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The Making of Modern Ukraine, Class 10. Global Empires (3)

Class 10. Global Empires (3)

I want to convey this because it helps us to see a moment

where we have the Golden Horde,

we have the Europeans in the 14th century,

and we have a very important change,

which is that roughly a third of Western Europe is going

to die of this disease.

So roughly a third of the population

is going to be wiped out.

And this is very important for our Age of Exploration,

which is what we're trying to set up now.

After so much of the European population is wiped out

and avenues are cleared for innovation...

This is an optimistic story

of what happens after a plague, by the way.

So after avenues are cleared for innovation

and social advancement and after traditional barriers

for changing ways of life are broken

because of all of the death and disease,

then you have this incredible European century

of revival after the Black Death.

Meanwhile, dun-dun-dun!

Something very important happens in Byzantium in 1453,

which is that... - The Ottomans take it over.

- Yeah, it falls.

Finally, right? Finally.

Okay, from the West European point of view,

it's a thousand years late, but...

And a thousand years, let's face it, as a long time.

A thousand years late, but it finally falls in 1453.

And it falls to the Ottoman Empire, which is an entity

which we're going to cover in the next lecture.

The Ottoman Empire is very important for Ukraine.

In all these relationships,

which in our reading tend to look like Poland and Russia,

you know, west and east, the hard part

to force into the story is the southern part,

which is the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate,

and I'm going to try to force that in in the next lecture,

because none of it makes sense without the Ottoman Empire.

But the Ottoman Empire takes over Byzantium,

replaces Byzantium.

Istanbul becomes Constantinople,

and I was reminded by one of, like,

the many people who now email me about this class

that They Might Be Giants did not write that song.

Okay, I know they didn't write the song.

I was looking for, like, some reference

which maybe you guys would possibly get.

Probably failed.

But anyway, Istanbul rather than Constantinople,

and what this means for Europe...

And this is where we get

to our world historical turning point.

What this means for Europe

is that the Ottoman Empire now controls

the standard trade routes to Asia.

And because the Ottoman Empire

controls the standard land routes to Asia,

if you're in a reviving Europe

and you need those trade routes, what do you do?

You do crazy things.

Like, if you're England, you say,

"Hmm, maybe I could find a passage to China

through the Arctic Ocean," right?

And then you find Russia instead.

Oh, and by the way, I mean,

this is another example of globalization.

When the Russians sweep through Asia,

basically in a hundred years,

I mean, it's incredibly fast,

they're doing that in part because they have access

to European technology, namely the musket, right?

The musket. Very simple gunpowder weapons.

They have access to that because they also have contact

with the Atlantic World.

The Atlantic World comes in

and then they make their way all to the Pacific

with a very simple technological advantage.

I mean, summarizing it, they go with muskets

and they collect tribute in furs, mostly sable.

That's simplifying it, but that's a big part of the truth.

And then they sell those sables

to China and around the world.

And so it's the...

And that is, in a microcosm, a big part

of the history of the Age of Discovery.

You have a technological edge

and you use that technological edge

to control a lot of territory really quickly

while that technological edge lasts.

That technological edge will eventually wear itself out,

and when it wears itself out,

then the tables are going to be turned on you,

and all of your stories about how you're superior are going

to turn out not to be so true, right?

It was the technological edge, really. Okay.

So you do crazy things.

Like, you might, like, okay,

so you go over the Arctic Ocean.

Why not? That didn't work out.

But two other things did work out

which you've probably heard of,

like Vasco da Gama going around the Horn of Africa

and finding his way and defeating Arab sailors

and landing in South Asia, in India, right,

for the Portuguese, and Christopher Columbus,

with the even, if possible, wackier idea

of going across the Atlantic Ocean to make his way to China,

or the Indies, rather, and discovering, you know,

something else which he called the Indies.

And so it's now still called the Indies, weirdly,

or it's now called America.

So all of these things, right?

The British, the Portuguese, the...

Columbus wasn't Spanish, but it was a Spanish mission.

All of this is because of Ottoman Empire

blocking trade routes,

and the trade routes then in turn generate new things.

So after these unexpected encounters

with new places in America,

there are new supplies of precious metals,

and of course there are new people

to colonize and to convert.

Now, I realize this isn't really our main story,

but the reason why we have to have this in the back

of our mind is because we are in, as I've said,

we're entering into this world of empires,

and you can't understand Ukraine inside empires

unless we understand what empires are

at this particular moment in history.

Okay, so some of this history is going to be familiar

to you from other classes.

The leading imperial powers

at the very beginning are Portugal and Spain.

They divide the whole world between them ambitiously.

Spain destroys some other really important states,

the Aztecs, the Incas,

kill maybe 10 million people in the New World.

The Dutch rise and replace

to a large degree the Portuguese in Asia.

They take over the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.

The Portuguese are pushed back to Brazil. Okay.

And then this brings me to a theme which I'm sure

you've kept in mind the entire time, which is slavery.

So the nature of slavery...

Again, you know,

it's not like I'm going to ask you this on the exam.

It's just that our history fits into this larger history

and it helps the larger history make sense.

So if you remember,

our history is partly about how slavery

in a certain part of the world comes to an end.

The conversions to Christianity

are about slavery coming to an end.

When you convert to Christianity,

that is one of the first things that happens.

Other Christians...

I mean, rules are broken, but in principle,

other Christians are not going to enslave you

and your neighboring Christian powers are not going to think

they can raid your country and enslave the population.

It's not the most glamorous thing about Christianity,

and this is not the thing that rises to the top

in the narrative of conversion, right?

But it's perhaps the fundamental thing.

If you create a Christian state,

other Christian states are not going to enslave your people.

You've decided not to enslave your people.

You're going to tax them instead.

Very important, very important transition.

So our class in a way starts with this riddle of slavery,

because you have to, like...

You can't get away from slavery.

If you're going to study human history,

you can't get away from slavery,

because at any moment where you try

to start history almost anywhere in the world,

you then have to ask the question

of when you get from this form of economic organization

to another form of economic organization and why

and under what ideological and political premises

and auspices, which is a way of understanding

the first few lectures of this class.

This doesn't mean that slavery comes to an end, of course.

What it means is that the slave markets,

like the Genoese one that I mentioned in Kaffa,

the slave markets are trading different people,

from the Caucasus, for example, from Asia,

and then, of course, from Africa.

The Ottomans are increasingly going

to be getting their slaves from Africa,

not that they won't enslave Europeans occasionally,

but increasingly, they're going

to be getting their slaves from Africa.

And so this all connects, right?

Because the demand for slaves, it's going to be present,

but where the slaves are coming from is going to change.

And so again, I realize I've, like,

pounded this point into the ground,

but the language can help you remember something

which subsequent events will then bury.

So our word for slave, right, the English word for slave,

which comes from the German Sklave, Sklave,

which comes from the Arabic (speaking in Arabic),

and (speaking in Arabic) comes from Slav, right?

Following the language can remind us

of an origin of something,

or an early phase of something, let's call it,

that we might otherwise forget.

So this is connected to our class

because of the formation of states

and because of the spread of Russian power southward,

which is going to be in the next lecture.

But as the Russian state moves southward,

enforcing serfdom, to be sure,

it becomes harder and harder to raid

for slaves in that direction.

So the slave markets or the source of slaves,

in general, it's going to move southward.

And this coincides, this shift coincides with the emergence

of the demand for slaves in the New World, right?

And so then the slave markets are going

to shift to the New World.

The demand for slaves is coming from the New World

as the slave trade in general has moved

southward towards Africa.

So again, this is not a connection

that we need to push too far.

It's just that I want you to see that there is a kind

of logical chain of events,

and this larger question of who belongs to the state

and who can be enslaved is a question

which you can follow if you want.

You don't have to.

I'm not going to make you do this.

But it's a question that you can follow

from the 10th century in Eastern Europe

to the 18th century in the United States

if you want to, right?

It's not just a logical question.

It's not just a kind of similarity.

It's also a chain of events over time that one can follow.

Okay, so the African slave trade...

Yeah, so of course, like, the expansion

of the slave trade to Africa involves massive death

and trauma, including by suicide,

the destruction of local states and local cultural groups,

the destruction of the position of women.

It slows down.

The trade slows down in the late 18th century,

early 19th century, as first the French

and then the British end the African slave trade.

The slave trade in the Ottoman Empire comes

to an end in 1882.

The Civil War in the United States is in 1863.

Okay, so what I...

The last thing that I want to do

is to try to bring the history of empire

through the period where we are now

a little bit into the 18th and 19th centuries

so that you can then, as we do the 17th,

18th, and 19th centuries in Ukraine,

you'll have a kind of world perspective of what's going on.

I'm going to again pause and ask if I'm going too quickly

and see if there are any questions.

Just taking the feel of the room here.

Okay, you're all at the edge of your seats. That's good.

The camera can't see

whether you're on the edge of your seats or not,

so I can just, like, say stuff like that.

Okay, so after Spain...

So the first wave, Spain and Portugal,

are the most important,

and then the Netherlands is the most important,

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Class 10. Global Empires (3) Klasse 10. Globale Reiche (3) Clase 10. Imperios mundiales (3) Klas 10. Wereldrijken (3) Klasa 10. Globalne imperia (3) Aula 10. Impérios mundiais (3) 第十课 全球帝国(3)

I want to convey this because it helps us to see a moment |||express|||||||||

where we have the Golden Horde,

we have the Europeans in the 14th century,

and we have a very important change, ||持っています||||

which is that roughly a third of Western Europe is going

to die of this disease.

So roughly a third of the population

is going to be wiped out. ||||destroyed|eliminated

And this is very important for our Age of Exploration,

which is what we're trying to set up now. |||||||set| en dat is wat we nu proberen op te zetten.

After so much of the European population is wiped out ||||||||destroyed|

and avenues are cleared for innovation... |paths||made available|| |道筋||||革新の道が開かれる

This is an optimistic story ||||物語

of what happens after a plague, by the way. |||||disease outbreak|||

So after avenues are cleared for innovation Dus nadat wegen zijn vrijgemaakt voor innovatie

and social advancement and after traditional barriers ||progress|||| |社会的|||||

for changing ways of life are broken ||||生活様式||

because of all of the death and disease,

then you have this incredible European century

of revival after the Black Death. |renewal resurgence recovery|||| |||その||

Meanwhile, dun-dun-dun! At the same time||| Ondertussen, dun-dun-dun!

Something very important happens in Byzantium in 1453,

which is that... - The Ottomans take it over. |||||||引き継ぐ

- Yeah, it falls.

Finally, right? Finally.

Okay, from the West European point of view,

it's a thousand years late, but...

And a thousand years, let's face it, as a long time.

A thousand years late, but it finally falls in 1453.

And it falls to the Ottoman Empire, which is an entity

which we're going to cover in the next lecture.

The Ottoman Empire is very important for Ukraine.

In all these relationships,

which in our reading tend to look like Poland and Russia,

you know, west and east, the hard part

to force into the story is the southern part, in het verhaal te dwingen is het zuidelijke deel,

which is the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate, ||オスマン帝国とクリミア・ハン国である||||||

and I'm going to try to force that in in the next lecture,

because none of it makes sense without the Ottoman Empire. omdat niets van dit alles zin heeft zonder het Ottomaanse Rijk.

But the Ottoman Empire takes over Byzantium, ||||占領する||

replaces Byzantium.

Istanbul becomes Constantinople, Constantinople||

and I was reminded by one of, like, |||made aware|||| |私が||||||

the many people who now email me about this class

that They Might Be Giants did not write that song.

Okay, I know they didn't write the song.

I was looking for, like, some reference

which maybe you guys would possibly get.

Probably failed.

But anyway, Istanbul rather than Constantinople,

and what this means for Europe...

And this is where we get

to our world historical turning point. ||世界||| naar ons historisch keerpunt in de wereld.

What this means for Europe

is that the Ottoman Empire now controls

the standard trade routes to Asia.

And because the Ottoman Empire

controls the standard land routes to Asia,

if you're in a reviving Europe ||||restorative| |あなたが||||

and you need those trade routes, what do you do?

You do crazy things.

Like, if you're England, you say,

"Hmm, maybe I could find a passage to China

through the Arctic Ocean," right? |||北極海を通って|

And then you find Russia instead.

Oh, and by the way, I mean,

this is another example of globalization.

When the Russians sweep through Asia,

basically in a hundred years,

I mean, it's incredibly fast,

they're doing that in part because they have access ||||一部||||

to European technology, namely the musket, right? |||||マスケット銃| naar Europese technologie, namelijk de musket, toch?

The musket. Very simple gunpowder weapons. ||||火薬|

They have access to that because they also have contact ||||それ|||||

with the Atlantic World. |||大西洋世界と

The Atlantic World comes in

and then they make their way all to the Pacific

with a very simple technological advantage.

I mean, summarizing it, they go with muskets |||||||firearms

and they collect tribute in furs, mostly sable. |||tax or payment||animal pelts||sable |||||||クロテンの毛皮

That's simplifying it, but that's a big part of the truth.

And then they sell those sables

to China and around the world. |||世界中||

And so it's the...

And that is, in a microcosm, a big part |||||small example|||significant element |||||縮図で|||

of the history of the Age of Discovery.

You have a technological edge |||technological|advantage

and you use that technological edge

to control a lot of territory really quickly

while that technological edge lasts.

That technological edge will eventually wear itself out,

and when it wears itself out, |||||尽きる

then the tables are going to be turned on you,

and all of your stories about how you're superior are going

to turn out not to be so true, right? |||||||本当のこと|

It was the technological edge, really. Okay. ||その||||

So you do crazy things.

Like, you might, like, okay,

so you go over the Arctic Ocean.

Why not? That didn't work out.

But two other things did work out

which you've probably heard of,

like Vasco da Gama going around the Horn of Africa |ヴァスコ・ダ・ガマ||||||喜望峰||アフリカ大陸

and finding his way and defeating Arab sailors |||||overcoming||

and landing in South Asia, in India, right,

for the Portuguese, and Christopher Columbus, ||||クリストファー|

with the even, if possible, wackier idea |||||more absurd| |||||さらに奇抜なアイデア|

of going across the Atlantic Ocean to make his way to China,

or the Indies, rather, and discovering, you know,

something else which he called the Indies.

And so it's now still called the Indies, weirdly, ||||||||strangely enough ||||||||奇妙なことに

or it's now called America.

So all of these things, right?

The British, the Portuguese, the...

Columbus wasn't Spanish, but it was a Spanish mission.

All of this is because of Ottoman Empire

blocking trade routes,

and the trade routes then in turn generate new things.

So after these unexpected encounters ||||meetings

with new places in America,

there are new supplies of precious metals, |||sources||| |||||貴金属|

and of course there are new people

to colonize and to convert.

Now, I realize this isn't really our main story,

but the reason why we have to have this in the back

of our mind is because we are in, as I've said,

we're entering into this world of empires, |||この世界|||

and you can't understand Ukraine inside empires

unless we understand what empires are

at this particular moment in history.

Okay, so some of this history is going to be familiar

to you from other classes.

The leading imperial powers

at the very beginning are Portugal and Spain.

They divide the whole world between them ambitiously. |||||||with great ambition |||||||野心的に

Spain destroys some other really important states,

the Aztecs, the Incas,

kill maybe 10 million people in the New World.

The Dutch rise and replace

to a large degree the Portuguese in Asia.

They take over the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. ||||Cape of Good Hope|||| 彼らは||占領する||||||

The Portuguese are pushed back to Brazil. Okay.

And then this brings me to a theme which I'm sure

you've kept in mind the entire time, which is slavery.

So the nature of slavery...

Again, you know,

it's not like I'm going to ask you this on the exam.

It's just that our history fits into this larger history

and it helps the larger history make sense.

So if you remember,

our history is partly about how slavery

in a certain part of the world comes to an end.

The conversions to Christianity

are about slavery coming to an end.

When you convert to Christianity,

that is one of the first things that happens.

Other Christians...

I mean, rules are broken, but in principle,

other Christians are not going to enslave you

and your neighboring Christian powers are not going to think en jullie naburige christelijke machten zullen niet denken

they can raid your country and enslave the population.

It's not the most glamorous thing about Christianity, ||||flashy attractive stylish|||

and this is not the thing that rises to the top

in the narrative of conversion, right? ||||conversion narrative|

But it's perhaps the fundamental thing.

If you create a Christian state,

other Christian states are not going to enslave your people.

You've decided not to enslave your people.

You're going to tax them instead.

Very important, very important transition.

So our class in a way starts with this riddle of slavery, |||||||||puzzle||

because you have to, like...

You can't get away from slavery.

If you're going to study human history,

you can't get away from slavery,

because at any moment where you try

to start history almost anywhere in the world,

you then have to ask the question

of when you get from this form of economic organization

to another form of economic organization and why

and under what ideological and political premises ||||||assumptions

and auspices, which is a way of understanding |guidance or support|||||| |後援||||||

the first few lectures of this class.

This doesn't mean that slavery comes to an end, of course. |||||comes to an end|||||

What it means is that the slave markets,

like the Genoese one that I mentioned in Kaffa,

the slave markets are trading different people,

from the Caucasus, for example, from Asia,

and then, of course, from Africa. |||||そしてもちろん、アフリカから。

The Ottomans are increasingly going |||more and more| De Ottomanen gaan steeds meer

to be getting their slaves from Africa, ||||||アフリカから

not that they won't enslave Europeans occasionally,

but increasingly, they're going

to be getting their slaves from Africa.

And so this all connects, right?

Because the demand for slaves, it's going to be present, ||need for|||||||

but where the slaves are coming from is going to change.

And so again, I realize I've, like,

pounded this point into the ground, emphasized repeatedly|||||

but the language can help you remember something

which subsequent events will then bury.

So our word for slave, right, the English word for slave,

which comes from the German Sklave, Sklave,

which comes from the Arabic (speaking in Arabic),

and (speaking in Arabic) comes from Slav, right?

Following the language can remind us

of an origin of something,

or an early phase of something, let's call it,

that we might otherwise forget.

So this is connected to our class

because of the formation of states

and because of the spread of Russian power southward, ||||expansion|||| ||||||||南方へ

which is going to be in the next lecture. die in de volgende lezing zal worden gegeven.

But as the Russian state moves southward,

enforcing serfdom, to be sure, imposing|||| 強制する||||

it becomes harder and harder to raid

for slaves in that direction.

So the slave markets or the source of slaves,

in general, it's going to move southward.

And this coincides, this shift coincides with the emergence ||matches||change||||

of the demand for slaves in the New World, right?

And so then the slave markets are going

to shift to the New World.

The demand for slaves is coming from the New World

as the slave trade in general has moved

southward towards Africa.

So again, this is not a connection

that we need to push too far.

It's just that I want you to see that there is a kind

of logical chain of events, ||sequence||

and this larger question of who belongs to the state

and who can be enslaved is a question ||||subject to slavery|||

which you can follow if you want.

You don't have to.

I'm not going to make you do this.

But it's a question that you can follow

from the 10th century in Eastern Europe

to the 18th century in the United States

if you want to, right?

It's not just a logical question.

It's not just a kind of similarity.

It's also a chain of events over time that one can follow.

Okay, so the African slave trade...

Yeah, so of course, like, the expansion ||||||growth Ja, dus natuurlijk, de uitbreiding...

of the slave trade to Africa involves massive death

and trauma, including by suicide, |trauma|||

the destruction of local states and local cultural groups,

the destruction of the position of women.

It slows down.

The trade slows down in the late 18th century,

early 19th century, as first the French

and then the British end the African slave trade.

The slave trade in the Ottoman Empire comes

to an end in 1882.

The Civil War in the United States is in 1863.

Okay, so what I...

The last thing that I want to do

is to try to bring the history of empire

through the period where we are now 今の時期を通して||||||

a little bit into the 18th and 19th centuries

so that you can then, as we do the 17th,

18th, and 19th centuries in Ukraine,

you'll have a kind of world perspective of what's going on.

I'm going to again pause and ask if I'm going too quickly

and see if there are any questions.

Just taking the feel of the room here. ちょっと|||||||

Okay, you're all at the edge of your seats. That's good.

The camera can't see

whether you're on the edge of your seats or not,

so I can just, like, say stuff like that.

Okay, so after Spain...

So the first wave, Spain and Portugal,

are the most important,

and then the Netherlands is the most important,