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  • - [Instructor] When Christopher Columbus

  • first arrived in the Americas,

  • he had no way of knowing that he had

  • set off a complex chain of events

  • that would lead to everything

  • from humanity's largest demographic disaster,

  • to the founding of a new nation nearly 300 years later,

  • to you watching a video about the history

  • of that nation right at this very moment.

  • It's strange, right?

  • Columbus's voyages to the New World

  • and those of the navigators and settlers who came after him,

  • changed the worlds to an extent

  • rarely seen in human history.

  • Let's briefly review the effects

  • of these transatlantic voyages on Europe,

  • Africa, and the Americas between 1492 and 1607,

  • the period between first contact

  • and the establishment of the first permanent

  • English settlement in the Americas at Jamestown.

  • So you might call this the pre-British era

  • of colonization in the Americas.

  • So what changes did these voyages cause?

  • Well, there were demographic changes,

  • and by demographic I mean shifts

  • in the structure of populations.

  • The indigenous populations of the Americas

  • faced a catastrophic decline in numbers

  • as a result of diseases carried by Europeans.

  • On the flip side, the populations of Africa and Europe

  • grew with the introduction of nutritious foods

  • found in the Americas like potatoes and corn.

  • Contact also led to the creation of new cultural groups,

  • as indigenous people, Europeans, and Africans

  • mixed in the New World and had children together.

  • The transatlantic voyages also led to economic changes,

  • including shifts in the systems of money and labor.

  • Spain extracted gold and silver from the New World by force,

  • compelling indigenous people and then later

  • enslaved Africans to labor in mines.

  • These riches flooded into Europe

  • and caused a huge increase in prices,

  • which may have led to the development

  • of banking and capitalism there.

  • And European demand for laborers in New World mines

  • and plantations led to the expansion of the slave trade,

  • resulting in the forced migration

  • of millions of African people to the Americas.

  • Columbus's discovery also fostered

  • political changes in Europe and the New World,

  • as other European countries wanted

  • to claim colonies of their own.

  • And the power structure among indigenous nations

  • changed, too, with the addition of European allies

  • and the destruction of large portions of the population,

  • leading to the downfall of powerful empires like the Aztecs.

  • The cultures of indigenous people changed,

  • as Europeans introduced new material goods

  • and animals into their environment.

  • For example, the Spanish brought horses to North America,

  • changing the society of plains people,

  • who could now hunt and follow herds of bison on horseback.

  • And new religious practices also emerged in the Americas,

  • as indigenous peoples combined their own beliefs

  • with those of Catholicism.

  • By examining the effects of transatlantic voyages,

  • what we're really doing is practicing

  • the skill of causation.

  • This is probably the most important

  • skill in the historian's toolbox.

  • Understanding and arguing about

  • what caused an event to happen,

  • or what consequences an event had on society later on.

  • Now this seems pretty straightforward.

  • For example, a cause and effect statement might be,

  • I slept through my alarm this morning, so I missed the bus.

  • Cause: oversleeping.

  • Effect: missed bus.

  • Notice that the effect has to happen after the cause.

  • Missing the bus didn't cause me to oversleep.

  • So until we invent the time machine,

  • effects must happen later than causes.

  • But there can be a few pitfalls to watch out for

  • when we try to determine causes and effects.

  • First, not everything has just one cause and one effect.

  • For example, maybe I slept through my alarm

  • because I stayed up too late last night watching TV.

  • That's another cause for missing the bus.

  • And there could be more than one effect

  • of sleeping through the alarm,

  • not just missing the bus,

  • but also missing my test in first period.

  • Which was the most important cause of missing the bus,

  • oversleeping or watching too much TV?

  • And which was the more important effect

  • of sleeping through my alarm,

  • missing the bus or missing the test?

  • These kinds of questions are what historians argue about.

  • Which was the most important cause of Atlantic exploration,

  • competition between European countries,

  • or the desire to convert new people to Catholicism?

  • Another potential pitfall is one you might have seen

  • in a science class or in statistics,

  • which is correlation does not imply causation.

  • In other words, two events aren't necessarily related

  • just because they happened close together in time or space.

  • For example, although epidemic diseases led to the deaths

  • of indigenous people in the New World

  • at the same time that the discovery of new foodstuffs

  • increased the population of Europe and Africa,

  • the introduction of diseases didn't cause

  • those populations to increase.

  • Those were just two things that happened simultaneously.

  • One way you can check whether one event

  • was caused by an earlier one,

  • is to ask whether event B would have happened

  • whether or not event A happened.

  • The populations of Europe and Africa

  • would likely have increased with the addition

  • of those new foods even if there

  • hadn't been any epidemic diseases at all.

  • The last thing that we wanna take into account

  • while we're thinking about causation,

  • is the difference between short

  • and long-term effects of an event.

  • Missing my first period test might

  • be a short-term effect of oversleeping,

  • but failing the class because I missed tests

  • would be a long-term effect.

  • And maybe because I failed that test

  • I ended up focusing on a different subject in school,

  • and heading into a different career.

  • That would be a really long-term effect.

  • Think about the effects of transatlantic voyages

  • that we've discussed,

  • and see if you can categorize them

  • into short-term effects and long-term effects.

  • You might find that some things fit into both categories

  • as processes that started immediately

  • but then went on for a long time,

  • like the epidemic diseases that immediately

  • affected indigenous people,

  • but then continued to reshape the demographic composition

  • of the Americas for hundreds of years.

  • So let's recap what we've learned about causation.

  • First, historians argue about causation

  • as they try to pin down the reason an event happened.

  • Second, causes must happen before effects.

  • Third, a single event might have more than one cause

  • or more than one effect,

  • and some causes and effects may be

  • more important than others.

  • Fourth, events that happened near to each other

  • in time or space, aren't necessarily related

  • by a cause and effect relationship.

  • Coincidences happen.

  • And lastly, causes may have both short

  • and long-term effects, immediate results,

  • and downstream impacts that go

  • far beyond the time in question.

- [Instructor] When Christopher Columbus

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跨大西洋航行的影響,1492-1607年|可汗學院|美國曆史AP課程。 (Effects of transatlantic voyages, 1492-1607 | Khan Academy | AP US History)

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