Asian Responses to Imperialism: Crash Course World History  

Mongols all the way down, about wait for it . ..... The Mongols. And An abundance of Colonies, about colonialism and the American war of Independence. And finally , Let it blow , A book about the history of explosives , from greekfire and gunpowder to nukes ( preferably in collaboration with 3 other authors ).

He did

@@abhiprakash74999 Everything I know about the Mongols I've learnt from this guy...good work.

yep

But only because of our bigger power, which enables us to do great goods, but also, inevitably, great wrongs

fede Rubio And , also because we far,far too often forget to teach our and all others children secular factual history. Which is difficult, but, also absolutely necessary.

I know aint it great

Eu4 player?

I know that feel

Will Kettle Or any PDS games.

Will Kettle PDS player yes.

Will Kettle Paradox games, Civilization, Total War... In almost all strategy games, England/Britain is red and France is blue. It is the unwritten law, if you do not follow it you will be punished.

Funny, i remember my history book having a purple France and light blue UK split, my parents has a green france and dark red/weird mid rust/almost black UK.

Was it German? They tended to use Purple France at least.

Paradox addicts like me die when they see that color swap.

animalcross yeah aaaaah Victoria II, europa universalis IV and crusader kings II have blue france and red england

animalcross Amen Paradox brother!

Ferry Mahendra Hi, how do your history books treat Dutch imperialism, if I may ask? I am Dutch myself and in the past, many books were quite positive about it. Today, however, more and more nuanced and negative viewpoints dominate the media and literature and show how your people suffered.

OK one of many examples that I clearly remember of, in my highschool history book, Indonesia gained independence because of our forefathers (Sukarno and Hatta) successful negotiation with the Dutch, but on Wikipedia, Indonesia gained independence because of American and the UN pressure on the Dutch. This American and UN contribution is totally not mentioned in our school books.

+Ferry Mahendra He's very biased against islands.

Hmm,after Sukarno read the Proclamation of Independence, its the start of armed resistance against the Dutch,its a bloody fight,of course the UN and U.S joined to put Indonesia and Dutch in a table and make agreement.

Hi Aiderus haha

Montesquieu says that thinks the major problem with authoritarians States, they create despots. The only way to ensure that no one man and has so much power is to do a 'separation of powers'. Where 3 houses have control over the people. However he also said that people who lived in the tropics were lazy and stupid and will never be smart, so I'd take his sayings with a pinch of salt

+Gnomelord0 Agree with you on the uncertainty part. Disagree when you said authoritarian waste valuable energy -> Do you know how much time and money an election takes?

+Cycling in Edmonton from the Eyes of a Teen A sorta authoritarian state that doesn't choose its next prime minister based on heredity, but on merit.

How would you Enforce that without Civil War though?

we should have a thing where they can prove themselves capable to rule.

Nonamearisto "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." -Donald Regan

ahadicow Awesome point, though I think your use of the word "good" is equivalent to the word "competent" while my use of the word "good" is something like: "Generally beneficial for the ruler's subjects."

Authoritarianism is a good way to build the foundation of a strong state. Democracy is good and all, but if there is no strong state by the time democracy kicks in, chances are; that democracy is going to end up as a pretty shitty democracy.

Nonamearisto Good luck with building a strong state without an authoritarian rule. I'd like to know a successful first world nation today that did not emerge from a strong monarchical or dictatorial social and cultural background.

Nonamearisto The US settlers came with pretty authoritarian and monarchical backgrounds, and before the rebellion, Britain invested a lot in administrative institutions, which would help the state. Even after winning their independence, it took a lot of reforms to put America on the right track to defeat the clientelism that threatened the early nation. As for Rome, although they did dislike kings, they were extremely violent, authoritarian and had nowhere near the same amount of rules as we have today to limit the elite's power. This unrestrained power was the reason why they were able to make such extreme social and political changes to forge a powerful state in the first place. But there are notable differences between ancient and modern civilizations(both internal and external), the latter of which we are focusing now :P

+RealHipHopManiac Yes!-Can we actually?!

The Mongol joke is that the Mongols are the exception to every generalization about historical groups, because they are- except for one or two instances. It started in Crash Course World History (the original version).

@@j.h.8280 thanks for responding 4 years later

Abraham AlRajhi thank you sir

If they changed the condition of themselves from "within", there's no need for God. I say this is the correct rationalization!

@@takeshikodama5671 yeah, but Islam's argument for the existence of God doesn't solely depend on this one statement, so it's insufficient to disprove the "need for God".

that's CHRISTmas, not Xmas. you cannot take CHRIST out of Christmas. Merry Christmas.

@@basketofdependables4244 XD Xmas IS Christmas, X is the English version of the symbol for Christ in some ancient language I think. Even if it isn't, it's still Christmas just shorter

+yazackak France has red in its flag and blue was taken lol

It's just the color representing it. There's nothing wrong with red. Also, it's in their flag.

Lol 😂

I know what you mean, France must be blue and Britain must be red 😂

Dylan Sepasyar Does it really matter?

sorta

Netherlands orange? And Russia… for asia i mean

Rainbow Bubbles The Netherlands didn't have any territory in Africa after 1815, but I suppose orange would make a fine colour for the Boer Republics...

Haha me right now

this hits different when its in two days

Vaibhav Tripathi I strongly agree. There are the things which western cannot, never and don’t want to understand.

sugeeban ! And Who held all the wealth? Princes and Lords who never Worked a day in their life.

Rickyretardo and the queen

darklight reaper Yes. But eventually, It got better for the common man. In India it hasnt changed at all

india has changed a lot there was economic reform in 1992 and international influence is increasing

i have been to india, beatifull country but its sooooo poor! you have some serious issues there, under british you were much better, decolonialism is much worse then colonialism

?

Seriously. They should have gone with periwinkle and and mauve.

Nixon Perez There is a tradition of painting territories under the British imperial sphere of dominance as red or rather pink

Yes its so very important that people know the not even 6 year old US only tradition of blue france and pink UK... In contrast to for example the 40 year old version with green fance and dark red and/or sometimes yellow UK, GOD FORBID we go by the full grayscale different textured maps.

***** I don't really care, but the tradition for anglophones to use pink for the British Empire is more than six years old. It started in the late 18th Century.

Charles Wostenberg John Green does not even have a masters in history, let alone a phd. He's not qualified.

Amen

Well, he never said he WASN'T a hypocrite. ^_^

Naaah, You can't criticise something that is not European * slaps your hand * BAD! Only Europeans can be scapegoats. WRITE IT ON A BLACKBOARD A HUNDRED TIMES! Other nations did just as much shit as we did, but you can't talk about that. How would people find a scapegoat to hate if we all admitted our mistakes? Silly, silly HdRfreak21!

The caste system is a part of their religion, so they didn't really see it as "oppressive". They were born into that caste because of things they had done in their past life, or so they believed, and hence the only way to escape the caste was to induce good karma and be good people. The thing is, most Western conquerors didn't really try to understand the culture and the context of the civilizations they were conquering. The fact that people see the caste system as "oppressive" is proof of how pervasive Western thinking was and still is. Did you see the Hindus complain? No! So why is it oppressive? Because someone can't go up in society like the way they do? They have their own ways of doing that, so no problem there too. So is it really oppressive, or just oppressive from a Western standpoint?

agentrikamcgee If you were to ask me, I'd tell you "that religion has been used as a means of social control in all sorts of ways over the millenia." And how do you know the Hindus didn't complain? I sure as sausages wouldn't want to end up on the lowest rung of that ladder.

***** "Religion has been used as a means of social control in all sorts of ways over the millennia" Well, faith is powerful stuff. But it's THEIR faith. In other words, it's still their choice to believe in it. Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam co-existed in India. So someone who hated this idea could've easily made the switch. But the fact they didn't? The fact that there are a lot of Hindus (even until now), despite the plethora of religions available and the freedom to switch? Is that what oppression is?

Doubtful. The only time any of the Middle East was under direct European control was between 1922 and 1945, and even then we left most governmental matters to local rulers. If anything, people of the Middle East could be grateful that Britain and France stepped into the power vacuum created by the fall of the Ottoman Empire and prevented the Middle East from turning into anarchic chaos, as most of Africa did some years later. That's not to say there's nothing that could be blamed on European countries governing the Middle East; this was after all the time that the cultural and ethnic tolerance of the 18th and 19th centuries sadly started to give way to the rise of fascism, and all the intolerance and bigotry that comes with it.

Robert Faber The thing is though, look at the countries that experienced such "stepping in", Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestinian Territories, Yemen, and compare them to to one country in the region that wasn't taken by western powers: Turkey. Now I'll be the first to admit Turkey has had and still has many significant issues, but in comparison to the other nations in the region, it scores better so far as democracy, human rights, education, and economic viability. It's hard to argue that the western mandate system was so beneficial with such a counterexample. And a couple decades of foreign rule are more than enough to radically distort domestic politics. The general pattern is that anti-western sentiments become so powerful that post-independence, leaders get put in power based on how much they can capitalize on feelings of humiliation and resentment, a la Ba'athist dictators and Islamists. And that's only if they can overcome the conservative puppet monarchs left in power (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait), Afterall, it only took a couple years of humiliation by foreigners to build the resentment that hurled the Nazis to power in Germany. So while an unregulated breakup of the Ottoman Empire probably would have been violent, the emergence of nations in control of their own affairs from birth probably would have prevented a lot of the bloodshed we've see since.

Richie Lomas I'm not entirely sure. Lebanon would be an example where the peace and stability brought by the French mandate allowed the people to draw up a concept for a country where Maronites and Sunnis could live side by side, something that is unlikely to have been the case if the French hadn't been there. As for Turkey, there is a reason why the Ottoman Empire rose to prominence in the first place, and why the territory of what is now Turkey was so heavily desired by Persians, Greeks, Romand and Byzantines earlier in history; the inherent economic potential or Rumelia and Anatolia makes Turkey so much more succesful than its Middle Eastern neighbours. Also, it has to be said that a lot of Turkey's success is down to the reforms carried out by both the later Ottoman sultans and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which effectively transformed Turkey from a Middle Eastern country into a fully-fledged European country.

I'm so happy an actual discussion is happening here. That was fairly unexpected. I wasn't speaking entirely to civil disorder with my comment of course. I suppose my main point is that many people in my country (the US) would commit many of the acts we label as terrorism, were we to be subjected to the policies many countries in that region have been for a long time. I don't condone these things, but many people here see what people do there as fundamentally different from anything we'd do, in some cases nearly to the point of racism. I was just hoping to explain that a lot of that resentment, and actions based on it, are not impossible to understand, and not somehow disassociated with what we think we are.

HisRoyalCarlness Well, I think that quite a few things that the US forces did in the American War of Independence could be considered acts of terrorism by the modern definition, so I figure you're probably right...

Richarditong The Philippines is not much of a country... Tagalog means “resident beside the river.” In the Philippines, due to a history of multiple settlements, more than 170 languages ​​are spoken and only 2 of them are official in the country: Filipino and English. What Languages Are Spoken in the Philippines? - Translation Blog EVERY LANGUAGE COULD HAVE BEEN A SEPARATE COUNTRY BUT BECAUSE OF THE FILIPINO IMPERIALISM, MICRO IMPERIALISM, THEY WERE PREVENTED

+Kolynk iron-y

+sambulls whhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Like many things, invented by chinese, perfected by western people.

+Kilves X and then produced in china

+Kolynk We did put gunpowder in military use and had a centralized research centre for it back in 16th century. But it was banned after the Manchurians conquered us.

very funny

+Dippie Hippie XVII Hi Jangwoo

yay south africa!

Thing is only Western and Japanese empires are recognized as empires. China is technically still an empire, one even larger than Rome, as it holds onto many of the states it had conquered in the past. However, it is a considered a country instead, because in a way calling something an empire gives it strength and significance which you wouldn't want to as then people might just develop some respect for it and see it as achieving something. Subtle name changes can affect how people view others and their positions in the world.

The only difference between European empires and any other nation are they were good at it.

Absolutely true. It seems that by the time the US and the USSR started to act against any sort of imperialism in the 1940s (by the way, that makes these two countries fully to blame for the mess most of Africa is today), the main thing they looked at was whether territories were adjacent to each other. India, Vietnam and Indonesia being part of respectively Britain, France and the Netherlands was deemed wrong, while Uzbekistan being part of the USSR or the Dakotas part of the US was apparently fine, simply because they were adjacent to other territories. That really is everything, the people of Uzbekistan were no more or less Russian than Indonesians were Dutch...

Scale is a big distinction.

1846drte2342342 I disagree all the other nations of the world in all time would have taken the opportunity if they had had it to have an empire the size 17th-20th century Britain, France, Spain, America the Netherlands ect. The only difference is ability to do the job not the evil in which it was done.

He already rules tumblr

Yes, which I always find funny when Europeans (especially British people) are quick to point out America's imperialistic past without addressing where came from and who sent us there in the first place! Please note I'm not talking about all Europeans here just the ones who say this kind've stuff.

Yes the colonisation of america is the first wave pf imperialism, but is diferent because is not an imperialism made from a western world dominated by liberal ideas. Because of this the concept of civilisation and the hegemony of the west as the only posible form of real or corect civilisation is not chalenged. And for australia since the british almost eliminated the native population there were no expretions of cultural oposition to the imposition of western ideas, so the is no questioning of this ideas.

daniel ospina perez I think you should study Australian history more closely. There was a lot of opposition to Western values and still is. Also didn't "liberal" ideas really start in the 20th century, once Imperialism had finised?

technically, yes. However, the difference is that the imperialized people in Africa and Asia were, well, still alive. The colonized people in the Americas and Australia were routinely wiped out to near extermination. So these European nations ruled, not people who were unwillingly forced under a foreign power interested in stealing all their resources, but ruled Europeans who were quite happy to help send all the lands resources across the ocean as long as it made them a few bucks.

Bud Charles Liberalism has existed in the west since the 17th century. Liberalism was one of the European Enlightenment's reactions against the idea of absolute monarchies and the divine right of kings. Outside of Britain, however, liberalism didn't catch on until the French Revolution and it's aftermath. Classical Liberalism was actually at its height at the same time that imperialism was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Wut?

Past John's shirt

this might help you en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy

Very few political structures have elected authoritarians...unless you are the Mongols!

Yes I agree psyssi. I advocate for democracy in my own country Malaysia, but 3 places near Malaysia have done pretty well without democracy. The world most successful poverty eradication program? That's China 1979 reform-and -open-up program. Singapore and Hong Kong? Not entirely democratic but have done very well.

In the Roman republic during times of great hardship or strife the senate would elect a Dictator who would have complete control of everything to fix the problem and then step down and it worked until Ceasar was elected dictator for life.

Sean Duff Oh my, it is as though they were trying to be the most hipster empire thing they could.

underrated comment.

What happened in Siam?

1503nemanja They were able to adopt western knowledge and modernism, but at the same time retained the essence of being Eastern

vince andrade Okay I figured as much but like how? What did they do different than others? How did they remain Eastern and what became Western? Kinda curious but if you don't have the time to explain it's cool.

1503nemanja They were able to modernize themselves while staying away from imperialization, They still kept Eastern Philosophy and culture along with them which helped them develop further.

They have absolutely zero impact in the world.

So are you telling me that without Southeast Asia, the world would've been different?

SE Asia is the middle sea route between China and India, both were historically lands with centuries of civilizations. That alone should tell you the importance of SE Asia. Plus, SE Asia gave birth to people in the Pacific Islands (we share a common ancestor).

there were only some underdeveloped tribes in southeast Asia

NiggaBlossom Education has absolutely zero impact to your brain.

Him from the past is a time traveler. How else do you think he's able to appear on this show?

Liz Mac I took your comment not as a form of irony or sarcasm and would like to thank you wholeheartedly :D

In logically, We are 'Asia' british in East Asia LOL Island... And I'm history many communicated between UK and Japan.

fuzzyhair321 wait so china is russia?

I don't think so. More like failed emulation of Mongol Conquest. British is all about trade and war and violence as last resort and do as little of them as possible to not collapse the potential market. Why do you think British stopped at burning Summer Palace. They could have dismantled Qing right then and there? Britain never truly wanted China for land and resources; only market accesses. I'm not saying British Empire were doing those for altruistic reasons, but at the end of the day, it is clear that Brits never wanted to rule East Asians, they just want line up their corporate pockets by selling stuffs to East Asia by force if necessary. The fundamental purpose of introduce drugs to China is to use it as a gateway product to get Chinese to be hooked on modern consumerism. Japan, on the other hand, wanted to create Great East Asia and Pacific super state.

@@user-zn9mu1pn9s *"Europe"

Ravenpy yeah by imperialism w force

:O time travel examples? lets talk about that.

+Esteban Ortega Hey cousin

I'd prefer John Green to Donald Trump or Joe Biden, but most of the voting population of America wants either 1) a skilled politician, or 2) someone who agrees with them. John is not a skilled politician, and he doesn't agree with many of the people who don't care for professional politicians. So he'd have a hard time getting votes.

It is a tricky proposition that we'll be looking at again in what I think will be the final episode of the series. Although I think you could argue that having access to too much information, or worse to biased information from highly interested groups, might lead to inefficiencies, too.

The problem with democracy is that the majority of the population has no clue in governing a country. This leads to the inefficiency of developing policies because these misinformed masses going against policies even though intellectuals support it. Taxes are great examples of this. In an Authoritarian government, they don't give a crap as long as it is deemed to be better for its people, making it "efficient". In a just authoritarian government, policies would be decided on mass research and decisions of intellectuals who know what is going on. Some argue its a violation of human rights, but the argument is that this is just short-shortsightedness. This is because no matter how good the policy is, some people would be disadvantaged, and this is just a cost for the long-term spectrum.

***** But I don't accept the premise that authoritarian rulers are any more intelligent, reasonable, or partial than the masses. Dictators and monarchs throughout history have been quite willing to adopt stupid policies, ignore the advice of intellectuals and researchers, and make inefficient choices. It's not clear to me that there's any more reason to trust the elite than the common people, or that democracies are any less efficient than authoritarian regimes in practice.

Alice Gull Hence the word "just". There is no authoritarian government that has done this. In theory its better but its not.

***** So why bring it up at all?

+Histropedia enlightenment came from the Greeks and Romans, was lost, then found by the Muslims (Literal documents found) and restarted again in Europe, the middle east was essentially just a messenger boy.

+Nathan Jones Oh really? do u know about the great enginerring and mathamatical heights of Indus valley civilizations, its inventions, works like mahabharata and ramayana that would beat the oddysey or illiad any day, the great heights that ancient india would achieve in astromy, science and what not during the maurya and gupta period, the architecture? And surely u know about the heights of China, right? And arabs were messengers? Read about islamic golden age, the history of science and maths in indian subcontinent and in china East during the ancient period and even after the fall of the romans was better than the west. It is only in the late medival period that it became the most enlightened and dominated the world

Histropedia oh yeah the Hindu's did loads, Arabic numbers are derived from Hindu numbers, so again the Muslims are like messenger boys.

Nathan Jones 1. So u accept that the east (india-china, egypt,) did a lot dominating in the ancient age before the romans 2. Muslims were the messengers- That debate does not hold credibilty. Read-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Gondishapur,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Gondishapur,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Library_of_Constantinople,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Nisibis,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Zakariya_al-Razi,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Al_Quaraouiyine

+Akin Khoo The Qing Navy sucked balls, man. They were mishandled, mismanaged and got their ass whooped or scared off by other navies.

+Mitchell Hough Great comment! For most of us studying Asian studies, it's quite common knowledge that imperialism is not only a "Western" construct. The Qing and many other dynasties of China practiced their own respective form of imperialism. The Qing's imperialist strategies can be easily observed in Taiwan. The Austronesian aborigines of Taiwan, the original inhabitants of the island, experienced firsthand Qing imperialism.

Fun fact : The Opium war was the first battle between China and European power than is won by Europe. all other battles between China and European in the past 2000 years have always been won by the Chinese. most notably how Ming Dynasty defeated Portugal and Dutch in 16-17th century and Qing defeated Russia in 17th century

The Opium war was only one battle? Are you also forgetting the 2nd Opium war or do you put that into the win column for China?

Mitchell Hough i said was the *First* battle won by european over China over the course of history. what did i miss ?? i didnt say that Opium war was the only one, i said it was the first.

Billyharris110 :D yes but it was loosing ground to the European powers who were rapidly overtaking it.

Jj O,leary Well it really got pushed out of europe by rebellions in the balkans

***** True. The empire was a mess by the time the 20th century rolled around. However, despite having old and untended weaponry, it's army was still pretty big