Name: 速成班大歷史。現代性 (Crash Course Big History: Modernity)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:20:22.000Z
Duration: 13 min 26 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

Today we're going to look at the modern revolution.

and Super Nintendo are modern, but, like, people used to think

That's actually a pretty perceptive question,

So, if we're going to talk about modernity,

where video games are so much better than Super Nintendo.

So, some historians date the beginning of the modern era

with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution

Some date it to the French Revolution in 1789.

to 16th and 17th century European colonialism.

And some date modernity with the European Renaissance

and call anything past the year 1500 "early modern."

But through aBig Historylens, all of these are just signs

of acceleration in human collective learning,

which was already underway and took its first tiny steps

to call the first human foragers "early-early-early modern."

With an acknowledgment that it's all a little bit arbitrary.

So last week, we looked at how collective learning--

which relies on population numbers and connectivity

to produce new ideas-- grew by leaps and bounds

had advanced magnificently, but the world was still divided

into four isolated world zones: the Americas, Australasia,

what makes the European explorations worthy

of a place in an episode called "Modern Revolution"

is that they eventually united all four world zones

But why did the Europeans feel so motivated to expand?

One, Ottoman dominance of overland trade routes with Asia,

particularly after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453,

made Europeans seek alternative routes to the populace

Two, European states were fairly small compared to some

of the vast empires of Asia and needed to compete

for more resources to fuel their almost-constant wars.

whether it be the many advanced inventions

That last one should not be underestimated.

Crops like the potato-- which earned the nickname

"ready-made bread" because it was easy to prepare--

combined with maize and squashes and tomatoes

where those crops were introduced in the 17th century.

And let us not forget about the vast amounts of silver

that the Spanish "acquired" from the Americas

or the many cotton, tobacco, and sugar farms

that Europeans bolstered their economies with.

For instance, it was terrible for people who worked

on those cotton and tobacco and sugar farms.

Europeans increasingly relied on African slaves,

the first of whom were granted to the Portuguese

by African rulers, and then, you know, several centuries

of horror ensued with an incomprehensible number

of African slaves dying in the appalling conditions

Also, because Afro-Eurasia was a modestly connected

When they started arriving in the previously isolated Americas

in the late 1400s and 1500s, the indigenous inhabitants

This resulted in one of the most horrific events

A cocktail of various European diseases, most notably smallpox,