Bitchy History - May 15, 2023


Episode 1： American History 101 - The Age of Exploration and the Colonization of America


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

190.21

Word count

2,520

Sentence count

91

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Bitchy History, the American history podcast that might place me in the same category 0.77
00:00:04.420 as Disney for the first time ever. Not in net worth, but at least in how much Republicans
00:00:08.920 hate me. And I'll take what I can get at this point.
00:00:17.000 There are a lot of beginnings I could have chosen for this podcast. The history of Paleolithic
00:00:20.860 tribes into the Americas is very important, but not exactly my specialty. Perhaps one day I'll
00:00:25.680 bring on a guest to discuss it. I have a few co-workers who do specialize in that area.
00:00:29.200 and ultimately that prehistory is based on archaeology and I tend to prefer to stick to
00:00:33.880 social and cultural history so ultimately that's a bit too early for this show. I could also start
00:00:39.260 with the founding of America, the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence
00:00:43.100 but honestly that would be too late. There would be too much context missing for understanding the
00:00:48.080 world the colonists lived in and the events that shaped it. So I could go back a bit and start with
00:00:52.440 Jamestown, the first British colony and the home of the House of Burgesses, the basis of America's
00:00:57.540 bicameral legislature in Virginia, but that's also a bit too late because British colonists
00:01:02.380 on American soil didn't spring up out of the earth with no origin. They came here to this
00:01:06.600 country, crossing thousands of miles of oceans to establish themselves in a new world.
00:01:11.340 So where do we start? Well, we take a broader view, a global view, of what brought Europeans
00:01:16.360 here to the Americas in the first place. The Age of Exploration.
00:01:19.720 the age of exploration was a period from around the 15th to the 17th century in europe however
00:01:28.900 the groundwork for it began much earlier which is a sentence you're probably going to hear a lot on
00:01:33.500 this podcast if you ask me a simple question like why did the american revolution happen
00:01:37.420 you are almost definitely going to get a potted history of the english civil war before we even
00:01:41.760 glance at tea taxes since the fall of rome in the fourth century ce europe had become increasingly
00:01:47.240 isolated. Feudalism reigned, the church held sway, and no one was really very happy. In the late 11th
00:01:53.080 century CE, the Crusades began and Europe's biggest exports become soldiers and religion,
00:01:57.860 but their biggest imports become spices, silk, and luxury trade goods from the Middle East.
00:02:03.160 You'd think that the existence of stuff far nicer than the stuff they had at home in Europe might
00:02:07.460 have clued them into the fact that the Middle East was actually doing pretty well without Europe's
00:02:11.480 soldiers and religion, but that's not really the way Europeans think. The thing is, once you start
00:02:16.680 using spices, wearing silk, and generally having access to things that you didn't have available
00:02:21.740 in 11th and 12th century Europe, you kind of develop a taste for them and you don't want to
00:02:26.360 do without. So as the Crusades end up coming to an end, Europe begins to turn its eye towards less
00:02:31.700 intentionally murdery ways to get their hands on these goods. In the 13th century, new overland
00:02:37.380 and oceanic routes are going to be found and Italy, especially Venice, will become the hub of a major
00:02:41.980 trading empire with the Middle East, dominating most of the trade between Europe and the East.
00:02:46.680 The trade routes established by the Italians would become linked with those of the rest of
00:02:50.460 the Mediterranean and eventually the Baltic and northern regions of Europe, creating the first
00:02:54.760 networked global trade economy in Europe since the fall of Rome in the 4th century. During this
00:02:59.540 period, we're going to see the beginnings of the modern commercial infrastructure, with double
00:03:03.420 entry bookkeeping, joint stock companies, an international banking system, and foreign exchange
00:03:07.900 market, insurance, government debt, all the things that we think of today when we think of the modern
00:03:12.900 economy. Florence will become the center of this financial industry and the gold florin becomes
00:03:17.580 the main currency of all international trade. The population and economy absolutely explode with
00:03:22.900 the population nearly doubling and in Florence, Venice, and Milan the population is over 100,000
00:03:28.120 citizens by the 13th century. Unfortunately with the good is also going to come the bad. Major
00:03:34.320 trade routes would become the highways needed to spread disease rapidly across Europe which is why
00:03:39.540 when we overlay a map of the spread of the Black Plague with a map of the Silk Road overland route
00:03:44.260 and the maps of the ports of the 14th century in Europe, you'll notice a distinct similarity.
00:03:49.480 These trade routes would allow the first sustained transmission of a pandemic between highly diverse
00:03:54.980 and widespread populations. The Black Death would eventually kill more than 50 million in Europe 0.98
00:04:00.220 between 1346 and 1352, or around a third to a half of the population. It also resulted in widespread
00:04:07.840 social, economic, cultural, and religious changes across Europe. I won't tell too deep on this
00:04:14.000 particular subject because I want to have things to cover if I ever cover European history in
00:04:19.780 this podcast. The amount of death during the plague means Europe now has a much smaller labor
00:04:25.200 force. The supply of workers cannot meet the demand by employers, and as a result, wages of
00:04:30.780 workers begin to increase. There's a veritable bidding war between business owners that need
00:04:35.940 workers in both urban and rural areas, and survivors of the plague are going to end up
00:04:41.320 with a much higher standard of living and far more disposable income than the generations before had.
00:04:47.820 And before anyone gets any bright ideas, I know that my generation of millennials and every
00:04:53.520 generation below me will probably never own a home or pay off their student loans, but this
00:04:59.460 is not the answer. Just because after the Black Death, people had more expendable income does not
00:05:05.560 mean this is the answer to our modern problem okay so these changes among several others are
00:05:13.220 a major part of launching the renaissance in europe and one part of the renaissance is the
00:05:17.940 age of exploration see we we eventually got to the age of exploration eventually so what does
00:05:25.780 the hunt for middle eastern and eastern trade routes and luxury goods have to do with the
00:05:29.940 eventual discovery. Can you hear the finger quotes I'm using? Of the Americas. Surprisingly a lot.
00:05:37.200 To start this section, let me remind you that I am a historian, not a nautical engineer. So I'm
00:05:42.580 going to give you the most base level understanding of what the age of exploration did to nautical
00:05:49.100 travel. Prior to this period, boats had been small. They were a lot more suited to traveling
00:05:54.320 close to the coast where they could keep land in sight. Ships like galleys in the Mediterranean or
00:05:59.220 the Nordic Drakkar also relied mainly on oars for propulsion, aided by a few square sails that could
00:06:04.800 be used if the wind was in their favor. The Age of Exploration ends up bringing several changes to
00:06:10.200 shipbuilding techniques. New ships like caravels, carex, or galleons, depending on the style or size,
00:06:16.180 would begin to make it possible to move large amounts of goods and travel faster, while other
00:06:21.320 scientific advancements in technology like compasses and astrolabes, largely lifted from
00:06:26.180 designs made by Arabic navigators would allow ships to venture much further out from shore. 0.96
00:06:31.580 Without these advancements, the exploration of the Americas by Europe would never have been 0.56
00:06:35.740 possible. So why bother with exploring that far out in the first place? Surely the Middle East
00:06:41.060 and China had enough luxury goods to go around. The first thing to note is that no one was really
00:06:46.500 looking for a new continent. They were looking primarily for new routes to get to the same
00:06:50.700 trading ports. Italy and Arabic traders dominated the trade routes, and most Western European
00:06:55.960 countries quickly got sick of dealing with middlemen who jacked up the price on the goods
00:07:01.040 that they were importing and exporting. As a result, they would begin to try to find their
00:07:05.080 own routes to get to the east. In addition to trade routes, the Catholic Church also had an
00:07:09.840 interest in spreading Christianity throughout the world, partly to combat the growth of Islam at the
00:07:14.200 time. By 1492, there are four major power players in Europe. There's Spain, the most wealthy and
00:07:21.000 powerful nation, Portugal, known for their trade routes and superior nautical craftsmanship,
00:07:26.340 and France and England, both very powerful countries, but at the moment engaged in a very
00:07:31.080 distracting war with each other and internal strife as well within their own countries.
00:07:35.960 Spain and Portugal take advantage of this essentially to take over the trade and exploration
00:07:40.320 routes at this point, and in June of 1494, these two countries end up dividing the known world
00:07:45.820 into two parts. Spain claims all non-Christian lands west of the dividing line, and Portugal
00:07:50.860 claims all the non-Christian lands east of the line. It's fun that Spain and Portugal, knowing 0.99
00:07:56.240 that there were natives on those islands, just decided, we've never been to these places, yet
00:07:59.920 we own them now. But hey, the natives aren't Christian, so they don't count by European 0.98
00:08:04.460 standards of the period. Which brings us to the first lesson this series will have on the history
00:08:10.020 of oppression in history, specifically the oppression of European colonialism.
00:08:20.160 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm really bringing down the mood with this next part, but you knew what you
00:08:23.840 were signing up for with this podcast. The first thing you need to understand is that pretty much
00:08:28.420 no one wakes up in the morning with the intent to be the villain. When we see bigotry and oppression,
00:08:33.520 generally the people in power have spent a lot of time and effort rationalizing their oppression of
00:08:38.260 the other, and both race and religion have been a huge factor in rationalizing oppression in
00:08:43.240 Western society. Oppression has evolved a lot over the course of human history. It's been based on
00:08:48.340 religion and nationality, or even just geographic location within a nation, well before the
00:08:54.160 establishment of oppression based on skin color ever came into play. For instance, if you look
00:08:59.120 at how the Borgias were treated in the history of the papacy, Alexander Lee, a specialist in the
00:09:03.360 History of the Italian Renaissance, writes that he sees several reasons for why contemporary
00:09:07.660 observers were so vicious in their writings about the family, which have shaped the modern view of
00:09:12.500 the family so much that they had their own Showtime series in 2011. Lee writes that the first of these
00:09:18.020 reasons was simply that they were Spaniards, and so opinions about them were yoked to the shifting
00:09:23.000 perceptions of Spanish influence in the Italian peninsula. Spain's involvement in the affairs of
00:09:28.140 northern Italy during the late 15th and 16th centuries inspired a form of anti-Spanish
00:09:32.920 propaganda known as the Black Legend, which identified all things Spanish with oppression,
00:09:38.280 brutality, and cruelty. That position as outsiders, almost usurpers of the generally Italian-run 0.95
00:09:44.420 papacy, ruffled feathers and encouraged contemporaries to paint the Borgias with the
00:09:48.560 same brush as all other anti-Spanish propaganda of the time. That's not to say the Borgias weren't
00:09:55.300 terrible, but in context of the behaviors of many other popes before and after them, they weren't
00:10:00.080 really the outliers that the writings of the time would have us believing either. They were demonized
00:10:04.880 not for their behavior necessarily, but for their nationality. It's a bit like how Americans are 0.96
00:10:10.000 always the target to anti-tourist stereotypes when we know that tourists from every part of the world
00:10:14.860 behave obnoxiously. But at least the Borgias were Catholic, so while they might have suffered
00:10:20.000 anti-Spanish propaganda, at least they were viewed as following the right god and being afforded the
00:10:24.920 respect that came from that in Western Europe at the time. When you weren't Catholic, that's when 0.65
00:10:29.380 the real trouble started, because that whole concept of freedom of religion and universal
00:10:33.680 human rights wasn't really a thing at the time. If you weren't a Christian at the time that the
00:10:38.080 Age of Exploration was really kicking off, you basically could count on having fewer legal and 0.96
00:10:42.700 social protections than the average draft horse. And since the Protestant Reformation hadn't started 0.90
00:10:47.480 yet, Catholicism was really the only game in town for Christianity. And we can see this in the 0.85
00:10:52.780 signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 that I mentioned earlier. This 15th century treaty was
00:10:58.540 signed by only two signatories, Spain and Portugal, and it served to divide the new world of the
00:11:03.320 Americas neatly between these two powers. Spain and Portugal divided the new world by drawing a
00:11:08.340 north-to-south line of demarcation in the Atlantic Ocean, about 345 miles west of the Cape Verde
00:11:14.180 Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa, which were then controlled by Portugal. All lands east of
00:11:19.840 that line were claimed by Portugal, all lands west of that line were claimed by Spain. The treaty
00:11:24.800 completely ignored the established communities that already existed in the Americas, neatly
00:11:29.080 justifying it by stipulating that any lands with a Christian king would not be colonized. This means 0.61
00:11:35.160 that unless the land was already claimed by a Christian ruler, i.e. another European, by the 0.53
00:11:40.360 terms of their treaty, Spain and Portugal could claim practically any land they managed to conquer
00:11:44.680 in the Americas. This would result in the conquest and colonization, and in some cases near-complete
00:11:50.260 destruction, of Aztec and Incan empires, among many others. The issue of race is going to enter
00:11:56.980 the chat eventually, of course, but it's much later in the discussion once there is again a need
00:12:02.140 to justify... The issue of race is going to enter the chat eventually, because of course it is,
00:12:09.100 but it's much later in the discussion once there is again a need to justify oppression and 0.69
00:12:13.660 enslavement once the conversion process has actually begun to work and enough intermarriage
00:12:18.340 and cultural mingling has begun to happen, especially in early Spanish colonies, where
00:12:22.880 mixed marriages were not nearly as forbidden as they would become later in American history.
00:12:27.380 Once they are Christian and suitably civilized to behave the way that Europeans wanted them to,
00:12:32.220 the old methods of justifying the slave trade and colonization began to feel a little more
00:12:37.000 ideologically shaky. The old religious discrimination isn't going to vanish, of course,
00:12:41.700 it's just going to evolve in its own way, especially with Protestant versus Catholic
00:12:45.980 bigotry, which features heavily in 18th and 19th century American history, but we'll get into that
00:12:51.000 at another time. Thanks for tuning in to hear me bitch about history. Tune in next time for our 0.75
00:12:55.860 first How Did We Get Here episode, where we'll be talking about the deeply rooted history and
00:12:59.960 tradition of abortion in our nation, because Supreme Court Justice Alito definitely failed
00:13:04.580 his American history class. Remember, you can find the link to my podcast, Discord, and my TikTok
00:13:09.680 account, along with various other resources in my link tree, which should be in the description
00:13:14.080 of this podcast.