Bro is a fraud - ain’t no fucking way guns and ships were a minor factor to this situation

I find this video too simplistic. It's a resonable argument, that diseases were an important factor in conquering Americas, it's a good point because it isn't something people usually bring up. But saying that lack of diseases prevented Europeans from conquering Africa and Asia is just bollocks. What made China so easy to conquer, was it's disfunctional, not working goverment system, corrupt in every way possible. China throughout the history almost didn't change in terms of the way it's goverened, hence it has been conquered multiple times by different other nations: Mongols, Manchus, even Japanese more recently. Conquering people, after the conquest were always assimilated into Chinese culture, after time and generations repeating the exact same govermental errors, leading to another downfall. On the other hand, in Africa, there weren't a centralized goverment, people were split into multiple smaller groups, divided so much, the land was easily conquered by more coordinated forces from abroad, especially when you could play warring factions against each other. Both situations had nothing to do with diseases, nor the technology was a major factor, it had to do with disfunctional goverments on both continents. I would like to remind everyone, that battle at Lake Poyang in China took a place at 1363, where two different Chinese factions used gunpowder, canons and grenades on board of ships extensively on tens of thousands of ships. It's not that the technology was not present there, it's that it has not been properly utilized on a govermental level, and hundreds year from this, proper military gunpowder usage was less, not more popular. Financial, organizational and corruption issues again.

@@dziku2222 Ah yes the notorious "coordinated forces" of the 19th century who managed to march through the entirety of the central african rainforest battling any native soldiers they came across, the african soldiers who somehow were technologically at the same level but never managed to have the same amount of coordination because of infighting. Where can i find more information on this event in history?

@@cazek445 upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Scramble-for-Africa-1880-1913-v2.png

No you’re just completely wrong. A society that has not discovered metallurgy can only beat the advanced society numerologically. The societies of Europe and Asia were exponentially more advanced than those of the Americas and Africa.

Yes, this is even more striking with the Portuguese, whose colonial expansion was mostly in the Indian Ocean. Even though they were facing people of an otherwise similar technological level, their powerful ships allowed them to dominate the sea lanes and impose their will on kingdoms half the world away.

and metal working...

Wrong. The Spanish did NOT take down the Aztec Empire; their TLAXCALAN allies did. Nor did the Spanish have the man power to subjugate and ethnically cleanse the natives from Mexico and South America, which is WHY there's so many brown mixed race MESTIZOS in Latin America. The Spaniards would have liked it to be all Spanish blood Europeans living there if they could, BUT the natives' populations were still high and in full force. They HAD to interbreed with them to at least get them to become culturally Spanish, since it was impossible to make them genetically so. This was especially true in my family's home state of Zacatecas. The "Chichimeca" were a group of nomads that were the ONLY Indians that the Spanish never outright conquered. Their ability to live off the desert land and know where to ambush supply lines and civilian homesteads made it impossible for them to conquer the area and safely move north, so they recruited some of their Tlazcalan allies and mestizos to go to Zacatecas in order to interbreed with the locals and make them culturally Spanish in exchange for land and money. And it worked! They gave up their nomadic ways and adopted Catholicism along with their new mestiza wives. The early interbreeding with the Spanish gave the natives in Latin America the immunity from European diseases, and since mixed blood mestizos were already discriminated against they would tend to breed more with other natives or mestizos, which only boosted the number of brown people instead of whites. The English however didn't have this problem because they arrived literally one hundred years later, and by that time Smallpox, plague, and all other European diseases wiped out the natives to literally only 10% of their former population. Making it easier for the British to take their land and push them out without having to interbreed or culturally assimilate them.

And don’t forget the horses, donkeys and mules when talking about transportation.

Cortez said him self if each of his mean killed killed 20,000 Aztecs in battle they would still lose because there was so many Aztecs ..they left went back to Spain came back yo America to find disease had killed millions of poeple

The Tlaxcalans were so influential and tied up in Spanish colonial activity, that there are Nahua loanwords in Phillipino languages from how many of them travelled to help the Spanish across the Pacific

I don't think it was inevitable that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and the Inca. The Spanish was always incredible outnumbered, but the Spanish made the right decision at the right time by allying with the Aztecs' tributaries and by kidnapping the Inca emperor. Both empires were in shambles mainly due to losing 90% of their population but also due to internal division.

@@8is you are right, it wasn't inevitable at all. There were several moments when either the Tlaxcallans or Aztecs would have wiped Cortez's army off the face of the earth had slightly different decisions been made. The Conquistadors were almost entirely wiped out in la noche triste for instance (a battle which the Aztecs unambiguously won)

​@@sankarchaya It's honestly one of the more absurd events in history. No one could've predicted that after a several centuries long conquest, the Spanish would discover an entire new continent on the other side of the world, go there, just barely be able to conquer two larger empires, complete and utterly consolidate their gains and eradicate nearly all previous culture replacing it with what's essentially an extension of western civilization.

colonisation is always a story about of divide et impera, no large European army set sail to conquer and colonize

Sorry to break it to you but most of history is "racist" lol

@@maxwillis3840there’s a difference between actual history being that way and glorifying it.

@HighFlySoyGuy an accurate retelling of history isn't necessarily glorifying it; but even so, there is plenty within European history to worthily glorify.

@@HighFlySoyGuy Europeans have every right to be proud of our history and our ancestors

@@enochpowellwasright899 I was specifically talking about glorifying racism so how’d you go there from that?

The industrial revolution also provided a lot of excess population. Compared to pre-industrial agriculture, where the vast majority of people were growing food, industrial agriculture leaves a lot of people free for the army or resettlement.

@@nikolatasev4948 True. Ironically though, most migration of Europeans was to colonies that were established before the industrial revolution (with the exception of Australia/New Zealand, possibly South Africa). Equatorial Africa, India, and China saw almost no migration of Europeans, probably due to disease. I think the later, industrial phase of colonization able to happen because the Europeans figured out how to do it, after practicing in the Americas on a population decimated by disease. Thus, after using the big armies, they could maintain control with small administrations.

@@mliittsc63 Equatorial Africa and China are a matter of how the Europeans were starting to exhaust themselves, they already had their settlement phase, hard to continue the mass spree, and how do you even colonise China en masse? Too many people. India meanwhile is also the same, too many people, not empty enough for settling down en masse.

A lot of the population growth in the 19th century was possible because of potatoes. And those were first found in south america, wouldn't have come to Europe without the early conquest and colonization period.

@@nahblue pretty sure you could've just... imported the potato without colonisation, mind you disease.

And down from French Canada, which was colonized before the English arrived. Also north from Florida and New Mexico. Plus de Soto's travels from the Carolinas west to the Mississippi River and north along the river to southern Illinois. Cabaza de Vaca trip from Texas to Arizona.

According to Charles Mann, an area 200 miles long and 40 miles wide had been emptied by disease before the Mayflower arrived. In response to the kidnapping of several Wampanoag young people, the tribe kidnapped the crew of the next ship and distributed the captives. Historians suspect that the disease that killed up to 90% of the tribe was hepatitis A. While this outbreak burned itself out without spreading the length and breadth of the Americas, other outbreaks did. Check out "Pox Americana" by Elizabeth A Fenn. She writes of the early 18th century outbreak of smallpox. This outbreak began in the Spanish empire and spread north to both the French and English colonies. The French and Indian War only spread it more.

I read somewhere, that an English colonist guest through were 300,000 natives I have hear of an anthropologist estimate of 3,000,000. Why the difference, my guess is the loss to disease between Spanish exploration and English colonization.

Yeah I heard some people say native Americans in the us were the way they were not just because of frugal living but because when the British arrived they encountered the remains of basically a zombie apocalypse

It’s estimated that 50 years after first contact with Europeans, the population of North and Central America was halved by disease

evidence?

@@michaelsonsarmiento5943 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonor_Cort%C3%A9s_Moctezuma es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionisio_Inca_Yupanqui

@@michaelsonsarmiento5943 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_real_incaica

@@michaelsonsarmiento5943 I gave you a couple links, there have been several presidents in Latin America who are descended from Inca nobility too, including the current queen of the Netherlands.

Absolutely correct. The spanish armies never crossed the sea - as they were fighting all over Europe - and the conquistadores basically established alliances with the natives that were already at war with each other. The native elites were assimilated as noblemen of the empire and had the same status than the spaniards, that already had the order of evangelising and mixing from the early 1500. You can still easily see today this mixture, that central american population look mesoamerican, peruvians look peruvian, etc... You can't say that from any other colonised territory by the europeans, were the natives were just completely anihilated.

The issue with your comment being that technological advantage couldn’t have amounted to much of anything without the massive population wipes from disease. Disease is almost certainly the most dominant factor which allowed for any of any of the others to be close to relevant

​@@domgaar9933 Without the mentality, the moves (different, at that; the spanish or portuguese colonizers weren't like the english colonizers), the technological superiority etc the natives wouldn't have been colonized and the europeans wouldn't have retained control. Diseases or not.

Technological superiority? Yes, in many respects, the colonizers were technologically advanced; BUT, the indigenous (especially in the Northeastern Woodlands) also used firearms, and had far more advanced tactics in respect to guerilla warfare, than the Europeans. In many colonial wars, the native peoples actually had superior arms from their decades of trading with people like the Dutch!

I disagree, the Technological advantage was minimal particularily in the Central and South America, where the terrain was not favourable to either guns or Horses, disease was the major cause for their downfall, not only in terms of the death caused but also in how disorderly a society becomes after losing so much population in such short time. Then there was also the incredible amount of infighting in the America's that helped Europe.

​@@masterdclone2172 why didn't the diseases go both ways? what immunity did the European explorers have to immunize themselves against the American masses? the superiority in European medicine clearly was more important that the inferiority in medical care care. This is made all the more apparent when reviewing the accounts of the injured.

Yes, that was the norm. That was how poor people (i.e. most people) kept warm. Pretty much impossible not to share germs with the animals doing that.

That's simply not true? As a rule people didn't do that, they had houses and beds to sleep in.

@@jackwalters5506Yeah but in the colonial era you actually had to construct those houses and beds since there wasn't that many settlements.

@@DarthFhenix55 yeah, people still had beds. They aren't exactly very hard to make. Having beds was absolutely the norm for basically everyone across all of time

@@jackwalters5506 Yeah, but it's not the same sleeping in a hand-made bed in the middle of a forest than sleeping in a house.

very well said

There's definitely evidence of trans Atlantic trade before Columbus.

The 19th century colonisation of Africa was spectacular, but it lasted barely a century. Livingstone trekked through Africa in the 1850's, the Berlin Congress was in 1878, Africa became independent in the early 1960's. That is less than a century of effective colonial rule. Barely two generations. A wink of an eye.

@@theo-dr2dz Yet still the Africans and left wing psuedo intellectuals blame the evil white men for all their misfortunes, conveniently forgetting that they are still tribal societies and each tribe tries to suppress it's neighbour. Not to mention dictatorial governments that have emerged after the European countries tried their best to leave these countries with some sort of democratic process and a civil administration. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Why is Botswana doing so well and neighbouring Zimbabwe one of the poorest countries in the world. That is a question that the Africans themselves must answer to one another if this impoverished but potentially wealthy continent is ever going to advance.

The 1800s massive colonial expansion was brought about by britain becoming the dominant power creating peace in europe allowing all of europe to redirect their efforts outwards for 100 years

It is also true that technologies arise from previous technologies generally speaking. Coke blasting furnaces give way to the Bessemer process. This is usually incremental.

... Which were mostly all technologies from ancient roman times...

Why does that matter? Its interesting surely. But most technological advancement happens in spurts and then stagnates for a time. @@cazek445

“Combined European efforts” the Europeans fought each other over their empires for centuries. European cooperation is a myth

True enough. But the video wasn't comparing various civilizations' abilities to colonize, but the question of what gave the Europeans the advantage once they had the ability (what you are describing) to project colonies overseas.

I think it's also important to understand that at the time, people had no idea of such things as germs and diseases. Let alone how to tackle it.

The inverse was true as well. Europeans had a hard time dealing with African borne diseases. Although the Europeans kept sticking their noses into everyone’s businesses, which is why they were so immune to most diseases and suffered all of them themselves. Keep in mind he sites that 90% of the Indian population were deceased from 1500 to 1650 (1776 colonies were still on the eastern seaboard) due to diseases which meant that the small colonies in the Americas which at the time had no grand designs we’re just spreading diseases by accident, they were not deliberate.

It had a large impact, but the technological gap is massively underplayed in this video. Firearms vs no firearms. Standing army vs no standing army. Cavalry vs no cavalry. Organized society vs unorganized societies. Nevermind the massive massive gap in warship technologies. All pre-industrialization. EDIT: spelling mistake

@@mrcrowley109 That is true. But disease was still a more important factor than technology.

Diseases were more important. I think that was because the Europeans never entered America in enough numbers for their technological advantage to really play out in those early centuries

Disease is only 1 small fraction of the puzzle! Most over emphasize western European technology which was more advanced than any in the globe in the high Middle Ages in the (Proto-Renaissance) in the 1300's after the black plaque & it would be a travesty to leave unmentioned the earlier Carolingian renaissance in the late 8th century through the 9th century unmentioned. The Italian Renaissance was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries this changed Europe beyond recognition more advanced than anywhere on the globe undoubtably but only gets less attention due to the English Renaissance a cultural & artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century that gave rise to Britain- the United Kingdoms of Comprised Scotland, Wales, Ireland now slit & of course England that would be the 1st to industrialize. Without England later the UK there is no Industrialization & all 3 industrial revolution had England & the Uk at the helm, of it though the USA had as much a part play in the 3rd post WW2 in 1947 that can't be ignored! you are trying to summarise over 1/2 a millennia of human history into less then 10 minutes pushing ideological nonsense as you obviously know very little on the matter you claim knowledge upon. Beyond technology & disease Europe succeeded through maritime knowledge having an age of exploration no other society outside Europe would replicate in history. Europe desired the unknown for adventure-riches while the rest of the world for the most part knew little of what lied beyond their borders that where often unstable if even drawn on a map! Beyond technology any knowledge be it economics, cartography & so forth it gives no technology but it's management for massive operation rivalled anything the world could hope to muster when compared to western Europe in the 1500's. Administration of western Europe was an enterprising company to compared to wares seller out of a cart. Only thing more competitive than war is business! western Europe was playing a different game to the rest of the world that couldn't compete & beside the USA, Canda & Japan as well as horribly China few to no nations are worth mentioning on the global power be it by any means virtuous or otherwise. Less than 20 nations account for 1/2 the worlds wealth & it's for more reasons than just colonies for their geography blessed them & they were adaptive-innovative while the rest of the world lazed about for the most part with exceptions Everyone likes to think their Land & people great, but someone has to draw the short straw of life & that is just a hard unpleasant truth few want to accept. Who ever said life was meant to be easy? ;) ''Hell is full of good meanings and wishes" Africans, most Asian & south Americans always talk of good X while wishing X but nothing to show for it. They work hard rather than smart & this is what separates them from the western civilization that got to what it is through sceptic scrutiny & rational while the 3rd world believed in nonsense clinging to faith along with superstitious jabber even today for the most part! Mentality-culture determines success. A plain & simple truth few want to admit!

True, in military technology they were equal or inferior to North Africans and Arabs, and probably inferior to Chinese at the time. But Europeans did have vast superiority in military technology over the Native Americans. Steel and horses did make them OP against the Aztecs and Incas.

@@arnijulian6241 Yes, mindset is everything, which was amply demonstrated by the Chinese deliberately destroying their huge fleet of ocean ships because they considered exploring the world to be 'unnecessary'. That is why the Portuguese soon ended up on their doorstep instead of the other way around. It is also why Europeans needed to inform the Chinese that the Earth is a globe.

What kept most Europeans out of Sub-Saharan Africa for centuries was the fact that Europeans had no resistance to Africa's Tropical diseases. Sub-Saharan Africa was literally "the white mans grave". In the second half of the 19th century medical advances changed this, and the African land rush was on. Also, by that time the gap between European technology and Sub-Saharan Africa had widened so much that the native African peoples had no chance to turn back the European tide. Match locks and Flint locks don't stand much chance against breach loading cartridge guns and light artillery. And many African populations still relied on edged hand weapons or hand or bow thrown weapons. Once again, the outcome was never in doubt.

I m not surprised at all. This is the result of the self serving inflated golfed history being fed to the West for at least a century -- makes them think that they are/were the center of the universe. It takes a bit of time I guess to come to terms with the real history.

That was 1532, 40 years after plagues had begun to ravage the continent, remember the natives had no access to any large domesticated animals, they had no mules, no horses, no oxen, no cattle, no chickens (the aztecs had some ducks), there's a point where advancing your civilization becomes very difficult when the fastest way to get a message across is a guy physically running over to the other side of your empire

This is a much better explanation for why Europeans only colonized much of Africa in the 1800's. Note that they had already established a foothold in what is now South Africa much earlier than that, due to it having a much milder climate and being largely free of malaria. So the technological advantages of 1500's and 1600's Europe were enough - except for the matter of African diseases which killed European explorers and settlers.

I've learned that for the French part, they worked with Lebanese to settle there in Africa, because French didn't want too (because of disease and all...). The Lebanese wanted to settle in America but the French drop them in Senegal and other place as they will do business for the french here...

The industrialization played a larger part than you are implying. If not then Africa would've been colonized in the 1500s. The technology they had back then was not effective on the Continent. Even in the 1700s (think about loading a musket and fighting in the thick bush). African societies had organization, experienced armies and tactics. Now if you were to say the established rivalries amongst nations that existed in Africa already may have been an additional factor. I could take that argument. There were many competing kingdoms and of course Africa did not have a view of "pan-africanism" or a fluid racial identity at that time.

Portugal didn’t colonize Africa because it would be impossible, they only had 1 million citizens in Portugal! They weren’t interested in colonization, their main goal was to establish outposts in order to support their ships going back and forward from India. Of course the explorers and representatives spoke as equals with African kingdoms, they had much much more people than the few hundreds of a portuguese outpost, it has nothing to do with not being more technological… do you honestly believe Africans were technologically more advanced than the Portuguese???

@@Cobalt1520 The Kingdom of Benin, Meroe, Axum and Mali were superior to Portugal in the 1400.

India was under British control before the 1800's - but largely because of historical accidents such as the collapse of the Mughal Empire, after Delhi was sacked by some Persians in 1721. This allowed the East India company merchants to use the age-old tactics of divide and conquer, setting various disaffected factions against each other, and accidentally creating an empire that the stock holders back in England had neither requested, desired, nor expected.

@@davidbarry6900 You absolutely forget that England was the place where the Industrial revolution started the earliest and where this technological superiority was actually already present in the late 18th century, before it was the case in the rest of Europe. So the conquest of India already kind of happened in this window of opportunity of emerging technological superiority, and the consolidiation of British rule over India certainly happened during that time of technological superiority.

​@@mardasman428 wrong, the consolidation of India IS the direct cause of technological ascendancy via economic supremacy.

@@davidbarry6900 Yes, this is important. The role of stochastic events in human history likely had a huge impact on outcomes. I don't say that lightly, because I also consider material factors (e.g., regional and local ecologies, food availability and procurement technology, demography) to have been of high significance.

yep, Portugal managed to conquer several african and asian areas during a long time, saved the Ethiopian empire from the sudanese neighborgs and even keep it until british appeared saying "hallo mate"

What I know is that Africans had a lot of diseases dangerous to us Europeans, but due to the industrialization we managed to create more effective medicine. Is what I've heard.

Crazy stupid, the VOC (dutch) was abolished in 1796, thats 200 years of colonization before this dude talks about this "gap".

@@fivepack3887 Watch the video again and then read up on history of Asia in the 1600s and 1700s. Trade (monopolies) was not colonialization. Europeans had only tiny footholds in Asia and Africa in those times. Yes they dominated long distance trade, but did not excercise local politcal power outside a few coastal cities.

No the British had NOT conquered large parts of India. They had vasalized large parts of India. The local political structures were still intact self ruled. Britain had merely managed to dominate the power euqilibrium and control foreign politics of most of those entities. Thats not (yet) colonialization. PS: Watch carefully what the Chinese will (try to) do in Africa in the next 20 years.

@@michaelrenper796 More like "not colonialization". They whole company stuff were more or less being used to fool the locals so that the Dutch didn't seems appear as invading country. They already killing and controlling the local monarchs during VOC reign.

europeans looked to traverse the atlantic because constantinople fell to the turks

@@lost524 OP was talking about the 19th century tho. 1453 helped plant the seed, but it wasn't until much, much later that it would grow into the classic European imperialism.

@@lost524 also because the ottomans were cockblocking the spice trade route

​@@marusdod3685they didn't block it but took their cut what increased the price and scarcity. So european traders and their patrons (nobilty) funded the discovery of direct trade routes. This problem persisted even in 20th century like the suez canal crisis.

@@farkasabel That is blocking it dummy. They block it, and force you to pay in order to pass through.

Because of capitalism

Narrow it down, why did it happen In Britain first ?

The lust for wealth and power combined with the genius of autistic men. Still true today, just most evident in the US currently.

​@@visorij3374The major theory is that the large amount of coal is the reason. Steam engines could be used to pump water out of coal mines and because the coal is already there they were cheap enough to run. This meant people had an incentive to improve and build more of them.

That was the largely the 1800s.

Just be careful! There is a lot of information that's biased or false especially on a platform like KZfaq. I'm not talking about this video by amy means but in general.

​@@vlody33 half the enjoyment of studying history is sorting through the myths and misconceptions to find something close to the "truth" on a subject.

Some might argue commercial institutions like banking were what separated Europe from the rest of the world. Banking changes one's frame of reference for economic endeavors. Suddenly "investment" becomes the default way of thinking. Now you have people inventing things, sailing to find new markets to trade, opening new lands for settlement.

Interesting, I haven't heard of banking being instrumental in the pursuit of knowledge and progress! Makes sense though, I'll have to do more research

And le'ts not overlook the fact that the rise of banking was made possible thanks to the accumulation of wealth created by the slave trade and the exploitation of slaves. Anthropologist Sydney Mintz's book Sweetness and Power greatly explain the links between slavery, wealth and the industrial revolution.

​@@liversuccess1420Yes its true, while Spain and Portugal were entirely state sponsored there were many limited stock companies in the colonial business, the VOC, the British East India Company, Hudsons Bay, the Virginia co etc. All the way down to DeBeers.

Banking is what we use to colonize in modern times

I really second this

50% of the European population went extinct in the 12th and 13th century because the Mongold brought the Bubonic Plague to Europe. These disease extinction events has happend more times in human history

Not shocking when you study European history. Hitler, Leopold, Columbus

Yeah..

Cope

​@@Shrouded_reaperYes, that's what he is pointing out.

@@Ravi9A Should have tried inventing a wheel

@@Shrouded_reaperDid you invent the wheel?

@5even.1nches Your people didn't have a high enough IQ to either invent or utilise their alleged inventions to their capacity and so got rolled by my people. Sorry not sorry, that's just the grinding wheel of history and you lost.

I would say its the opposite, belief in economic growth and investment came as a consequence of capitalism and industrialization. Sure you had banks in europe in medieval times but power was centralized in the hands of the king and as such economic and politican power was one whereas today it exists in seperate but interconnected spheres.

@@Windsofchange99 The main reason Great Britain was the first country to industrialize was because of its unique culture. As soon as it caught on, the countries that was the most culturally similar to Britain adapted the same technology and also started industrializing. Economic growth didn't really exist before the industrial revolution, so that was certainly a new concept, but private markets and investors had already existed for centuries at that point. The Dutch became famously successful due to their advances in markets and investments in the 1600s. An entire class of adventure capitalists created the Dutch empire.

Indeed and Britain needed machinery because of its cripplingly high cost of labour. Qing China would never have had that problem. Why invest in labour saving devices when peasants owe you free labour?

After the plauge (and losing 50% of its population) europe did something unepected, the renaissance. The renaissance would build the foundament for everything that would come later. The other great civilisations would go down even more conservative and/or fundamentalist paths at the same time. The islamic world would be become extreme fundamenalistic, the indians would become ultra conservative and the chinese would become isolanistic.

The video is good, but I would add two more reasons; the western state and the way war was waged. The european state was consolidated at that specific time and it provided a great way to ideologicaly motivate people, something very few other systems at the time did. On the other side, the lack of a belief in a central political entity ment, that a divide and conquer strategy was possible(see India). On the second, war, Europeans were some of the few at the time to fight in order to kill. For most cultures war was waged in order to capture enemies(see precolombian civilazations). There was a limited number of colonies in Asia and Africa but the population density prevented the pace of colonazzation that happenned in the Americas. In short, I don t think that "cultural reasons" were insignificant in a broader sense, but I would be more careful with the term since it is so broad.

You touch on two important points, each of which would be a good topic for a stand-alone video: (1) The Spanish didn't defeat the Aztecs single-handedly but were in coalition with a very large number of indigenous allies, and (2) The European conquest of the Americas was not total in the early modern period (e.g. the Maya). They would both be important correctives to widely held historical misconceptions. With regard to the second point, it is worth noting that the period in which Europeans and people of European descent finally did attain complete mastery of the Americas was in the late 19th century, in the wake of industrialization. Regarding the Aztecs and Incas, just to clarify -- I'm not saying that they fell simply because of disease. You and I seem to agree that European technology was not an important factor in their fall. I didn't mention the Spaniards' indigenous allies in Mexico in 1519-21 because I was making a wider point about the Americas in general. That said, disease did in fact play a role in the conquests of both the Aztecs and Incas. Tenochtitlan was hit by a smallpox outbreak prior to the final siege, and the Inca civil war you mentioned was precipitated by the Sapa Inca dying of smallpox. (Smallpox was one of the diseases inadvertently introduced from Europe.) Disease in Africa DID hold back the Europeans. They did not go into the interior of Africa until modern drugs started becoming available in the late 19th century. The modern pharmaceutical industry was made possible by industrialization.

I think someone would sooner or later still find America even if trade wasn't blocked. It was just going to happen I think. Maybe Europeans but later like in 1600s or maybe Chinese or Russians as they started to expand in Siberia. Someone would find it I think. Just like Vikings managed to find it

@@premodernist_history sure it held back Europeans somewhat. But Europeans also didn't need to go to the interior of Africa.

@@skeletorlikespotatoes7846 The why is a lot more difficult to answer than the how.

@@8is why what?

Settler colonialism ....

Reading Spengler really puts everything into perspective. Europeans, and by extension Americans, were born to expand and conquer. They were made to lead the world technologically, economically, and culturally.

Spot on. Europeans being able to travel entire world is a sign of superiority, Europeans are excellent sailors and shipbuilders.

@@rimiserk8277 True. As far as I can remember, I have heard of European ships fighting on the other side of the globe for 500ish years, but I have never heard of the Chinese, Persians, Indians coming anywhere close, until now in these resent decades

@@RandomNorwegianGuy. I only heard of Ottomans raiding Ireland and Iceland for slaves, for example. In reality, Ottomans are kinda white and have been exposed to European technology, beside that, never heard of anyone else.

@@rimiserk8277 " Ottomans are kind white " lmao , what European technogy they were oxposed to at the time tell me ?

But the Chinese and Malaysian kingdoms traded with us in South East Africa from about 600AD, a full 1000 or so years before Europeans arrival. And yes they came here by boat, take a look at Madagascar for example it is racially the way it is because of Malay traders settling it, yet it is more than 3000miles from the Malay peninsular.

In reality, this video author left only one detail aside. Most natives died out of disease, yes. But the contamination happened on purpose, by use of biological warfare. In some cases, they gave clothes infected with smallpox to the natives. This, alone, have wiped out the entire Goitacá tribe (which consisted of many villages) Europeans also used smallpox, flu and yellow fever, and have usually poisoned the waters of the natives. There’s a famous documented case where they used a catapult to throw dead infected HUMAN bodies in the middle of a fortified city. So natives died due to disease, yes, but not “naturally” like on the Black Plague. It was very, very intentional.

Considering germ theory didn't even exist at the time its very, very unlikely that there was any intentional biological warfare. It certainly helped hasten colonization but wasn't a primary weapon, just an unexpected bonus.

​@@NathanHenriquefaso europeans learned something from mongols.

Well now I can agree that they didn't know what a virus/germ is but they know that throwing rotting bodies at the enemy makes them ill, that was know and used by the romans and mongols half a millennium early.

@@tau-5794 I'd say wiping out 90% of the population was more than an unexpected bonus. It was the main factor that enabled colonization. Also, it doesn't matter whether or not people knew germ theory (seriously?). You don't need to know germ theory to know that diseases are contagious . The Mongols knew this as they catapulted bodies over city walls to spread diseases among the inhabitants under siege. Quarantine and isolation were also practiced in Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages. That being said, Europeans didn't generally spread diseases intentionally in the Americas. Some did (smallpox blankets), but for the most part it was unintentional.

Yes, "disease" is a coping mechanism. As if the numbers of colonists weren't exposed to the exact same scenario, if not much worse since these diseases were native to the land and not allegedly inhabiting some blankets.

The Catholic church who chooses the kings in Europe already knew about germ warfare as early as the 12th century flinging corpse's over besieged city walls.

"the old world theatre saw the trend of setting up ports and strongholds along the coasts. This itself is phenomenal on its own. Certainly this had not been tried to such an extent by any civilisation in any time period." *Cough* the Phoeniciens *cough* and the greeks *cough* and something something *cough* cartaginians.

​@@ihabhatim5825All belonging to what we would call Europe.

@@ihabhatim5825 if phoenician and Greek were phenomenal enough for you, then the Arabic and Hindu ports in the medieval era should count too. But it's my bad. I forgot to emphasize the scale.

They had to negotiate, get leaders on their side, provide land, protection etc. That’s vastly different than what happened later.

@@godofthisshit Europeans seeking to get natives on their side is "The French & Indian War" got its name. It's just a sensible thing to do, and the important thing is that the Europeans kept growing in power.

​@@godofthisshitSpain conquered the philippines in the 1500s and 1600s

Same with the Philippines. Spain has already begun their conquest of the Philippines in 1565 and by the end of 1800 we are are already fighting for our independence.

Exactly, basically European increase in colonisation of the Americas happened at the same time as Asia and Africa. The colonies only expanded inland in 1800s, same as Africa and Asia. The Portuguese sailed around the tip of Africa at the same time they discovered Americas. They were successfull in Africa in the same way that they were in the Americas

" Countries in Central and South America keep having between 60 and 95 % of native DNA nowadays". That is very much false, and the reality is the opposite. Most of the ancestry of Latin Americans is European. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Latin_America#Genetic_studies

the spanish who are european, also owe the vast amount of their success to diseases as well. research

Yeah, my channel's been kind of under the radar. Thanks for helping!

Theres a definite sense of the Aztecs having no foreign affair experience when you read about how Cortez took Tenochtitlan.

And as another portuguese here, I gotta add that all that slavery didn't even started as and African idea,.. it's not European's or Africans fault. It was the ARABS the ones who for CENTURIES prior to the arrival of the Europeans, were already invading, killing and destroying African tribes and enslaving them, as still of today slavery is allowed and legislated in their religious book Q'uran. No wonder The African tribes learnt it was better to trade their own prisioners as slaves than having their whole village destroid. Also, in Lisbon there's official historic records that shows letters from the King of Congo and the Portuguese, and he was the one who offered them his prisioners. He even asked for more ships to be sent there so he could trade more for more armoury. But it was normal for them already somehow. It wasn't normal to us. We didn't come up with the idea of enslaving people. It was already going on there.

And as another portuguese here, I gotta add that all that slavery didn't even started as and African idea,.. it's not European's or Africans fault. It was the ARABS the ones who for CENTURIES prior to the arrival of the Europeans, were already invading, killing and destroying African tribes and enslaving them, as still of today slavery is allowed and legislated in their religious book Q'uran. No wonder The African tribes learnt it was better to trade their own prisioners as slaves than having their whole village destroid. Also, in Lisbon there's official historic records that shows letters from the King of Congo and the Portuguese, and he was the one who offered them his prisioners. He even asked for more ships to be sent there so he could trade more for more armoury. But it was normal for them already somehow. It wasn't normal to us. We didn't come up with the idea of enslaving people. It was already going on there.

And as another portuguese here, I gotta add that all that slavery didn't even started as and African idea,.. it's not European's or Africans fault. It was the ARABS the ones who for CENTURIES prior to the arrival of the Europeans, were already invading, killing and destroying African tribes and enslaving them, as still of today slavery is allowed and legislated in their religious book Q'uran. No wonder The African tribes learnt it was better to trade their own prisioners as slaves than having their whole village destroid. Also, in Lisbon there's official historic records that shows letters from the King of Congo and the Portuguese, and he was the one who offered them his prisioners. He even asked for more ships to be sent there so he could trade more for more armoury. But it was normal for them already somehow. It wasn't normal to us. We didn't come up with the idea of enslaving people. It was already going on there.

And as another portuguese here, I gotta add that all that slavery didn't even started as and African idea,.. it's not European's or Africans fault. It was the ARABS the ones who for CENTURIES prior to the arrival of the Europeans, were already invading, killing and destroying African tribes and enslaving them, as still of today slavery is allowed and legislated in their religious book Q'uran. No wonder The African tribes learnt it was better to trade their own prisioners as slaves than having their whole village destroid. Also, in Lisbon there's official historic records that shows letters from the King of Congo and the Portuguese, and he was the one who offered them his prisioners. He even asked for more ships to be sent there so he could trade more for more armoury. But it was normal for them already somehow. It wasn't normal to us. We didn't come up with the idea of enslaving people. It was already going on there.

And as another portuguese here, I gotta add that all that slavery didn't even started as and African idea,.. it's not European's or Africans fault. It was the ARABS the ones who for CENTURIES prior to the arrival of the Europeans, were already invading, killing and destroying African tribes and enslaving them, as still of today slavery is allowed and legislated in their religious book Q'uran. No wonder The African tribes learnt it was better to trade their own prisioners as slaves than having their whole village destroid. Also, in Lisbon there's official historic records that shows letters from the King of Congo and the Portuguese, and he was the one who offered them his prisioners. He even asked for more ships to be sent there so he could trade more for more armoury. But it was normal for them already somehow. It wasn't normal to us. We didn't come up with the idea of enslaving people. It was already going on there.

Correct. Until then it was impossible for whites to enter Africa.

sorry you had to witness all that

@@irnpoo lol 😂

Colonization may have still been successful in NA/SA, but it's interesting to think what mass migration would have done to Native American society. Would they have accepted immigrants en masse?

@@redryan20000no successful country takes in migrants en masse

@@redryan20000 There was already a collapse of some sort (disease?, Malthusian?) in the century before Columbus arrived. The Mississippian culture collapsed. Linguistic evidence suggests the Cree rapidly expanded and filled a void ~500 years ago. Cabot spent two summers in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (1497 +1498) and didn't see any natives, and only scant logging evidence of human activity. And of course the Mayans.

Nobody followed Columbus lol. Portugal was pioneer and then countries followed them. Columbus studied in Sagres Portugal.

​@@BurniaccThat's true. Hi from Spain.

Europe geographically is adavantaged in some sense. The biggest civilaztions were stopped by geography. For example China has Siberian tundra in the north, the highest mountains on the world in the west, tropical forest in the south and the biggest ocean in the east. African kongdoms were stopped by the sahara but in the east coast could trade with muslims. Indian subcontinent is kinda delimited by the aIndus and Himalaya. But still the other places where they could go were already "occupied" by others

@@andreamarino6010 Yeap, geography makes history.

In terms of Geography and resources, there was also the fact that Europeans had access to larger trees and different types of useable wood that allowed them to manufacture fleets of ships. There is the misconception that the Iberian peninsula is dry and desert like but this isn’t true in the north of Spain and west in Portugal, where it is heavily forested. It was a major advantage compared to what was available in North Africa. Combined with superior naval technology and improved map making, the Spanish and Portuguese also managed to bottle in the Turks and North Africans at Gibraltar and the various straights in the Indian Ocean, keeping them from expanding outward.

This is pretty basic world history. 😂

Compared to China or Japan, Europe was pretty backwards when it came to military doctrine... compare 100 years war with Feudal Japanese squabbles. European civilizations were really simplistic compared to Asia and Middle East until early modern era and Industrial revolution.

Lol😂 British literally copied Indian war tactics and navy building to make themselves stronger. Dutch were stronger than British but they were completely annihilated by India after which the water body was named the Indian Ocean.

@@divyavashisth4919Lmao no one is copying Indian doctrine

The prevalence of coal in britain (unrivaled over such a small area) and Britain being the first truly capitalist nation

Someone said Qing China has so much labor an industrial revolution was not needed. Plus Europe had a belife in science from the Renaissance and smth abt believing in capitalism or some new concept of economic growth

Thanks! It was just a matter of keeping the video simple, as an intro to the concept. I agree that India does not fit neatly into the chronology I presented (nor do a few other places). It was a generalization. I really just wanted to drive home that European technology was not superior as early as many people think it was. I haven't read Hobsbawm's argument that you reference. I wonder why the British would need to have political/military control of India to be able to undercut the local textile manufacturers. Couldn't they just ensure that local princes would keep their markets open? But admittedly I don't know much about India's economic history. Your point about India being the missing link in European activity in the two hemispheres is a good one, but I think it would have been outside the scope of this video. It'd be worth someone doing a video on it though, because I suspect a lot of folks don't necessarily connect the two in their minds. My impression is that American students are taught about colonialism in North America in isolation, without reference to how it connected to the rest of the globe. Maybe that kind of feeds into the American tendency to see the U.S. as distinct from and disconnected from the rest of the world.

@@premodernist_history funny thing is, during the early modern era, in certain areas (i.e. agriculture, urban planning, and a few others) Europeans were actually technologically behind the some of the people they conquered. As you said in the video it was only during the Victorian era that Europeans got ahead of everyone else. To name an example the type of farming that the aztecs did was far more efficient that anything in Europe, and tenochtitlan was better designed than any city in Spain. The biggest reason Europeans managed to conquer during that time period was due to their extensive use of divide and conquer strategy (whether it's in Asia or americas)

Yep, and not just India, but also Malaya, East Indies (modern day Indonesia), and the Philippines. Europeans begin the colonization of those regions in the 1600s, not 1800s. The Portuguese defeated a coalition of Asian maritime empires to conquer Malacca (1511), and the Dutch later crushed successive local powers in the region (e.g. conquest of Batavia in 1619) to become the de-facto colonial overlord of majority (if not all) of the states/sultanates in East Indies by 1750s. Fact is, Europeans did have significant technological advantage in the 1600s, even in the 1500s. Europeans (e.g. the Portuguese) had superior navigation, better ships, and better guns. China (Ming Dynasty, and later Qing Dynasty) was the *ONLY* state in Asia that can compete with (or at least effectively resist) the Europeans till 1700s.

@@sasi5841 It is true that the Europeans were *NOT* universally superior in everything (at least not till mid/late 1700s). There are some aspects that they were behind, for example in chemistry and medicine, also, like you said, in agriculture (especially in some less advanced region). But the Europeans were more advanced (or at least in relative parity with the then forerunner) in certain tech, like metallurgy, astronomy, navigation, and shipbuilding. Above all, one thing that the Europeans were superior to everyone else was in *finance and economics.* Almost all of "modern" financial institutions and instruments were invented/founded in Europe. This enable European companies to absolutely outcompete their Asian and African rivals and dominate the market. After all, the success of this "divide and conquer" strategy relies heavily upon *strong finance.*

@@ihl0700677525 true

The machine gun is what did it. We saw the 19th century Brits take loses to the Zulus who weren’t even the most advanced in Africa. An 15th or 16th century england would’ve gotten annihilated in Africa.

@@godofthisshit That's not really painting the full picture, with the exception of a phase of incompetence the British pretty handily beat the Zulu's.

​@@godofthisshitlol,Portugal was already colonising in XV century in Africa,we weren't whipped out all,Portugal conquered and vassalised many African kingdoom in the XVI century like Kongo,Sultanate of Sofala ,Sultanate of Kilwa,Sultanate of Mombasa,Sultanate of Mozambique Island. Ps:We also conquered the Sultanate of Malindi

@@kermitthethinker1465 Kongo kicked the Portuguese out.

​@@kermitthethinker1465this is cope, the Congo even kicked the Portuguese out, before the 19th century the Europeans would have had it handed to them

There’s one thing that is still missing from his explanation though. Most natives died out of disease, yes. But the contamination happened on purpose, by use of biological warfare. In some cases, they gave clothes infected with smallpox to the natives. This, alone, have wiped out the entire Goitacá tribe (which consisted of many villages) Europeans also used smallpox, flu and yellow fever, and have usually poisoned the waters of the natives. There’s a famous documented case where they used a catapult to throw dead infected HUMAN bodies in the middle of a fortified city.

while ironically, the diseases kept the Europeans from venturing further into subsaharan africa's interior until almost recently

False. If disease were so important a factor, then the Spanish allies who fought the Aztecs would have died from smallpox and thereby Hernan Cortes could not have conquered the Aztec Empire. Vaccination is a scam.

Between the Mexican tribes that immeditely joined Cortes' company of troops, there were others who repeatedly tried to defeat him in battle as a matter of honor, repeatedly failed, and then joined forces with him out of honor. Between Cortes' diplomatic ability, ability to force others to join him, and ability to convince a larger Spanish force to join him instead of arresting him, it's really quite an amazing story. It would make for a great TV series but you wouldn't be allowed to because muh noble savage.

​@@C-Farsene_5Europeans faces alot of defeat in subsaharan Africa than anywhere in the world, entire European armies were destroyed by native tribes

There were some entrepreneurs who migrated from England to the US because of lower competition. And the US allowed these entrepreneurs/ businesses to grow unhindered.

I always thought it was because most Americans and proto-Canadians were English. England was the home of the Industrial Revolution, so the other Englishmen across the world could more easily implement English ideas.

More developed trade networks also

Better question: Why did China go through industrialization at that time? Because their elites were distrustful of merchants and would never allow them to have such power.

No it's not. It's sjw filth

The British had worked out their mines as deep as they could. Deeper needed steam powered pumps. Steam power instantly made it possible to retrieve masses of valuable minerals, but also made it possible to have stem powered weaving mills, metal pressing plants, weapons factories, and metal fittings for ships, steam tractors with steel ploughs and a lot of other volume manufactured stuff, all delivered by steam trains, and later, steam powered ships. (The UK had steam trains from 1860).

I read England had easy access coal mines, combine with invention of steam engine

Guns, germs, and steel. Also a knowledge of diplomacy passed on via education. Aztecs lost to their vassal states with the help of guns. There is a reason natives traded bows for guns. The Europeans kept them short on ammo, intentionally.

His video didn't put it as the biggest and foundational reason and he didn't downplay other facts

I'd say on the whole it's complicating it by saying it's not just because "europeans better than americans", which seems hard for people to understand based on the comments on this video.

The moveable type printing press was the key component for the industrial revolution.

There’s a really important detail the author left out, though. Most natives died out of disease, yes. But the contamination happened on purpose, by use of biological warfare. In some cases, they gave clothes infected with smallpox to the natives. This, alone, have wiped out the entire Goitacá tribe (which consisted of many villages) Europeans also used smallpox, flu and yellow fever, and have usually poisoned the waters of the natives. There’s a famous documented case where they used a catapult to throw dead infected HUMAN bodies in the middle of a fortified city.

I thought about this as well, perhaps it did not happen with the Vikings because the bubonic plague epidemic did not occur in Europe until the 1300s?

@@justinperez4693 actually that's a good point! I didn't take in the consideration of the effects the plague had when it comes to natural immunity. Once the European population was able to get thru the plague, I can assume that their immune system created the difference when it came for the time of colonization. That would be an easy answer to fill the plot hole. However, life is pretty complex so there's gotta be more factors that came into play too.

interesting question. My take would be that the Vikings never showed up in large numbers and had fought with the locals right from the start, thus interactions were minimized.

You have missed the real plot: The one who can write and read contracts will beat the other, hands down - especially if his uncle is the judge in the local law court, or his sister is wife of the queen.

That's far from universal. Most obviously, enough oil wealth makes you a world power, even if you have nothing else to offer but sand and fundamentalists. However, in your example the big difference is that cutting trees is relatively unskilled labor, and there are many forests, so there will probably be much competition in providing the raw timber. Joining (furniture-making) is a high-skilled craft, where it takes many years of practice to compete. All else being equal, the joiner can pick and choose suppliers and the lumberjacks have to take what they can get.

IIRC it was more a change in the political situation in the Middle East (i.e. the rise of the Ottoman Empire, ending up in it controlling pretty much the eastern coast of the Mediterranean) leading to traders and governments feeling like the trade routes were pretty much either cut or prohibitively expensive that lead to Europe wanting to develop dominance in sea power rather than merely "a peripheral location"; otherwise why wouldn't they have focused on trying to go round the Cape to link up with the Maritime Silk Road earlier? But also this is just IIRC from what I've read, I haven't done any fact checking or research prior to posting this comment haha

Dutch navy was completely annihilated by Indian navy before even british arrived!!! And British never really fought India. East india company through land acquisition and controlled of industries managed to take control of decision making.

Oh yes. The Philippines, for one.

If you're the only one literate and there's no books, what does it give?

Hmm... I'd love to hear more, just don't have time to read a new book now, and the few reviews I just looked at were very vague - can you summarize some deeper reasons for me?

@@stephenmontague6930 The book goes through pre-history to counter insurgency tactics, its an 800 page book so unfortunately I can't really summarize it for you since so much changes. However, his main argument is that the reasons certain powers triumph over others is socio-cultural differences. Whether that be how certain cultures worldviews work, or how the society's view on warfare shapes their warfighting methods, and so on. I think the best point he makes regarding technology is that the technology only matters insofar as the society develops the proper tactics to employ them, and every culture and every society develops them differently.

@@TerryGruss Yeah a lot of people are going way too far to try and explain away why the Europeans were able to dominate the globe. They take away all the agency from the Europeans themselves and give them purely deterministic reasons, I think it falls really flat and I blame Guns, Gems, and Steel for it personally.

@@TerryGruss "You don’t conquer that entire globe by accident". You speak for yourself!

​@@TerryGruss"Cultural superiority" 💀💀💀

If you poke holes in his arguments you will see a lot of what he is saying is rubbish. A few true things sprinkled in with so many falsehoods it’s comedic.

Exactly.@@stevenshoemaker8326

@@stevenshoemaker8326hate rhe facts? Cry about it