this is Crash Course: World History

and today we’re going to do some compare and contrast,

because that’s what passes for hip in world history circles.

Right, so you’ve probably heard of

Christopher Columbus who in 1492 sailed the ocean blue

and discovered America, a place that had been previously discovered

only by millions of people--

Mr Green, Mr Green!

Columbus was just a lucky idiot.

Yeah, no.

Here’s a little rule of thumb, Me from the Past:

If you are not an expert in something,

don’t pretend to be an expert.

This is going to serve you well both in your academic career

and in your Kissing Career.

MOVING ON.

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So unlike Me from the Past,

I’d argue that Columbus has a deserved reputation in history—

[Save his Harry Potter directional stint]

but was he really the greatest sailor of the 15th Century?

Well, let’s meet the other contestants.

[playing for a lifetime supply of Garlique]

In the red corner, we have Zheng He, who, when it comes to ocean-going voyages

was the first major figure of the 15th century.

And in the blue corner is Vasco da Gama,

from scrappy little Portugal, who managed to introduce Europeans

to the Indian Ocean trade network.

Columbus, you have to sit in the polka-dotted corner.

[until you learn special effects are a privilege, not a crutch]

As you’ll no doubt remember from our discussion of Indian Ocean trade,

it was dominated by Muslim merchants,

involved ports in Africa and the Middle East and

India and Indonesia, and China and

it made a lot of people super rich.

This last point explains why our three contestants were so eager to set sail.

Well, that and the ceaseless desire of human beings to discover things

and contract scurvy.

Let’s begin with Zheng He,

who is probably the greatest admiral you’ve never have heard of.

Couple of important things about Zheng He:

First, he was a Muslim.

That may seem strange until you consider that by the late 14th century China had long experience

with Muslims,

especially when they were ruled by, wait for it....

The Mongols.

[Hark! The commotive, cacophonic caterwauling of clattering conquerors!]

Secondly, Zheng He was a eunuch.

(He was one of a kind?]

Fortunately, 15th century China had excellent general anesthesia,

so I’m sure it didn’t hurt at all when they castrated him—

what’s that, Stan?

They didn’t have any anesthesia?

Oh, boy.

Oh. STAN,

I’M SEEING IT!

I can see, AH AH AHHHH.

Stan!

SHOW ME SOMETHING CUTE RIGGHT NOW!

Oh, hi there kitty!

How’d you get in that little teacup?

Thank you, Stan.

Right, so

Zheng He rose from humble beginnings to lose both of his testicles,

and become the greatest admiral in Chinese history.

Let’s go to the thought Bubble.

Between 1405 and 1433,

Zheng He led seven voyages throughout the Indian Ocean,

the expeditions of the so-called treasure ships, and they were huge.

Columbus’ first voyage consisted of three ships.

Zheng He led an armada of over 300 ships.

With a crew of over 27,000—

more than half of London’s population at the time.

And some of these ships were, well, enormous.

The flagships, known as treasure ships,

were over 400 feet long and had 7 or more masts.

See that little tiny ship there in front of the Treasure Ship?

That’s a to-scale rendering of Christopher Columbus’s flagship,

the Santa Maria.

Zheng He wasn’t an explorer:

The Indian Ocean trade routes were already known to him

and other Chinese sailors.

He visited Africa, India, and the Middle East,

and in a way, his journeys were trade missions,

but not in the sense of filling his ships up with stuff to

be sold later for higher prices.

China was the leading manufacturer of quality goods in the world,

and there wasn’t anything they actually needed to import.

What they needed was prestige and respect so that people would continue to see China

as the center of the economic universe,

so there was a tribute system

through which foreign rulers or their ambassadors would come to China and engage in a debasing

ritual

called the kowtow

wherein they acknowledged the superiority of the Chinese emperor

and offered him or her but usually him

gifts in return for the right to trade with China.

The opportunity to humble yourself before the Chinese emperor was

so valuable that many a prince was happy to jump on a treasure ship

and sail back to China with Zheng He.

Also, these tribute missions brought lots of crazy things to China,

including exotic animals:

From Africa, Zheng He brought back a zoo’s worth of

rhinos, zebras, and even giraffes.

Basically, he was like the medieval Chinese Noah.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So the Chinese were world leaders in naval technology,

and they wanted to dominate trade here in the Indian Ocean.

So why, then, did these voyages end?

One reason was that Zheng,

He couldn’t live forever, and sure enough, he didn’t.

Also his patron, the Yongle Emperor, died.

And the emperor’s successors weren’t very interested in maritime trade.

They were more concerned with protecting China from

its traditional enemies, nomads from the steppe.

To do this,

they built a Rather Famous Wall.

The Great Wall was mostly built under the Ming with resources that they had because

they stopped building gigantic ships.

Just imagine what might have happened if the Ming emperors had embraced a different strategy.

One that was based on outreach instead of isolationism.

And now, to the blue corner…

Representing Portuguese exploration,

we have Vasco da Gama.

Couple things about Portugal:

First, it has a fair bit of coast line.

Secondly it was also relatively resource poor,

which meant it relied upon trade to grow.

Also, the Iberian peninsula was the only place in Europe where Muslims could be found in

large numbers in the 15th century,

which meant the Christian Crusading spirit was quite strong there, presumably because

Muslims had brought so much stability and prosperity to the region.

And chief among these would-be crusaders was

Prince Henry the Navigator, so called because

he was not a navigator.

[What is in a name, Metta World Peace?]

He was, however, a patron, not only of sailors themselves, but of a special school at Sagres

in which nautical knowledge was collected and new maps were made,

and all kinds of awesome stuff happened.

And all that knowledge gave Portuguese sailors a huge competitive advantage when it came

to exploration.

Henry commissioned sailors to search for two things.

First,

a path to the Indian Ocean so they could get in on

the lucrative spice trade.

And second,

to find the kingdom of Prester John,

a mythical Christian King who was supposed to live in Africa somewhere, so that Henry

could have Prester John’s help in a crusade.

Da Gama was the first of Henry’s protégés

to make it around Africa, and into the Indian Ocean.

In 1498, he landed at Calicut,

a major trading center on India’s west coast.

And when he got there, merchants asked him what he was looking for.

He answered with three words:

Gold and Christians.

Which basically sums up Portugal’s reasons for exploration.

So, once the Portuguese breached the Indian Ocean,

they didn’t create, like, huge colonies,

because there were already powerful empires in the region.

Instead,

they apparently sat in the middle of the Indian Ocean doing nothing.

Actually, they were able to capture & control a number of coastal cities,

creating what historians call a

“trading post empire.”

They could do this thanks to their well-armed ships,

which captured cities by

firing cannons into city walls

like IRL Angry Birds.

But since the Portuguese didn’t have enough people or boats

to run the Indian Ocean trade,

they had to rely on extortion.

[C.R.E.A.M. Get the money- Dollar, dollar bill y'all.]

So, Portuguese merchant ships would capture other ships

and force them to purchase a permit to trade

called a cartaz.

And without a cartaz, a merchant couldn’t trade

in any of the towns that Portugal controlled.

To merchants,

who’d plied the Indian Ocean for years in relative freedom,

the Portuguese were just glorified pirates,

extracting value from trade without

adding to its efficiency or volume.

So, the cartaz strategy sort of worked for a while, but

the Portuguese never really took control of Indian Ocean trade.

They were successful enough that their neighbors Spain,

became interested in their own route to the Indies,

and that brings us to Columbus.

But first, let’s dispel some myths:

One:

Columbus and his crew knew the earth was round.

[Some folks still aren't convinced]

He was just wrong about the earth’s size.

Columbus used Ptolemy’s geography

and the Imago Mundi, based on Muslim scholarship—

and ended up overestimating the size of Asia and

underestimating the size of the oceans.

Two:

Columbus never thought he’d made it to China.

He called the people he encountered “Indians” because

he thought that he’d made it to

the East Indies, what we know as Indonesia.

Three: Columbus was not a lucky idiot.

He navigated completely unknown waters primarily relying on

a technique known as dead reckoning,

in which you figure out your position based on three pieces of information:

The direction you’re going,

your speed,

and the time,

which you figure out via hourglass.

With only that technology to guide you,

its not actually that easy to hit a continent.

Come here people who are saying he didn’t hit a continent,

that he only hit some islands.

Come here.

Dahhh!

Oh,

it’s time for the Open Letter?

An open letter to the Line of Demarcation…

But first,

let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today.

Oh, its a globe. T

hanks Stan!

Just what I always needed.

Dear Line of Demarcation,

You have so much to teach us

about the way that the world used to work,

and the way that it works now.

In 1494, Pope Alexander VI

settled a dispute between Portugal and Spain by

dividing the world into two parts:

The Spanish part, and the Portuguese part.

This whole thing, at least

according to Pope Alexander VI,

could be split between Spain and Portugal.

At least when it came to so-called unclaimed land.

I mean, unclaimed by whom?

You know all the American Indians were like,

“wait, this land is available? In, in that case, we’ll just,

we’ll just keep it.

If its all the same to you.”

Anyway, Line of Demarcation,

I have great news for you.

What Alexander VI did

totally worked.

We haven’t had a problem since.