Hello and welcome to Crash Course History.
I’m John Green; you may know me because I once hosted a series of Crash Course videos
on world history, which depending on your perspective was either far too Eurocentric
or not nearly Eurocentric enough.
Well, we’re about to get rather Eurocentric, because over th...
Mr. Green Mr. Green!
Yeah, you’re retired, Me from the Past.
I can’t play seventeen anymore.
Anyway, starting today, we’re going to explore the history of Europe, beginning with the
closing years of the so-called Middle Ages and ending with Europe’s recent, and possibly
temporary, great turn toward political and economic unity.
But here at the start, I want to note two things.
First, that Europe is a made-up idea--like, in parts of eastern Europe, students learn
there are six continents, not seven, because Eurasia is treated as a single landmass, on
account of it being, you know, a single landmass.
But then, Eurasia is both physically and geopolitically inseparable from Africa, just as North America
is from South America.
And Australia is more an island than a continent, and don’t even get me started on Antarctica,
so in some ways there are two continents.
We don’t even completely agree what constitutes Europe--the dividing line is often constructed
as the Ural Mountains, which would mean that half of Russia is European and the other half
Asian.
And is western Kazakhstan Europe?
The Southeastern border of Europe is also problematic--is Turkey Europe?
And if not, was the Roman Empire a European Empire only when its capital was Rome and
not for the many centuries in which its capital was Constantinople?
But of course, like many made up ideas, Europe is also real, and in these videos, we’ll
attempt to introduce you to the big political, economic, and military, and cultural developments
in recent European history.
The second thing I want to say is that one cannot look at the history of Europe in isolation,
because as part of the Afroeurasian landmass, Europe has long been in contact and conversation
with other parts of the world, and so it’s impossible to examine its history in isolation,
because it was never isolated.
In early human history, when bands of hunter-gatherers rarely reached populations of larger than
a few dozen, people were relatively independent from those who lived far away from them.
But the story of humans is in some ways a story of growing connection--like, three thousand
years ago, everything most humans used had been made within their community--from clothing
to tools to weapons to jewelry to ideas.
Over time, though, our trade networks and cultural connections expanded.
More of us began to live in cities, and to travel between communities.
By around a thousand years ago for instance, Christianity--which was born in the Middle
East-- had become the dominant religion in Europe,
and the Catholic Church was extremely powerful, but there were also other religions being
practiced.
Like, most of the Iberian peninsula, for instance, was controlled by Islamic Caliphate of Cordoba,
which had arrived from northern Africa.
Gunpowder, which was first developed in China, began being utilized in Europe around 1300.
And the great disease pandemics that reshaped early modern Europe also came from Asia.
What I’m saying is that even Europe isn’t really Eurocentric.
We’re going to try to emphasize the world’s interconnectedness in this series, but any
regional history risks isolating itself.
So throughout, I hope you’ll remember that Europe is a made-up idea, and that it is nonetheless
real, and that the lives of humans in Europe have long been shaped by the lives of humans
elsewhere.
Our history will begin around the year 1300, with central Europe a tangle of kingdoms and
city-states, and the continent in a purportedly Dark Age.
Big changes are coming--the absolute devastation of the Black Death, a reimagining of the relationship
between peasant and lord, and questions about the role of the Catholic Church in political
life.
But before we get there, I want to flash forwards and backwards.
In September of 1940, with Europe roiled by the second world war, an 18-year-old car mechanic
named Marcel Ravidat was walking his dog Robot in the countryside of southwestern France
when the dog disappeared down a hole.
The next day, Marcel went to the spot with three friends to explore the hole, and after
digging for a while, they found a cave with walls covered with paintings--paintings of
handprints and horses and bison.
It would eventually be established that some of these artworks were at least 17,000 years
old.
Two of the boys who found the cave were so profoundly moved by the artwork they saw that
they camped outside the cave to protect it for over a year.
Now, there’s nothing unique to Europe about very old cave paintings--they’ve been found
in the Americas, in Indonesia, in Africa, in Australia.
They have not been found in Antarctica, another argument against its continenthood.
And don’t tell me that continents are about geology not humans.
Who do you think invented continents?
Rocks?
I will confess to being a little human-centric when it comes to history.
Right, but cave paintings aren’t unique to Europe.
But what I find fascinating about ancient cave paintings is that they were often made
over the course of many thousands of years, as hundreds of generations of humans lived
in the same caves.
Like, the paintings at Lascaux, for instance, were likely created over a span of around
two thousand years.
For two thousand years, a community of humans lived in this cave.
Two thousand years.
Two thousand years ago, Tiberius was the Emperor of the Roman Empire.
Our history of Europe will span around 700 years, which is a long time, but it also isn’t
a long time, as it represents less than one half of one percent of human history.
History, like so much else, changes as our perspective changes.
And so as we zoom into the history of Europe, let us not forget that we are zooming in.
Thanks for watching.
I’ll see you next time.
P.S.
Have you ever wondered what’s at the center of the Earth?
Well, it turns out, it changes every week but this week, it’s yet another Earth.
It’s Earths all the way down, you see.