The Rise of the West and Historical Methodology: Crash Course World History  

*2014

+Cathal O'Maoilste Nice example for the ineptitude of the authors to talk seriously about history. Their science videos may be good, but the history stuff is extremely poorly done.

ColHoganGer90 a bit of sarcasim can go a long way

+ColHoganGer90 you know he was joking right?

Actually, that was said in 2014.

Are-Are you me?

Crash course Lit. 3 should have The Portrait Of Dorian Gray

In this episode, John admits he can't stop making stuff up. I suspect he was making that up though.

TheFireflyGrave jeez this is the 100th time ive seen you in the comments sectiojn

"Judeo-Christian thought" is highly problematic. This article covers why, as well as linking to other sources that do so as well. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/australias-judeo-christian-heritage-doesnt-exist

TheFireflyGrave isnt that a paradox due to the fact that if he made up him making things up thus cancelling out the first.

Exactly, you have a perfect point there. Am Latino and i do consider ourselves Westerns. If ifs cuz of race then we are of European descent, vast majority Latinos. I dont understand how Australia is considered "western" when they are even more far away, if we include Geography. If its cuz of main power and military, then Australia and New Zealand arent nothing and many Europeans countries too. Maybe they consider Western those who were pro Alies during WW2 and Democracy Aliies during the Cold War, then thats isnt enough argument since we no longer in the C.W.

Juan Manuel Salamanca Totally see your point, when they were pointing the Western regions I was waiting for LATAM but got nothing, then I thought - why latam is not there? I thought we were from the West, uhmm maybe I was considering myself from the West because all my education is Western - The answer is NO. It's freaking segregation, same with "I'm from America". Dude, I'm from Ecuador, and I'm from America.

The west means something different to everyo e. I dont know of anyonehere inspain thatwould thinkof south america as the west .... perhaps because of the real or perceived political instability there. Erm, also,,, The idea of thewest, well, its geographical, if you coukd move meditereanian countries physically somewhere else, i bet noone would incljde them in the west. Thewest is like, the guarantee of certain freedoms, soending power, political stability, longlastingpolitical stability, ie spain and franco were not long ago, civil war etc, greece is or is almost a failed state, italia is about as corrupt as th eu gets at governmental level, etc ... sadly, true or not, northern europeans would oftenassociate thesecountries more with south america..... they getcalled the west because of theiR location and. Ecause theh seem to be trying to follow the nort/. Sorry. Please not, ive only talkedabout perception, ot about what is or is not true

+Juan Manuel Salamanca There are people & historians that do count most if not all Latin nations as well as Russia as part of the Western Civilization. It has it's Greek/Roman/German roots. So in the Classicist or Medievalist sense or standard yes the Western Civilization is bigger than what they named in crash course. In American Cold war rhetoric than it is what it showed in crash course. Western Civilization is a culture, not sort of a culture, it is one.

+Juan Manuel Salamanca Latin America is very westernized,, yes. Yall have a blend of native cultures as well though, so it's a mixed bag - but given my experiences in Latin America I would say it's "mostly western."

Daniel Salmon The relentless pursuit of pleasing its customers and fulfilling their demands, how evil! (also maybe the heroin would help people cope with the perpetual long waits at the checkout lines)

Daniel Salmon At least stupid people would buy it and kill themselves off. natural selection

to be honest just cause someone dose drugs does not make them stupid i tend to do drugs on occasion but i know my limits and i never take them alone also i dont do anything that involves a needle, smoking weed eating mushrooms or taking the occasional line of coke at a party is one thing but i would not be caught dead taking something that has a chance of me mixing blood with someone else

Daniel Salmon It does. You're intentionally ruining your own health. Drug addicts are complete idiots, we don't need them. And you make drug cartels happy

1 i am not ruining my health by occasionally partaking of recreational drugs 2 i am not addicted to drugs as i do not activly crave them or seek them out unless under very specific circumstances 3 i doubt the weed i buy has anything to do with drug cartels since i buy it stright from a friend who grows it and occasionally gives it to me for free when we go out to party's 4 and dont try to say that its a waste of money ether if anyone makes that argument i have a million other things i could point out that people dont need but still buy or pay for to do in there own free time since i make 80k a year 5 also agin i restate doing drugs dose not make you an idiot unless you cannot control yourself well doing so just like with alcohol, i was a straight a student all through high school and never got anything short of a b in my collage courses

One of my favorite wars of all time.

J H. Booth It's pretty cool.

Have you heard his and Hank's ear biscuits?

Although his anachronism is showing again.

BUT IT AINT RALPH THO

I'm pretty sure it is Ralph.

A thinking human.

Bill or John McNeill? See _The Human Web_

The Doctor.

Right?

A person with an opinion and worldview.

... and we South Americans love to be dismissed as not being part of the West

João Paulo Bochi I think that's a different issue. with 'the west' being a weird vague idea about cultures, who's in and who's out is a little arbitrary.

ProfAwesomeO I read your comment again now. I know that "the West" is a culture idea, and not necessarily geographical, Australia and NZ being considered part of it. The thing is that South America was colonised by Spain and Portugal. It's full of descendants of Europeans. We are part of the Western culture.

New Zealand can be distinguished from Australia by its superior natural beauty and its government's willingness to suspend labor laws to get The Hobbit made.

@@jpbochi - I agree that South America is part of the West. It's weird that with so much of Latin American culture and the conduct of its institutions is based on European-derived principles and philosophies -- with all that, people still try to treat Latin Americans as something separate. That's weird and wrong.

Nonamearisto or more likely how dumb his teachers where.

John has never hidden the fact that he was a generally poor student and that he didn't try hard in school. Also, while he has become a thoughtful, hard-working, and intelligent man, he's not a historian or a teacher. Crash Course is made by many people, including Raoul Meyer, his former teacher. They also consult with educators on what they should cover in order to be useful (at least they did in previous series).

David Quintana That's is a very unfair statement to make. John has said multiple times on other channels that he was not a dedicated student, but that his teachers didn't give up on him, giving him many opportunities that he feels he didn't really earn.

Nonamearisto I see you here on every video talking about how wrong John is (with varying levels of civility). If you disagree with him so vehemently, why are you here?

var1ables Yup, this is why I did so badly in high school (well not bad 3.6 GPA, but you know could have been much better if I weren't getting B's instead of A's for refusing to regurgitate information), but I am doing so well in college. Completely different learning technique. The American high school system prepares children to learn how to take orders and work in a factory setting while American college teaches people to *think* for themselves and evaluate information

Absolutely. Everyone needs to understand that the Western nations have just been very very lucky over and over again for a long long time, purely by chance. There own talents had zero to do with it. I cannot stress enough how important it is that all are aware of this. Any day now the laws of probability will catch up to them and some other group will get lucky and they will be on top. We must all combine our efforts to make sure that everyone knows this. No one must be permitted to believe anything else.

Chad Vader Lucky? You seem to be denying the efforts of countless people as nothing more than sheer luck.

TheSonOfDumb That's exactly what I'm doing because that's exactly what it is. Luck and luck only.

Chad Vader Luck how? That they themselves made a system wherein being a monarch is done with divine sanction, that they themselves fought each other for their own feudal greed, and that they bettered themselves with the pressure of innovation caused by war with the adoption of gunpowder and its refining into the musket, thus allowing them to subjugate other peoples of the world for their own benefit?

Chad Vader I highly doubt that human work is as influenced by outside influences as much as you say they are. You are discrediting all those people have done to just "luck" like someone would refer to God or fate.

I think he's just taking a stab at the STEM people, because in academia math oriented people tend to belittle every other field of academia. As in because we can't put stuff like psychology into accurate numbers means that psychology is less of a science than math is. While I understand where his viewpoints are coming from, I don't agree that he should include them in this video because he is acting as sort of a "teacher", and thus he's teaching his own bias as fact.

History is told by 3 people in the world. The victors The writers The readers Interpret it as you will, as John is.

He became a dad and is therefore more tired all the time.

nismo510 bed head? You're referring to his messy hair?

How education came up in europe? There is always cause of the root cause.

excactly. In many societies once you solve the problem on education it would be a lot easier to solve slmost everything else

There was plenty of technical skill and scientific knowledge in China, India, or the Middle East.

***** Not to the extent you found in Britain. Even when you consider technical skill among craftsmen, there is a difference between being able to hammer out a shape, and being able to make that shape exactly the size you want to the millimeter. The latter was very much enabled by experience from making scientific instruments. Without it, making a large, properly sealed cylinder for a steam engine is impossible. It is interesting to see what the trade balance between China/India and Europe looked like in the 1700s. Generally, China had access to everything Europe produced within their borders, *except* for automata. There are trade records of ships selling clockwork automata to the chinese for a very high price.

Johnathan Pierce No.

How does he know that there aren't differences in intelligence between different groups? It sounds to me like he just assumed that, but correct me if I'm wrong. And what do you mean they "developed" deadly diseases like smallpox? I think what you meant to say is that they developed _immunity_ to diseases like smallpox.

That book also spends a large chunk of the first quarter of it explaining the domestication of animals and plants that we eat and the latitudes they survive at. Cows, pigs, sheep, goats, wheat, barley, peas, etc were mainly domesticated in the Fertile crescent and then migrated with the trade routes to Europe, where the plants would grow in similar latitude ranges. No other places in the world had as many domesticated species as the Fertile Crescent. Because of that advantage, less work was needed on getting food to eat. Thus, economics takes over and people specialized. *note corn, squashes, beans, and potatoes all came from the Americas. The "standard" Native American diet was corn beans and squashes, supplemented by game hunting. The three grown together is actually pretty sustainable and nutritious.

While Diamond gives some interesting and convincing arguments why Eurasia gained dominance over the Americas, Australia and to a lesser extend Africa south of the Sahara, he can't explain why a part of Eurasia, Europe, gained dominance over other parts. He explains it by stating that some part had to become dominant (so why not Europe), and he talks a bit about Europe being political divided most of the time while China has been unified normally, but those are much weaker arguments, IMO.

That is exactly the point. Trying to compare countries success, or how good a culture is, is always going to be biased towards their home countries. It's similar to the crap thrown about whenever I look up Islam and try to understand what the big bad IS want. To say that Islam is a bad religion because it supports harsh punishments, or that it says that one is not to speak ill of Muhammad (which Christianity has too. Thou shall not use the lords name in vain. You're a naughty boy if you use gods name in bad ways), is all metrics we use to compare them to us, in a manner that will always show use better because of what we hold as values and what's important. It is devoid of taking into account the culture people grow up in, just saying it is lesser because it is different from our own by forgetting that we aren't them. We don't have their experiences, their mind sets, their history.

I loved Guns, Germs and Steel, but there seems to be a lot of head shaking from historians, mostly because he's an ornithologist and not a historian, and a few bits of ecological imperialism that seems to come up. I loved 1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann, they tell an interesting tale, and while they don't have the same goal they are somewhat on the same subject.

Whenever he said something like "rise of the west", all I could really think about was the end of LOTR, where they sail into the west.

I think he meant Australasia

TheWulf899 LOL rip new zealand

Lol, they didn't even co-exist. And pizza was first made in Naples. And neither Napoleon or Julius were ever in Naples at the same time. So shame on you for not knowing your history.

Don't forget Abraham Lincoln!

or even that time Aristotle wrote that one book, i think it was called the Mona Lisa

How about that time that buddha took a selfie with george bush?

Dr. Astrô Nauth It was clearly a joke.

As a Brazilian, I'd like to hear more about that since I'm not convinced.

In which ways is it different? Elaborate.

Well in South America they speak Latin languages... except for Suriname & the Dutch Caribbean. In North America they speak Germanic languages... except for Mexico, Quebec, most of Central America & most of the caribbean

But by that logic the Africa (minus Ethiopia) is also in the West since it's also from Europeon colonization

Well, that's not how it goes, but surely Africa is closer to being a part of the west than Latin America is to not being a part of it! (my opinion) Let's just remember that South America (which by many people, including most of those who live in it, is not considered a continent) was colonized by the Europeans BEFORE the US and Canada. It is obvious that South and North America are kind of different, though that difference you were pointing out is not the center of it, since: A) The fact that people speak languages from different branches of the same family(actually, quite close languages, that is) does not mean that they are different "civilizations": no one would consider that for the European case or for French-speaking Canada; besides B) The linguistic difference is better accounted with the idea of a Latin vs an Anglo-Saxon America, not by the division of a North and South America, which is quite arbitrary since it's all the same landmass (unless you consider the shallow man-built Panama Canal a "division") and we share such a close history etc. Now the thing is, it is pretty obvious that Latin America IS different from the US, or from France, or from Germany, or from Iceland. Put then, the obvious question to arise is: How can you include all those different places in "the West", but not Latin America? That is: What differences between Latin America and those places justify it not being a part of the West, while connecting all of those places as being a part of this same entity? And from this question alone we can already have some answers: 1- It cannot be language or language family, since some the same difference between the Latin American and Germanic exits (and comes from, originated etc) in Europe; 2- It cannot be geography, since AUSTRALIA and the USA can be considered part of the west (!); 3- It is probably not religion, since the same things that can be said about language can be said about religion, PLUS most countries are not as uniform religiously as their are linguistically, which would mean the absurd that American people form X religion are Western, but not Brazilian people of the same religion, for example; 4- For the reason state above, it is hard to make any "racial" argument, unless you do not consider everyone within the western countries, western. Just for the recap, the question is: What differences between Latin America and "the West" justify it not being a part of "the West", while connecting all of the places belonging to it as being a part of this same entity?

I saw it XD

I was just looking for someone who'd noticed that too!

same!

Saw it. GMM and Crash course should do some videos together

1+1=11 wanna fite?

Javitoux Couple of things Spain was in the Cold War a NATO and EU member and the Western nations all are on the highest ranking tier on human development only Argentina and Chile make it Latin America and while Latin America will hopefully join the west they are not yet there ind HDI GDP Corruption rates and democracy

+Heath Blasted Two thirds of Europe is Catholic so what's your point?

Just taking a guess, but perhaps because the culture of the indigenous people is still present/somewhat prevalent? While the US and Canada had our natives beaten off and literally genocidally murdered, South American colonies tended to be assimilated more and erm... murdered less. The culture of Central and South America was actually shaped by the natives, while the US and Canada are a result of relocation of Europeans.

LatinAmerica Has developed It’s own culture identity that is separate from the west

@@caesar0frome950 What identity, I may ask?

*siberian

It's part of the Latin Civilzation ! duh!

There's no such thing called "the Latin Civilization"

Luis Camilo Maybe not Latin 'civilization' but Latin culture is a thing.

Dude, give it up. There's really no valid justification to exclude Latin America from the so called "West". All Latin American countries are capitalist democratic republics, founded on 18th century liberal values, and speak western languages as their main tongues. There's no logical reason to include Australia or New Zeland while excluding Argentina and Uruguay, for example. It's just very weird for Crash course to ignore Latin America because it simply cannot be excluded from the western world, since almost every life aspect we have in this part of the world is essentially western, or western centered. It's as if Crash Course's only standard to separate the western world from other places were race, which is just weird!

Luis Camilo The West is practically Europe plus the most the most sucessful colonies of England that got enough economic power. Latin America has been the playground for USA and only got not that long ago enough economic development to get into the "big" countries party. You can't deny that many south american countries had or has socialist ideologies and has opposed USA domination (that makes them anti-west in some way, for example, they weren't aligned in the cold war with any superpower). Latin America hasn't had a strong media/cultural power in the last decades also. To finish, the definition of the west has many years, today it isn't really that important to get into the club.

Ohh arcane traveler. Please tell me of the world of Steel.

+nachoolo well technically China had those too.

+nachoolo I read "Guns, Germs, and Steel." and i could not tell anyone what it was about.

+Katie Abiri I heard the guy who wrote that is kind of a piece of shit

beeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssstttttttttttttt plllllaaaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeee eeeevvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! please do be respectful though.

Seeing as how more countries are becoming more democratic and more free, I don't think you can call him off yet. His argument is that the end of the Cold War made the End of History, whereby all states will be under a peaceful unifying liberal democratic ideology, inevitable. He didn't say that that would happen tomorrow, but that there are no challengers to liberal democratic hegemony. He wrote at a later date what he thinks of Islamist Ideologies and he, even after everything, is very dismissive of them and does not believe they can threaten the dominance of liberal democracy. I think he is right about that, but we'll see.

Maxben L Asia in alienates western intellectuals because their postmodern societies are less consumed by universalist ideals like liberalism and more by old-fashion ethnic nationalism. Fukyama is right about one thing, institutions are hugely important. For enlightened despots in Asia have developed meritocratic institutions whereas the weak democracies in Africa have not. An election is a 24-48 hours affair, an institution has to run 365 days a year. Story never ends. He recognized later on that there are threats to his view. Personally I think that ideologies as we know them today will go the way of the dodo without ever achieving their historical missions like Catholicism/Protestantism etc, never achieved supremacy over the other. God is dead.The questions of the future might by more like this: Is is right for mankind to be immortal? Is it right for machines to rule over men? Should a man be allowed to have poisonous glands or replace their limbs by cybernetic machine-guns?

I've never understood what he meant by 'the end of history'. Does he mean nothing will ever happen? Or that nothing important will ever happen? Because I (and I imagine many others) would disagree about that. F.E. I can easily imagine that with improved space tech, humanity will create space colonies and start exploring the galaxy. So that wouldn't be "history"?

Robbert-Jan merk It mean that history has been settled. Capitalism + democracy has been discovered to be the definitively best form of government. i.e. whenever a stupid moron says "omg, its 2014 and there's still xxx," or "wow, just wow, its 2014, blah blah blah" Its a feeling that history will no longer be made. There will no longer be any major conflicts (aside from a couple minor ones) and its full steam ahead to the future. This, however, hasn't held true for a while now, since many leftists (Scandis esp.) are starting to embrace the socialistic values and ideology of the early 20th century over classical liberalism of the enlightenment. They're questioning capitalism in favor of socialism. To call Fukuyama a "moron" for proposing this concept is extremely arrogant, forgettable and stupid in of itself! "The end of History" is an attitude that has only been recently, partially dropped since Russia's invasion of Ukraine + China being predicted to surpass USA as superpower + recession in most of Western World. Many people still hold the idea of "The end of history" even now.

Smoothbluehero I've never called Fukuyama a moron or even implied he is: I'm just asking a question, as I genuinely don't understand his idea. And I still do not see why everything would be settled. May be the politcal aspects of history, but even then that would mean assuming we can never invent a better government even in thousands of years. Sounds unlikely to me. And as I said, there can be plenty of social and technological issues popping up in the future. Will these all minor issues, unimportant compared to the invention of liberal democracy? I doubt that, personally.

Yes

Now he has 4.2 million.

+Antonio Lopez Definitely, sad thing is Trump had one for a little bit. Just shows how great the west is!!!