Mankind The Story of All of Us Episode 8/12 Treasure

[music]

Narrator: We are many.

[sounds of fighting]

We create different worlds,

but mankind shares the same desires.

Now, the riches of a new world pour out across the planet.

[sound of jewels falling on table]

creating new desires, new wealth, and new conflicts

that will give birth to a connected world.

Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet,

most species will fail, but for one, all the pieces will fall into place,

and a set of keys will unlock the path for mankind to triumph.

This is our story, The Story of All of Us.

1579

The Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America

A ship on a mission that launches a new age of piracy,

small, fast, armed with 18 cannons,

at the helm, an Englishman, Francis Drake,

farmer's son, fearless navigator, and the most successful pirate in history.

In his sights, a Spanish Galleon, loaded with a metal so valuable, it would change the world.

Drake's secret partner in crime is the English Queen, Elizabeth the First.

Loades: Drake was given letters of reprisal, signed by the British Crown,

which meant that he could go and raid Spanish shipping. What he did was piracy!

[cannon shot]

Narrator: He's already plundered over 70 Spanish ships.

The King of Spain has put a price on his head.

Ten million dollars today. Dead or alive.

The Spanish ship, the Cacafuego, heads for the coast of Panama with the most valuable cargo ever seen at sea.

In its hold, 26 tons of silver from the Americas, worth 30 million dollars today.

Barrels thrown off the stern slowed Drake's ship down.

Loads: So he was gaining on her very slowly, very slightly, imperceptibly,

and not looking like a foreign threat, and why would they expect one? There were no foreign ships in the Pacific.

Narrator: Disguised as a harmless Spanish merchant, Drake's ship has been chasing the Cacafuego for 14 days.

Machowicz: Nothing worked better than deception. You could do the unexpected.

If you can set up your enemy, so they think one thing while you do another thing, you're going to gain an advantage on the battlefield.

Narrator: But Drake can't risk an all-out attack.

Machowicz: Instead of going to flat out war with another vessel, where he takes the chance of sinking that vessel

or having his vessel sank, he wants to get as close as possible, so that he can seize that vessel whole.

[sounds of waves crashing and boards creaking]

Narrator: His plan: a surgical strike from close quarters,

to take out the Spanish Galleon's main mast.

Machowicz: Success on the battlefield, whether it's land or sea, is all about stacking the right advantage in your favor

at the right time, so when the moment comes [snaps finger], you execute perfectly.

[a man yelling and sounds of drums]

[FIre!]

[sounds of cannon ball being lit and fired]

Narrator: Two cannon balls chained together

[sound of the cannon balls hitting the ship]

[boards falling]

Narrator: smashed through the mast.

Loades: Now, she couldn't flee even if she tried; she was incapacitated.

[sounds of footsteps walking down stairs]

Narrator: The richest pirate haul the world had ever seen,

enough to pay off England's entire national debt and fund its government for a year.

American silver: the key to a new global economy that transforms lives in every corner of the planet.

Narrator: In 50 years, the Spanish and Portuguese have carved out vast new empires in the New World,

from New Mexico in the north to Argentina in the south,

and high in the Andes in South America, a discovery that will launch a new era in the story of mankind:

Potosi, a mountain made of silver,

[lava erupting]

Formed when continental plates collide 170 million years ago,

the Andes are the richest source of silver in the world. Magma from the earth's crust pushes rich silver veins towards the surface,

creating, in Potosi, silver veins up to 12 feet thick.

In the next 300 years, Potosi will supply 80% of all the silver in the world.

Wunderlich: We put a great value on that, which is rare. You can take silver and break it up into small bits, so that they become a standard value currency.

With that, you can purchase, and you trade with other societies, and it's going to increase the wealth of the entire world.

Narrator: But within 20 years, the richest silver ore is mined out,

leaving Spanish engineers with a problem.

The remaining ore is too low grade for the silver to be extracted using heat.

[music]

Mann: The Spaniards had never encountered it in anything like silver ore before and didn't know how to refine it.

The techniques that they actually used just ended up boiling away the silver.

Narrator: The riches of America trapped inside its rocks,

but in 1553, a man arrives with a secret formula,

the key that unlocks the wealth of the new world.

Bartolome' Medina

experimenter, innovator, entrepreneur,

a textile trader from Spain. He's traveled 5,000 miles to make his fortune.

His idea will build new cities and empires, create new ways of living,

launch new conflicts, and help define some of the man-made wonders of the world:

a chemical formula for extracting silver using mercury,

[sound of water swishing]

but at first, the method that worked in Europe fails.

Medina doesn't realize that the silver-bearing rocks of the Andes have fewer traces of copper than those of Europe,

essential for the formula to work.

For months he experiments, searching for a solution.

Medina: I suffered mental anguish. I begged Our Lady to enlighten and guide me, so that I might be successful.

[voices and crushed rocks hitting water]

Meigs: Medina was an entrepreneur, who saw a problem, and fiddled and experimented until he came up with a solution.

[sound of rain]

Narrator: Finally, a breakthrough: the missing ingredient, a common substance used to tan leather, copper sulfate,

reacting with Mercury, the missing catalyst that separates the silver from its impurities.

[Medina cheering]

Narrator: The key that turns the minds of Potosi into the richest source of silver mankind has ever known.

Meigs: What Medina did was he made those silver mines in South America dramatically more productive,

and the flow of silver going to the global train just took off overnight.

Narrator: 220 tons of silver mine each year.

Potosi becomes the busiest industrial complex in the world.

In each year, in three giant furnaces, the Spanish mint 2.5 million silver coins.

peso de ocho: pieces of eight,

the world's first universal currency.

Silver becomes the key to mankind's prosperity.

Mann: These Spanish coins are seen everywhere in the world. They unite the world in a web of commerce.

Narrator: A single coin worth the equivalent of $80 today,

legal tender in the USA until 1857.

The scroll and pillars of the Spanish Royal Crest inspires one of the world's most potent symbols, the dollar sign.

Mann: The result is extraordinary. The entire world's economy is affected, as this silver just explodes out of the Americas,

crosses the Pacific, crosses into Europe, and there is an enormous burst of prosperity.

This is the true beginning of globalization.

Narrator: Spanish fleets ship 50 thousand tons of silver out of the Americas, creating a new Atlantic trade.

Wunderlich: Suddenly, we have mass quantities coming onto the market, which is going to really transform all of European trade

and what we see as a whole new blooming economy in Europe.

Narrator: New trading centers rise: Seville, Lisbon, London, and on the coast of a small new country, the Netherlands, the world's richest and busiest trading city:

Amsterdam, a city of new wealth and new desires,

about to trigger the world's most extraordinary boom and bust and gamble its future on a flower, the tulip.

[yelling and fighting]

Amsterdam, 1639

[sounds of fighting and cheering]

a city flushed with new money.

A century after the Spanish conquest of the New World, the riches of the Americas and an explosion of global trade have turned the Netherlands into the richest nation on the planet.

The Dutch control over the half the world's shipping,

more new millionaires than anywhere else on Earth,

the highest income per head in Europe,

[Sounds of yelling]

a city in love with gambling.

Caught up in the excitement, Jan van Goyen

struggling artist, looking for a new way to make his fortune.

Hejeebu: In a wealthy city, a city of great merchants and great enterprises, he's a guy on the move, and he wants to get in on this action.

Narrator: New wealth drives the demand for new luxuries, and one exotic import has captured the public's imagination:

the tulip.

Imported from Turkey, the patterns of the most exotic tulips are created by a virus that attacks only some bulbs,

making them rare and hard to cultivate.

Today, the tulip bulb sells for about 50 cents but, in Holland in 1636, the rarest bulbs are selling for 100 times their weight in gold.

Amsterdam's merchants are inventing new ways of making money.

The birth of speculation, in the back rooms of taverns, tulip merchants sell, not flowers or bulbs but, the rights to next year's harvest,

the world's first futures market.

Hejeebu: Today, all agricultural products are sold at futures markets.

You can buy crops that have not been harvested yet.

Similarly, tulips were bought in advance of their delivery date.

Narrator: In one month, in November 1636, the price of tulip shares has quadrupled.

Van Goyen sees an opportunity.

Narrator Van Alst: Until now ,if you weren't nobility or you weren't a great merchant, you weren't wealthy,

but here's a chance for the common people to become wealthy.

[people talking]

Narrator: Confident of a quick return, Van Goyen invests all his savings in tulip shares.

[Sounds of drums beating, people talking and money being dropped]

By the beginning of December, the price of tulip bulbs reaches ten times their price a month before.

A bubble has started to inflate.

By December 12th, the price doubles again.

At an auction in nearby Leiden, the seven penniless orphans of an innkeeper pin their hopes for the future

on their dead father's small collection of tulip bulbs.

[voices, music]

In less than a hour, each child earns 40 times the annual income of an average craftsman.

[cheering]

Tulips turn orphans into millionaires,

and the price continues to rise.

Holland is gripped by tulip mania.

Brands: If you watch price of tulips go up and up and up, you start to think you're a fool if you don't get on that escalator and ride it up.

Narrator: Three days later, Van Goyen, like many others, buys more tulip shares.

Brands: He may well know that a tulip is only worth a tulip and not worth a fortune, but, if other people think it's worth a fortune, then you'll make a lot of money.

Narrator: By January 1637, the price has doubled again.

[people auctioning ]

Narrator: Now, a few wise investors decide to sell their shares and make fortunes.

Hebeeju: Everything in financial markets is about timing, the time you enter a contract and the timing you get out.

Narrator: Van Goyen hangs on to his, confident that the market will continue to rise and rise.

Hebeeju: I can see myself in his shoes. He saw the orphans getting rich; he thought he would like to be in the mix himself,

that if he didn't get in, that he'd missed the boat, he missed his chance. Unfortunately, his timing was off.

Narrator: Suddenly, on February 3rd 1637, at a auction in a city of Harlem,

a consignment of tulip bulbs goes unsold.

[yelling]

Within days, investors panic and rush to sell their shares,

but there are no buyers.

Prices crash.

Tulips once sold for 5,000 guilders, now worthless.

From Boom to Bust,

and Dutch investors discover a truth that mankind is still learning today,

that the value of investments can go down as well as up.

Hebeeju: Booms and Bust have been with us since trade has been with us, but what's special about the tulip mania is the fact that people like Van Goyen,

nonspecialist, nontraders, not qualified to understand the value of the bulb, they're getting involved in this trade,

and frankly, they're not in a position to absorb the risk.

Narrator: Van Goyen is ruined.

He never makes his fortune but, in painting his way out of debt, over 1,200 pictures and 800 drawings,

he becomes one of Holland's most prolific and greatest artists.

New wealth transforms society in Europe, with new desires and new temptations.

Leading one group of religious radicals to reject this world as corrupt and ungodly

and set out on a journey that will transform the future of a continent, North America.

They call themselves, Pilgrims. They arrive in the New World in search of religious freedom.

Brands:: The Pilgrims rejected the society they were in. They believed that the only way to preserve their religious belief, pristine, was to get away,

to go somewhere where they wouldn't be bothered and, most importantly, where their children wouldn't be tempted by what they had seen in Holland and England.

Male Pilgrim speaking: The great hope, an inward zeal we had, of laying some great foundation for advancing the gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world.

Brands: America represented a clean slate because, to their way of thinking, it was empty.

[sounds of wind, water dripping and digging]

Narrator: But within months, the Pilgrims are struggling to survive.

They land at the start of a bitter New England winter. Their crops fail.

malnutrition, starvation, disease.

[somber music]

102 men, women, and children make the crossing. Six months later, 50 of them are dead.

[ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Lord who watches in Heave be thine name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven]

[Gives us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass - fade]

[gunshots]

Male Pilgrim speaking: That'll do, Father. That'll do. Cover them up. Get the women back to camp.

Narrator: The Pilgrims bury their dead at first light to hide how weaken they've become

because the land they've settled on is not empty.

It belongs to the Wabanaki.

An encounter between two worlds is about to shape the future of mankind.

In New England, 50 pioneers prepare to fight for their lives.

The future of a continent hangs in the balance.

Not all are Pilgrims. Among them, a soldier, Miles Standish.

brave, impulsive, the group's military commander

[pilgrims talking and getting ready to fight]

Standish: Is there somebody out there? Get the gate in place. Now! Now! Now! Ladies, get inside.

[intense music]

Native American: Welcome, Englishmen. Welcome.

Narrator: 3,000 miles from home, the first Native American the Pilgrims encounter greets them in their own language.

[soft music]

Narrator: Samoset, a Wabanaki Chief, his English learned from earlier visitors to this coast.

Van Alst: If we think back to how fearful the English are of being here, here's what they might think is a sign from God: he actually speaks our language.

It could have been a really violent encounter, and Samoset should get a lot more credit for kinda bringing things down a notch.

Narrator: The next day, Samoset brings another English speaking warrior, Squanto.

diplomat, politician, the man who will teach the Pilgrims to survive in the New World

Squanto has spent a year in Europe.

Kidnapped and sold as a slave in Spain, he wins his freedom and makes his way to London, where he learns English.

Hired as a interpreter for English merchants, he eventually earns his passage back home.

William Bradford, Governor of the Pilgrims, writes:

Squanto was a special instrument sent of God and never left until he died.

Narrator: He guides the Pilgrims through his world, brokering friendships, alliances,

their survival guide in their new world.

Van Alst: He taught them what he and his people had learned in isolation over the millennia.

Narrator: The crops the Pilgrims bring from Europe have failed in poor sandy soil.

Squanto teaches them to fish and use their catch as fertilizer.

Bourdain: It surely must of come as a revelation to see people using fish to make the soil more productive.

To the early Pilgrims, it must have been quite a surprise.

Narrator: And a crop they had never seen before:

Corn, the key to their survival and still today, the most widely grown crop in the Americas.

William Bradford records:

We set some 20 acres of corn, according to the manner of the Indians,

and now, we began to gather up the small harvest. We were well recovered in health and had all things in plenty.

Brands: They discovered, perhaps to their surprise, that the Indians weren't simply savages, who simply hunted and fished.

They had grown crops. There was an exchange of ideas, each side and from the other,

and it seemed like a productive enterprise on behalf of both sides.

Narrator: A moment of cooperation, all too rare in the story of the New World.

Brands: The Pilgrims were important for what they represented, in terms of Europe's preparation to

essentially explode out across the Atlantic and reproduce itself,

not only in North America and South America and other parts of the world as well.

Narrator: Ten percent of all Americans today are descended from these first fifty pioneers.

Thousands more will follow. Within 100 years, they found great trading cities that rivaled those of Europe.

Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, Boston.

50 pioneers, who turned their backs on a world devoted to making money,

lay the foundations of the United States, the greatest trading nation of the future.

But while corn and cooperation transforms North America, a new commodity sweeping the world, sugar, changes the destiny of another continent.

Africa; meaning one woman, a warrior queen, into a desperate struggle for her kingdom and her people.

Ndongo, Central Africa.

Today, part of northern Angola.

In a struggle for resources that shapes the world we live in today, one woman fights to keep hold of her kingdom.

Queen Nzingha Mbande

skillful strategist, warrior queen

Gates: Nzinga was a ferocious woman, who was a ruler, but she was very complicated.

Narrator: Queen Nzinga confronts a formidable enemy, the Portuguese. They want her territory and her people as slaves.

Portuguese plantations in the New World need a work force, to produce a new crop changing mankind's taste: sugar.

Humans are drawn to sweetness more than any other flavor.

Today, we eat up to half our body weight in sugar every year.

In the Americas and Caribbean, the Spanish and Portuguese lay out vast new plantations of sugar cane.

Morris: People always want a luxurious food that tastes good, and the hunt for luxury has driven the exploration of the world in the spread of trade networks.

Narrator: Agriculture on a new industrial scale driving the demand for labor and a new commodity:

human beings.

Like many African rulers, Queen Nzinga has been selling captives and prisoners of war to the Portuguese.

Gates: The African slave trade was a conspiracy, unfortunately, between average Europeans and African elites.

Nzinga was a slave trader herself, like many of the monarchs in Africa at that time,

but she sold slaves, other Africans, captives in war, to defend herself against the encroachment of the Portuguese.

Narrator: But as the sugar trade expands,

so does the demand for more African slaves.

Her former trading partners have turned against her.

They now want her people as slaves.

In a mountain stronghold, she prepares to defend her kingdom and her people,

against her, not just the Portuguese, but their new African allies.

Painter: She was up against warlords, who were taking advantage of a market for people.

They were human traffickers, and they were armed.

Narrator: With Queen Nzinga,her sisters, Princesses Mukambu and Kifunji.

[voices]

[fighting, shooting]

Narrator: The Ndongo are outnumbered, surrounded

[screaming]

Princess Mukumbu and Kifunji enslaved.

Over three centuries, European slave traders will transport 15 million Africans to the New World,

the majority from Central Africa.

Gates: It's one the most horrendous, painful moments, in modern human history,

both for Europeans and for black Africans.

Narrator: But Queen Nzinga herself escapes.

For the twenty years, until her death,

she will fight on and negotiate and bargain to keep Ndongo free from Portuguese rule.

Gates: I am fascinated that there was a woman, who was as powerful in the history of Africa as Queen Nzinga.

Enormously complicated and enormously brilliant diplomatic figure in African history.

Narrator: 250 years later, slavery will be abolished.

[man: "and forever free."]

Narrator: But mankind's taste for sugar transforms the face and civilization of two continents.

Today, almost a fifth of the population of the Americas can trace their roots back to Africa.

And while a New World economy transforms lives in Africa,

across the globe in India, the riches of the Americas

help turn its ruler into the wealthiest man on earth.

[yelling]

and help build one of the most epic monuments on the planet.

Narrator: 1631

Morhampur Fortress, Central India

[clapping]

The world's richest man, on campaign to consolidate his power,

Shah Jahan.

emperor of 100 million people.

His name means "King of the World."

Hebeeju: Shah Jahan was the king of kings. During the Mughals' golden age,

he expanded the reach of the Empire.

Narrator: Shah Jahan's wealth is legendary.

A chronicler describes just one of his treasure houses:

750 pounds of pearls,

275 pounds of emeralds,

three silver thrones,

100 gold and silver chairs,

100,000 silver plates.

Narrator: Contributing to this wealth, a string of trading ports along India's coast,

drawing thousands of European merchants, flush with American silver.

Hebeeju: Silver just opened so many doors for them, at long last. They had a trading currency,

they had something that the Asians wanted. They could acquire textiles, cotton,silk, spices,

pepper, cinnamon, exotic Asian commodities.

Narrator: 100 tons of silver pours into India each year.

generating millions in taxes, paid to one man,

Shah Jahan.

A renegade nobleman, Khan Jahan Lodi, has rebelled and been hunted down.

Now, he pays the price.

With the Emperor on campaign, his favorite wife in labor with their 14th child,

her name, Mumtaz Mahal,

"the jewel of the palace."

Hebeeju: He had many, many, many wives, but she was his first among women.

His chroniclers praise her as the inspiration behind the throne.

[screaming out, crying]

[Jahan speaking]

Narrator: But her life is in danger.

She's losing blood.

Neither Shah Jahan's wealth nor power can save the woman he loves.

[crying out, grieving]

Hebeeju: Here's this man who has the world in his hand. Here's the man who has riches that can't be counted,

and he's lost his beloved. He has lost what he cannot hold.

Narrator: In grief, Shah Jahan commissions a tomb for his beloved wife,

hundreds of tons of white marble, encrusted with jewels, costing the equivalent of $70 million today,

a lasting monument to the power of silver.

the Taj Mahal.

Global trade and wealth on a vast new scale creates some of mankind's most iconic structures,

bigger, taller, will spend the next 350 years, building monuments to our economic power and our connected world.

The riches of a New World, unlocked,

a new global currency, launching pirates across oceans,

new commodities, new desires,

and new conflicts, transforming every continent on the planet.

Mann: That kind of globalization that we are in now, where bank collapses in Iceland can ripple across the American Midwest,

that all begins in the 16th century,

and it begins with the creation this universal currency.

Narrator: Now, pioneers push further into the open spaces of the world.

New adventures,

discoveries, and an age of revolutions

that will launch mankind into the modern world.