One thing that should strongly be emphasized
is that history should not be bunched into
separate categories, but is one big, long,
parallel story of everything, like how there
were tiny mammoths in northeastern Russia
when the pyramids were built, but could we
link ancient China to Martin Luther?
Well, yes, that’s what this video’s about,
so how does this all work?
First, we start off in northern China, during
the Song dynasty.
Just north of the Chinese border, there have
always been tribes, often referred to as the
equivalent to “barbarians” by many in
China, these included peoples such as the
Xiongnu, perhaps partially known for contributing
to the fall of Rome, as the Huns.
China’s tactic for keeping these various
clans at bey was the classic tactic of divide
and conquer, just without the “conquer”
part.
Many Chinese officials would pay individual
clans to go to war with each-other, keeping
them from mounting a devastating offense on
the Chinese heartland (the wall helped a bit,
too, I guess).
This wasn’t really very favorable for those
living outside the border, and there have
been attempts to unite the clans against China,
all were thwarted, with their leaders killed,
until the year 1205, when someone named Temujin
(later Genghis Khan) decided he also had enough
of this, and decided to unite the Mongol tribes.
They quickly started conquering surrounding
areas, including entering into China.
In just a few decades, the Song dynasty collapsed,
and by 1271, the Mongols established their
own government, known as the Yuan dynasty,
which is quite a feat, considering they were
also busy conquering the rest of the world.
In the year 1279, the Mongols established
an empire that stretched from St. Petersburg
to Guangzhou, and they used their huge sphere
of influence to transfer people and knowledge
around their realm, and effectively rebooted
the old Silk Road trade system, allowing goods,
people, ideas, and much more to once again
easily travel between Europe and east Asia.
Unfortunately, one thing that also travels
easy on trade routes is disease, and the bubonic
plague (starting off in central Asia) eventually
made its way to Europe, likely through the
siege of Kaffa, in modern-day Ukraine.
The disease then spread throughout the 1340’s
and 50’s, out through Italy and Constantinople,
into almost all of Europe (except Poland,
Poland was completely unaffected), killing
between 1/3 and 1/2 the population.
Cities were temporarily deserted, and the
feudal society that ran Europe couldn’t
function as it had prior, with the significantly
smaller population of serfs and laborers to
work for the manors.
The few that remained were now valuable enough,
in comparison, to start demanding fairer wages,
and one thing that was innovated throughout
the mid-15th century were technologies that
required less manpower, and one of these such
inventions was the reliable printing press.
Before the printing press, only the rich and
the church (which was also getting rich) could
afford their own books, and books were incredibly
valuable, since each copy had to be handwritten
by a scribe, and took months to make at best.
The printing press wouldn’t have exactly
impressed someone in the 21st century, but
it was huge.
Books were easier to make, and more people
could be exposed to ideas, and (important
for this scenario) could read the Bible for
themselves (especially when they translated
it into the languages they actually spoke).
Not only could preexisting ideas be spread
rapidly, so could new ideas.
The church, over the centuries, had to idea
to get corrupt, and soon, a priest named Martin
Luther had the idea of not liking that idea,
and when they started offering “get out
of hell free” cards, the printing press
came in very handy to Martin Luther and his
95 protest-ant ideas to improve the church,
but then people disagreed, and the whole thing
split up.
Obviously, this is a very simplified version
of everything, and didn’t do all these historical
events quite the justice they deserved, but,
to be fair, it’s still over 250 years of
history spanning thousands of kilometers.
This video is to illustrate how historical
events can be linked in causation, more than
“this happened, and then this happened”,
but more like “this happened, which affected
how this would happen”.
Thanks for watching this video, and if you
found it interesting, please be sure to like,
share and subscribe to learn something new
every Sunday.
