Commerce, Agriculture, and Slavery: Crash Course European History #8

Summary

In this Crash Course episode, John Green explores the transformation of everyday life in Europe from 1500-1800, focusing on the agricultural and commercial revolutions. These changes increased food production, population growth, and urbanization, but also caused social displacement and inequality. Innovations like crop rotation, the seed drill, and new global crops, including potatoes and maize, played a key role. The expansion of trade, fueled by the Atlantic slave trade and capitalism, redefined European wealth and social order, creating new power dynamics that would shape future developments.

Takeaways

• 👑 The episode shifts focus from political disputes to everyday life in European history, examining food, commerce, and societal changes.
• 🌽 Developments in agriculture and commerce, including the Agricultural and Commercial Revolutions, significantly shaped European life between 1500 and 1750.
• 🌱 Crop rotation, land reclamation, and the enclosure movement increased agricultural productivity but also led to social dislocation and increased poverty.
• 💰 The rise of private property and capitalist practices disrupted traditional social structures, creating new wealthy classes and altering values.
• 🍲 The introduction of new crops from the Americas, such as potatoes and maize, played a crucial role in increasing food production and population growth.
• 📈 The Commercial Revolution saw the expansion of trade, leading to the growth of cities and specialized labor, such as shoemaking and theater.
• 🚢 The Atlantic slave trade and the dehumanization of Africans were integral to the economic growth of Europe, particularly in the production of commodities like sugar and tobacco.
• ⚖️ The exploitation of African slaves and indigenous populations fueled European wealth, while introducing systemic racism that justified the inhumane treatment of these groups.
• 💼 Innovations in finance and commerce, such as joint-stock companies and double-entry bookkeeping, facilitated economic growth but also introduced new risks for investors.
• 🏦 The rise of capitalism and the global expansion of trade created a new class of wealthy merchants, challenging the traditional power of the aristocracy.

Q & A

What is the main focus of this episode of Crash Course European History?

The main focus is on the basics of everyday life in Europe centuries ago, including the foods people ate, the goods they bought and sold, and changes in their lifestyles. The episode explores developments in agriculture and commerce during the early modern period.

Why does the host argue that developments in agriculture and commerce are important to study in history?

The host argues that history is about how people lived and what we can learn from their lives. While political events are significant, the day-to-day lives of people, including their access to goods, services, and opportunities, are equally important.

What were some of the key agricultural innovations during the early modern period in Europe?

Key innovations included crop rotation (e.g., planting turnips and clover to replenish soil), land reclamation (converting marshes into farmland), the enclosure movement (consolidation of common lands into private farms), and the invention of tools like the seed drill and a more efficient plow.

How did the agricultural revolution impact the population in Europe between 1500 and 1800?

The agricultural revolution led to an increase in food production, which contributed to population growth. For example, the population in Britain nearly doubled between 1700 and 1800.

What were the social consequences of the agricultural revolution in Europe?

The agricultural revolution caused significant social dislocation, including the rise of poverty, migration to cities, and the disenfranchisement of farmworkers. The enclosure movement led to fewer people having direct access to land, resulting in increased homelessness and starvation among the poor.

What role did the Columbian Exchange play in the changes in European agriculture?

The Columbian Exchange introduced new, nutritious crops such as potatoes and maize to Europe. These crops could be grown on previously marginal land, contributing to increased food production and population growth.

How did the rise of capitalism during the early modern period change European society?

Capitalism led to the private ownership of enterprises, creating new groups of wealthy traders and merchants who competed for political influence. This disrupted traditional social hierarchies, as wealth was no longer solely tied to aristocratic lineage.

What was the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on European economic growth?

The Atlantic slave trade provided the labor needed to produce lucrative commodities like sugar, tobacco, and coffee. This trade was integral to the growth of European wealth, but it also entailed horrendous treatment of enslaved Africans and the development of dehumanizing racism.

Why does the host mention that historians debate the impact of the agricultural revolution?

Historians debate the impact because, while the agricultural revolution led to increased food production and population growth, it also caused significant social upheaval, poverty, and migration. The benefits of modernization came at the cost of trauma and impoverishment for many people.

How did European views on Africans change from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century?

Initially, Europeans admired African wealth and described Africans as intelligent and rich. However, as the demand for slaves grew, European views became contemptuous and dehumanizing, justifying the brutal treatment of Africans in the slave trade.

Outlines

00:00

📜 Overview of Everyday Life in Early Modern Europe

John Green introduces the topic by highlighting a shift from discussing political and religious conflicts to exploring the basics of everyday life in Europe centuries ago. He emphasizes the importance of agriculture and commerce, arguing that history is fundamentally about how people lived, rather than just the actions of rulers. He draws a parallel to modern life, where politics influences but does not entirely define daily experiences. The discussion will focus on the food, goods, and opportunities available during the early modern period, setting the stage for an examination of agricultural and commercial developments.

05:01

🌍 Europe's Transformation: From Subsistence to Growth

This paragraph details the dire conditions in Europe around 1500, marked by famines, limited trade, and a subsistence economy with little surplus. Despite ongoing conflicts, the early modern period saw significant improvements, with population growth, particularly in Britain. Historians attribute this to an agricultural revolution that included innovations like crop rotation, land reclamation, enclosure of common lands, and the introduction of new farming tools. These changes increased agricultural productivity, leading to more food and wealth, though not everyone benefited equally.

10:06

👩‍🌾 Agricultural Revolution and Social Displacement

The paragraph discusses the social impact of the Agricultural Revolution, focusing on figures like Elizabeth of Sutherland who removed tenants from her lands to create more efficient farming operations. This led to the displacement of many people, who became landless and impoverished. The revolution increased overall food production and wealth but also caused massive social dislocation, with many poor individuals migrating to cities or other continents. The period saw rising inequality, as fewer people controlled more land, leading to a debate about whether these changes ultimately helped or harmed society.

🍲 The Global Exchange of Crops and Knowledge

This section highlights the role of the Columbian Exchange in introducing new crops like potatoes and maize to Europe, which could be grown on previously unusable land. The potato, in particular, became a vital food source due to its adaptability and nutritional value. Additionally, the exchange brought agricultural knowledge from Africa and the Americas to Europe, with enslaved African women playing a crucial role in transferring techniques that increased crop yields, such as rice cultivation in European colonies.

⛓️ The Expansion of the Atlantic Slave Trade

The paragraph traces the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, which saw a massive increase in African slaves being transported to the Americas in the late seventeenth century. Initially, Europeans admired African wealth, but as the demand for labor grew, they dehumanized Africans to justify the horrors of slavery. The slave trade became integral to the global economy, with European and African leaders profiting from the exchange of slaves for goods and weapons. This trade led to widespread suffering and the entrenchment of racist ideologies that persisted for centuries.

⚖️ Slavery's Role in Europe's Economic Growth

This paragraph discusses the brutal conditions faced by enslaved people in industries like sugar and mining in Brazil, where slavery was both a cause and a product of growing European wealth. The slave trade was part of a complex global network, not just a simple triangular trade, involving goods like cowrie shells and Indian textiles. The section also touches on the spread of consumption and innovation in Europe, which further fueled economic growth. Despite the wealth generated, the paragraph highlights the deep human cost of slavery and its lasting impact on society.

🏦 The Rise of Capitalism and Global Trade

The paragraph focuses on the rise of capitalism and its impact on European society, where new wealth from global trade disrupted traditional social hierarchies. Innovations like joint-stock companies and double-entry bookkeeping facilitated economic growth, though risks remained high for investors. The Fugger family is mentioned as an example of how banking fortunes were tied to the success of monarchs. The emergence of a wealthy merchant class led to competition with the nobility for political influence, marking the beginning of capitalism's profound influence on European values and societal structures.

Keywords

💡Agricultural Revolution

The Agricultural Revolution refers to the period between 1500 and 1800 when significant advancements in farming techniques led to increased food production in Europe. This era saw innovations such as crop rotation, land reclamation, and the introduction of new farming tools like the seed drill. These changes played a crucial role in boosting agricultural yields, which in turn supported population growth and the expansion of cities, despite also causing social dislocation and increased poverty for displaced farmers.

💡Commercial Revolution

The Commercial Revolution describes the period of European economic expansion, colonialism, and mercantilism that occurred roughly between 1500 and 1750. This era saw a growth in global trade, the rise of joint-stock companies, and the spread of capitalism. These developments were fueled by innovations in trade, finance, and agriculture, leading to the accumulation of wealth among new social classes and significantly impacting the structure of European society.

💡Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange refers to the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World following the voyages of Christopher Columbus. In the context of the video, the introduction of new crops like potatoes and maize to Europe is highlighted as a major factor in improving agricultural productivity and sustaining population growth during the early modern period.

💡Enclosure

Enclosure was the process by which common lands, traditionally used by local communities for grazing and farming, were consolidated into private ownership, often by wealthier farmers. This practice increased agricultural efficiency but also led to significant social upheaval, as many small farmers were displaced from their lands and forced into wage labor or migration to cities. The video uses the example of Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, to illustrate the impact of enclosure on rural populations.

💡Slave Trade

The Slave Trade refers to the forced transportation of millions of Africans to the Americas to work as slaves in plantations and mines. The video discusses how the demand for labor in the New World, particularly in sugar and tobacco production, drove the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. This brutal system was justified by racist ideologies and had long-lasting economic and social impacts, contributing to the wealth of European nations and the development of capitalism.

💡Triangle Trade

The Triangle Trade describes the transatlantic trading network during the 16th to 19th centuries that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas. European goods were exchanged for African slaves, who were then sold in the Americas, with the profits used to purchase commodities like sugar and tobacco for return to Europe. The video notes that while the Triangle Trade was a significant part of the global economy, the actual trading routes were far more complex, involving a variety of goods and regions.

💡Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the pursuit of profit. The video explains how the rise of capitalism in early modern Europe was driven by global trade, the Agricultural and Commercial Revolutions, and the exploitation of slave labor. This new economic order created a wealthy class of merchants and traders who competed with traditional aristocratic elites for social and political power.

💡Crop Rotation

Crop Rotation is an agricultural technique where different crops are planted in succession on the same field to maintain soil fertility and reduce the need for fallow periods. The video highlights this practice as a key innovation of the Agricultural Revolution, which helped increase food production in Europe. By alternating crops like turnips and clover with grains, farmers were able to replenish the soil and boost yields, contributing to the overall growth of the population.

💡Fallow

Fallow refers to farmland that is left unplanted for a period to allow the soil to recover its nutrients. The video mentions that the practice of crop rotation during the Agricultural Revolution reduced the need for leaving fields fallow, which in turn increased the amount of land available for cultivation. This innovation was crucial in boosting food production and supporting population growth in early modern Europe.

💡Moral and Intellectual Inferiority

Moral and Intellectual Inferiority is a concept used by Europeans during the early modern period to justify the enslavement and brutal treatment of Africans. The video discusses how, as the demand for slaves grew, Europeans began to dehumanize Africans by portraying them as morally and intellectually inferior. This racist ideology was used to rationalize the horrific conditions of slavery and the systemic exploitation of African labor in the Americas.

Highlights

European history highlights the shift from political disputes to everyday life, including agriculture and commerce.

The early modern period saw population growth and improvements in agriculture despite ongoing wars and strife.

Crop rotation methods, such as planting turnips and clover, helped replenish soil and increase agricultural yields.

The Dutch pioneered land reclamation efforts, converting marshes and previously unusable land into farmland.

The enclosure movement privatized common lands, leading to more efficient farming but displacing many peasants.

New agricultural tools like the seed drill and improved plows, based on Chinese inventions, enhanced efficiency.

The agricultural revolution led to increased productivity but also social dislocation, poverty, and migration to cities.

The introduction of new crops from the Americas, such as potatoes and maize, played a crucial role in increasing food supply.

The global exchange of agricultural knowledge, particularly from African and Native American women, transformed European farming.

The Atlantic slave trade expanded dramatically in the 17th century, driving European wealth and consumer demand for goods like sugar and tobacco.

Racism grew alongside the slave trade, with Europeans dehumanizing Africans to justify their exploitation.

The slave trade was part of a complex global market involving multidirectional trade routes, not just the triangle trade.

The rise of joint stock companies, like the East India Company, facilitated the growth of capitalism and international trade.

Innovations in banking, such as double-entry bookkeeping, helped merchants and bankers manage growing commerce.

The rise of capitalism created new wealthy groups, challenging traditional aristocratic values and reshaping European society.

Transcripts

Hi I’m John Green and this is Crash Course European History.

So, last time, we were focusing on queens and kings and rivalries.Today we’re gonna

take a break from struggles over religion and political disputes that made for so much

violence and look instead at some basics of everyday life--the foods people ate centuries

ago, the kinds of things people bought and sold, and changes in the kinds of lives people

could hope to live.

I know developments in agriculture and commerce may seem like sidelines to the main political

show—I mean, there’s a reason it’s called Game of Thrones and not like, Game of Slightly

Improved Seed Quality--but I’d argue that history is about how people lived, and what

we might learn from their lives.

And if you think about our lives today, our leaders are important.

Our forms of government are important.

But as Miroslav Volf said, Politics touches everything, but politics isn’t everything.

On a day-to-day basis, our lives are also shaped by the kinds of goods and services

available to us, and our professional and personal opportunities.

Whether you go to school, whether you get enough to eat, the kinds of freedom you do

and do not enjoy... those are the big questions we’re exploring today.

INTRO The citizens of many European nations today

have long life expectancies, and a top standard of living.

Europe also comprises the largest developed economic market place and a major region of

trade.

But in 1500, that was hardly the case.

In the early fourteenth century a major famine erupted, with further famines across the centuries.

We’ve talked about the Black Death.

Trade was local and regulated by guilds—that is, by organizations of individual artisans

and traders that determined the number and type of goods that could be produced and marketed.

In the late middle ages Europe was a subsistence economy, with little if any agricultural surplus.

If princes could satisfy their appetite for food and drink on a regular and reliable basis,

they were virtually alone in experiencing a consistently happy and full stomach.

In 1500, Europe was not exceptional in life expectancy or in many other measures of well-being.

But in the early modern period, roughly between 1500 and 1750 the situation gradually improved,.

And I know that seems impossible, given all the religious strife, and wars, and massacres

we’ve discussed in this series so far.

But during this period, population actually rose;

In Britain, for instance, the population almost doubled between 1700 and 1800.

Historians attribute this rise to developments in agriculture, sometimes called an agricultural

revolution that unfolded alongside all that warfare.

And there was also a growth in commerce, often called a commercial revolution, and of course,

the Columbian exchange, which made new nutritious foods--from potatoes to corn--available to

Europeans.

But the agricultural revolution was also driven by innovation that dramatically boosted agricultural

yields in Europe between 1500 and 1800.

Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

For starters, it was discovered that planting certain crops, like turnip and clover, could

replenish soil, which was one example of crop rotation--farmers would plant one crop in

a field one year, and then another the next year, rotating 2 or at times three crops to

add nutrients to the soil. and the great thing about crop rotation is

that it decreased the amount of farmland that needed to remain fallow each year--that is,

unplanted.

Secondly, with the Dutch pioneering some advances, land reclamation occurred across Europe.

This entailed converting marshes and other previously unusable land into farmland.

and Third, common lands were enclosed.

Enclosure occurred when wealthier farmers bought up or simply took common land (land

that had been open to community use).

Private farms were able to innovate faster than communities,

which required consensus in group decision-making.

And fourth, there were new inventions such as the seed drill and a plow that could be

drawn by two instead of six or eight farm animals.

The new plow cut down on expenses and the seed drill made planting more accurate with

less wasted seed.

Both of these new tools, by the way, copied Chinese inventions.

But while enclosure and more mechanized farming practices did mean more overall food, and

therefore more overall wealth, not everyone benefited, because a decrease in common land

meant that fewer people had direct access to land for their own use.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So one example of all these innovations can be seen in the life of [[TV: Elizabeth of

Sutherland]] Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, who inherited some 800,000 acres in Scotland.

Stan, hold on a second.

Is that a trout in her hair?

Is is a feather?

Was there some kind of hair fish trend at the time?

Let’s move on from lighthearted hair fish jokes and talk about people being wrested

from their land.So, Elizabeth removed hundreds of tenants from her estate, then created unified

acreage for farming and raising sheep with the help of day laborers.

These landless workers were cheaper, and also unlike the tenant farmers who had lived on

the land previously, day laborers did not have longstanding claims to inhabit and work

the land, called “tenancy.”

The Countess was known for chasing villagers away from their land with her own hands, and

also for innovations that increased productivity even as Sutherland’s former tenants became

homeless.

So more overall food, but on land controlled by fewer people.

So obviously, this Agricultural Revolution entailed massive social dislocation that included

the rise of poverty, migration of disenfranchised farmworkers to cities and also to other continents,

and even as overall agricultural production rose, some among the poor starved.

And this period of European history is still widely debated in part because ideas of private

property and inequality of wealth remain resonant today, but whether this modernization helped

or hurt humanity again depends on your perspective.

To some, it was fatal.

To many, it meant trauma and impoverishment as people were removed from lands their families

had farmed for generations.

But these changes also helped fuel greater overall food production, population growth,

larger cities, and more space for all kinds of specialized labor, from shoemaking to theater.

I mean, it’s no coincidence that Shakespeare and Marlowe were writing as English agricultural

production started to increase.

Another ingredient in the rising population and overall output of food was the inflow

of novel plants from the Americas and other parts of the world.

Potatoes and maize, for example, were grown on the marginal land that was previously seen

as unfit for agriculture.

Farmers started experimenting with all the new crops, but especially with maize and potatoes

that could produce super-abundant...did the world just open?

Is there a potato in the center?

There’s a lot of candidates for most important plant of the last 500 years, but I’m gonna

say it’s the potato.

They contain lots of carbohydrates, and whatever micronutrients are.

You can turn them into both French fries and tater tots, the world’s two most important

foods.

But most importantly, you don’t need great soil to have great potatoes.

Just ask Idaho!

[[TV: Rice]] In addition to the transfer of crops, knowledge about agriculture was transferred

from Africa and the Americas to Europe.

Women in both the Americas and Africa had made their regions food-rich, as European

traders and invaders testified, and their knowledge of crops and irrigation techniques

allowed, for instance, rice to be grown in much larger quantities in European colonies.

[[TV: Slave Trade]] Much of what Europeans learned about agriculture from Africans came

from enslaved women agriculturalists.

Slavery has existed for millennia, but slaves have experienced very different lives depending

on culture, and religion, and occupation, and gender.

[[TV: Slaves at Work]] Before 1650, the Atlantic slave ships took an annual total of 7,500

Africans to the Western Hemisphere—and that number was comparable to other slave routes,

such as the one in South Asia or the Ottoman Empire.

The vast majority went to Mexico and South America.

European ships transported other slaves from the Indian Ocean across the Pacific, many

of them to Mexico.

But, beginning in the late seventeenth century, there was a massive upsurge in African slavery

that sought to replace the labor of the native American populations that had been utterly

devastated by disease and warfare.

In particular, slave labor was used to fill the world’s increasing demand for commodities

and consumer goods.

Europeans came to depend on sugar, and tobacco, and coffee, and tea--all of which was produced

primarily via forced labor.

[[TV: Mansa Musa]] And racism developed alongside the growth of the African slave trade.

At first, Europeans were in awe of African wealth in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,

as it motivated their first contacts.

They craved African gold and found African men and women stately--“intelligent and

rich,” as one Portuguese trader wrote.

However, greed for profit took over and as the indigenous Amerindian population declined,

the desire for slaves grew, and to justify slavery, European descriptions of Africans

became contemptuous and dehumanizing.

[[TV: Slave Ship]] As dehumanization progressed, Europeans treated Africans as morally and

intellectually inferior, and used those incorrect constructions to justify their horrendous

treatment of Africans, packing them into slave ships and subjecting them to the lethal middle

passage across the Atlantic.

African kings and independent African traders fed the rising demand for slaves.

In those days of state consolidation African rulers sought funds for weaponry, which Europeans

provided in exchange for slaves.

More advanced weaponry then allowed leaders to capture additional people to sell to European

slavers for yet more weapons.

European slavers mostly operated along the West African coast, while Arabs took slaves

from East Africa to sell to India or into the Middle Eastern markets.

The Saharan slave trade went northward, transporting many women slaves to serve as domestics and

as sex workers.

But the European slave was by far the largest, and the dehumanizing racism that has endured

to this day.

[[TV: Slaves at Work]] In the eighteenth century, one million slaves worked in the sugar industry

and diamond and gold mines of Brazil.

These industries were tremendously lucrative, and in that sense, slavery both produced and

was a product of growing European wealth.

The conditions of slavery were truly dire: Torture, beatings, overwork, and malnutrition

were routine.

And because the system itself did not treat them as humans, enslaved people had very little

recourse, and there was always the knowledge that you could be separated from your children,

from your family, at any time, because you were treated legally and practically as property.

The slave trade itself was part of a web of interactions that is still being understood.

Historians used to talk of the triangle trade: shippers took small iron goods from Britain

to Africa, trading them for slaves; and then shippers dropped off the slaves who survived

the passage in Brazil or the Caribbean, and then filled their holds with local sugar or

molasses to take back to England.

But while there was a triangle, there were also many other shapes.

West African rulers and consumers wanted cowrie shells and Indian textiles as payment for

slaves.

These products took a much more circuitous route than a simple triangle.

Cowrie shells, for example, were picked up from merchants along the Pacific Ocean or

South Asian coasts, then “cured” and processed in Sri Lanka, then shipped again.

With slaves coming to the New World across the Pacific and commodities to pay for them

flowing in multiple directions, the slave trade into the Americas was part of a global,

not just triangular, market.

In fact, multidirectional trade in many goods increased in diversity and quantity.

In the seventeenth century literally millions of pieces of porcelain went in Portuguese

ships to Dutch and other European ports.

And to get funds to buy that porcelain, European shippers did a lot of local coastline shipping,

stopping at ports around the Indian Ocean or at Chinese depots in the Philippines.

European consumers snapped up goods and merchants grew wealthy.

The increase in consumption was truly unprecedented: For example, in 1660 the East India Company

imported 23 pounds of tea to Britain; in 1750 it imported five million pounds.

[missing text] [[TV: Indiaman]] Besides slavery and colonization,

innovation was also an important facilitator of economic growth.

And I don’t just mean innovation in terms of actual things, I also mean innovation in

terms of ideas...like corporations!

The East India companies such as those founded in Britain, the Netherlands, and France focused

each kingdom’s international trade and raised funds for investment.

Joint stock companies arose to finance merchant ships.

The development of double entry bookkeeping gave merchants and bankers a better idea of

inflows and expenditures.

However, there wouldn’t be laws limiting liability of such companies until much later.

So, a ship lost at sea could still mean the investors’ loss of homes and possessions.

Whereas now, when investors do things that lose money, we just give them their money

back.

And talking of bankers brings us to the Fuggers, or Fuggers.

The Fugger family of bankers, who once loaned money to monarchs such as Charles V and Philip

II of Spain, who then spent everything on defeating Protestants, the monarchy’s bankruptcy

made the bankers penniless too.

This whirl of commerce disrupted society by producing new values and creating new groups

of wealthy, influential people.

Almost everywhere in Europe, people who weren’t aristocrats became rich from global expansion

of trade.

Many of the aristocrats also became richer, of course, but the wealth of new groups of

people upset long-held notions about the importance of family lineage.

And capitalism--that is, the private ownership of enterprises--changed everyday values and

turned activities toward making profit above all else.

Capitalism created a new class of wealthy traders and merchants, who competed for political

influence with those from hereditary status groups such as the nobility.

We’ll hear more, of course, about the twists and turns of capitalism across the centuries.

But by the beginning of the eighteenth century capitalism was in a lively stage of development,

thanks to the abundance provided by the agricultural and commercial revolutions and also by the

Atlantic slave trade, which wrenched some eleven to twelve million Africans from their

homes and families.

Thanks for watching.

I’ll see you next time.