How Europe Stole the World: The Age of Exploration Origins

(drawer opening) (explorative music) - The world you live in today was sketched on paper

by European men. Men who looked like me. Men who at first were just curious and adventurous

but soon whose motives morphed into an insatiable greed. A confidence that their way was better than everyone elses. This confidence led to arguably the most influential series

of events in human history. At least the history that affects you and me, a 500 year project of moving people

and weapons and germs and language and violence to every corner of our earth and in the process, gathering and taking home stuff to make them richer, metal,

rubber, tea, sugar, and human bodies. This isn't a history lesson. You won't hear me talk a lot about dates and names.

Instead, this is the first of three videos where I want to show you how this happened. How Europe, a continent full of poor, miserable farmers

took over the entire world, and in the process, they shaped it, they shaped it to their way of thinking and speaking and doing things.

So this is part one of how Europe stole the world. (dramatic music) Yes, I'm gonna be looking at a lot of maps

to understand this issue because drawing on the map is how they did things. (dramatic music)

To understand how Europe stole the world, we need to rewind to back when the map looked a little different, hold on.

Back in like 1450, the world map looked like this. I mean, Europe was just a bunch of smaller kingdoms. The borders look so different than they do today.

They were all pretty small potatoes. Well actually there actually were no potatoes. Those wouldn't arrive to Europe for another 50 years

but the fact is there wasn't an abundance of anything in Europe. Instead, Europeans were just farmers barely scraping by,

constantly in debt to a few rich landlords. Life in Europe was scarce and miserable. Meanwhile, there was a bunch of other empires

around the world that were thriving. There was this big empire over in the Middle East. They had silk and then over here in India,

you had a big empire with spices and luxurious cotton fabrics. Then of course there was the big dynasty in China

that had by this time already invented gun powder, porcelain and really sophisticated ships, that they could use to sail around the world.

Oh, and all of these empires were trading with one another, making all of them even richer. They all had better everything than Europe did

and miserable Europeans eventually wanted in on all the trade. (funky music)

So that's kind of the context here that sets the stage for Europe taking over the world. The first two countries that wanted in on all this trade

and set out to explore were the countries that today we know is Spain and Portugal. So they start looking for a land route to get them east.

They start moving east and nope. Oh, look, it's the Ottoman Empire, a very powerful Middle Eastern empire

that's run by Muslims. Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal are hella Catholic and they're not being super nice to Muslims or Jews.

So the Ottomans are like, "No, we're not gonna let you "pass through our land to get in on the trade in the east. "Oh and by the way, you can't even afford our taxes.

"You're miserable Europeans without a lot of money, "so go away." They're gonna need another way to go east.

Portugal's work around was literally to go around the continent of Africa. Stopping along the coast to trade

with the wealthy African empires along the way. This is a huge moment because it actually worked. It's near the end of the 1400s

and the Portuguese are now going nuts. They're sending ships around this route that they figured out, trading with the east

and suddenly the Portuguese are dressing in luxurious fabrics. They're using cloves and cinnamon and black pepper

to make their food actually taste good. Wait a minute, you're telling me they didn't have black pepper before this?

Geez, miserable indeed. - You must have some peppers. - So the age of exploration has begun.

Miserable Europe is doing something about their situation. Going out to get in on the thriving trade in the east. But remember, this isn't about conquering land.

It's about trading, for now. (dramatic music) Okay, so now Spain sees Portugal hitting the jackpot

and they're kind of jelly, they want in on this too. They need to establish their own trade route to Asia but they wanted to do things a little bit differently.

Instead of following Portugal's lead and going around Africa, they listen to a pitch from this Italian sailor and this sailor wants them

to fund his new startup called what if we sailed west to get to Asia instead of east, super promising name. Now remember at this point, people in Europe thought

that the world looked like this, the logic was like, oh we can just hop over to Asia by going this other way. So Spain was like, yes, great idea, high risk, high return.

Do it Columbus. Well, it turns out the world does not look like this and instead over here, there are a couple of

massive continents that Columbus ran into. But like many of us confident white dudes, Columbus was like, yeah, I know exactly where I am.

We're like in the Indies right now. Like over those guys over there, those are Indians. Yep, I can feel it.

But instead he was like in Cuba, but despite the mansplaining, Columbus kind of found exactly what he was looking for

and more. Great empires with rich culture and food and precious metal that weren't available to him back home,

he was right on target. So he's like, "All right, guys, let's trade." But then he is like, "Wait a minute.

"These people don't have armies or navies "protecting their stuff." So this must be kind of a different place,

different land with different rules and this is where the biggest light bulb moment of the century goes off in this guy's head.

"Change of plans, boys." says Columbus, "We're going to claim this land." And everyone was like, "Wait, what?"

"You heard me, we are claiming this land." and the boys are like, "Wait, "weren't we here to like trade with great empires.

"Portugal's been doing this "for like all these years and getting rich." and he's like, "No, they don't have armies.

"They're just letting us show up "and like be here without a fight. "So obviously that means they don't mind

"if we just like claim the land." I mean, I'm taking some creative Liberty here on like explaining what Columbus was thinking.

But like, look at the letter that he wrote. Here's the letter that Columbus wrote back to the king and queen, reporting on what he saw.

He writes back saying that he discovered many islands, inhabited by numerous peoples and then I took possession of them

for our most fortunate king, making public proclamation and unfurling his standard, his flag, with no one making any resistance,

no one making any resistance. Spain and Portugal set out to trade. They sent out to like explore and understand and get in

on the global economy. But Columbus's realization was instead of trading, they could actually just claim land for themselves

and this changed everything. After all, no one was making any resistance. This moment is the foundation

upon which all European imperialism grows. I'll show you. (dramatic music)

It's the moment that would give us the first big division in the minds of Europeans. The thing we wrote on paper, the old world

versus the new world. This is really familiar language to us now but it was invented in this moment.

The new world was now seen as land that could be claimed. It was fair game to go conquer because they didn't have big armies or a Christian King.

"Forget trade with the east," said, Columbus, "There's a bunch of land that we can go "take over in the west." and the race was on.

(inspiring music) Spain and Portugal didn't wanna fight with each other over all this land,

this conquest that they were about to undertake. So they got together and they drew some lines. No, literally they just drew two straight lines.

We have Africa, we have Europe and then we have this line. Everything left of this line is Spains,

everything to the right is Portugal. This is literally one of the original maps where they actually drew these straight lines

and divided the world into two. But let's look at this on a nicer looking map, please. There we go, now we can see very clearly.

Oh, look now we understand why they speak Portuguese in Brazil. So Spain and Portugal now have their spheres

of the world that they can go conquer. They didn't ask anyone. They didn't negotiate with the locals.

They just drew these straight lines. The Pope actually helped them broker the deal, classic. But again, this is a huge thing that I want to explain

in this series, that these were not just lines. They weren't just like lines on paper. They were actually a shift in the paradigm, a new way

of thinking about the world, no one making any resistance. It was a story that Europeans could now tell themselves. Old world versus new world,

claimed versus unclaimed, a new way of thinking. Think I'm being overly simplistic about this? Let me show you something.

(dramatic music) There's one, two, three, four. These were a juicy find.

I found this amazing Portuguese nautical Atlas. It's a bunch of maps that the Portuguese Navy drafted up right after these two lines divided the world

between Spain and Portugal and it is an amazing series of maps, but not only because it's visually stunning,

but also because it lets us into the mind of how the Portuguese saw the world after they divided it with Spain.

(relaxing music) This Atlas reads like a story book. It's like the Portuguese were so giddy

about giving themselves permission to steal half the world, that they had to write a children's story about it. That's what it feels like, that's not what it is,

but just look at this thing, here's the title page. You can see that at the center is the sphere that was given to Portuguese.

Brazil, Africa, what is now the East Indies and here on every corner, you see these angels that are blowing wind into the sales

of the Portuguese who are out on their land grab mission. So this is just the title page. The subsequent pages of this Atlas are closeups

on different regions. This is the Caribbean over here. Look, this will become Cuba.

This will become Haiti, Dominican Republic, North America, South America, all of this unclaimed up for grabs. Here, our story depicts all these flags.

Some of them are Spanish flags on the islands on their side of the line, but then you have Portuguese flags on the Portuguese side of the line.

The status of this land, according to the fantasy of the Portuguese, changing from unclaimed to claimed by men on ships

with Christian crosses on their sails, showing up and planting flags. This was like playing a board game to them.

(dramatic music) Here's another page. This one's a close up on Brazil,

and look, we've got people over here. We've got dark skinned, naked people with primitive tools and no homes.

It looks like down here in Brazil, they spend their days chopping wood naked and dancing, all while being gazed upon by fantastical birds and dragons?

This was an official Naval Atlas drafted for the king and if its message wasn't clear enough on how these people should be depicted,

the Atlas has a little info box up here where they say that the Brazilians are quote, "Savage and very brutal." This is one of the first atlases ever made

and it wasn't really a navigation tool. It was much more a declaration of a new way of seeing the world.

Unclaimed territory, sub-human people, all of it up for grabs by Christian boats. So yeah, this is how it all started.

Under this new paradigm, both empires expanded very quickly forcing the Spanish and Portuguese languages across the ocean,

mining, vast quantities of silver, creating plantations for tobacco and sugar and in the process, massacring the people who were living

in this new world, both with their weapons, but also with their European city germs that the people being conquered didn't have immunity to.

I mean, this whole thing started with curiosity, with a thirst to get in on the trade in Asia. But soon as this fantasy of unclaimed land

came into the picture, the goal shifted, the project pivoted and soon Europe was telling themselves a new story that they, enlightened Christians,

were entitled to claim it and while the story starts with Spain and Portugal, soon it spread.

Other European countries poked their head up from their farm work and said, "Hey, we're white Christians also, we know how to sail.

"We want in on this story of unclaimed land." And that's the next chapter of the story. One that I will tell you in the next part of the series.