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  • Hi, I’m John Green;

  • this is Crash Course: World History

  • and today were going to do some compare and contrast,

  • because that’s what passes for hip in world history circles.

  • Right, so youve probably heard of

  • Christopher Columbus who in 1492 sailed the ocean blue

  • and discovered America, a place that had been previously discovered

  • only by millions of people--

  • Mr Green, Mr Green!

  • Columbus was just a lucky idiot.

  • Yeah, no.

  • Here’s a little rule of thumb, Me from the Past:

  • If you are not an expert in something,

  • don’t pretend to be an expert.

  • This is going to serve you well both in your academic career

  • and in your Kissing Career.

  • MOVING ON.

  • [music intro]

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  • So unlike Me from the Past,

  • I’d argue that Columbus has a deserved reputation in history

  • [Save his Harry Potter directional stint]

  • but was he really the greatest sailor of the 15th Century?

  • Well, let’s meet the other contestants.

  • [playing for a lifetime supply of Garlique]

  • In the red corner, we have Zheng He, who, when it comes to ocean-going voyages

  • was the first major figure of the 15th century.

  • And in the blue corner is Vasco da Gama,

  • from scrappy little Portugal, who managed to introduce Europeans

  • to the Indian Ocean trade network.

  • Columbus, you have to sit in the polka-dotted corner.

  • [until you learn special effects are a privilege, not a crutch]

  • As youll no doubt remember from our discussion of Indian Ocean trade,

  • it was dominated by Muslim merchants,

  • involved ports in Africa and the Middle East and

  • India and Indonesia, and China and

  • it made a lot of people super rich.

  • This last point explains why our three contestants were so eager to set sail.

  • Well, that and the ceaseless desire of human beings to discover things

  • and contract scurvy.

  • Let’s begin with Zheng He,

  • who is probably the greatest admiral youve never have heard of.

  • Couple of important things about Zheng He:

  • First, he was a Muslim.

  • That may seem strange until you consider that by the late 14th century China had long experience

  • with Muslims,

  • especially when they were ruled by, wait for it....

  • The Mongols.

  • [Hark! The commotive, cacophonic caterwauling of clattering conquerors!]

  • Secondly, Zheng He was a eunuch.

  • (He was one of a kind?]

  • Fortunately, 15th century China had excellent general anesthesia,

  • so I’m sure it didn’t hurt at all when they castrated him

  • what’s that, Stan?

  • They didn’t have any anesthesia?

  • Oh, boy.

  • Oh. STAN,

  • I’M SEEING IT!

  • I can see, AH AH AHHHH.

  • Stan!

  • SHOW ME SOMETHING CUTE RIGGHT NOW!

  • Oh, hi there kitty!

  • How’d you get in that little teacup?

  • Thank you, Stan.

  • Right, so

  • Zheng He rose from humble beginnings to lose both of his testicles,

  • and become the greatest admiral in Chinese history.

  • Let’s go to the thought Bubble.

  • Between 1405 and 1433,

  • Zheng He led seven voyages throughout the Indian Ocean,

  • the expeditions of the so-called treasure ships, and they were huge.

  • Columbusfirst voyage consisted of three ships.

  • Zheng He led an armada of over 300 ships.

  • With a crew of over 27,000—

  • more than half of London’s population at the time.

  • And some of these ships were, well, enormous.

  • The flagships, known as treasure ships,

  • were over 400 feet long and had 7 or more masts.

  • See that little tiny ship there in front of the Treasure Ship?

  • That’s a to-scale rendering of Christopher Columbus’s flagship,

  • the Santa Maria.

  • Zheng He wasn’t an explorer:

  • The Indian Ocean trade routes were already known to him

  • and other Chinese sailors.

  • He visited Africa, India, and the Middle East,

  • and in a way, his journeys were trade missions,

  • but not in the sense of filling his ships up with stuff to

  • be sold later for higher prices.

  • China was the leading manufacturer of quality goods in the world,

  • and there wasn’t anything they actually needed to import.

  • What they needed was prestige and respect so that people would continue to see China

  • as the center of the economic universe,

  • so there was a tribute system

  • through which foreign rulers or their ambassadors would come to China and engage in a debasing

  • ritual

  • called the kowtow

  • wherein they acknowledged the superiority of the Chinese emperor

  • and offered him or her but usually him

  • gifts in return for the right to trade with China.

  • The opportunity to humble yourself before the Chinese emperor was

  • so valuable that many a prince was happy to jump on a treasure ship

  • and sail back to China with Zheng He.

  • Also, these tribute missions brought lots of crazy things to China,

  • including exotic animals:

  • From Africa, Zheng He brought back a zoo’s worth of

  • rhinos, zebras, and even giraffes.

  • Basically, he was like the medieval Chinese Noah.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble.

  • So the Chinese were world leaders in naval technology,

  • and they wanted to dominate trade here in the Indian Ocean.

  • So why, then, did these voyages end?

  • One reason was that Zheng,

  • He couldn’t live forever, and sure enough, he didn’t.

  • Also his patron, the Yongle Emperor, died.

  • And the emperor’s successors weren’t very interested in maritime trade.

  • They were more concerned with protecting China from

  • its traditional enemies, nomads from the steppe.

  • To do this,

  • they built a Rather Famous Wall.

  • The Great Wall was mostly built under the Ming with resources that they had because

  • they stopped building gigantic ships.

  • Just imagine what might have happened if the Ming emperors had embraced a different strategy.

  • One that was based on outreach instead of isolationism.

  • And now, to the blue corner

  • Representing Portuguese exploration,

  • we have Vasco da Gama.

  • Couple things about Portugal:

  • First, it has a fair bit of coast line.

  • Secondly it was also relatively resource poor,

  • which meant it relied upon trade to grow.

  • Also, the Iberian peninsula was the only place in Europe where Muslims could be found in

  • large numbers in the 15th century,

  • which meant the Christian Crusading spirit was quite strong there, presumably because

  • Muslims had brought so much stability and prosperity to the region.

  • And chief among these would-be crusaders was

  • Prince Henry the Navigator, so called because

  • he was not a navigator.

  • [What is in a name, Metta World Peace?]

  • He was, however, a patron, not only of sailors themselves, but of a special school at Sagres

  • in which nautical knowledge was collected and new maps were made,

  • and all kinds of awesome stuff happened.

  • And all that knowledge gave Portuguese sailors a huge competitive advantage when it came

  • to exploration.

  • Henry commissioned sailors to search for two things.

  • First,

  • a path to the Indian Ocean so they could get in on

  • the lucrative spice trade.

  • And second,

  • to find the kingdom of Prester John,

  • a mythical Christian King who was supposed to live in Africa somewhere, so that Henry

  • could have Prester John’s help in a crusade.

  • Da Gama was the first of Henry’s protégés

  • to make it around Africa, and into the Indian Ocean.

  • In 1498, he landed at Calicut,

  • a major trading center on India’s west coast.

  • And when he got there, merchants asked him what he was looking for.

  • He answered with three words:

  • Gold and Christians.

  • Which basically sums up Portugal’s reasons for exploration.

  • So, once the Portuguese breached the Indian Ocean,

  • they didn’t create, like, huge colonies,

  • because there were already powerful empires in the region.

  • Instead,

  • they apparently sat in the middle of the Indian Ocean doing nothing.

  • Actually, they were able to capture & control a number of coastal cities,

  • creating what historians call a

  • trading post empire.”

  • They could do this thanks to their well-armed ships,

  • which captured cities by

  • firing cannons into city walls

  • like IRL Angry Birds.

  • But since the Portuguese didn’t have enough people or boats

  • to run the Indian Ocean trade,

  • they had to rely on extortion.

  • [C.R.E.A.M. Get the money- Dollar, dollar bill y'all.]

  • So, Portuguese merchant ships would capture other ships

  • and force them to purchase a permit to trade

  • called a cartaz.

  • And without a cartaz, a merchant couldn’t trade

  • in any of the towns that Portugal controlled.

  • To merchants,

  • who’d plied the Indian Ocean for years in relative freedom,

  • the Portuguese were just glorified pirates,

  • extracting value from trade without

  • adding to its efficiency or volume.

  • So, the cartaz strategy sort of worked for a while, but

  • the Portuguese never really took control of Indian Ocean trade.

  • They were successful enough that their neighbors Spain,

  • became interested in their own route to the Indies,

  • and that brings us to Columbus.

  • But first, let’s dispel some myths:

  • One:

  • Columbus and his crew knew the earth was round.

  • [Some folks still aren't convinced]

  • He was just wrong about the earth’s size.

  • Columbus used Ptolemy’s geography

  • and the Imago Mundi, based on Muslim scholarship

  • and ended up overestimating the size of Asia and

  • underestimating the size of the oceans.

  • Two:

  • Columbus never thought he’d made it to China.

  • He called the people he encounteredIndiansbecause

  • he thought that he’d made it to

  • the East Indies, what we know as Indonesia.

  • Three: Columbus was not a lucky idiot.

  • He navigated completely unknown waters primarily relying on

  • a technique known as dead reckoning,

  • in which you figure out your position based on three pieces of information:

  • The direction youre going,

  • your speed,

  • and the time,

  • which you figure out via hourglass.

  • With only that technology to guide you,

  • its not actually that easy to hit a continent.

  • Come here people who are saying he didn’t hit a continent,

  • that he only hit some islands.

  • Come here.

  • Dahhh!

  • Oh,

  • it’s time for the Open Letter?

  • An open letter to the Line of Demarcation

  • But first,

  • let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today.

  • Oh, its a globe. T

  • hanks Stan!

  • Just what I always needed.

  • Dear Line of Demarcation,

  • You have so much to teach us

  • about the way that the world used to work,

  • and the way that it works now.

  • In 1494, Pope Alexander VI

  • settled a dispute between Portugal and Spain by

  • dividing the world into two parts:

  • The Spanish part, and the Portuguese part.

  • This whole thing, at least

  • according to Pope Alexander VI,

  • could be split between Spain and Portugal.

  • At least when it came to so-called unclaimed land.

  • I mean, unclaimed by whom?

  • You know all the American Indians were like,

  • wait, this land is available? In, in that case, well just,

  • well just keep it.

  • If its all the same to you.”

  • Anyway, Line of Demarcation,

  • I have great news for you.

  • What Alexander VI did

  • totally worked.

  • We haven’t had a problem since.

  • Best wishes, John Green.

  • So, Columbus’s first journey

  • (he made four,

  • the last three of which were pretty calamitous)

  • was tiny,

  • and he initially landed on a s mall Caribbean island he called

  • San Salvador in search, like the Portuguese,

  • of Gold and Christians.

  • He was able to convince

  • Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain

  • to fund his expedition by

  • promising riches and conversions of the natives,

  • hopefully to sign them up for yet another crusade.

  • And there’s a long-standing myth that Columbus tricked

  • Ferdinand and Isabella into paying for his trip,

  • but in fact they’d commissioned two different sets of experts

  • to analyze his plans, both of which agreed,

  • he was [totes cray cray].

  • One called the plan,

  • Impossible to any educated person.”

  • But even so,

  • Ferdinand and Isabella footed the bill,

  • partly because they were full of Crusading zeal

  • after expelling the Muslims from Spain,

  • and partly because they were desperate to get their hands

  • on some of that pepper richness.

  • [Also some Kleenex, to help with the subsequent sneezy richness?]

  • Columbus of course, failed at finding riches

  • he returned with neither spices nor gold.

  • He did create some Christians, as well discuss in a future episode,

  • but in terms of goal accomplishment,

  • Columbus was much less successful than either

  • Zheng He or Vasco de Gama.

  • [and most certainly, David Yates]

  • But within two generations of Columbus,

  • Spain would become fantastically wealthy,

  • and for a time they were the leading power in Europe.

  • Columbus’s voyages also had a huge, largely negative,

  • impact on the people the Spanish encountered in the Americas.

  • And excitingly from my perspective,

  • once Columbus returned from San Salvador,

  • we can speak for the first time of a truly world history.

  • Except for you Australia.

  • So who was the greatest mariner of the 15th century?

  • Well, as usual,

  • it depends on your definition of greatness.

  • [Eccleston, Tennant, Smith? Frak it... Adipose?]

  • If you value

  • administrative competence over ill-advised adventure,

  • than Zheng He is certainly the winner.

  • But the reason we remember Columbus over him

  • or Vasco de Gama

  • is that Columbus’s voyages had a lasting impact on the world,

  • even if it wasn’t necessarily a positive one.

  • And that makes me wonder what kind of person you’d want to be:

  • A capable administrator and brilliant sailor like Zheng He?

  • A daring captain like de Gama?

  • Or the bearer of a complicated but famous legacy like Columbus?

  • Let me know in comments.

  • Thanks for watching, and well see you next week.

  • Crash Course is produced and directed by

  • Stan Muller,

  • our script supervisor is

  • Danica Johnson.

  • The show is written by my

  • high school history teacher

  • Raoul Meyer and myself,

  • and our graphics team is

  • Thought Bubble.

  • [Seriously, no Canadians made it past Stanley Cup Round 1?]

  • Last week’s Phrase of the Week was,

  • You smell pretty.”

  • [missed an opportunity for banjo picking there...]

  • Thanks for that suggestion, by the way.

  • If you want to suggest future phrases of the week,

  • you can do so in comments

  • where you can also guess at this weeks phrase of the week

  • or ask questions about today’s video

  • that will be answered by our team of historians.

  • Thanks for watching Crash Course,

  • and as we say in my home town,

  • Don’t forget you're Stuck In My Heart Now, Where My Blood Belongs.

Hi, I’m John Green;

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B1 中級

哥倫布、德伽馬、鄭和!15世紀的航海家。速成班。世界歷史21號 (Columbus, de Gama, and Zheng He! 15th Century Mariners. Crash Course: World History #21)

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    Chi-feng Liu 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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