we made it
to new york city
[Music]
every time i'm in this city i find
myself asking the same question
why is this place so giant why does nyc
feel like the epicenter of the world
are you kidding back in the 70s the new
yorker magazine
made this map showing how new yorkers
see the country
i grew up in rural oregon and so this
map
sort of resonated with me i felt like
new york had this outsized presence in
our country
that everyone thought that the united
states was new york
like it had some sort of huge pull on
everyone's mind
and when i say huge i don't mean the
eight and a half million people that are
packed into this city
i also mean the outsized cultural
gravity of this city
it seems like every other movie i watch
or book i read is somehow connected
to new york city so as we biked around
the city
and had socially distanced hangouts with
our friends and as we ate
the delicious things the city has to
offer i started to go down this rabbit
hole
of how this city came to be and how it
became
so damn big this is new york the world's
largest city
so i've boiled it down to three reasons
the three reasons why new york city
is so big and important number one
water let's look at a map real quick
because
you know i like to look at maps the
growth of new york city is primarily
a story of perfect access to water
look at where it is compared to the
atlantic ocean it's not
right on the ocean like it's not a beach
you've got this nice
long island called uh long island
protecting it from the elements and from
invaders
zoom in and you see that stanton island
is also here to protect the city from
the wrath of the sea
or from conquerors and yet manhattan is
just
this tiny skip away from the ocean for
any boat faring person who wants to come
and go
plus these waters are super deep
creating nice
deep ports which don't freeze during the
winter they allow for
loads of traffic from bigger and bigger
boats the first europeans to arrive and
settle this land were the dutch
who were no strangers to the economic
advantages of controlling water
in fact i made a whole video about how
the dutch are obsessed with controlling
water so anyway the dutch arrive and
they see this prime
piece of land and they're like yep this
is a sweet piece of land
we need this piece of land let's name it
after our favorite city back home that
also has
amazing access to water and new
amsterdam was born
[Music]
the dutch taking over this piece of land
is really the beginning of the modern
history of new york and i want to tell
you that story but first i want to tell
you about today's sponsor which is
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and let's get on with the story what are
the dutch up to
on the island of manhattan as always
there were people living on this land
who were not really familiar with the
concept of owning plots of land
which clearly belonged to the earth duh
and so the dutch arrive and are like oh
so you don't mind
if we buy this land from you and exploit
it to get super rich
and so the dutch paid the natives 24 and
now the dutch begin to control this
little plot of land that is so
perfectly connected to and protected
from the water
they kept the original name that the
algo queen people had given this island
which was
manhatta and then they named their
surrounding areas
after dutch names like brooklyn and
bronx
the british eventually took over this
piece of land from the dutch
and renamed it after one of their own
cities that had
nothing to do with water and after a few
years of settling this land
the british really started leveling up
when it came to controlling the water
they started navigating up this river
called the hudson river
so that they could connect with the
newly constructed erie canal
which went all the way to the great
lakes
and so now you have this one city that
has protected access to the atlantic
ocean
as well as to the great lakes all
through water
okay so perfect access to water is
number one and the main reason why new
york city became
so huge number two is that new york
became the world's factory
[Music]
so it's the 1800s and there are three
industries that are really taking over
the world
number one is the mass production of
clothing number two is the publishing of
books
since there's all this sciency stuff
going on and people want to write it
down and
publish it and share it and everyone
wants to get really smart and number
three
was the refining of sugar which european
powers were stealing
from all over the world to feed the
growing obsession with sugar back home
these three have something in common
they require some raw material to be
shipped in somewhere to be transformed
or refined or
rearranged and then shipped out as a
final product to customers all over the
world
to us in the 21st century this seems
super obvious that our products would
travel around the world to be
transformed and manufactured before they
end up with us
but back in the 1800s a global
interconnected supply chain was sort of
a newish thing
and new york city was uniquely placed to
take advantage of this new process
to add to this momentum back in britain
they were kind of pissed off that their
settlers had declared independence from
them and then had beat them in a war
so as a matter of pride they sort of
refused to trade with any of the major
revolutionary cities like philadelphia
or boston
so this meant that new york city was the
place to do global business
and the city exploded with industry
[Music]
this boom in factories and industrial
production
is really what built this city from the
actual buildings and infrastructure to
the population
as workers flocked to the city for jobs
which gets me to my next point
the third and potentially most important
element that
built the new york city that we know
today is immigration
as this city became the industrial hub
for making stuff for people around the
world
a steady flow of immigrants started
flowing into new york city
mainly from europe at first some of them
were fleeing war or oppression
starvation
and some were just looking for a new
life to take a risk to try something new
and new york was there to meet them so
millions of immigrants started to flow
into new york city many getting on ships
and arriving on this island
by 1860 almost 70 percent
of adults in new york were foreign born
70 percent
[Music]
these immigrants didn't just fill the
jobs of the industrial and commercial
growth of new york city
this influx of immigrants from so many
different backgrounds
began to lay the foundation of the
incredibly
diverse multicultural experience that is
new york city today
but even though they all came from
different backgrounds they also had one
thing in common
immigrants tend to be a self-selecting
group of risk takers
after all they made the long arduous
journey into the unknown to start a new
life in other words they're natural
entrepreneurs
look what we found best tacos
on the east coast because they're just
like tijuana
here we go
so you take a bunch of risk takers and
you gather them into one
large growing city to build a new life
and that creates a culture of its own
a culture of new ideas new businesses
new inventions and when you have a bunch
of new businesses and new inventions and
new ideas
you often have rich people show up to
try to bet on those ideas
to see whose idea will actually win with
the intention of making money
on a successful idea or invention i'm
using a bunch of words to describe the
process of
investing or finance for many years in
the united states
the epicenter for banks and lenders was
philadelphia but as
new york city filled up with
entrepreneurial immigrants
the epicenter of investing slowly
shifted to the place where the best bets
were happening and new york city became
the financial epicenter
all of the industrial production and
factories eventually went away
but the banks in the stock exchange that
were built on its shoulders
stayed and became the economic
foundation of modern-day new york
this explanation of new york city helps
me understand
the more elusive mystique about this
place
and that its pull isn't just about the
eight and a half million people that
live here
but that those many people their stories
where they came from the lives they
built here
all from different backgrounds and yet
they were all engaged in the same
experiment
cramming into this city to build
something that had never been built
before
new york city is as amazing in its own
way as the grand
canyon new york city new york city new
york city
so there you have it new york city is a
place that had a perfect connection to
the water
that was perfectly placed to be the
world's factory as the global economy
started to blossom
all of this attracting risk-taking
immigrants who built the population
but also planted the seeds for the
uniquely new york character
that we know today