The Market Revolution: Crash Course US History #12

Summary

In this Crash Course US History episode, John Green explores the Market Revolution, a transformative period in early 19th century America. It delves into the shift from agrarian self-sufficiency to an interconnected, industrialized economy fueled by innovations like roads, canals, railroads, and factories. Green discusses how this revolution changed labor, with more Americans working for wages in factories, and how government support and new business structures facilitated this change. He also touches on the social and intellectual responses to these changes, including transcendentalism and early labor movements, and the ongoing implications for freedom and work.

Takeaways

• 🚂 The Market Revolution was a significant shift in the US economy during the early 19th century, transitioning from self-sufficient farms to industrialized commerce.
• ⚙️ The revolution was driven by technological advances, particularly in transportation (roads, canals, railroads) and communication (telegraphs).
• 🏭 Factories emerged as organizational innovations, centralizing workers and tasks, which boosted efficiency and production, especially with water and steam power.
• 💰 The growth of the modern American economy required large capital investments, facilitated by new business organizations like limited liability corporations.
• 🏛️ Government played a key role in the economy, building infrastructure and passing laws that promoted competition and protected businesses.
• 👩‍🔧 The shift from home-based work to factory jobs changed the nature of labor, leading to wage-based work that was regulated by time, not productivity.
• 🚜 Westward expansion during this period was fueled by the belief in 'Manifest Destiny,' where Americans believed it was their right to settle the continent.
• 📉 The rise of industrial work led to economic disparities, with workers forming unions and political organizations to demand better conditions.
• 📚 Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau responded to the Market Revolution by emphasizing individual freedom and self-reliance in an increasingly regimented world.
• 📖 Herman Melville’s 'Bartleby the Scrivener' reflects on the alienation and meaninglessness of work in the market economy, offering a critique of the period's changes.

Q & A

What was the Market Revolution and why is it significant?

The Market Revolution was a process in the early 19th century where America transitioned from small-scale, local production to a more commercial, industrial economy. It marked the shift from self-sufficiency on farms to producing goods for sale in distant markets, transforming both the economy and the way Americans worked and lived.

How did new transportation technologies contribute to the Market Revolution?

New transportation technologies like better roads, canals, steamboats, and railroads dramatically reduced the cost and time of moving goods. These innovations expanded markets, allowing goods to be sold over long distances and contributing to the growth of a national economy.

What role did the government play in the Market Revolution?

The government played a crucial role by building infrastructure like roads and canals, passing laws that made it easier to form corporations, and protecting businesses through the Supreme Court. This support helped facilitate the growth of capitalism in America.

Why were factories significant during the Market Revolution?

Factories were important because they centralized production, increased efficiency, and introduced mass production techniques. Workers were brought together to perform specialized tasks, making goods faster and cheaper, which transformed how labor and industry functioned in the United States.

How did the Market Revolution change the nature of work for Americans?

The Market Revolution shifted many Americans from working at home or on small farms to working in factories where they were paid wages. Time became more regimented, with factory work being controlled by the clock, and people began to work for employers instead of themselves.

What impact did the telegraph have on the American economy?

The telegraph allowed for faster communication, enabling merchants to better anticipate when goods would arrive and how much they would sell for. This increased efficiency and information flow helped strengthen markets and contributed to economic growth.

Who were the early factory workers, and why were they employed?

Early factory workers were often young women, particularly in textile mills like those in Lowell, Massachusetts. They were employed because they were considered cheaper labor, as it was assumed they would not be the primary breadwinners of their households.

How did the Market Revolution affect gender roles and women's work?

The Market Revolution began to pull women into industrial labor, particularly in textile factories. However, women were paid less than men, reinforcing the belief that they were secondary earners. This shift also altered traditional roles, as work moved outside the home.

What was the 'putting-out system' and how did it change during the Market Revolution?

The 'putting-out system' was a production method where factory owners sent materials to workers who would complete tasks at home. As factories grew, it became more efficient to gather workers in one place, although the putting-out system persisted in some industries.

What were some intellectual and literary responses to the changes brought by the Market Revolution?

The Transcendentalists, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, emphasized individualism and the freedom to reinvent oneself in response to the regimentation of factory work. Herman Melville's story 'Bartleby the Scrivener' also critiqued the lack of meaning in industrial labor.

Outlines

00:00

📈 The Importance of Economics and the Market Revolution

In this introduction, John Green discusses the significance of economics, stating it’s more than just supply and demand—it’s about the decisions people make and how those decisions shape the world. He introduces the topic of the Market Revolution, a key period in American history when the economy shifted from self-sufficient farming to producing goods for sale. He compares the Market Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, emphasizing the transformative impact on how Americans lived and worked, thanks to advancements in transportation and communication.

05:03

🚂 Technological Advancements in Transportation and Communication

This paragraph delves into the technological innovations that spurred the Market Revolution, particularly in transportation and communication. Roads, canals, and railroads greatly reduced transportation costs and time. The Erie Canal and the spread of steamboats made New York the leading port, while railroads expanded commercial reach. The telegraph revolutionized communication, enabling faster and more reliable market information. Factories, an organizational innovation, centralized workers and increased production efficiency. These technological changes laid the foundation for America's modern commercial economy.

10:06

🏦 The Role of Corporations and Government in Economic Growth

John Green explains how new business organizations, like the Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), encouraged investment by protecting investors from personal financial ruin. He also highlights the role of the government, showing how state and federal interventions—such as infrastructure projects and legal rulings—supported capitalism. Supreme Court cases like Gibbons vs. Ogden and the Charles River Bridge decision promoted competition and growth. This collaboration between private enterprise and the government was crucial to the success of the Market Revolution.

🏡 The Changing Nature of Work and Labor

Here, Green explores the shift in labor from home-based production to factory work. Initially, small-scale production was done at home, especially by women, but factories centralized labor. This transition changed how Americans viewed work, with factory schedules regulating time rather than the natural rhythms of farm life. Factory work often fell to women, who were paid less, marking a significant change in labor dynamics. Workers now earned wages based on hours worked, which undermined traditional concepts of freedom and autonomy, leading to debates about American identity and liberty.

🌍 Westward Expansion and its Impact on Labor

As factory work became more common, many Americans sought freedom by moving westward, a migration fueled by the idea of 'manifest destiny.' Between 1790 and 1840, millions moved west of the Appalachian Mountains, establishing new states and increasing populations. This migration was both a search for new opportunities and a challenge for factory owners, who struggled to find labor. Immigrants, particularly the Irish fleeing famine, filled many factory jobs. Westward expansion became a symbol of American freedom, but it also deepened reliance on immigrant labor.

📜 Transcendentalism and Intellectual Reactions to Industrialization

In this section, John Green discusses the rise of Transcendentalism, a philosophical movement responding to the restrictions of industrial life. Writers like Emerson and Thoreau emphasized the importance of individual freedom and self-reliance in an increasingly regimented world. They saw the rise of interchangeable factory workers as a loss of personal identity. Green highlights the existentialist themes in literature, particularly in Herman Melville’s 'Bartleby the Scrivener,' which critiques the dehumanizing effects of the market economy and the meaningless of repetitive clerical work.

📉 The Impact of Business Cycles and Labor Movements

As the Market Revolution progressed, it brought with it economic booms and busts, which increased disparities in wealth. Workers responded by forming political organizations and unions to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Green notes that the prosperity of the Market Revolution often came at the expense of workers, including women, wage laborers, and slaves, who found themselves with less freedom than before. Literature, like Melville's 'Bartleby,' reflects these struggles, showing the existential frustrations of individuals caught in the market-driven economy.

Keywords

💡Market Revolution

The Market Revolution refers to the profound economic transformation that occurred in the United States during the early 19th century. It shifted the country from a primarily agrarian society, where individuals produced goods for personal use, to a more market-based economy, where goods were produced for sale in larger markets. This change was driven by new technologies in transportation, communication, and manufacturing, and it had significant social and economic implications for how Americans worked and lived.

💡Transportation Revolution

The Transportation Revolution was a key aspect of the Market Revolution, involving innovations like roads, canals, steamboats, and railroads. These developments drastically reduced the cost and time of transporting goods, making distant markets accessible. For instance, the Erie Canal made New York a major port by linking it to the Great Lakes, and railroads expanded rapidly by 1860, creating over 30,000 miles of tracks across the U.S.

💡Factory System

The factory system was an organizational innovation that brought workers together in a single location, dividing labor to increase efficiency and production speed. Initially reliant on water power, factories began using steam power, allowing them to be built in more locations. This system played a major role in the shift from home-based production to wage labor, where workers no longer owned the products of their labor but worked for wages based on time worked.

💡Limited Liability Corporation

A Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) is a business structure that protects its investors from personal financial loss beyond their own investments. This concept was crucial during the Market Revolution, as it encouraged investment in large-scale infrastructure projects like railroads and canals by minimizing the financial risk to investors. The formation of LLCs facilitated the growth of businesses by allowing them to raise more capital while protecting individual investors.

💡Telegraph

The telegraph was a groundbreaking communication technology that allowed for the rapid transmission of information across long distances. Its invention revolutionized commerce by enabling merchants and businesses to coordinate shipments and transactions more efficiently. This innovation, mentioned in the video, helped synchronize market information, reducing the delays that previously hampered trade and commerce.

💡Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny was the belief that it was the God-given right of Americans to expand across the North American continent. This idea justified westward migration and the displacement of Native American populations. It became a defining cultural and political ideology in the early 19th century, coinciding with the Market Revolution, as many people moved westward seeking economic opportunities and farmland.

💡Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was an intellectual and philosophical movement that emphasized individualism, self-reliance, and the belief that humans could transcend material limitations through personal intuition and spiritual growth. Prominent transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau reacted to the growing industrialization of America by promoting the idea that true freedom came from self-discovery, not from the constraints of wage labor or factory work.

💡Working Man's Parties

The Working Man's Parties were early labor organizations formed by workers in response to the economic changes brought by the Market Revolution. These parties advocated for higher wages, better working conditions, and more political representation for wage laborers. They were part of the broader labor movement that sought to protect workers' rights in the face of growing economic inequality and the increasing power of capital.

💡Put-out System

The 'put-out' system, also known as the 'cottage industry,' was a pre-industrial production method where manufacturers provided raw materials to households, who would then complete parts of the production process at home. This system was gradually replaced by factories, where workers were gathered together in a centralized location. The transition from the put-out system to factory-based production is highlighted in the video as a key change during the Market Revolution.

💡Wage Labor

Wage labor became increasingly common during the Market Revolution, as people moved away from self-sufficient farming and artisanal work. In a wage labor system, workers are paid based on the number of hours worked, rather than the value of the goods they produce. This marked a shift in how Americans viewed work, as people became more dependent on employers for their livelihood, leading to concerns about the loss of individual freedom and autonomy.

Highlights

Economics is about more than supply and demand; it's about how people's decisions shape their lives and the world.

The Market Revolution was more of a process than an event, transforming the way Americans worked and lived.

New transportation innovations like roads, canals, and railroads were critical to expanding markets and connecting distant producers.

The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, made New York the nation's premier port and spurred the growth of cities like Buffalo and Rochester.

The advent of railroads was perhaps the most transformative transportation innovation, with more than 30,000 miles of track laid by 1860.

Telegraph technology revolutionized communication, enabling merchants to manage shipments and prices more efficiently.

Factories were an organizational innovation, bringing workers together and dividing tasks, leading to faster and more efficient production.

The Limited Liability Corporation allowed investors to take risks without being personally responsible for company losses, fueling economic growth.

The government played a critical role in the Market Revolution by building infrastructure and protecting businesses through favorable laws and court decisions.

The Market Revolution changed the nature of work, moving people from home-based production to wage labor in factories regulated by the clock.

Young women, particularly in places like Lowell, Massachusetts, were among the first factory workers, but were paid less due to assumptions about their role as secondary breadwinners.

The Market Revolution brought about the rise of wage labor, which some saw as undermining individual freedom and independence.

Massive westward migration, driven by the promise of land and freedom, reshaped the American landscape and led to the creation of new states.

The term 'manifest destiny' embodied the belief that Americans had a divine right to expand across the continent, often at the expense of Native Americans.

Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson reacted to the Market Revolution by promoting the idea that true freedom lay in self-reliance and the power to reinvent oneself.

Transcripts

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course US History and today we return to one of my favorite subjects: economics.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, I don't wanna brag, but economics is actually my best subject.

Like, I got the bronze medal at the state academic decathlon tournament...among C students.

Yeah, I remember, Me from the Past.

By the way, thanks for getting that picture into our show.

It just goes to show you: aptitude is not destiny.

Anyway, economics is about much more than, like, supply and demand curves.

Ultimately, it's about the decisions people make and how those decisions shape their lives and the world.

So today we're going to turn to one of the least-studied but most interesting periods in American history: the Market Revolution.

There weren't any fancy wars or politically charged debates, but this discussion shaped the way that most Americans actually live their lives and think about work on a daily basis.

Like, if you or someone you know goes to work, well, then you have the Market Revolution to thank, or possibly to curse.

[Theme Music]

The Market Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, was more of a process than an event.

It happened in the first half of the 19th century, basically, the period before the Civil War.

This was the so-called "Era of Good Feelings," because between 1812 and 1836, there was really only one political party, making American politics, you know, much less contentious.

Also, more boring.

The Market Revolution saw many Americans move away from producing stuff largely for themselves on independent farms – that Jeffersonian ideal –

and toward producing goods for sale to others, often others who were very far away, with prices set by competition with other producers.

This was closer to Hamilton's American dream.

In the end, buddy, you didn't get to be president, but you did win.

In many ways, this was the beginning of the modern commercial industrial economy, not just in the United States, but in the world.

The first thing that enabled this massive economic shift was new technology, specifically in transportation and communication.

Like, in the 18th century, it was very difficult to bring goods to markets, and that meant that markets were local and small.

Most trade was over land, and transporting goods 30 miles over land in the United States literally cost as much as shipping them to England.

So, to get something from Cincinnati to New York, for instance,

the most efficient way was to go down the Mississippi River, through the Gulf of Mexico,

around Florida, and then up the Atlantic coast, which took three months,

but that was still less time and less money than more direct overland routes.

But new transportation changed this.

First came better roads, which were largely financed by tolls.

Even the federal government got in on the act, building the so-called National Road,

which reached all the way from the massive city of Cumberland, Maryland, across our great nation to the equally metropolitan Wheeling, West Virginia.

Mr. Green! Mr – Mr. Green, Mr. Green!

I know, Me from the Past, West Virginia did not yet exist, argh, shut up!

More important than roads were canals, which made transport much cheaper and more efficient,

and which wouldn't have been possible without the steam boat.

Robert Fulton's steam boat Clermont first sailed from New York to Albany in 1807, demonstrating the potential of steam-powered commerce.

And by 1811, there were steam boats on the Mississippi.

The introduction of steam boats set off a mania for canal building.

Between 1800 and the depression of 1837, which put a halt to most construction, more than 3,000 miles of canals were built.

And no state was more instrumental in the canal boom than New York,

which in 1825 completed the 363-mile-long Eerie Canal, linking the Great Lakes with the Hudson River, which made New York the nation's premier port.

Other cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse grew up along the canals.

So much so that Nathaniel Hawthorne once said,

"The canal is like fertilizer, causing cities to spring up alongside it."

That's such a good simile, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

It's almost like the United States didn't have any good writers until Mark Twain,

but we need to read somebody from the early 19th century, so I guess it's you.

But from a long-term perspective, the most important new transportation? Railroads.

The first commercial railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, was begun in 1828 and by 1860, there were more than 30,000 miles of rails in the United States.

And on the communication side, we got the telegraph, so no longer would Andrew Jackson fight battles two weeks after the end of a war.

Telegraphs allowed merchants to know when to expect their shipments and how much they could expect to sell them for.

And then, as now, more information meant more robust markets.

But perhaps the most important innovation of the time was the factory.

Now, when you think of factories, you might think of, like, Chinese political prisoners making smartphones, but early factories looked like this.

More than just a technological development, the factory was an organizational innovation.

Like, factories gathered workers together in one place and split up tasks among them, making production much faster and also more efficient.

The first factories relied on water power, which is the reason they were all east of the fall line – the geographic reason why there are so many waterfalls and rapids on the east coast.

But after 1840, steam power was introduced, so factories could be located in other places,

especially near the large cities that were sprouting up in what we now know as the Midwest.

So the American system of manufacturing, which centered on mass-production of interchangeable parts,

grew up primarily in New England, but then it moved to the Midwest, where it spent its adolescence and its adulthood, and now its tottering decline into senility.

So, all these new economic features – roads, canals, railroads, telegraphs, factories – they all required massive up-front capital investment.

Like, you just can't build a canal in stages as it pays for itself.

So, without more modern banking systems and people willing to take risks, none of this would have happened.

Some of these investments were facilitated by new business organizations, especially the Limited Liability Corporation,

which enabled investors to finance business ventures without being personally responsible for losses other than their own.

In other words, corporations can fail without, like, ruining their stockholders and directors.

People don't always like that, by the way, but it's been very good for economic growth in the last 180 years or so.

So having angered a bunch of people by talking about the important role that big businesses played in growing the American Economy in the 19th century,

I will now anger the rest of you by talking about the important role that the state played.

In the 1830s, states began passing general incorporation laws, which made it easier to create corporations,

and the Supreme Court upheld them and protected them from further interference in cases like Gibbons vs. Ogden, which struck down a monopoly that New York had granted to one steamboat company.

And the Charles River Bridge case, which said that building a second bridge over the Charles River did not infringe upon the charter of the first bridge.

In both those cases, the court was using its power to encourage competition.

And this brings up something really important about the growth of American capitalism: government helped.

The federal government built roads and canals and its highest court protected businesses.

And states issued bonds to build canals and offered sweetheart deals to companies that built railroads.

And despite what we may believe about the heroic risk-taking entrepreneurs building the American economy through solitary efforts,

without the government protecting their interests, they wouldn't have been able to do much.

All right, let's go to the Thought Bubble.

The Market Revolution changed the landscape of work, which, for most of the prior 200 years, happened at home.

Small-scale production of clothes and other goods had been done in the home, largely by women, and initially, this is how industrial production worked as well.

Factory owners would produce some of the products, like patterns for shoes, and then farm the finishing out to people working in their houses.

Eventually, they realized that it would be more efficient to gather the workers together in one place, although the older, "putting-out system" continued in some industries, especially in big cities.

After the Market Revolution, more and more Americans went to work instead of working from home.

The Market Revolution also changed the way we imagined work and leisure time.

Like, on farms, the seasons and hours of daylight regulated the time for work, but in factories, work is regulated by the clock.

Which, by the way, was one of the first products to be manufactured using the American system of manufacturing.

Railroads and shipping timetables further required the standardization of time.

Factories also made it possible for more people to do industrial work.

At first, this meant women.

The workers in the early textile mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, for instance, were primarily young, New England farm girls who worked for a few years in the mills before returning home to get married.

Women were cheaper to employ, because it was assumed that they would not be a family's sole breadwinner.

At least, this was the excuse for not paying them more at the time.

I can't remember what excuse we have now, but I'm sure it's a great one.

Anyway, all of this meant that the nature of work had changed.

In colonial America, artisans worked for what they called their "price," which was linked to what they produced.

In a factory, however, workers were paid a wage according to the number of hours they worked, regardless of how much they produced.

This may not sound like a big deal, but working for wages with one's livelihood defined by a clock and the whims of an employer was a huge change,

and it undermined the idea of freedom that was supposedly the basis of America.

Thomas Jefferson had worried that men working in factories, dependent upon their employers, were inherently un-free, and that this would make them unfit to be proper American citizens.

And as it happens, many factory workers agreed with him.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So, one reaction to the restrictions of the wage worker was to engage in the great American pastime of lighting out for the territories.

With less and less farmland available in New England, young men had been migrating west for decades.

And, after the War of 1812, this flood of migration continued and even grew.

Between 1790 and 1840, 4.5 million people crossed over the Appalachian Mountains, and six new states were created between 1815 and 1821.

Ohio's population grew from 231,000 in 1810 to over 2 million by 1850.

People even took up the motto 'Malaria isn't going to catch itself!' and moved to Florida after we purchased it from Spain in 1819.

Moving out West was a key aspect of American freedom, and the first half of the 19th century became the age of "manifest destiny":

the idea that it was a God-given right of Americans to spread out over the North American continent.

The term was coined by a New York journalist, John L. O'Sullivan, who wrote that the people living out West – i.e, the Native Americans – must succumb to quote,

"our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which providence has given us for the development of the great experiment in liberty."

Stan, he actually wrote "overspread"!

One thing I love about providence is that it has like a 100% rate of giveth-ing unto us and taketh-ing away from them.

One of the results of this migration was that it was really difficult for factory owners to find men who could work in their factories.

First, they looked to Yankee women to fill the factories, but increasingly, those jobs were filled by immigrants.

Fortunately, the US had lots of immigrants, like the more than one million Irish people that came here fleeing poverty, especially after the potato famine of 1845 to 1851.

Lastly, let's turn to the intellectual responses to the Market Revolution.

Oh, it's time for the Mystery Document?

The rules here are simple.

If I fail to guess the author of the Mystery Document, I get shocked with the shock pen.

And yes, this is a real shock pen!

Lots of people are commenting, saying I am faking the shocks.

I am not faking the shocks!

I am in the business of teaching you history, not in the business of faking pain!

All right, let's do this thing.

"They do not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers of the career, do not yet see,

that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Patience - patience; - with the shades of all the good and great for company;

and for solace the perspectives of your own infinite life;

and for work, the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world.

Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be a unit; - not to be reckoned one character;

- not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be – "

Oh, god, Stan, I can't bear it anymore.

It's Emerson. [dinging noise] It's definitely Emerson. It is unreadably Emerson.

Indeed, the most linguistically convoluted of the Transcendentalists, which is really saying something.

Anyway, I don't get punished, but I did kind of get half punished, because I had to read that.

The Transcendentalists – like Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman – were trying to redefine freedom in a changing world.

Work was increasingly regimented.

Factory workers were as interchangeable as the parts that they made.

But the Transcendentalists argued that freedom resided in an individual's power to remake oneself, and maybe even the world.

But there would be a reaction to this in American literature as it became clear that escaping drudgery to reinvent yourself was no easy task for wage workers.

So, the early 19th century saw a series of booms and busts, sometimes called business cycles.

And with those business cycles came a growing disparity in wealth.

To protect their interests, workers began forming political organizations called Working Man's Parties, that eventually morphed into unions, calling for higher wages and better working conditions.

And we'll have more to say about that in coming weeks, but for now, it's important to remember that as America grew more prosperous, many people

– women and especially slaves, but also free, wage-working men –

recognized that the Market Revolution left them with much less freedom than they might have enjoyed 50 or 100 years earlier.

My favorite commentary on the Market Revolution actually comes from the author Herman Melville in his short story "Bartleby the Scrivener."

Melville worked at the customs house in New York, so he knew all about world markets first-hand.

In "Bartleby," he tells the story of a young clerk who works for a lawyer in New York City.

Now, when you're a farmer, your work has an intrinsic meaning.

When you work, you have food, and when you don't work, you don't.

But when you're a copyist like Bartleby, it's difficult to find meaning in what you do every day.

You know that anyone else could do it, and you suspect that if your work doesn't get done, it won't actually matter very much.

And in light of this, Bartleby just stops working, saying, "I prefer not" when asked, well, pretty much anything.

Seeing his boss and society's reaction to someone who simply doesn't buy into the market economy is comic, and then ultimately tragic.

And it tells us a lot about the Market Revolution beyond the famous people and inventions and heroic individualism.

Now, most people read "Bartleby" as an existentialist narrative, and it definitely is that, but, for me, the story's subtitle proves that it's also about the market economy.

The full title of the story is, "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street."

I'll see you next week.

Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller.

The script supervisor is Meredith Danko.

Our associate producer is Danica Johnson.

The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself.

And our graphics team is Thought Cafe.

If you have questions about today's video, please ask them in comments, where they'll be answered by our team of historians.

Also, suggest Libertage captions.

Thanks for watching Crash Course World History.

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Just kidding, thanks for watching Crash Course US History! DFTBA!