaigns or for public construction projects in Tenochtitlan, along with at times having to put up a shrine to Huitzlipotchli. I think the misconception that their conquered subjects had war waged on them for captives originates from a misunderstanding of what Xochiyaoyotl (Flower Wars) were and how they were used. Flower Wars were ritualistic, usually pre-arranged conflicts between Nahua cities/towns that were smaller in scale compared to normal wars (Yaoyototl) and were more focused around collecting enemy soldiers as captives rather then trying to conquer urban centers; and were usually waged between two agreeing parties for various reasons, sometimes even cementing alliances, or against a target of conquest which would be costly or ineffective to try to conquer outright, and where Flower Wars could act as a way to feel each other out or to gradually wear the other side down (as their smaller scale nature meant they could be done throughout the year, vs large scale invasions needing to be seasonal). In fact, glancing through Hassig's "Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control" to double check things, I see NO mentions of Flower Wars being used against existing subjects (contrary to what I remeber hearing about it being used on them occasionally via mutual consent to cement alliances and the like), and rather exclusively in the more pragmatic "testing each other/wearing them down" context. It even notes that in the early Flower Wars the Mexica had against Chalco under the rule of Acamapichtli starting in 1375, that many of the initial Flower Wars had NO causalities, and only over time as both sides felt each other out did it shift to be involve taking captives and then stopped before escalating further into actual, non-flower wars wars. His lack of mention of the pre-arranged, "friendly" flower wars could just be because that book is focused on a pragmatic view of Aztec militarism in contrastto the ritualistic view a lot of other texts take, so he may have saw covering them outside the scope of the book. Regardless, forced raids or flower wars against subjects wasn't a thing on any widespread basis. I'm also not sure where you are drawing the 2 million figure from or what length of time or what geographic expanse it is meant to encompass, but even if it's meant to be all sacrifices in Tenochtitlan from it's founding in the 1320's to 1521, or all of the states and towns the Aztec Empire contained from it's founding in the late 1420's (when Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan allied together to overthrow Azcapotzalco, the then most dominant city-state in the Valley of Mexico) to 1521; I would say that's a pretty, arguably unreasonably high estimate, for a few reasons. The first being that the Mexica were the only Mesoamerican group to really practice mass-scale sacrifices, as a result of religious reforms made by the Tlatoani (King) of Tenochtitlan, Itzcoatl, and the Cihuacoatl ("Woman-Snake"; a head adminstrative, religious, and judicial office underneath the Tlatoani to handle internal domestic affairs, especially when the Tlatoani was handling external diplomacy and warfare) Tlacaelel shortly after the formation of the Aztec Empire, with Itzcoatl ordering the burning of existing religious and historical texts in Tenochtitlan and Tlacaelel devising a new state-sponsored history and creation myth to glorify the Mexica's origins and place an increased emphasis on the need of the blood of enemy soldiers to sustain Huitzlipotchli as a way to provide a cosmological justification/rationalization for military campaigns. So the amount of sacrifices other towns and cities, even other Nahua ones, would be doing would likely be a fraction of that as Tenochtitlan, and even Tenochtitlan was probably not sacrificing many thousands of people a year, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands: The recent excavations as the Tzompantli (Skull Rack) in Tenochtitlan's ceremonial district/downtown Mexico City have, per the media reports I can find (sadly I haven't found published papers on it yet),found that it held "Thousands" of skulls at it's "maximum extent". Now, the rack WAS cleared at times and then refilled, and sacrifices did occur in other temples in the city and not all sacrifices had their skulls put on the rack, but based on that wording and some numbers I crunched, I think it's pretty likely that the actual amount of annual sacrifices was probably in the hundreds, if not dozens, MAYBE between 1 and 2 thousand, most of which (up to 75% per the Tzompantli findings) would have been enemy soldiers, not civilians. Even if we take Cortes's estimate of 3000 a year at face value in Tenochtitlan, across the roughly 200 years the Tenochtitlan would be around, that would still be only 600,000, not 2 million, and, again, the Mexica only even really ramped up their sacrifices 100 years after Tenochtitlan was founded, so even that's being pretty charitable. To shift to the "All of the Aztec empire from the 1420's to 1520's" model for the 2M estimate, using Cortes's likely already inflated 3000 a year figure again, and say that the rest of the Aztec Empire's cities/towns sacrificed 3x that combined abnnually (which I would find unlikely, since, again, others didn't do mass scale sacrifices), so 3000 + 9000 = 12,000 a year, across 1000 years that'd be 1.2m sacrifices, still only a bit over half the 2M figure. None of these are meant to be accurate estimates, but are rather numbers I'm relatively sure are *higher* then what would be accurate as to show you that even when using those you wouldn't reach 2 million. Anyways, with corrections/nitpicks out of the way, I wanna talk about some further/additional/related misconceptions regarding Indigenous American history and societies, but I ran out of space, so... CONTINUED IN A FOLLOW UP REPLY
CONTINUED: So, now with those corrections done, here's some more misconceptions I want to tackle................ 1.That the Mesoamericans and the Andeans were "Stone Age". On an easy surface level, this is wrong because both Mesoamerica (the Cultural area incluiding the Aztec, Maya, Olmec, etc; usually defined as roughly the bottom half of Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and bits of Hondouras and el Salvador), Central America below it, and the Andes (the Inca, Nazca, Moche, etc; so Peru and bits of adjacent countries like Bolvia and Ecuador) all had metallurgy, smelting both soft metals like gold, silver, and copper, as well as Bronze. You can quite litterally google images of copper and bronze Inca weapons and armor or Aztec Axe-monies or tweezers with little effort. Beyond that, though, it's just a bad premise: the whole Stone/Bronze/Iron age model isn't meant to be a measure of technological progression, but rather just specific periods of European and Near-Eastern history since the widespread shift from/to each material makes a convenient set of Milestones. Metallurgical technology is just one of many facets of society and technology, and trying to make any sort of broader assessment of complexity just based on it is, frankly, silly: Let's look at Mesoamerica again. Teotihuacan was a massive metropolis with 150,000 denizens across 37 square kilometers, 22 sq.km. of which was a dense urban grid of fancy stone temples, plazas, villas, etc. Almost the entire city's population was living in opulent housing complex/villas with dozens of rooms, large open air courtyards, rich painted frescos on walls, and fine ceramics and stuatary. Some complexes had toilets, and like a lot of other large Mesoamerican cities it had a complex water mangement system that included canals, resvoirs, and drainage systems/plumbing. It could even flood the Plaza outside the Temple of the Feathered Serpent for rituals like the Roman Colosseum could be flooded..... and Teotihuacan's apex passed BEFORE Mesoamerica had ANY metallurgy, even of soft metals like Gold. The Mesoamericans might not have worked Iron or made Steel, but rest assured they were more comparable to Iron age, Classical and Medieval Old World socities then they were Bronze age ones in quite a few respects, and almost all respects vs Stone age ones. Medicine, Sanitation, and Botanical science in particular the Aztec I'd argue were cutting-edge with even by global standards. 2. That the Native Americans outside of Mesoamerica and the Andes were simple hunter-gatherers. This is sort of an extension of the 1st point I just split up because I didn't want the paragraph to go on for too long, and Whatifist actually covers this briefly in the video; but there was a suprising amount of complexity in many socities in what's now the US and Canada (and the rest of Central and South America), even if not as much in Mesoamerica in the Andes by traditional Western standards : As noted in the video, even for the non-sendatary socities, there was often a notable degree of environmental modification, such as agroforestry where the brush of forests were managed with fire and crops were planted and then then the whole forests would be used as "farms" for said crops and animals were hunted. A large amount, perhaps even a majority, of Native Americans north of Mexico were in fact agricultural, they just didn't practice "Western" style agriculture. And there were many that DID and had towns and even (albiet not of stone) cities: The Pueblo and related Oasisamerican cultures in New Mexico, Arizona, etc, or the Mississipians in the Eastern US who were basically their own Cradle of Civilization: Cahokia, located in what's St Louis, had 30,000 to 40,000 denizens. Down in the Amazon, LIDAR has found huge networks of earthenwork complexes, towns, and irrigration from a former culture there, (probably closer to the Missiissipians then the Mesoamericans, for the sake of your mental image), with a notable amount of the Amazon rainforest really being an overgrown human-made ecosystem. In reality a fair amount of cultures across the Americas even outside of Mesoamerica and the Andes were sedentary, but collapsed from European diseases spread by the Spanish before the British, French, and American colonists spread throughout the Continent: They were seeing what was already a post-apocalyptic landscape. 3. That the only heavily urbanized, complex civilizations in the Americas were the Aztec, Inca, and Maya: Even putting aside the cultures I mention in point 2, and looking at what we'd consider full, complex civilizations (as arbitrary as that can be at times), there's DOZENS more then just those 3: stuff like monumental archtecture, rulership, class systems, etc goes back in Mesoamerica almost 3000 years prior to Europeans arriving in the late 15th/early 16th century, and around 2000 years in the Andes (some will say as far as 9000 years due to sites like Caral, but my understanding is these were more akin to stuff like Gobekli Tepe or stonehenge, being large monumental sites visited seasonally rather then cities). There's so many other civilizations, city-states, kingdoms, empires, etc. I already mentioned Teotihuacan as another Mesoamerican one, but there's also the Olmec (probably the next most well known, thanks to their giant stone head sculptures), the Zapotec and Mixtec (two major ones in what's now Oaxaca, the exploits of the Mixtec warlord 8-Deer-Jaguar-Claw matches the most thrilling tales of great conquerers from Europe and Asia, going from a noble working for a general of other cities to making key alliances with influiential religious lords, to then conquering almost 100 cities in under 2 decades and finally dying in an ironic twist when the one boy he left alive from his arch-rivals family grew up to overthrow him), the Purepecha/Tarascans (the second largest Empire in Mesoamerica after the Aztec, who repelled numerpous invasions from them and built a series of forts and watchtowers along their border) etc'; or down in the Andes, the Moche (who built giant, impressive temple complexes called Huacas a bit like Mesopotamian ziggurats, google some of the well preserved bits of Huaca de la Luna or Huaca Cao Viejo), the Chimor Kingdom (The largest state in late Andean history before the Kingdom of Cusco conquered them and then swallowed up the rest of the region as the Inca Empire; The Chimu captial, Chan Chan, was the largest city in Prehispanic South American history, with 60,000 denizens), etc. I was going to do a 4th one, which is the myth that the Conquest of Mexico and Peru or the collapse of Mesoamerican and Andean civilization and the complete colonization of the Americas was inevitable, but I already left an even more massive comment(s) on the "What if the Aztec Empire survived?" Whatifist video you can see here: th-cam.com/video/52yu6hA_k2Y/w-d-xo.html&lc=Ugz9cPOGU-Iwg802o2l4AaABAg which goes into that, and frankly I have other stuff to do, so I'll leave it at that.
A common misconception, especially in the USA is that Columbus reached America, as in their country. He, of course, never set foot in North America. The only part of mainland Americas that he set foot on is what is modern day Panama (hence the city of Colon, Christopher Columbus in Spanish is Cristobal Colon) and what is modern day Venezuela.
Nearly done with number 11 but still thank you so much for helping me understand about the myth and books to read of these things. Keep up the great work.
If Italy didn't unify the North would have been taken by Austria and the south by Spain. The Pope would have been kn a better situation between 2 of his besties rather than cover by the Savoys.
I like the thought of one of the Moroccan crisies starting off WW1 as very nearly happened. Mainly because in that war Serbia would not bleed nearly as much, and would probably only join war late for spoils like Romania/Italy instead of having to bear the brunt of the war and massacres as in OTL (25% of all people died in the war, more if only counting men, and there were massacres of Serbs in Austria-Hungary too which don't count to this dark score). Bulgaria might even join Entente with no easy DoW on Serbia while they could instead try and take Constantinople from Ottomans. OTOH Austria and eventually Germany had to commit many troops to Serbian front, these would go elsewhere and potential be enough to win or at least knock out Russia a bit sooner.
I’m going to talk about if the Qing never existed. All of this would account for if the Ming did industrialised and modernised. 1. The Ming encounters the Opium Wars with Britain and wins it so it drives the colonial powers out of China instead of a longer war. 2. China builds up the military response to Japan modernising & trading with western powers. 3. Japan tried to invade Korea but failed to do so because of China advanced navy and army so then Japan will suffer a revolution & isolation after it. 4. The Ming dynasty supports the anti-communists Russians so therefore the Soviet Union will lose the civil war more likely and gained support of western powers. 5. The Ming send troops so the axis is defeated very early by 1943 and with Japan being isolated, the US would not intervene. Major powers would be British, French, Russians, and the Ming dynasty during the 1940s. 6. Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ming dynasty would be an alliance. British empire, French empire, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and occupied Germany would be an alliance sort of like NATO. The US, Japan, Mexico, Central America, and South America would be an alliance. 7. With Russia and China having inferior economies compared to the western colonial powers still then Russia will end up in a economic and political crisis and will make concessions. 8. With the Qing not invading, then China will be in a much smaller area size that will exclude Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Guangxi probably and leaves with about 1,910,000 square miles of Chinese land as modern Chinese territory. 9. China in the alternate timeline would not include Dalai Lama as part of the Chinese nation. I know some other people also speculate that later Tang would exist with the Ming falling, Ming dynasty having a huge wealth gap that leads to rebellions probably, potentially Ming could have bad emperors that lead to lost of the Opium Wars, and Ming could reform its economy based on capitalism by 1700s and become a dominating capitalist empire by 1800s and 1900s. With all this said, anything could possibly happen had the Qing conquest didn’t happen.
X1 Gen KaneshiroX The Ming couldn't industrialize or modernize. It was practically intellectually, socially, and technologically stagnant for its duration, especially when compared to the dynamism of the Song. Part (certainly not all, but part) of why the Qing failed to modernize was their arrogance, which might be even worse under a dynasty not ruled by “barbarians”.
But to answer your question, OP, I think the Ming probably would've been overthrown by the Shun dynasty (which probably wouldn't last very long) or gone into a period of civil strife before being reunited by some warlord.
Yeah, I was expecting something overall better. I am now thinking that I was simply not the target audience of this video and my expectations were a mistake.
@Derrick Pino Yeah, this was my second. I was impressed with his Timur video and instantly subscribed to Al Muqaddimah who assisted with it, then I watched this one which left me 'not wanting more'.
Even though the main point seems right imho, I too feel like this was quite a subjective . And found quite interesting that your view of europe was so foccused on the source nations of the northamerican colonizers.
Whatifalthist I’m Afro-german it’s huge in some tribes they speak a Germanic dialect similar Dutch. Namibia is great just don’t call is South African because we hate we people do that.
The eleven misconceptions: 11 - World War I commanders were idiots 1:01 10 - Oriental despotism 3:18 9 - Dialogue 4:41 8 - People in the past were stupid and immoral 7:00 7 - Industrialization was awful 8:58 6 - The Europeans exploited Africa 10:43 5 - Early civilizations were good places 12:58 4 - The Dark Ages were terrible 14:58 3 - The Middle Ages were primitive 16:26 2 - Migrations never occurred 18:04 1 - The Native Americans were hippies 19:48
Thank you on the witch craft and bathing comment for the Middle Ages. I had a coworker (I work at a fast food joint while working on BSE) who honestly thought that people bathed once a month and that you'd die by 30. And for the witchcraft thing I often turn to the Council of Panderborn.
The problem wasn’t how the Europeans treated Africa after it was colonised, but how the Europeans destroyed African cities and infrastructure during the colonisation process. I’m a 2nd generation immigrant from Ghana and in there, the British burned down our original capital city (Kumasi) in 1896. This as well as the divide and conquer tactics, badly drawn borders, the Europeans’ lack of help in terms of development and the longer amount of time under colonial rule is what made Africa underdeveloped and slower to modernise than Asian countries for example. The problem wasn’t the exploitation (which still happened especially in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo) but the destruction caused by the wars and the prevention of growth.
The mythology behind the native American peoples is one of the most important things you mention here. People believe they were saints, in part to demonize the westerners who came after them. They did indeed fight wars of genocide and conquest, deforest their lands, and engage in slavery on a wide scale. Brave of you, frankly, to include this in the list!
This is also done with Africans during the Atlantic slave trade. It’s usually portrayed that Westerners came into Africa and enslaved the population themselves directly. In reality, the slave trade was started by African tribes and countries who had conquered other regions and taken them captive, then traded those captives with Westerners. Modern people tend to worship the poor innocent African tribals who were just going about their peaceful Stone Age lives before the Europeans stormed in and enslaved them all. Africa was a thriving part of the world for centuries, and a lot of that was due to slavery in some form or another.
You should do what if Ottomamans didn't manage to expand into Europe, good start for this would probably be Serbs winning battle of Maritsa and besieging Edrine (which was actually more likely than what happened). That would be very interesting.
Nothing much would change. Timurids beating and nearly destroying Ottomans only delayed Ottoman expansion for a few decades. Serbia and other Balkan states would begin fighting each other for power while Ottomans were recovering and strengthening their positions in Anatolia only to come back stronger to Balkans.
12: Italy is an "artificial" nation which didn't exist before 1861 and it was better when divided, the South in particular (SPOILER: it was the other way around)
@João Antonio honestly the market is flooded with diamonds now. They’re not nearly as valuable as they once were. The gold that ended the Bullion famine, however, now that African “contribution” definitely benefited Europe a great deal more than Africa
@Petri I'm aware, and I'm nkt able to rewatch the video right now, he made it sound like Africa somehow benefitted from their colonization, when they clearly didnt
Long time I hadn't seen so insightful and stimulating videos as yours. I don't agree with everything, but your debunking of myths 7 and 6 (industrialization horrors & colonial exploitation) especially was top spot.
You are surprisingly in tune with the reality of history. I disagree on a few details, but overall your gripes with the mainstream understanding of history are about the same as mine.
Hey man I just wanted to say I love your videos, and I love how balanced you are, but I have to disagree with the how Europe didn't exploit Africa, I'm surprised you didn't bring up king Kongo, or what's Germany did in Namibia, or Cecil rose using badly treated African to mine gold, and the destruction of the city of Benin, all the capital of the Ashanti empire, Africa was not perfect but what Europe did was not the most constructive, thing they could have done.
I'm Italian. Italian colonizers have done horrible things to the Ethiopians, but in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia they still have and use some of the infrastructures (streets, railways, schools, places of entertainment, etc.) that the Italians built there. We didn't expolit our colonies that much also because Italy had a very short colonial history compared to other European countries.
The destruction of Benin and the Ashanti capital were due to them being at war with the British also it is very clear that African colonies were far more costly than beneficial to European powers. Therefore Europe recieved very little if any actual benefit for colonial rule in Africa. Also the fact that non-colonial European nations such as Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria are just as wealthy per capita as the colonial nations such as Britain, France and Germany shows that the western world was not enriched by their Empires like some people like to believe in order to push a reparations narrative.
@@oreroundpvp896 That's ridiculus, you seem to forget that having a rich market with high population and high demands tends to make you have much more posibilities to make money. Just take a look to the way those countries make money, and those are by selling goods to the european markets. With the added benefit that not being a colony so they could put the price
true, but no one is saying that the Europeans were doing out of the kindness of their hearts. Most people where properly just in it for the money (as most people tend to do) although I will say that Europeans didn't see it as simply a way of exploiting (maybe except the Belgians), They saw it as a way of exporting civilisation to Africa, which they thought gave them the right to conquer. This is analogous to how Microsoft sees its vision to "empower companies of all sizes to be their best".
True, however, Europe would still have had the same level of wealth without Africa, and Africa would be much poorer without Europe (this, however, doesn't justify any act of conquest in itself)
I enjoy your content for new facts and considerations. Thanks. I just watched Top 11 Historical Misconceptions and I want to take issue with your comment about deforestation in the American southwest by the Pueblo Indians (I am one). 1. I can't believe the population was ever high enough to cause deforestation on any large scale. 2. The picture you showed is of an area below the tree line, where the desert is rising to the forested higher altitudes.
Very interesting about the dialoged portion in how American English is such a direct language. I think its also leading to a new form of Spanish. I live in Los Angeles where most of the population speaks spanish and you can tell that among older people or those who immigrated to America from Mexico have a different way of speaking Spanish. As suppose to younger or 2nd generation children who are by all means Americanized but where told to speak spanish. Their way of speaking Spanish is much more direct and blunt forgoing pleasantries and to several older people its considered rude. I remember been in like at a store and the cashier and the customer where speaking spanish. The cashier stated the total price and the older lady remarked how rude the cashier sounded, saying how there where no pleasantries sprinkled within the sentence. To me the cashier sounded perfectly fine. But then I watched this video and yeah Mexico compared to the US does have a more ridged class structure. In places like Aguascalientes, Nayarit or Jalisco most people dont make conversations with waiters or cashiers or will flat out ignore their existence. They will wave servers away like some medieval king waving away a peasant. I made the mistake of thanking my waiter once in Mexico and the rest of the table looked at me oddly. My uncle later explained to my that such behavior isnt really practiced there unless your of the lower classes and by speaking to someone of working class it was an indication that I was of lower class. My American sensibilities where rocked.
Thats a very interresting topic. As a history nerd it is very difficult sometimes to keep your temper when someone drops a history fact and you as the only person in the room who knows the truth have to see with horror how everyone believes it, allthough it is completely false. Here are some „facts“, that I encountered (without order): 1. People in the middle ages never turned 35 2. The Holy Roman Empire was never holy, roman or an empire 3. The Greeks were the good guys in the war against the Persians (you touched on this but I wanted to specify it) 4. That will be controversial: Germany was sole responsible for WW1 5. Pre modern battles were majestic and heroic matters I exluded your points, allthough I would have added some to my list too, like that the native americans were the pure essence of morality or that the middle ages were one gigantic dark age.
A) The drawing of borders was done with some help from the Africans, since Europeans literally created governments for these countries when they left. Yes it had an insane amount of issues, but that doesn't completely lie on Europeans, especially since massive public opinion throughout the whole world, as well as the USA and USSR encouraging decolonization, as well as unrest in the colonies, put extreme pressure on the process, forcing it to become an unnatural escape from Africa, instead of a natural lay of the colonies with consideration, at the cost of them being colonies for longer. B) Tribes always fought each other anyway. Like mini nations they conquered land from each other and like nations they allied with other nations to destroy. Also he only mentioned the economic viability and exploitation, even mentioning that what the Europeans did was wrong.
"I'm not sure how much effect the Europeans themselves had on Africa." 21 countries in Africa speak French as their official language. 29 in total. I'd say there was a pretty big impact. This isn't even the most damning mistake in the video, just the most glaring.
I was actually wondering wtf I was listening to. I commented about lumping Indians hating Churchill with Holocaust deniers of the Jewish or Armenian hating variety.
Very few Africans I’m in the former french colonies actually speak fluent french and fewer still use it in regular daily communication it’s at most a public lingua Franca for governments but almost everyone speak native African languages everyday
French in Africa is mostly for the elite, but more importantly, it was deliberately maintained by African leaders on a common accord because that gives them a convenient system to talk to each other. Otherwise they would have to manage a bazillion dialects. Imagine the president or prime minister of your country only speaks the dialect of his people group and stayed in place for 20-ish years, his language would gradually become the de facto language of the country and make every other groups become second-class citizens, leading to social unrest. But since none of the sub-groups has French for its native tongue, you're alienating everyone equally, thus alienating no one. Which funnily enough is the Frenchest thing to do 😂
A question. I thought that the early era of Egypt wasnt so much a cast society but a free one in Wich a farmer can become a merchant but with time (like the bronze age collapse) the cast society became a reality is this true or not?
It was probably more like two choices: 1. Toil in the fields like your forefathers did. A semi stable income for you and your family but better than nothing at all. 2. Try your luck and gamble everything on one hand and become a merchant, sell all your stuff and buy high value items and transport them 500 km to make a profit. You might be killed or enslaved on your way, or at best, just lose everything you have and get back alive with nothing. Meanwhile your family is probably coming with you and starves along with you. You might get incredibly rich but the chance is very slim. I guess most people would have chosen the first option.
Luís Filipe Andrade That wasn't the social structure of, say, Rome or imperial China (though it was like that in pre-imperial China). Side note, it was arguably better to be a peasant than a merchant in imperial China since the former could in theory take the imperial examination to become a scholar-official, the most prestigious social position, while the latter were often barred from the examination.
I just discovered your channel a couple days ago and I’ve been absolutely tearing thru your body of work. I love the info and context you provide - America defined by 10 ethnicities is a wealth of historical course correction that started filling gaps for me that have never really made sense. I have a kind of overly simple question maybe: would you say it’s safe to say that humans are humans and if it makes sense that We modern men would do a behavior, historic man would have likely done similar? So when we hear that public atheism in the Middle Ages was common, should that not be surprising and should I try applying that context to a lot of historical information?
Whatifalthist, this may sound obscure to you, but can you give us a possible scenario of what would possibly happen if the Maratha Empire won the Third Battle of Panipat? In our timeline, they lost and they went into stagnation. This made it much easier for the surrounding kingdoms to take some territory from the Marathas and it also caused even more of a power vacuum which was exploited by the British EIC to conquer the Indian subcontinent.
They would probably just have been conquered anyway once the Mughal Empire/EIC state withered away and was replaced with the Raj. Might have led to more armed resistance to the Raj though.
10:37 - Just to clarify, Marx was never against industrialisation, he was simply against the profits of industrialised labour going to the bourgeois class rather than the workers or proletariat. Hopefully that clears things up.
Marx has been refuted so many times by real economists that is really boring to hear someone explaining marxism. Prehistoric and very anti cientific theory. Also really dangerous.
@@FragRevel you talk about Marxism as though it’s an economic system, it is not, it’s a method of analysing the relationship between the human mind and the world it exists in. Marxist economics is a load of outdated garbage I’ll be the first to admit that, but that doesn’t mean the system of analysis Marx created should be discarded.
@@solortus Just because it's been the most successful so far doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be reformed. Capitalism through climate change is literally destroying the planet (yes i know the soviets were extremely bad for the environment as well).
Not to mention the fact that he fails to recognise the difference between Marxism and Marx’s theory as detailed in the communist manifesto. I like his channel in terms of historical documentation but his political understanding (with the exclusion of certain aspects of geopolitics) is soooo limited
As a history professor, I found myself saying "hmmm well..." very often. You made A LOT of bold statements and I appreciate you for increasing our society's knowledge. I enjoy your videos and they get me hyped up to debate.
Except he got the part wrong about 1600's Western Europ to Islamic comparison. Since Islam came to existence, women had the rights to vote, own property conduct business and HAS to see her family at least twice a year and in most middle class households people meet their relatives (especially the woman) waaay more than that, more like on a weekly basis. Whilst in Europe you had governement officials coming in the house to punish your inobedient wife. Lemme get this straight, I left islam and sexism had a big part to do with it, but I hate when folks use the same stereotype of "West is less sexist than brown muslims" if we are speaking of "degrees" here I would say the form varies but the content is still there
@@refugetube4800 Perhaps you would like to expound on why the Koran entitles a man to 4 wives... but not a woman to 4 husbands? The Koran has much to say about how men should control women, but not the other way around. Please answer without reference to the Bibles (Christian or Jewish) or by making odious comparisons.
@@v1e1r1g1e1 are you stupid or you just acting like one? Next time read well before typing nonsense like an angry teen. I said I left Islam cuz its sexist but you guys are on another level and your stinginess continues to prove it
His Africa argument is complete bunk btw. One of the books he cites is more of a scattered memoir of a mans travels through Africa with vague extrapolations and the other is a hodgepodge of facts about colonial wars with a loosely evidenced claim at the end.
European colonialism had a serious negative impact on Africa. If there was no colonialism Africa would be a very difficult place. It would have evolved naturally and major ethnic groups would have greater there own countries and institutions. Trade would flow internally amongst Africans rather than being a resource exporter, Europeans didn't build railways in Africa that only went to the ports for no reason. Never mind the amount of Gold and precious minerals, rubber and the like that was exported by the colonialist. Also the farming land that was taken by expelling the Africans from their livelihoods. List goes on. Furthermore the colonisation of India made Africa poor. Before the British, India was responsible for 25% of world trade, slot of it was with Africa on a fair bases. The British stopped that and diverted the trade to the U K.
I wish you would make an entire video on the painful degree of misconception concerning the whole medieval era, maybe starting with the term "dark" ages and how it's mostly used interchangeably with the early medieval period (5th to about 10th century) and that it doesn't mean that it was an especially terrible time to life but that there aren't many good sources that could help historical sciences shine light into this era and thus understand it better and know more about it, which makes it dark by that connotation. Most people have not just no idea about how different the beginning of the middle ages was to it's end and therefore how much progress (societal/cultural, scientific etc.) actually occurred but their view is as if it's all pretty much the "dark" ages (which consists of all the worst stereotypes people can come up with put together for this "period") and nothing has changed during 1000+ years and suddenly came the renaissance etc. .... Sorry for the rant, to me it's just one of the if not the single most annoying misconception people have about history, primarily because it's so important for our understanding of our ancestors and cultural heritage.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Sorry for number 3 I made a mistake and left out the reason for the why we look down upon the Middle Ages. The big reason is that modern Western civilization came out of the failings of 14th century Medieval Civilization. Medieval Civilization lasted longer than it probably should have and thus collapsed spectacularly in the 14th century. Thus, since modern Western Civilization was formed out of Medieval Civilization, we remember it at its most brutal and dysfunctional and forget all the successes it had in the previous 500 years.
The best source for #3 is "The Age of Faith" by Will Durant
When you talked about Europeans in Africa, why didn’t you speak about the Atlantic slave trade or Leopoldian Congo, or the apartheid. I feel like those are significant points made for the argument of exploitation of Africa that you didn’t mention
I’ve been wondering I had an argument with this guy about the German Army of World War II and saying that not all or at least less than half or more than half of the Germans that fight during World War II were not harmed by Nazis or radical Nazis most are just fighting for their country I would say about 35% were really hard line Nazis and from what the sources I seen I leave that to be true but is that just a misconception on my part
Yo, this is the best video you've ever made. I swear to God I've learnt so much!
Any citations for the extinct/near extinct racial map part? I was aware of the african and asian groups, but not of the others.
He explicitly did mention the slave trade and South Africa tho... And specifically clarified he was talking about the direct colonial period. As for the Congo. Though Belgium didn't help any it was just as murder heavy before and after.
Public atheism in the middle ages genuinely surprised me.
Damn
Same here
@@appleslover um no. Did you watch it? The University of Bologna was the centre of atheism
Grubby bum I think university were given special privilege which is funny considering they setup by the theocratic governments
Have you ever heard of struggle between Holy Roman Emperors and Popes? It lasted several centuries, and got to a point where one Emperor was exluded from the church.
I love how we moderns look down on tenement housing, poor farms and mental hospitals, while we are surrounded by thousands of people living in tents or just shelter less on the sidewalks.
Word
based
@@Clumsy-vp3if not really
@@nathanielcueto2339 why not
@@Clumsy-vp3if because people say stuff like that all the time, it doesn't go against societal standards it goes with them
7:12 I'm a culinary student, and I notice this about every time a professor talks about the past. A lot of assuming, without research or context. A common one is "the Egyptians accidentaly discovered beer, and had no idea how yeast worked" (seeing as beer is older than agriculture, it was already old news by the time of the pyramids), or even "they ate only meat, and only occasionally would feed on other things" (the societies that are literary called hunter-gatherers), or the opposite: "the Aztecs were incredible due to their highly vegetarian diet" (ignoring the fact that they had no choice, and even raised small dogs for protein).
The elite priests ate human meat regularly.
@@meneither3834 The elite priests ARE human meat.....
Also guinea pigs, alpacas and llamas I think.
@@fainitesbarley2245 people from incan empire, used to eat those cuyes, alpacas and llamas, but non different from other places: Wealthy people ate a lot and more variety more than the usual normal low class people.
Regarding the Aztecs,
The bodies of the sacrificed did not go to waste. The grim details are laid out in the histories of the Conquest.
The Spanish Conquistadores, in order to obtain grease to lubricate the hubs of their animal drawn wagons, had to render human corpses.
The Meso American civilizations had no livestock.
Meanwhile, introduced disease from humans and from imported animals killed beyond count.
And cruelties willfully inflicted by the conquerors where recorded by some of the accompanying clergy as testimony for the future.
As far as the fetishization of the "noble savage" goes, Thomas Sowell writes of this as a recurring theme throughout (at least) Western history, as many Roman writers would glorify the Germanic tribes as well for rejecting corrupt urbanity and living in nature.
Makes sense, a sort of the grass is greener kind of thing as well as an inate desire to be closer to nature and freer
Classical Greek bourgeoisie wore barbarian-style pelts for fashion too
The German tribes were actually able to hold against the Romans, tho. So they had to be good.
But there was a reason to glorify the Germans. They were not in fact savages. Note they used metal weapons and tools. As the uploader points out, Rome essentially was a state where the rural areas were taxed to support an urban civilization. (Hmmmmm.....sounds familiar...)
@@Fridaey13txhOktober They repeatedly lost, but due to shitty emperors got to keep their land. Large parts of Germany and Hungary were subjugated by Marcus Aurelius, but when he died Commodus just abandoned the conquests. Same with Germanicus's conquests being left behind by Tiberius and so on and so forth
Other popular myths:
1) Crusades happened purely because of religion. It is usually used in a "religion is bad" disputes. In reality, Crusades had certain political, social and economical benefits which could interest the rulers to go on Crusades.
2) When people make direct connections between the modern nation and some old one: Kievan Rus = Ukraine/Russia and not some other nation, Macedonian Empire = Macedonia and not some other nation. Such perception of history disregards the fact of migrations and cultural changes. These ideas are usually promoted to make people proud of their heritage.
Very true, both of your points
Example of the second one
Phoenicians and Lebanese people
Thracians and Bulgarians
Wessex and English people
Vikings and Scandinavians
Thirteen Colonies and Americans
yeah the use of crusades for religion is bad is really retarded, if the crusades was only motivated because of religion, the crusades could have happened earlier
Humans need some sort of heritage to be proud of or they have nothing
And Crusades happened after Muslim rulers have invaded Europe, it wasn't the first act of aggression.
"American English is the most direct way of talking in the world"
Australian: "... get (censored)"
No way man Australians like to pretend but in reality the English roots show through in our highly conflict-shy way of speaking
Americans are direct to the point of a fault..a lot of times we make foreigners feel uncomfortable without meaning to do so.
Depending on how to define "direct,, I wouldn't argue for any form of English at all. I see his statement interpreted as regarding politeness and yeah okay Americans and Australians sure are rude but when giving criticism in a work environment America is much less direct compared to Germany. At least before everything was globalized. A few years ago Germans were still much more direct in terms of criticism and orders to an extent far greater than in any Anglo culture.
@@authenticbitterleben7434 probably true, you can see that on the chart with American English vs. French. The French are _not_ shy about giving negative feedback and being confrontational, lol. German culture/language is probably different than French, but they might be more similar to each other than either is to American English in that way.
@@RickJaeger I disagree. This is a cultural difference. You perceive the French as not shy. The French (and many others) perceive the Americans as rude. The difference is the French being polite and indirect while criticizing; the Americans shed politeness off and are brutally direct. The French also take a very generalist view, of reason A against reason B; the Americans take a view of "My American way or the highway", which is very confrontational. Isn't it curious that American presidents routinely say or mean "You're either with us or against us" (Bush, 2001, First Invasion of Irak) and put themselves in the same footing as dictators from China, North Korea, and Turkey, to name a few?
Im surprised that the "France always surrenders" thing wasn't on here. Maybe people finally realized they don't I guess.
Its always been a running gag that is kept alive solely by the hilarious reactions of thin skinned frenchmen.
@@Nutellafuerst that's all fun until the US President makes the joke to shame the french for not approving of the invasion of Iraq.
Of course it wasn't here, because it's true
hue hue hue
@@Winnetou17 hon hon hon... wait a minute
@L Dikx Not fully serios, but you do realize that Napoleon was a corsican, which is italian culture, and that Corsica was only recently occupied and not even properly annexed by France when Napoleon was born ? Napoleon's father was from Tuscany and his mother was genoese. His primary languages were corsican and italian and only at the age of 9 or 10 he learnt french. Not to mention that his family actually fought agaisnt the french, trying to maintain Corsica independent.
In others words, he's not that much french in origin. Which explains his military prowess :P
Fellow historian here. On your point about Indian morality, I often wondered as a young lad why the Indians didn’t simply unite to fight the Europeans more than they inevitably did. I once asked my history teacher this question, since much of our lessons on Native Americans clearly portrayed Europeans in an evil light and the Indians as the good guys. My teacher told me Indians were too few, given the effects of the plague, which is partly true. I later learned through my own studies that Indian unity was an extreme rarity. Rather than being alarmed by the immorality of Europeans, Indians usually found them and their industrialized trinkets very alluring. They mostly enjoyed the Europeans, especially when the Europeans would trade them rifles and ammo, which the Indians could then point at their long time Indian rivals. This in-fighting amongst Indians is rarely ever spoken of.
Cree chief Billy Diamond used to joke about hunting Inuit. It hadn't been a practice for a while, but the theme did have a historic basis.
European colonisation was not inherently profitable true, but that is WHY it became so exploitative. They had to force native men into labour camps to either work on massive plantations or mining for raw materials just so they could get some money back from the whole thing. And not to mention that, just because the colony wasn't worth it financially for the whole empire, it might have been for one person. Cecil John Rhodes (who you should definitely make a video of) became a billionaire, perhaps one of the richest men on earth, from colonialism and he for that reason continued to drive it forward.
I know african colonies were more of a tool to use in international relations and to keep concert of europe/League of Nations alive by making concessions when necessary (Britain-Italy border exchange 192X). They were also big tools for pride and was also source to conscript soldiers from. Unless you are talking about specific colonies like Leopolds Congo(Which was very bad) or some specific parts of British and French empire
"labors were forced to work in massive plantation and mine".
Cool story bro, it was the same shit for most of Europeans at that times.
My grand grand father worked it mines in north of France from 13 to 62, for almost nothing.
And yes, some very rich get money from colonization, but again, same thing in Europe.
Pretty sure that the mine where my grand grand father worked made someone very very rich too.
@@mrsupremegascon I´m not saying your grandfather was treated with justice but you have to understand that he wasn´t a slave
Coast of Africa was also important in strategic sense that your ships could get coal in middle of travel beetween european and more lucratice colonies. Thats why "unimportant" islands and coast's were "important" in age where your ships need a lot of coal to sail.
@@mrsupremegascon yes, essentially, the same thing that was done on Africa was first done on the peasants. But back in Africa it was part of a much larger cultural shift, which was, basically, forced.
"Europeans would exploit Africa if they could, but they couldn't"
Belgian Congo would like to have a word with you...
Only belgian africa!!!!!
There is very little hard evidence for the Congo Genocide. The colonial authorities would have had to kill more people than were actually living in the Congo. Each individual member of the small security force would have had to have killed tens of thousands himself for the narrative to be true. Surely there was cruelty, not doubt, but to call it a genocide of millions is a false narrative pushed by Black American intellectuals in the 20th century so they could have their own holocaust to guilt white people with.
ElCadejo172 When did I call it a genocide? Afaik, for the exploitation of the Congo to be a considered genocide it had to be the intentional extermination of the population. Millions definitely died, there's no question about that, but it was in the pursuit of the Belgian king's desire for profit and not for the mere extermination of an entire peoples. Not to mention many had their hands chopped off, which there's also plenty of proof.
I'm not sure how anything you said refutes the fact Europeans exploited Africa.
@@SurprisinglyDynamicAnimeSideC I'm not sure if you're an American, but it is common for American children to be taught about the "Congo Genocide" even as most cannot find the Congo on a map. Your assertion of millions likens Leopold to Hitler, Stalin or Mao and it originated as ridiculous propaganda from professional "anti-racists".
ElCadejo172 Millions _did_ die in the Congo. And yes, I'm an American, and children are _not_ taught about the "Congo Genocide" until high school, and even then it's mostly glossed-over. So now I'm doubting that _you're_ American from how little you seem to know how broken and Americentric our education system is.
King Leopold II of Belgium: "I agree with No. 6."
King Leopold II*
@@matthings4133 I respect this level of nitpicking.
@@bobbyswan5659 Leopold II of Belgium or King of the belgians***
@@matthings4133 Leopold II of Belgium or King of the belgians; in either case, owner of the Congolese****
Vatican viewed dark skin was a curse until a century ago lol.
Racist was the culture In Europe until recently.
Omg. Your first part about getting upset when someone starts to frick with history is so true. I got way too heated the other night at a friend of mine when she started criticizing a bunch of aspects of Western Civilization and saying things that simply weren’t true.
@Jake don't forget the BBC documentaries about Rome with black female generals 😬
@@tron1852 I don't know what documentary you are talking about but in the latter Empire almost all soldiers and plenty of generals and emperors were provincial, including of course the north african provinces. Would they look black in the modern sense? Maybe some of them. Would they be women? No
@@michaelpsellos2560 north African is definitely not black. Brown, sure, but if we're being honest you'd probably only see little difference from the north African Roman's to the Italian or Greek Roman's.
@@ncls.1371 Yeah I don't know how it was back then but nowadays there exist a pretty wide range of skin colors in north Africa. Probably no one you would mistake for sub saharan though you're right
There's so much propaganda taught these days.
The African one is a bit off to me. While economically speaking for an entire country European nations didn’t benefit however for private individual corporations they definitely benefitted. A perfect example would be in the diamond industry most of the diamond stores that we go to that are based in France and Switzerland were established in between 1875-1908 around the same time colonization started and and mining was going on. Just that industry alone had siphoned billions. And that’s just one industry let’s not even talk about rubber or Ore. not to mention that a lot of the same industries that were established during the colonial period are still there. Also Europe was very cost effective at how they ran their operations on the continent. For millions of Africans they built their houses out of recycled sheet metal as it was a way cheaper option the building proper buildings that were most likely only saved for important landmarks or for the very few European inhabitants.
Ye that was just stupid with easily dismissed and refured points, anything to defend racism
@@dejankojic4293 that is an extremely romanticized view of African states and kingdoms, it's a lot more complicated then that, to deny otherwise is to play into the Noble Savage view of Africa. It really depends what region of Africa and who colonized it. Otherwise Ethiopia and Liberia should be the most advanced and happiest nations on the continent and not artificial states like Ghana and Botswana.
Ignore, i wanna see where this goes
@@dejankojic4293 By saying "they would be happier", you are praising them. Humans are not happier because of the reality that surrounds them, it's biologically wired. We tend to idealise realities we don't live in, because they adjust more to our views and desires, but it's only that, an idea, reality is far different.
@@dejankojic4293 And no, their purpose was not exploitation, it ocurred, but was not the goal. The goal was more like "getting a girl because all the homies are married". Exploitation was more individually driven, like with King Leopold
It's probably worth mentioning that the growth of cities during the early and mid- industrial revolution was caused by immigration from rural areas due to surplus population there. Cities did not, as a rule, grow due to internal population growth. This does indicate something about the brutality of the industrial revolution, but it also does indicate something about the constant inability to support a growing population in rural areas.
No, cities were population sinks from the dawn of civilization until about 1900 or so (in the Western world) due largely to contagious diseases. Improved hygiene as a result of industrial era developments in soapmaking and plumbing, and the late-industrial innovations in water supply (chlorination) and sewage disposal (activated solids sewage treatment plants), are largely the things that have allowed urban populations to grow by natural increase. So actually, you're wrong about it indicating anything at all about industrialization.
??? Industrialization meant that machines could perform farm labor that had previously required many people to do, which is where your "surplus population" in rural areas came from. There were less farms, and less farm jobs, so people moved to cities to work in factories. The same thing happened in Mexico after NAFTA, corn prices dropped so much that it was cheaper to buy US corn than to grow it for themselves, and it led to millions of farmers seeking work in large cities, or across the border.
ahh yes Leonidas and his 300 spartans, who made their honorable last stand to defend their slave reliant economy
remember the thing that whatifallthist said about slavery likely being necessary to develop an advance society. even we today have slaves in third world countries and yet people say "the troops are heros"
@Luís Andrade i mean, in those days, there wasn't really a difference. Athens for instance, the most open society that we think of when thinking of ancient Greece had slaves atleast from what I've seen, so there wasn't much difference but it was the norm
@Luís Andrade dumbass
Asdf
He is wrong on that, poorly paid workers are enough, look at ancient Persia who despite having no proper slaves were able to build amazing architecture and roads which even the biased Herodotus said "were expertly maintained".
And as he said, degree matters, the majority of Spartan slaves were poorly treated, routinely massacred, routinely beaten, routinely humiliated, and could be murdered or raped with no punishments. Compare that to pretty much the rest of the near east (there might be some exceptions I don't know about), the slaves where treated badly but at least they had rights and assaulting them could get you punished.
Tydras
Bro you have to explain why he is a a dumb ass, this is not how debates work.
Number 7: “Industrialization was awful” is a markedly frustrating misconception. The ability to mass produce goods lowered the price of said goods, making them available for more people to obtain. I think part of this misconception also comes from idealizing a quaint past where the artisan gave his or her creation a unique quality that elevated it above the soulless creations of an assembly line. Of course, one forgets that if shoes were custom made, fewer people could afford shoes.
It’s equally bizarre that the early, high, and late Middle Ages are sort of seen as a single period without consideration for geopolitics either. A person living in the Eastern Roman Empire would have had a very different life than one living in Brittany. There’s also, as you alluded to, a tendency to confuse the late Middle Ages with the counter-reformation. Even theologically 13th-century Catholicism looks more familiar to us than its 16th-century counterpart.
Industrialization was very awful, though. Immigrants were systematically exploited, being given poor-paying, labor-intensive jobs with very few rights, and not to mention that the work environments were incredibly hazardous. Industrialization was a crucial step for us to enjoy the world of mass production we live in today, but to say that initial conditions weren't horrid would be to downplay the limbs lost and the various horrors that needlessly fell upon factory workers (the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire arguably being the epitome of such).
@@sylvestergharold7265 Exactly, the whole industrial age was an multi-national social experiment; at no other point before in human history were so many crammed into such a small space as a city for so long, which is why thing like waste disposal to prevent cholera, plagues and diseases being part of daily life rather than occasional events, reliance on merchants for food rather than growing your own allowing scammers to cut foods like bread flour with non-edibles like plaster of paris or brick dust to reduce costs, creation of workers rights, child labour laws and health and safety protocols, pressure on doctors to perform sugeries and other medical procedures quickly rather than correctly so they can move onto the next patient not to mention the number of harmful chemicals whose effects only manifested after years of use - all mistakes that needed to be happen before we realised it was an issue and worked out ways to prevent it.
Proto industrialisation : little farm wokers would produce at home for merchant a certain amount of a certain patern. Almost self suffiscient, in the same time.
Some aspects of industrialisation were shit. Like working in dangerous factories, pollution etc Vs working on a farm. But yes it made goods way cheaps.
@@Neion8 No. Studies showing asbestos killed people were presented to that industry before 1900. We continued to use it, spray it etc. through the 1960s. It is still legally sold in India. Industrialization is not universally good. If technologies had rolled out in a different way, if the peasantry of England hadn't been driven to destitution through the late middle ages and the Renaissance industrialists would have had to earn their labor force by providing competetive wages and a better standard of living than owning your own farm or craft business.
As a Québécois, hearing you talk about our swear words makes me unreasonably proud 😂
That’s called nationalism haha
@@appleslover It's simple, really. You said yourself just now that linguistic differences make one's identity, and this is how most Quebecers see it. There are about 8 million people descended from French-speaking catholic stock and who have been conquered 250 years ago by a British force. Attempts at assimilating them have been mostly unsuccessful for various reasons, so here we are today, you still have a ton of Quebecers who identify as such and not with the (rather artificial) Canadian identity.
Of course there's a lot more nuance I could inject in it (the large amounts of French speakers outside Quebec, the Quebecers who reject the Quebecer identity for various reasons and prefer to call themselves Canadian, the immigrant population, the very word Canadian being used to refer to French-Canadians up until the end of the 19th century) but that's the gist of it.
Or an even blunter way:
a watermelon ≠ a pineapple a cat ≠ a dog Quebec ≠ Canada
@@appleslover Where are ya from, brother? The way I understand it, most French-Canadians refer to themselves as such, not just as Canadians. Almost like they're their own mini-nation inside a much larger one. It actually works, too! ...for The most part... 😆😆
Here's a question for ya, my northern compadre:
I can read French fairly well, due to speaking native English, conversational Spanish, and beginner French, but I can somehow u understand spoken Québécois better than Parisian French. Why is that? It caught me off guard recently when a French-Canadian TH-camr busted out his Native tongue and I somehow understood the gist of what he was saying! I jumped out of my seat! It was weird!
@@FG-om9jb What about New Brunswick? I did a report on that province back in middle school. It fascinated me.
I deeply appreciate the book recommendations, I'm studying history at uni and it gets real annoying with some groups judge the past peoples with modern standars for their political agendas.
which groups?
That’s odd, I had many of the same books in college history classes, can’t say I experienced them as notably biased.
@@luxborealis I don't think you and I are getting the same books for class bud.
The ones he mentions are pretty good though.
South korea japan taiwan hong kong philipines would like a talk
That last part about judging peope by modern standards is so unbelievably true. I'm a member on quite a large AltHist forum,and we constantly have this debate, like, I joined late last year, and I've already been part of, or observed three different ones.
“The incas were facing food problems “
Me, a spaniard: so we saved them?
Incas: no you just sped up the inevitable
Me: that works too
They were facing food problems?
Form what ive read, their agriculture was really advanced.
This guy have an aglo centered point of view. The reason why incas were fighting a civil war and their economy was on problems. Was becose their society colapsed by the plage. But in the views of this guys it was not related to the arrival of europeans.
@@nicolasignaciomerinonunez114 aglo? You mean Anglo? Because the Spaniards aren't Anglos my friend that's the English - totally different country. Also, blaming the plagues on Europeans is like blaming the plagues on the Asians; neither society had the technological advancement to know about disease control enough to prevent contamination. Plus, while Americans got Smallpox (which no longer exists outside of a lab) Europeans got Syphilis (which still exists and kills people to this day) so they got their own back in the long run lol.
@@Neion8 except both societies knew how disease worked. The Mongols literally weaponized the plague on purpose.
@@trollerjakthetrollinggod-e7761 I mean, Louis Pasteur's Germ theory wasn't published until 1861 (and the link between Germs and infections was published in 1878) when beforehand then the prevailing theory among the educated about the spread of disease was split between 'spontaneous generation' and 'Miasma' - or 'bad air' causing disease. If you think that a bunch of soldiers knew more about infection than the best of pre-1861 scientists and doctors centuries beforehand, then it was certainly very selfish of them to keep that knowledge to themselves, and strange that they didn't protect themselves better.
Catapulting dead bodies into cities is a millenia-old tactic to demoralise an enemy, the fact that the Mongolians used plague bodies is at best more akin to deductive-reasoning than outright knowledge of biological warfare (similar to how people used to poison wells by throwing a carcass into it) and plague-blankets are even more of a stretch for claims of intentional harm.
10:03 I think that is a missconception, too. The working-hours in an agricultural society was normaly lower than in the industrial age (harvest season not included). It just was not that well payed, especialy when the main farmland was occupied by big landlords. The reason that the farmes went to the cities was not the hard work on the land, it was because the hard work in the city was better payed.
Additionally, the closing of common lands forced a huge portion of farmers into poverty, where city/industrial jobs were a way to survive. I disagree with the video on that section from the study I've done on economic history in university.
Yup, during winter time that's not even 7 hours a day
Why would you exclude the harvest season in the calculation of working hours of an agricultural society?
@@jeremiesdavidson4450 Because its just one part of the year.
In a factory you get payed every week or two while in agriculture the produce only grows every couple of months with varying degrees of success, not to mention having to go out and sell said produce.
"Immensely subtle regimes that could be very nice places to live." What a refreshing description about, for example, the Persian Empire. The phrase could be applied rather fittingly to more modern states too, I think.
>Immensly subtle regimes.
>Ottomans stealing Christian children and indoctrinating them into becoming the Sultan’s personal death squad.
>Islamic caliphates treated Christians subjects like second class citizens until they converted.
I think the Islamophilic view that the Islamic empires were good places to live if you were non-Muslim is another viewpoint that needs to go.
@@megakillerx This. It's not even just the jizya tax on non-believers. The Islamic world also had laws prohibiting the marriage of Muslim women to non-Muslim men (but of course Muslim men were free to take non-Muslim women as wives.) While I'm not a fan of judging historical practices by modern morals, this kind of discrimination is still far from great and definitely not much better than how almost any other region treated conquered peoples.
@@megakillerx I would agree with you, if I didn't compare that to what it was like elsewhere. Europe in that time was a horrific bloodbath of religious extremism - protestant and catholic people were killing each other on mass. He never made the argument that they were good places by modern standards, just that they were the best during their time.
@@megakillerx so christians were treated like second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, how terrible. What do you think muslims were treated like in Western Europe at the same time? Way worse obviously.
@@jakub8782 Why yes, how else should you treat a foreign invader that tried to murder you, uproot your faith, you culture and your way of life? Give them a slap on the wrist? But then again, i still fail to see how the iberian ultimatum of “convert or be exiled into North Africa” is way worse than the Ottoman ultimatum of “convert or be taxed into oblivion and have your sons kidnapped and be indoctrinated into the Sultan’s personal death squad”.
there's also misconception among Hindu nationalists and some Indians that Indo-Aryan migration never happened.
Yep trying justify that they're native to North India(even though the majority haplogroup in North India is R1a and that haplogroup originated somewhere from the western or Central Asian steppe region)and that their culture and language isn't related to Europeans(even tho their language is apart of the branch of the Indo-Aryan which is a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian language family which also a sub-branch of the wait for it,wait for it.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Indo-European language family you know the language family that includes almost all of the European languages,Iranian&Aryan languages,Armenian languages,and the extinct Tocharian languages and they worship Indo-European Gods case close)
Not so much a misconception as a belief brought about by motivated reasoning
@Edmond Schwab Not really, DNA evidence suggest that the Aryans and Dravidians mixed over time, resulting in modern day Indians.
@Emperor Basil the Bulgar Slayer Yah, Indian people are obsessed with their "genetic purity".
@Metsarebuff 22 Aryan is Iranian not Germans, yes the Nasi Germs actually thought that an Iranian looked like Odin.
18:34 "white central asians" do still exist in some form today. Look up Pamiri
Iranians, kalash, some kazakh...
so do the san of southern africa, i am unfamilair with the pamiri but if they are anything the san people then largely extinct (being a meer shadow in terms of numbers and population spread) and politically irrelevant.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 they are very small and insignificant. Only around 100-200 thousand of them are there.
Nah vast majority of them are brown, it's just that central and south Asians are obsessed with trying to be "white"
And russians
What if the Meiji Restoration failed?
What if the Knights' Templar never fell?
What if the Raid on Harper's Ferry succeeded?
What if Bleeding Kansas never happened?
I can kind of answer #2. The Knights Templar were taken out by Philip the Fair primarily because they owned a lot of France's Debt, were a Papal force in country at a time when the King was trying to fight Papal influence, had ambitions to create a Papal state in country and were fabulously rich.
Now, for the Templars to survive, that requires Pope Boniface VIII to survive and this isn't that difficult. When the Pope got word of what Philip was doing, he prepared to go down there to put a stop to it. Philip promptly sent thuggery commandos (yes I'm calling them that) to kidnap him (yes, I'm serious), which resulted in the Pope being decked across a room and dying a week later of a brain aneurysm. The result of this led to the French taking over the Papacy and rampant corruption that led to the Protestant Revolution.
Now, if Boniface hadn't been decked across the face or was out of town, then he'd lead a Papal response to Philip. This likely would've led to France being invaded by militant orders and Papal loyalist countries, which Philip had no chance of winning. This would either lead to Philip being killed or deposed.
This would mean the Papacy would still be in Rome, would not have taken such a massive reputation hit and such would not have suffered such massive corruption. While Protestantism likely would've risen eventually, it would've happened much later, since a lot of the issues that led to it occurring under Martin Luthor would not have been as exasperated. That means the 17th century would've completely altered. Likewise, Philip's line is completely derailed and France would've lost quite a bit of territory in the process.
Now as for the Templars, they likely would've gotten a sizable chunk of France to rule for the Pope, essentially becoming akin to the Teutonic Knights. Like them, they would've lasted several centuries but probably would've been bested by the locals (either the Germans or French). They would continue to exist today as charity and honorary organization, much like the Hospitaliters.
Hope this answers your question.
How would bleeding Kansas not happen. I mean wouldn't something like it have to happen
There's already a video about #1
Aiden Wieder exactly my thoughts, with something like the Kansas Nebraska Act allowing the incoming settlers that populate the territories to decide if they will allow slavery or not some serious conflict was bound to happen
@Luís Filipe Andrade One point you're missing.
If the Cotton Gin was never invented, slavery would have died out long before a Civil War even happened, because slavery would not have been a profitable economic system for the Southern landowners to latch onto. The South would have inevitably industrialized, like the North did. And African Americans would have been freed from slavery as early as 1840.
Well done. Facing our favorite misconceptions head on is the hardest thing, but the best way to deal with it. Truth is always better than the alternative, no matter how much we would prefer the alternative to be the truth. Very well done, indeed. Please keep the outstanding videos coming and God bless you, my friend!
What if the Mongols Conquered Egypt
This sound weird thought
They probably would have expanded more if it wasn’t for their inheritance laws/rules. Like most pre 17th 18th century successions laws are quite flawed and lead to usurpers like in Imperial Rome with a general on a winning streak of battles could be proclaimed Emperor by his legions
@@thomasalvarez6456 that's pretty dumb to devide the empire between generals. Why wouldnt they chose one sucessor to rule the empire like 90% of the empires?
Egypt was ruled by a Mongolian slave-soldier in the thirteenth century surprisingly. The Mongol overlords and troops would probably mix into the local mamluk elite and Egypt would become independent again
@@wirelessbluestone5983 i don't think that's how it works. It is the population that represents the country, it is not because the elite is semi egyptian that the country would become egyptian, it like the european royal families, they are often mixed but the kingdoms still independent from each other and that because the population is different from a kingdom to enother.
Bruh the intro is super relatable, I as well get fairly upset when a person makes a mistake about something historical.
An example I remember is from a couple years ago when my class was learning about ww1, and I was making corrections left and right like "No one called the central powers axis" or "its pronounced Bulgaria not Buljaria".
just to be sure, it is bulgaria, not buljaria? i've always said bulgaria so it'd be nice to have confirmation from a person of the mighty bulgaria.
@@jokullah B u l g a r i a
@@k9cobra728 good good
Someone in my class said Hitler wasnt german he was austrian why didnt he get gased
Buljaria? Haha
12:53 Ok we are just gonna ignore the Belgium king here.
He is an outlier. An extreme example not representative...
Still a much better place than post-colonial Congo.
He was more doing generalisations, the Belgian king was a outlier in the colonial leaders as he was a especially vindictive ruler
@@paulanderson6834 Not if you're the one getting your hand chopped off!
This is obviously a sensitive issue and I should point out that I am not an expert on the subject. I just think that there are problems in the argument given in this video on this point, and I'm setting them out here.
Moreover, "Europeans have exploited Africa" can be understood differently.
If exploited is taken to mean that Europeans have done their utmost to extract as many resources as possible, I think that is wrong. As said in the video, there was no huge investment and industrialization would have made the exploitation of Africa much more efficient.
I rather have the impression that the Europeans have mainly tried to extract as many resources as possible by relying almost exclusively on the local populations. In Madagascar, for example, slavery was massively used to build the infrastructure needed by Europeans, particularly for the transport of local production to the metropolis. There was therefore no cost to France apart from the deployment of the military, but there was a transfer of resources from the colony to Europe.
It seems in fact that the wealth exploited in Africa is not so huge compared to other colonies or even to the resources present on the continent.
If we take into account the fact that they have been exploited almost exclusively by the labour of local populations without modern tools, the term "exploitation" seems appropriate.
Nor should it be forgotten that this is not the time of current liberalism. Empires tried to be as self-sufficient as possible and sought to obtain the resources necessary for their industries through colonisation. In this perspective, the colonies were mainly to produce enough resources to keep the industry of the mother country functioning, no more.
In fact, the local populations were more or less (depending on the place and time) forced to produce various resources for the colonizer and used their pay to buy products sold by the colonizers (another considerable source of wealth for the industry of the colonizing countries).
Anyway thank you for your very enjoyable videos.
Belgium, Leopold, rubber, Congo ?
Even to think that it was just Europeans is very ignorant, in the grand scheme of things the Islamic world exploited Africa for far longer, to a far greater extent and were far more brutal in doing it. At the end of the day every civilisation that beats another in the field of conflict have tended to go on to exploit and mistreat those they defeated, it's not just Europeans but humanity
I think the question can be broken into three parts:
- Have the colonizers mistreated Africans for material gain? Yes, definitely.
- Has this lead to a net benefit to the colonizing countries? Not really, trading for the needed resources would be more efficient in the long run.
- Would Africans be economically better off if there had been no colonization? Only if they had adopted Western ideas and technologies on their own
The main negative impacts of colonialism weren’t exploitation of resources, rather the classic European tradition of drawing random lines on a map
@@TapOnX True, this whole thing is so deeply mixed with emotions and current narratives that we have forgotten what questions we actually are answering, moreover many people would answer yes to all 3, but when shown evidence to the contrary, would simply move the goal post by switching the question out with one that is easier to defend.
17:15 In Sicily, under Frederick II of Staufen, they even had environmental laws that resemble our modern laws on environment quite a bit.
8:00 the Italians just went nuts during the Renaissance
1800’s, the height of the renaissance
“I’m not sure how much of an effect Europeans had on Africa”
Dude, have you even SEEN the borders?
I mean, borders can change.
The former european colonial powers essentially drew up all the modern day borders in Africa
Geoff Williams this ^ which is why THE Gambia is a long narrow country
They tried twice actually. First France offered to change the Ivory Coast for The Gambia, but UK declined, lmao. And in the 1970s they tried out the Senegambia confederation, but it didn't work out, yeah.
@@haydenpack6947 While they theoretically could, since the colonization of Africa by Europeans, it practically has not. Furthermore, it is for all intents and purposed forbidden by international law. I suppose there could be some sort of peaceful land exchange between two countries, but I am not aware of even this happening anywhere in Africa.
One problem: India's caste system was formed after the Indus river civilization was long gone.
They still had a previous caste system that was exploitative as well. The Dravidians were not the good guys either.
From what I gather, the caste system wasn't so rigid until British dominion over India, though I could be wrong on that.
@@brownbricks6017 No the British division was based on more religious lines
@@skullcrusherm7425 The Caste system did achieve its current form during British rule. The Caste system started becoming more rigid during the Gupta Empire (220ce-550ce) but it became weaker over time until the 1200s due to the rise of Jainism and Veerashaivism which challenged Brahmanical society. However, it became more rigid again from the 1200s to 1450s due to early Islamic rule where highly influential Hindus made it rigid as a resistance to the early tyrannical Muslim rulers. However, from the 1450s to 1800s, the system became less rigid again due to Vijayanagara Empire, regional Sultanates and later Mughal Empire which all encouraged caste fluidity within communities and the administration. However, from the 1800s to early 1900s, caste became more rigid than ever before. This was because the British organised communities based on caste and religion in their censuses among other things that came under 'Divide and Rule'. From the 1900s onwards, due to the rise in free thinking amongst the Indian elite and intellectuals, caste became less rigid and social restrictions were gradually lifted. To be honest, the caste system wasn't as bad as people think it was; it was just as bad as the class systems used in other parts of the world at the time and fluidity between castes was just as common. Its just a shame that it still exists in India whilst other cultures have managed to almost completely get rid of it.
@@brownbricks6017 The Caste system did achieve its current form during British rule. The Caste system started becoming more rigid during the Gupta Empire (220ce-550ce) but it became weaker over time until the 1200s due to the rise of Jainism and Veerashaivism which challenged Brahmanical society. However, it became more rigid again from the 1200s to 1450s due to early Islamic rule where highly influential Hindus made it rigid as a resistance to the early tyrannical Muslim rulers. However, from the 1450s to 1800s, the system became less rigid again due to Vijayanagara Empire, regional Sultanates and later Mughal Empire which all encouraged caste fluidity within communities and the administration. However, from the 1800s to early 1900s, caste became more rigid than ever before. This was because the British organised communities based on caste and religion in their censuses among other things that came under 'Divide and Rule'. From the 1900s onwards, due to the rise in free thinking amongst the Indian elite and intellectuals, caste became less rigid and social restrictions were gradually lifted. To be honest, the caste system wasn't as bad as people think it was; it was just as bad as the class systems used in other parts of the world at the time and fluidity between castes was just as common. Its just a shame that it still exists in India whilst other cultures have managed to almost completely get rid of it.
My favorite example of how people of old times being introspective and intelligent is some people can observe their blind spots in their eyes. With know understanding of how the eye work seeing an object disappear and re appear in your peripheral vision would be confusing at best and possibly terrifying. Explains a few folk tales of demons or spirits that disappear and re appear in front of you.
The only historical misconception that really counts is the one where everyone thinks every other country/race/religion/gender is guilty of wrongdoing towards them whilst their own is oh so fluffy and cute and whimsical and innocent, always picked on and bullied by those other big meanies.
@@NordProductions *Laughs in Eastern European*
Otherwise known as " My side is good -- any bad ones are the exception. The other side is bad, and any good ones are the exception."
Vietnam?
Romania rings a bell ?
Well that kind of goes along with the age old ( but true) notion that "the winners write the history books". So if "your country" is one that has historically been one that has come out on top, then of course you are always the "good guys". Had Nazi Germany won WWII, people today would be reading texts speaking of the great benevolent Adolf Hitler. It's all a matter of perspective. Outside of a handful of historical martyrs, very few acts have been done for the good of everyone, just "our everyone".
The past isn't what it used to be.
Revisionist boomers be like
Same fam
As a jew, the ottoman empire thing was particularly good. Many of us left europe for the ottoman empire just to be somewhere safe!
based
When I was in the military, I became friends with a Jew who, while not my first Jewish friend, he was the first one really to tell me about their history. One thing I wasn't expecting was he said that the fanatical anti-Jewish attitude of the Arabs is actually a recent development, only really becoming a major force about 100 years ago. Before that, he said there would be isolated outbursts of persecution due to an emir or caliph having a personal grudge, but it would stop as soon as that ruler died or was out of power. Kind of like how Christianity was mostly tolerated by the Roman Empire, but you occasionally had someone like Nero come along.
@@ressljs as a Syrian I can tell you that eventhow it wasn't always perfect jews and Muslims all lived here in peace up until the conflict with Israel. Propaganda just spread fast and many became anti-semetic. There were definitely many Syrians who had nothing against jews but it wasn't socially acceptable.Although I have to say that the younger generation (luckily) is much more educated on the matter due to having the internet.
the ottomans invited the jews over for economy
@@johnmalik2631 the secular ba’athists are pretty much the ones who ramped up all the anti semtisim
The wheel was first found in modern day Romania, county of Iasi. But we don't know if it was invented there
14:54
The oldest wheel currently was found in Slovenia, but yes we cant know where it came from, besides we dont know what else my lie underground somewhere, considering most finds are accidental
@@gajmlinar6950 i believe the idea that it was invented in modern day ukraine comes from indo-european invasions, which we know spread the wheel. although that doesn't mean they invented it.
1:30 - The Prussians did send observers to the American Civil War, but they looked down upon the American armies as undisciplined rabbles (in the first months of the war they were probably right if Mark Twain's account is any indication) so they probably didn't learn much.
Something you could add to a part 2:
The Renaissance is a separate era that follows the Medieval era. The Late Medieval era is considered to be from mid 1200s to around 1500. The Italian Renaissance happened from the 1300s to 1500s. Donatello died the same year the War of the Roses ended. The period that involves European exploration and early colonization is the Early Modern era.
Point of note: a lot of modern Medieval fantasy stories are set in the Renaissance. Organized armies, crossbows and realistic paintings
Crossbows are much older than the Renaissance though
As an aspiring historical fiction author, I thank you so much for this list! I do think that more people should go and look into the past.
I know this video was posted two months ago, but I only discovered this channel recently (although I wish I'd learned of it sooner).
I really like the way it works to present history with an authentisity-based, non-dogmatic lens--trying to speak the facts for the sake of speaking the facts. I really look forward to seeing more videos in the library.
Dude I've watched 12 of your videos in 2 days and I wanna watch more... I'm scared to check how many videos I have left but this content is amazing, thank you so much.
"It is easy to judge what you haven't lived through." - Me
I think a lot of people sense that in the past
No one's situation allows them to wrong others. We can absolutely 100% judge others.
That was amazing. You managed to challenge a couple of my presumptions; I’m going to have to rethink my stance on the Middle Ages and their relationship to the Dark Ages.
I never could hold back chuckles when modern day activists behave as if atrocities are uniquely European and only exported to the rest of the world later on.
There are segments In the ancient history of my people (Chinese) that always leave me disgusted when I happen upon them, where entire urban centers of men, women, and children got buried alive or otherwise executed _after they surrendered_ by hostile armies whose generals happened to have psychotic fits after conquering those cities, and rivalries between upper-echelon nobles often ended with entire families _and those of their friends_ massacred.
It doesn't seem to occur to them that every country was draconian back then.
I disagree that people believe atrocities are uniquely European. However European atrocities are directly linked to our history in the united states. You are suffering from the straw man fallacy.
@@DOMOzCHANNEL >>I disagree that people believe atrocities are uniquely European.
@@dy031101 1. What activists are you referring to?
2. Another straw man fallacy. I never claimed atrocities were not linked to all of human history. The history of our own country's founding is taught more in the united states than other elements of human history. Whether or not you or I agree with that being the right thing to do. Personally, with limited time, I would rather learn about our own countries history, and how it has shaped our country today, than that of ancient china, as an example.
3. I never attacked you personally. I never claimed to be special. This sounds like an ego attack, implying your ego may have been damaged by my comment. Apologies.
@@DOMOzCHANNEL >>What activists are you referring to?>I never claimed atrocities were not linked to all of human history.>The history of our own country and ancestors is taught more in the united states than all of human history.>Whether or not you or I agree with that being the right thing to do.
@@DOMOzCHANNEL touch grass you obese loser
That sudden mention of Quebec French swears at 6:15 always gets me.
I wanna clarify something with the first myth, the way WW1 was fought was not new. In fact you could see mirrors in the American Civil War, especially towards the end. The technologies had advanced between the two, and WW1, was much more brutal, but in almost every way, the American Civil War was very much a proto-WW1.
Point 1: Massive stalemat, with the exception of the Mississippi, no side was able to gain or lose much ground until the end of the war, especially in the main hotspots. When we are taught about the Civil War, we are taught about many offenses on both sides ultimately going nowhere for the better part of the war, such as the many attacks into the north, usually perpetrated by General Lee, or the initial failed attacks on Richmond.
2: Technological advancement, while not as extensive as WW1, the ACW used many new inventions or is one if not the earliest use of a preexisting invention in warfare, such as the repeater rifle, modern bullets, the ironclad, railways, gatling gun, and early submarines. There are a few other inventions that were new or untested in war at that point.
3: Shift in tactics, the Battle of Bull Run is famous for this combination of tactics that were slowly being dated and citizen naivety, but by 1864 with the Siege of Petersburg we start to see a full on trench warfare in the fashion of early to mid WW1
So, simply put, a precedent did exist, but everyone thought it would end up like the Franco-Prussian war, not the US Civil War
The Russo-Japanese war was even closer to WW1, being only 10 years before. Europeans watched it keenly (mostly because they were worried about possible Russian agression, and also because Japan had a "British" navy and "German" army so they could see tactics and ships in actual action), but don't seem to have noticed how grim the land campaign got (and how much worse it might be if, say, both countries had the majority of their armies on either side of a land border...)
I don’t buy this Petersberg-WW1 trench warfare statement. Armies have been fighting in trenches during sieges for hundreds of years. Nothing about Petersberg wasn’t seen in the second siege of Vienna, for instance.
I love number 8. It irks me so much that people think like that. And even worse when they assume that merely vilifying the past is learning from it.
Fantastic content! Please keep it coming; yours is an uncommon, and needed, voice. Thanks for shedding light on these misconceptions.
I kinda feel the use of exploitation as synonymous with stealing of physichal resources for monetary gain is misleading. I understand the argument of europeans not having gained much monetary advantage from colonizing Africa, but there was clearly some form of resource that they were looking for - you even mention it actually: relative political power compared to other european rivals. Would you still argue that taking political and geographical power from the native population of Africa is not exploitative? It also seems like you are arguing that the europeans taking control over african geographical areas and implementing their governace (whether directly or not) has had an insignificant impact on history - which might be me misunderstanding your intentions, or might be a statement with which I cannot agree based on my understanding of our history.
In either case, I still appreciate you having made this video. It is a good thing to challenge persistent ideas not based in the reality of history. Thank you!
I think his point was refuting the general idea Africa is poor because Europe ravaged it of all resources. In reality European colonialism in the late 18th & early 19th century introduced technology Africans wouldn't have acquired otherwise.
@@Pan_Z But taking away political power from the people there and creating an unstable geopolitical climate won’t affect wealth ?
@@imoyabrax450 which political power? They had no states
@@imoyabrax450 lol what geopolitical condition, every single African government before colonization is a joke and people lived like savages like Incas and they are real primitive compared to the average technology and considering that Europeans have actually modernized most of Africa, I don't see how it is wrong or a disadvantage to Africans, the governments which came after colonization are the ones that caused massive resource plundering for their own good and left people like slaves
@Tetramoriam 474 They were not modern states that we would recognize, but rather tribal chiefdoms to iron age kingdoms.
What if the Maori never landed in New Zealand, and the Haast's eagle and the Moa still existed?
...then the Haast eagle and Moa still exist. lol. What else could come of that? It'd be exactly like you say.
...but, it would be amazing. It's mind blowing that one of the world's largest sky-bird preyed on the world's largest land-bird, in the land of the world's smallest land-birds.
I doubt that was possible, considering how tenacious the polynesians were at exploring, I'm surprised they hadn't made it to the moon by now.
@@a_m5115 are you Australian? Do you know who is responsible for the thylacines extinction on the mainland? Cheers, come back and tell me plz.
@@a_m5115 while you're at it, tell me who is responsible for the rest of Australia's megafauna extinction.
Such a delightful video! I love the sincerity of your attitude towards debunking myths
A new Whatifalthist video. Christmas came early
#13: People still say dogs are "man's best friend" when it is OBVIOUSLY the horse that is the true MVP.
I am reading Durant now along with the unabridged rereading of Gibbons Decline and Fall plus the Historia Augusta, and it is some of the most exciting portrayals of history I have ever read.
6:01 this is not entirely true. People did of course swear in the past, just not in the same way we do. Words and their meanings change over time and common words back in history might have a more serious meaning today. If you want to learn more about this watch this video by Simon Roper, an excellent anthropologist and historical linguist.
th-cam.com/video/ARgGguQlQ0w/w-d-xo.html
It's also important to note that more formal language was used in the literature from the past, and thus isn't truly representative of how people commonly spoke, meaning that we aren't getting what was actually spoken, but instead a formalization of it. It's not hard to realize that people didn't really speak like they do in Shakespeare.
Another note is the inaccuracy of the point made at 6:30. Old English and Southern English are not incredibly close, they just share a few pronunciations. Simon Roper also has a video discussing this.
th-cam.com/video/4rb0HPDnc8Y/w-d-xo.html
Not Very Good With This Stuff
But I'm Decently Sure He Said They Swore In Different Ways. Like God's Bones Etc
Thank you, Nowhere Man! I was wondering when somebody would cite that video (which I was thinking of). How's your 19th book coming?
Interestingly enough in my language we still swear sometimes like people from medieval times. Ok, even in english there is "damn" and "in god's name", swears with a more religious context. But we swear on words like "sacrament", "cross- crucifix", "cross- cruzifiction" and so on. Even some class/caste related swear words like "one who got shorn up from behind" (i really have no clue how i should translate this), which describes the style of hair serfs had to have in medieval times, so you basically call him a serf, a rightless man on the lowest social level, even though this class system died in our society around 500 years ago.
Another one is "crucify the turks", even though the thing you are swearing about has nothing to do with them or generally any person. Maybe because my ancestors saw the invading turks as kind of dark wizards who could hex people.
@@valentinmitterbauer4196 out of curiosity, what is your language?
@Luís Filipe Andrade I speak a very rural dialect of bavarian.
18:34 Oh wow! Look at the Ainu! I never new that they used to populate such a large area! Of course they were probably ancestors of the Ainu, but still.
Great video - thanks for making it. There's a saying that's appropriate to this - The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
You should have mentioned the Belgian Congo during your Africa segment. That was undeniably a brutal, exploitative slave state made entirely for profit
EDIT: not made for profit. It was made because Belgium wanted to have an empire. It couldn't have been initially founded for profit because the Europeans thought nothing was there. It was when rubber was found that the congolese people were exploited
That was one of the exceptions for a colony that turned a profit.
It was not financially worthwhile hence the hasty escape from Africa after ww2.
Whatifalthist as much as I like your videos there are countless instances where Europeans got more out of Africa than it put in. The French government extracted billions post independence from 14 of their former sub sharan colonies by dictating the financial guidelines of the separation of French rule and even have first claim to some of their natural resources. And by carving up the continent with no regard for ethnic differences when independence it created the space for civil wars,military dictatorship, ethnic cleansing and easier for neo-colonialism to start again. The Congo Is just one of the easiest explosions to cite due to the sheer brutality
@@appleslover Nice argument.
Whatifalthist you forgot to mention how Africa was carved up for strategic reasons like the French control over the Sahara was used to link up their colonies in Algeria, Gabon, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. Many countries saw no economic investment other than military installations
While I absolutely agree that the number 1 misconception has to do with Indigenous American societies, and characterizing them as either Noble or barbaric savages, as somebody into Aztec history I've got some issues with some of the info you list in that part of the video. While i'm not able to speak for the Inca, I'm not aware of any sort of widespread environmental/agricultural sustainability issues the Aztec (I assume by "Aztec" here you mean Mexica, the specific subgroup of the Nahua civilization who lived in Tenochtitlan that the term "Aztec" is most associated with, with the Nahuas being the broader "Aztec culture" and the Aztec Empire being an alliance between Tenochtitlan and 2 other cities and their various subject states) had.
I could just be not be informed on the topic of it being unsustainable (My interest is on Mesoamerica generally, not Chinampas speffically) but my understanding is that the Chinampa (artificial islands made in shallow lakebed via filling a staked out plot of lake with soil and then planting trees to anchor it, which were the primary farming method used in Tenochtitlan and one of the major methods used in the Valley of Mexico, which was where the Nahuas were centered in and was the political core of the Aztec Empire) agricultural model was very sustainable and agriculturally productive. In fact pretty much everything i've read on them stresses that fact: That it retains much of the elements of the areas's existing ecosystem and uses local soil, crops, and trees (the trees themselves also acting as wind breakage); that it re-uses human waste for fertilizers, that the existing lake irrigates the soil, and can produce as many as 7 harvests a year. In fact, I've even read that even using the traditional population estimate of 200,000 people in Tenochtitlan and 1.5 million people across the whole valley (which would have made it one of the most densely populated areas on the planet) in 1519, which resulted from a massive population explosion over a few centuries, it was still was far from it's total carrying capacity.
I've also got some disagreements with what you state regarding the Mexica's institutionalized warfare. While the Mexica (and by extension the Aztrec Empire) absolutely had annual offensive military campaigns as an institutionalized practice, they did NOT systemically wage war against existing subject states. In fact, subject states in the Aztec Empire were generally left very hands off, keeping their rulers, laws, and customs; typically only having tax ("Tribute") burdens of economic goods, and/or burdens of supplying services, usually aid on military campaigns or for public construction projects in Tenochtitlan, along with at times having to put up a shrine to Huitzlipotchli. I think the misconception that their conquered subjects had war waged on them for captives originates from a misunderstanding of what Xochiyaoyotl (Flower Wars) were and how they were used. Flower Wars were ritualistic, usually pre-arranged conflicts between Nahua cities/towns that were smaller in scale compared to normal wars (Yaoyototl) and were more focused around collecting enemy soldiers as captives rather then trying to conquer urban centers; and were usually waged between two agreeing parties for various reasons, sometimes even cementing alliances, or against a target of conquest which would be costly or ineffective to try to conquer outright, and where Flower Wars could act as a way to feel each other out or to gradually wear the other side down (as their smaller scale nature meant they could be done throughout the year, vs large scale invasions needing to be seasonal).
In fact, glancing through Hassig's "Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control" to double check things, I see NO mentions of Flower Wars being used against existing subjects (contrary to what I remeber hearing about it being used on them occasionally via mutual consent to cement alliances and the like), and rather exclusively in the more pragmatic "testing each other/wearing them down" context. It even notes that in the early Flower Wars the Mexica had against Chalco under the rule of Acamapichtli starting in 1375, that many of the initial Flower Wars had NO causalities, and only over time as both sides felt each other out did it shift to be involve taking captives and then stopped before escalating further into actual, non-flower wars wars. His lack of mention of the pre-arranged, "friendly" flower wars could just be because that book is focused on a pragmatic view of Aztec militarism in contrastto the ritualistic view a lot of other texts take, so he may have saw covering them outside the scope of the book. Regardless, forced raids or flower wars against subjects wasn't a thing on any widespread basis.
I'm also not sure where you are drawing the 2 million figure from or what length of time or what geographic expanse it is meant to encompass, but even if it's meant to be all sacrifices in Tenochtitlan from it's founding in the 1320's to 1521, or all of the states and towns the Aztec Empire contained from it's founding in the late 1420's (when Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan allied together to overthrow Azcapotzalco, the then most dominant city-state in the Valley of Mexico) to 1521; I would say that's a pretty, arguably unreasonably high estimate, for a few reasons. The first being that the Mexica were the only Mesoamerican group to really practice mass-scale sacrifices, as a result of religious reforms made by the Tlatoani (King) of Tenochtitlan, Itzcoatl, and the Cihuacoatl ("Woman-Snake"; a head adminstrative, religious, and judicial office underneath the Tlatoani to handle internal domestic affairs, especially when the Tlatoani was handling external diplomacy and warfare) Tlacaelel shortly after the formation of the Aztec Empire, with Itzcoatl ordering the burning of existing religious and historical texts in Tenochtitlan and Tlacaelel devising a new state-sponsored history and creation myth to glorify the Mexica's origins and place an increased emphasis on the need of the blood of enemy soldiers to sustain Huitzlipotchli as a way to provide a cosmological justification/rationalization for military campaigns.
So the amount of sacrifices other towns and cities, even other Nahua ones, would be doing would likely be a fraction of that as Tenochtitlan, and even Tenochtitlan was probably not sacrificing many thousands of people a year, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands: The recent excavations as the Tzompantli (Skull Rack) in Tenochtitlan's ceremonial district/downtown Mexico City have, per the media reports I can find (sadly I haven't found published papers on it yet),found that it held "Thousands" of skulls at it's "maximum extent". Now, the rack WAS cleared at times and then refilled, and sacrifices did occur in other temples in the city and not all sacrifices had their skulls put on the rack, but based on that wording and some numbers I crunched, I think it's pretty likely that the actual amount of annual sacrifices was probably in the hundreds, if not dozens, MAYBE between 1 and 2 thousand, most of which (up to 75% per the Tzompantli findings) would have been enemy soldiers, not civilians. Even if we take Cortes's estimate of 3000 a year at face value in Tenochtitlan, across the roughly 200 years the Tenochtitlan would be around, that would still be only 600,000, not 2 million, and, again, the Mexica only even really ramped up their sacrifices 100 years after Tenochtitlan was founded, so even that's being pretty charitable. To shift to the "All of the Aztec empire from the 1420's to 1520's" model for the 2M estimate, using Cortes's likely already inflated 3000 a year figure again, and say that the rest of the Aztec Empire's cities/towns sacrificed 3x that combined abnnually (which I would find unlikely, since, again, others didn't do mass scale sacrifices), so 3000 + 9000 = 12,000 a year, across 1000 years that'd be 1.2m sacrifices, still only a bit over half the 2M figure. None of these are meant to be accurate estimates, but are rather numbers I'm relatively sure are *higher* then what would be accurate as to show you that even when using those you wouldn't reach 2 million.
Anyways, with corrections/nitpicks out of the way, I wanna talk about some further/additional/related misconceptions regarding Indigenous American history and societies, but I ran out of space, so...
CONTINUED IN A FOLLOW UP REPLY
That's an absolutelly huge comment
CONTINUED: So, now with those corrections done, here's some more misconceptions I want to tackle................
1.That the Mesoamericans and the Andeans were "Stone Age". On an easy surface level, this is wrong because both Mesoamerica (the Cultural area incluiding the Aztec, Maya, Olmec, etc; usually defined as roughly the bottom half of Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and bits of Hondouras and el Salvador), Central America below it, and the Andes (the Inca, Nazca, Moche, etc; so Peru and bits of adjacent countries like Bolvia and Ecuador) all had metallurgy, smelting both soft metals like gold, silver, and copper, as well as Bronze. You can quite litterally google images of copper and bronze Inca weapons and armor or Aztec Axe-monies or tweezers with little effort. Beyond that, though, it's just a bad premise: the whole Stone/Bronze/Iron age model isn't meant to be a measure of technological progression, but rather just specific periods of European and Near-Eastern history since the widespread shift from/to each material makes a convenient set of Milestones. Metallurgical technology is just one of many facets of society and technology, and trying to make any sort of broader assessment of complexity just based on it is, frankly, silly:
Let's look at Mesoamerica again. Teotihuacan was a massive metropolis with 150,000 denizens across 37 square kilometers, 22 sq.km. of which was a dense urban grid of fancy stone temples, plazas, villas, etc. Almost the entire city's population was living in opulent housing complex/villas with dozens of rooms, large open air courtyards, rich painted frescos on walls, and fine ceramics and stuatary. Some complexes had toilets, and like a lot of other large Mesoamerican cities it had a complex water mangement system that included canals, resvoirs, and drainage systems/plumbing. It could even flood the Plaza outside the Temple of the Feathered Serpent for rituals like the Roman Colosseum could be flooded..... and Teotihuacan's apex passed BEFORE Mesoamerica had ANY metallurgy, even of soft metals like Gold. The Mesoamericans might not have worked Iron or made Steel, but rest assured they were more comparable to Iron age, Classical and Medieval Old World socities then they were Bronze age ones in quite a few respects, and almost all respects vs Stone age ones. Medicine, Sanitation, and Botanical science in particular the Aztec I'd argue were cutting-edge with even by global standards.
2. That the Native Americans outside of Mesoamerica and the Andes were simple hunter-gatherers. This is sort of an extension of the 1st point I just split up because I didn't want the paragraph to go on for too long, and Whatifist actually covers this briefly in the video; but there was a suprising amount of complexity in many socities in what's now the US and Canada (and the rest of Central and South America), even if not as much in Mesoamerica in the Andes by traditional Western standards : As noted in the video, even for the non-sendatary socities, there was often a notable degree of environmental modification, such as agroforestry where the brush of forests were managed with fire and crops were planted and then then the whole forests would be used as "farms" for said crops and animals were hunted. A large amount, perhaps even a majority, of Native Americans north of Mexico were in fact agricultural, they just didn't practice "Western" style agriculture. And there were many that DID and had towns and even (albiet not of stone) cities: The Pueblo and related Oasisamerican cultures in New Mexico, Arizona, etc, or the Mississipians in the Eastern US who were basically their own Cradle of Civilization: Cahokia, located in what's St Louis, had 30,000 to 40,000 denizens. Down in the Amazon, LIDAR has found huge networks of earthenwork complexes, towns, and irrigration from a former culture there, (probably closer to the Missiissipians then the Mesoamericans, for the sake of your mental image), with a notable amount of the Amazon rainforest really being an overgrown human-made ecosystem. In reality a fair amount of cultures across the Americas even outside of Mesoamerica and the Andes were sedentary, but collapsed from European diseases spread by the Spanish before the British, French, and American colonists spread throughout the Continent: They were seeing what was already a post-apocalyptic landscape.
3. That the only heavily urbanized, complex civilizations in the Americas were the Aztec, Inca, and Maya: Even putting aside the cultures I mention in point 2, and looking at what we'd consider full, complex civilizations (as arbitrary as that can be at times), there's DOZENS more then just those 3: stuff like monumental archtecture, rulership, class systems, etc goes back in Mesoamerica almost 3000 years prior to Europeans arriving in the late 15th/early 16th century, and around 2000 years in the Andes (some will say as far as 9000 years due to sites like Caral, but my understanding is these were more akin to stuff like Gobekli Tepe or stonehenge, being large monumental sites visited seasonally rather then cities). There's so many other civilizations, city-states, kingdoms, empires, etc. I already mentioned Teotihuacan as another Mesoamerican one, but there's also the Olmec (probably the next most well known, thanks to their giant stone head sculptures), the Zapotec and Mixtec (two major ones in what's now Oaxaca, the exploits of the Mixtec warlord 8-Deer-Jaguar-Claw matches the most thrilling tales of great conquerers from Europe and Asia, going from a noble working for a general of other cities to making key alliances with influiential religious lords, to then conquering almost 100 cities in under 2 decades and finally dying in an ironic twist when the one boy he left alive from his arch-rivals family grew up to overthrow him), the Purepecha/Tarascans (the second largest Empire in Mesoamerica after the Aztec, who repelled numerpous invasions from them and built a series of forts and watchtowers along their border) etc'; or down in the Andes, the Moche (who built giant, impressive temple complexes called Huacas a bit like Mesopotamian ziggurats, google some of the well preserved bits of Huaca de la Luna or Huaca Cao Viejo), the Chimor Kingdom (The largest state in late Andean history before the Kingdom of Cusco conquered them and then swallowed up the rest of the region as the Inca Empire; The Chimu captial, Chan Chan, was the largest city in Prehispanic South American history, with 60,000 denizens), etc.
I was going to do a 4th one, which is the myth that the Conquest of Mexico and Peru or the collapse of Mesoamerican and Andean civilization and the complete colonization of the Americas was inevitable, but I already left an even more massive comment(s) on the "What if the Aztec Empire survived?" Whatifist video you can see here: th-cam.com/video/52yu6hA_k2Y/w-d-xo.html&lc=Ugz9cPOGU-Iwg802o2l4AaABAg which goes into that, and frankly I have other stuff to do, so I'll leave it at that.
@@MajoraZ do know TH-camr who makes mesoamerican video called azlan?
@@ronjayrose9706 You mean Aztlanhistorian? He makes good content, i'm in his discord server.
@@MajoraZ yep😊😊😊
Damn, this is the best thing I've seen on TH-cam in a very long time. Nice job. Think I'll watch it a couple more times.
A common misconception, especially in the USA is that Columbus reached America, as in their country. He, of course, never set foot in North America. The only part of mainland Americas that he set foot on is what is modern day Panama (hence the city of Colon, Christopher Columbus in Spanish is Cristobal Colon) and what is modern day Venezuela.
Nearly done with number 11 but still thank you so much for helping me understand about the myth and books to read of these things. Keep up the great work.
What if the Agadir crisis started WW1 or the Qing conquest of China never happened or if Italy never unified
If Italy didn't unify the North would have been taken by Austria and the south by Spain. The Pope would have been kn a better situation between 2 of his besties rather than cover by the Savoys.
I like the thought of one of the Moroccan crisies starting off WW1 as very nearly happened. Mainly because in that war Serbia would not bleed nearly as much, and would probably only join war late for spoils like Romania/Italy instead of having to bear the brunt of the war and massacres as in OTL (25% of all people died in the war, more if only counting men, and there were massacres of Serbs in Austria-Hungary too which don't count to this dark score).
Bulgaria might even join Entente with no easy DoW on Serbia while they could instead try and take Constantinople from Ottomans.
OTOH Austria and eventually Germany had to commit many troops to Serbian front, these would go elsewhere and potential be enough to win or at least knock out Russia a bit sooner.
I’m going to talk about if the Qing never existed.
All of this would account for if the Ming did industrialised and modernised.
1. The Ming encounters the Opium Wars with Britain and wins it so it drives the colonial powers out of China instead of a longer war.
2. China builds up the military response to Japan modernising & trading with western powers.
3. Japan tried to invade Korea but failed to do so because of China advanced navy and army so then Japan will suffer a revolution & isolation after it.
4. The Ming dynasty supports the anti-communists Russians so therefore the Soviet Union will lose the civil war more likely and gained support of western powers.
5. The Ming send troops so the axis is defeated very early by 1943 and with Japan being isolated, the US would not intervene. Major powers would be British, French, Russians, and the Ming dynasty during the 1940s.
6. Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ming dynasty would be an alliance. British empire, French empire, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and occupied Germany would be an alliance sort of like NATO. The US, Japan, Mexico, Central America, and South America would be an alliance.
7. With Russia and China having inferior economies compared to the western colonial powers still then Russia will end up in a economic and political crisis and will make concessions.
8. With the Qing not invading, then China will be in a much smaller area size that will exclude Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Guangxi probably and leaves with about 1,910,000 square miles of Chinese land as modern Chinese territory.
9. China in the alternate timeline would not include Dalai Lama as part of the Chinese nation.
I know some other people also speculate that later Tang would exist with the Ming falling, Ming dynasty having a huge wealth gap that leads to rebellions probably, potentially Ming could have bad emperors that lead to lost of the Opium Wars, and Ming could reform its economy based on capitalism by 1700s and become a dominating capitalist empire by 1800s and 1900s. With all this said, anything could possibly happen had the Qing conquest didn’t happen.
X1 Gen KaneshiroX The Ming couldn't industrialize or modernize. It was practically intellectually, socially, and technologically stagnant for its duration, especially when compared to the dynamism of the Song. Part (certainly not all, but part) of why the Qing failed to modernize was their arrogance, which might be even worse under a dynasty not ruled by “barbarians”.
But to answer your question, OP, I think the Ming probably would've been overthrown by the Shun dynasty (which probably wouldn't last very long) or gone into a period of civil strife before being reunited by some warlord.
i agree with the sentiment but really this was pretty subjective from your part too.
Yeah, I was expecting something overall better. I am now thinking that I was simply not the target audience of this video and my expectations were a mistake.
@Derrick Pino Yeah, this was my second. I was impressed with his Timur video and instantly subscribed to Al Muqaddimah who assisted with it, then I watched this one which left me 'not wanting more'.
Even though the main point seems right imho, I too feel like this was quite a subjective . And found quite interesting that your view of europe was so foccused on the source nations of the northamerican colonizers.
I think it was quite objective, but nobody is perfect.
@Derrick Pino Out of curiosity, what was the bias you saw here that upset you?
Your monologue in the beginning really resonated with me!
Is there version for german speakers even tho this has made my English better- I’m from Namibia I live in Frankfurt Germany
Interesting. Are you descendent from the German settlers or are you a black Namibian immigrant into Germany. What's Namibia like?
I’m near Namibia in South Africa
Whatifalthist I’m Afro-german it’s huge in some tribes they speak a Germanic dialect similar Dutch. Namibia is great just don’t call is South African because we hate we people do that.
Wow that's pretty cool!
apple's lover my dad is Namibian American he works for Mercedes in Frankfurt my mom is a was born in Wolfenbüttel germany
The eleven misconceptions:
11 - World War I commanders were idiots 1:01
10 - Oriental despotism 3:18
9 - Dialogue 4:41
8 - People in the past were stupid and immoral 7:00
7 - Industrialization was awful 8:58
6 - The Europeans exploited Africa 10:43
5 - Early civilizations were good places 12:58
4 - The Dark Ages were terrible 14:58
3 - The Middle Ages were primitive 16:26
2 - Migrations never occurred 18:04
1 - The Native Americans were hippies 19:48
This is your best video by far. I wish TH-cam had recommended it earlier.
Thank you on the witch craft and bathing comment for the Middle Ages.
I had a coworker (I work at a fast food joint while working on BSE) who honestly thought that people bathed once a month and that you'd die by 30.
And for the witchcraft thing I often turn to the Council of Panderborn.
The problem wasn’t how the Europeans treated Africa after it was colonised, but how the Europeans destroyed African cities and infrastructure during the colonisation process. I’m a 2nd generation immigrant from Ghana and in there, the British burned down our original capital city (Kumasi) in 1896. This as well as the divide and conquer tactics, badly drawn borders, the Europeans’ lack of help in terms of development and the longer amount of time under colonial rule is what made Africa underdeveloped and slower to modernise than Asian countries for example.
The problem wasn’t the exploitation (which still happened especially in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo) but the destruction caused by the wars and the prevention of growth.
The mythology behind the native American peoples is one of the most important things you mention here. People believe they were saints, in part to demonize the westerners who came after them. They did indeed fight wars of genocide and conquest, deforest their lands, and engage in slavery on a wide scale. Brave of you, frankly, to include this in the list!
This is also done with Africans during the Atlantic slave trade. It’s usually portrayed that Westerners came into Africa and enslaved the population themselves directly. In reality, the slave trade was started by African tribes and countries who had conquered other regions and taken them captive, then traded those captives with Westerners.
Modern people tend to worship the poor innocent African tribals who were just going about their peaceful Stone Age lives before the Europeans stormed in and enslaved them all. Africa was a thriving part of the world for centuries, and a lot of that was due to slavery in some form or another.
You should do what if Ottomamans didn't manage to expand into Europe, good start for this would probably be Serbs winning battle of Maritsa and besieging Edrine (which was actually more likely than what happened). That would be very interesting.
Or victory of the 1395 battle of Nicopolis between the Crusaders and the Ottomans with their pet Lazarevic?
Nothing much would change. Timurids beating and nearly destroying Ottomans only delayed Ottoman expansion for a few decades. Serbia and other Balkan states would begin fighting each other for power while Ottomans were recovering and strengthening their positions in Anatolia only to come back stronger to Balkans.
I want all those books that you have. My hunger for books is endless.
12: Italy is an "artificial" nation which didn't exist before 1861 and it was better when divided, the South in particular
(SPOILER: it was the other way around)
We had 15 different types of meatballs and fought wars between ourselves to figure out which was best
Exactly
I rather have war outside Italy than going fighting Milan or Venice with my city
@@krimzonkamikaze8524 Rainy with a slight chance of meatballs
You kind of overlooked the Congo and the theft of African gold and diamonds
no he didn't
Without anyone outside of africa to sell too, those diamonds wouldn’t be very useful
@João Antonio honestly the market is flooded with diamonds now. They’re not nearly as valuable as they once were. The gold that ended the Bullion famine, however, now that African “contribution” definitely benefited Europe a great deal more than Africa
@Petri I'm aware, and I'm nkt able to rewatch the video right now, he made it sound like Africa somehow benefitted from their colonization, when they clearly didnt
Just another example of brutality rather than profit.
Long time I hadn't seen so insightful and stimulating videos as yours. I don't agree with everything, but your debunking of myths 7 and 6 (industrialization horrors & colonial exploitation) especially was top spot.
You are surprisingly in tune with the reality of history. I disagree on a few details, but overall your gripes with the mainstream understanding of history are about the same as mine.
Hey man I just wanted to say I love your videos, and I love how balanced you are, but I have to disagree with the how Europe didn't exploit Africa, I'm surprised you didn't bring up king Kongo, or what's Germany did in Namibia, or Cecil rose using badly treated African to mine gold, and the destruction of the city of Benin, all the capital of the Ashanti empire, Africa was not perfect but what Europe did was not the most constructive, thing they could have done.
I'm Italian. Italian colonizers have done horrible things to the Ethiopians, but in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia they still have and use some of the infrastructures (streets, railways, schools, places of entertainment, etc.) that the Italians built there. We didn't expolit our colonies that much also because Italy had a very short colonial history compared to other European countries.
The destruction of Benin and the Ashanti capital were due to them being at war with the British also it is very clear that African colonies were far more costly than beneficial to European powers. Therefore Europe recieved very little if any actual benefit for colonial rule in Africa. Also the fact that non-colonial European nations such as Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria are just as wealthy per capita as the colonial nations such as Britain, France and Germany shows that the western world was not enriched by their Empires like some people like to believe in order to push a reparations narrative.
@@oreroundpvp896 combine that with some of there history..aka Ireland and Finland both being treated like shit
@@oreroundpvp896 That's ridiculus, you seem to forget that having a rich market with high population and high demands tends to make you have much more posibilities to make money. Just take a look to the way those countries make money, and those are by selling goods to the european markets. With the added benefit that not being a colony so they could put the price
I think he meant they didn't benefit from it, or at least not as much as it's commonly believed.
I'm from Africa and most of the infrastructures built during colonisation were simply to help ship raw materials back to Europe... 🤷♂️
Exactly
You still got it
That infrastructure is better than none
true, but no one is saying that the Europeans were doing out of the kindness of their hearts.
Most people where properly just in it for the money (as most people tend to do) although I will say that Europeans didn't see it as simply a way of exploiting (maybe except the Belgians),
They saw it as a way of exporting civilisation to Africa, which they thought gave them the right to conquer. This is analogous to how Microsoft sees its vision to "empower companies of all sizes to be their best".
True, however, Europe would still have had the same level of wealth without Africa, and Africa would be much poorer without Europe (this, however, doesn't justify any act of conquest in itself)
why top 11? Because you like to go one step beyond.
lol
Hello, NostalgiaCritic
This is Spinal Tap.
I enjoy your content for new facts and considerations. Thanks. I just watched Top 11 Historical Misconceptions and I want to take issue with your comment about deforestation in the American southwest by the Pueblo Indians (I am one). 1. I can't believe the population was ever high enough to cause deforestation on any large scale. 2. The picture you showed is of an area below the tree line, where the desert is rising to the forested higher altitudes.
Very interesting about the dialoged portion in how American English is such a direct language. I think its also leading to a new form of Spanish. I live in Los Angeles where most of the population speaks spanish and you can tell that among older people or those who immigrated to America from Mexico have a different way of speaking Spanish. As suppose to younger or 2nd generation children who are by all means Americanized but where told to speak spanish. Their way of speaking Spanish is much more direct and blunt forgoing pleasantries and to several older people its considered rude.
I remember been in like at a store and the cashier and the customer where speaking spanish. The cashier stated the total price and the older lady remarked how rude the cashier sounded, saying how there where no pleasantries sprinkled within the sentence. To me the cashier sounded perfectly fine. But then I watched this video and yeah Mexico compared to the US does have a more ridged class structure. In places like Aguascalientes, Nayarit or Jalisco most people dont make conversations with waiters or cashiers or will flat out ignore their existence. They will wave servers away like some medieval king waving away a peasant. I made the mistake of thanking my waiter once in Mexico and the rest of the table looked at me oddly. My uncle later explained to my that such behavior isnt really practiced there unless your of the lower classes and by speaking to someone of working class it was an indication that I was of lower class. My American sensibilities where rocked.
Thats a very interresting topic. As a history nerd it is very difficult sometimes to keep your temper when someone drops a history fact and you as the only person in the room who knows the truth have to see with horror how everyone believes it, allthough it is completely false.
Here are some „facts“, that I encountered (without order):
1. People in the middle ages never turned 35
2. The Holy Roman Empire was never holy, roman or an empire
3. The Greeks were the good guys in the war against the Persians (you touched on this but I wanted to specify it)
4. That will be controversial: Germany was sole responsible for WW1
5. Pre modern battles were majestic and heroic matters
I exluded your points, allthough I would have added some to my list too, like that the native americans were the pure essence of morality or that the middle ages were one gigantic dark age.
I feel this way as a medical provider when people talk about medications or vaccines and such
Fantastic to see such a lot of myths dispelled so clearly.
except he didn't, he purposefully left out the congo free state and the trans atlantic slave trade just to sugarcoat european colonisation of Africa
Number 6 neglects the artificial drawing of borders and also the playing off of tribes against each other.
A) The drawing of borders was done with some help from the Africans, since Europeans literally created governments for these countries when they left. Yes it had an insane amount of issues, but that doesn't completely lie on Europeans, especially since massive public opinion throughout the whole world, as well as the USA and USSR encouraging decolonization, as well as unrest in the colonies, put extreme pressure on the process, forcing it to become an unnatural escape from Africa, instead of a natural lay of the colonies with consideration, at the cost of them being colonies for longer.
B) Tribes always fought each other anyway. Like mini nations they conquered land from each other and like nations they allied with other nations to destroy.
Also he only mentioned the economic viability and exploitation, even mentioning that what the Europeans did was wrong.
"I'm not sure how much effect the Europeans themselves had on Africa."
21 countries in Africa speak French as their official language. 29 in total. I'd say there was a pretty big impact. This isn't even the most damning mistake in the video, just the most glaring.
Yeah it's strangely inconsistent and incoherent at times. There are some points that are well sourced but this video is just kind of a mess.
I was actually wondering wtf I was listening to. I commented about lumping Indians hating Churchill with Holocaust deniers of the Jewish or Armenian hating variety.
Very few Africans I’m in the former french colonies actually speak fluent french and fewer still use it in regular daily communication it’s at most a public lingua Franca for governments but almost everyone speak native African languages everyday
French in Africa is mostly for the elite, but more importantly, it was deliberately maintained by African leaders on a common accord because that gives them a convenient system to talk to each other. Otherwise they would have to manage a bazillion dialects.
Imagine the president or prime minister of your country only speaks the dialect of his people group and stayed in place for 20-ish years, his language would gradually become the de facto language of the country and make every other groups become second-class citizens, leading to social unrest.
But since none of the sub-groups has French for its native tongue, you're alienating everyone equally, thus alienating no one.
Which funnily enough is the Frenchest thing to do 😂
He also didn’t mention that France still tax those 21 countries till this day and all their currency is kept in frances central bank
Hey kid want some history Watchmojo?
Sure.
I wasn't disappointed
A question. I thought that the early era of Egypt wasnt so much a cast society but a free one in Wich a farmer can become a merchant but with time (like the bronze age collapse) the cast society became a reality is this true or not?
There was very little social mobility in Egypt, but yes, there was some there.
It was probably more like two choices:
1. Toil in the fields like your forefathers did. A semi stable income for you and your family but better than nothing at all.
2. Try your luck and gamble everything on one hand and become a merchant, sell all your stuff and buy high value items and transport them 500 km to make a profit. You might be killed or enslaved on your way, or at best, just lose everything you have and get back alive with nothing. Meanwhile your family is probably coming with you and starves along with you. You might get incredibly rich but the chance is very slim.
I guess most people would have chosen the first option.
Yes but it was hard
Luís Filipe Andrade That wasn't the social structure of, say, Rome or imperial China (though it was like that in pre-imperial China). Side note, it was arguably better to be a peasant than a merchant in imperial China since the former could in theory take the imperial examination to become a scholar-official, the most prestigious social position, while the latter were often barred from the examination.
The was very little movement between castes. You could, risk it all and become a merchant, but it was very unlikely you'd be a good merchant
I knew a couple of these like the Native American one but a lot of these were quite surprising. I enjoyed it !
I just discovered your channel a couple days ago and I’ve been absolutely tearing thru your body of work. I love the info and context you provide - America defined by 10 ethnicities is a wealth of historical course correction that started filling gaps for me that have never really made sense.
I have a kind of overly simple question maybe: would you say it’s safe to say that humans are humans and if it makes sense that We modern men would do a behavior, historic man would have likely done similar? So when we hear that public atheism in the Middle Ages was common, should that not be surprising and should I try applying that context to a lot of historical information?
Whatifalthist, this may sound obscure to you, but can you give us a possible scenario of what would possibly happen if the Maratha Empire won the Third Battle of Panipat?
In our timeline, they lost and they went into stagnation. This made it much easier for the surrounding kingdoms to take some territory from the Marathas and it also caused even more of a power vacuum which was exploited by the British EIC to conquer the Indian subcontinent.
They would probably just have been conquered anyway once the Mughal Empire/EIC state withered away and was replaced with the Raj. Might have led to more armed resistance to the Raj though.
The marathas and other kingdoms defeat the british
10:37 - Just to clarify, Marx was never against industrialisation, he was simply against the profits of industrialised labour going to the bourgeois class rather than the workers or proletariat. Hopefully that clears things up.
Marx has been refuted so many times by real economists that is really boring to hear someone explaining marxism. Prehistoric and very anti cientific theory. Also really dangerous.
@@FragRevel you talk about Marxism as though it’s an economic system, it is not, it’s a method of analysing the relationship between the human mind and the world it exists in. Marxist economics is a load of outdated garbage I’ll be the first to admit that, but that doesn’t mean the system of analysis Marx created should be discarded.
Capitalism is still the best and has done the most good for humanity
@@solortus Just because it's been the most successful so far doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be reformed. Capitalism through climate change is literally destroying the planet (yes i know the soviets were extremely bad for the environment as well).
Not to mention the fact that he fails to recognise the difference between Marxism and Marx’s theory as detailed in the communist manifesto. I like his channel in terms of historical documentation but his political understanding (with the exclusion of certain aspects of geopolitics) is soooo limited
I have been a student of history longer than you have been alive. But I never think I know it all. I learn things every time I watch a video.
As a history professor, I found myself saying "hmmm well..." very often. You made A LOT of bold statements and I appreciate you for increasing our society's knowledge. I enjoy your videos and they get me hyped up to debate.
Except he got the part wrong about 1600's Western Europ to Islamic comparison. Since Islam came to existence, women had the rights to vote, own property conduct business and HAS to see her family at least twice a year and in most middle class households people meet their relatives (especially the woman) waaay more than that, more like on a weekly basis. Whilst in Europe you had governement officials coming in the house to punish your inobedient wife. Lemme get this straight, I left islam and sexism had a big part to do with it, but I hate when folks use the same stereotype of "West is less sexist than brown muslims" if we are speaking of "degrees" here I would say the form varies but the content is still there
@@refugetube4800 Perhaps you would like to expound on why the Koran entitles a man to 4 wives... but not a woman to 4 husbands? The Koran has much to say about how men should control women, but not the other way around. Please answer without reference to the Bibles (Christian or Jewish) or by making odious comparisons.
@@v1e1r1g1e1 are you stupid or you just acting like one? Next time read well before typing nonsense like an angry teen. I said I left Islam cuz its sexist but you guys are on another level and your stinginess continues to prove it
@@v1e1r1g1e1 sociobiology
Exactly how I felt. There are too many questionable statements to go into here, but its nice to see debate with a reading list attached!
Could you give sources or a reading list for the African exploitation one
12:47
His Africa argument is complete bunk btw. One of the books he cites is more of a scattered memoir of a mans travels through Africa with vague extrapolations and the other is a hodgepodge of facts about colonial wars with a loosely evidenced claim at the end.
@@Berzerk-cr2cy "one of the books" and the rest?
@@andrepettersson175 he only cited 2.
European colonialism had a serious negative impact on Africa. If there was no colonialism Africa would be a very difficult place. It would have evolved naturally and major ethnic groups would have greater there own countries and institutions. Trade would flow internally amongst Africans rather than being a resource exporter, Europeans didn't build railways in Africa that only went to the ports for no reason. Never mind the amount of Gold and precious minerals, rubber and the like that was exported by the colonialist. Also the farming land that was taken by expelling the Africans from their livelihoods. List goes on.
Furthermore the colonisation of India made Africa poor. Before the British, India was responsible for 25% of world trade, slot of it was with Africa on a fair bases. The British stopped that and diverted the trade to the U K.
Really wish I could explain to this guy how difficult it is to read multiple paragraphs while also listening to him talk
Its better this way than making the videos longer. I dont read all of them, only what interests me.
Pausing the video works for me.
I wish you would make an entire video on the painful degree of misconception concerning the whole medieval era, maybe starting with the term "dark" ages and how it's mostly used interchangeably with the early medieval period (5th to about 10th century) and that it doesn't mean that it was an especially terrible time to life but that there aren't many good sources that could help historical sciences shine light into this era and thus understand it better and know more about it, which makes it dark by that connotation.
Most people have not just no idea about how different the beginning of the middle ages was to it's end and therefore how much progress (societal/cultural, scientific etc.) actually occurred but their view is as if it's all pretty much the "dark" ages (which consists of all the worst stereotypes people can come up with put together for this "period") and nothing has changed during 1000+ years and suddenly came the renaissance etc. ....
Sorry for the rant, to me it's just one of the if not the single most annoying misconception people have about history, primarily because it's so important for our understanding of our ancestors and cultural heritage.