Columbus, de Gama, and Zheng He! 15th Century Mariners. Crash Course: World History #21

In which John Green teaches you about the beginning of the so-called Age of Discovery. You've probably heard of Christopher Columbus, who "discovered" America in 1492, but what about Vasco da Gama? How about Zheng He? Columbus gets a bad rap from many modern historians, but it turns out he was pretty important as far as the history of the world goes. That said, he wasn't the only pioneer plying the seas in the 1400s. In Portugal, Vasco da Gama was busy integrating Europe into the Indian Ocean Trade by sailing around Africa. Chinese admiral Zheng He was also traveling far and wide in the largest wooden ships ever built. Columbus, whether portrayed as hero or villain, is usually credited as the great sailor of the 15th century, but he definitely wasn't the only contender. What better way to settle this question than with a knock-down, drag-out, no holds barred, old-fashioned battle royal? We were going to make it a cage match, but welding is EXPENSIVE.

Resources:

The Age of Reconnaissance by JH Parry - An explanation of the technologies that made these voyages possible, and a nice detailed record of many of the important voyages. http://dft.ba/-discovery

When China Ruled the Sea by Louise Levathes: A history of the Ming dynasty's ventures into maritime exploration. http://dft.ba/-zhenghedragon

Unknown Seas by Ronald Watkins: A highly readable account of Vasco da Gama's introduction of europe into the Indian Ocean trade. http://dft.ba/-vasco

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Hi,
I’m John Green;

this is
Crash Course: World History

and today we’re going to do
some compare and contrast,

because that’s what passes for
hip in world history circles.

Right, so you’ve probably heard of

Christopher Columbus who in 1492
sailed the ocean blue

and discovered America, a place that
had been previously discovered

only by millions of people--

Mr Green, Mr Green!

Columbus was just a lucky idiot.

Yeah, no.

Here’s a little rule of thumb,
Me from the Past:

If you are not an expert in something,

don’t pretend to be an expert.

This is going to serve you well
both in your academic career

and in your Kissing Career.

MOVING ON.

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So unlike Me from the Past,

I’d argue that Columbus has a
deserved reputation in history—

[Save his Harry Potter
directional stint]

but was he really the greatest sailor
of the 15th Century?

Well, let’s meet the other contestants.

[playing for a lifetime supply of Garlique]

In the red corner, we have Zheng He,
who, when it comes to ocean-going voyages

was the first major figure of the 15th century.

And in the blue corner
is Vasco da Gama,

from scrappy little Portugal,
who managed to introduce Europeans

to the Indian Ocean trade network.

Columbus, you have to sit
in the polka-dotted corner.

[until you learn special effects
are a privilege, not a crutch]

As you’ll no doubt remember from
our discussion of Indian Ocean trade,

it was dominated by
Muslim merchants,

involved ports in Africa and
the Middle East and

India and Indonesia,
and China and

it made a lot of people super rich.

This last point explains why our three
contestants were so eager to set sail.

Well, that and the ceaseless desire of
human beings to discover things

and contract scurvy.

Let’s begin with Zheng He,

who is probably the greatest admiral
you’ve never have heard of.

Couple of important things about Zheng He:

First, he was a Muslim.

That may seem strange until you consider that
by the late 14th century China had long experience

with Muslims,

especially when they were ruled by,
wait for it....

The Mongols.

[Hark! The commotive, cacophonic
caterwauling of clattering conquerors!]

Secondly, Zheng He was a eunuch.

(He was one of a kind?]

Fortunately, 15th century China had
excellent general anesthesia,

so I’m sure it didn’t hurt at all
when they castrated him—

what’s that,
Stan?

They didn’t have any anesthesia?

Oh, boy.

Oh. STAN,

I’M SEEING IT!

I can see, AH AH AHHHH.

Stan!

SHOW ME SOMETHING
CUTE RIGGHT NOW!

Oh, hi there kitty!

How’d you get in that little teacup?

Thank you,
Stan.

Right, so

Zheng He rose from humble beginnings
to lose both of his testicles,

and become the greatest
admiral in Chinese history.

Let’s go to the thought Bubble.

Between 1405 and 1433,

Zheng He led seven voyages
throughout the Indian Ocean,

the expeditions of the so-called
treasure ships, and they were huge.

Columbus’ first voyage
consisted of three ships.

Zheng He led an armada
of over 300 ships.

With a crew of over 27,000—

more than half of London’s
population at the time.

And some of these ships were,
well, enormous.

The flagships,
known as treasure ships,

were over 400 feet long and
had 7 or more masts.

See that little tiny ship there
in front of the Treasure Ship?

That’s a to-scale rendering of
Christopher Columbus’s flagship,

the Santa Maria.

Zheng He wasn’t an explorer:

The Indian Ocean trade routes
were already known to him

and other Chinese sailors.

He visited Africa,
India, and the Middle East,

and in a way,
his journeys were trade missions,

but not in the sense of filling his
ships up with stuff to

be sold later for higher prices.

China was the leading manufacturer
of quality goods in the world,

and there wasn’t anything they
actually needed to import.

What they needed was prestige and respect
so that people would continue to see China

as the center of the economic universe,

so there was a tribute system

through which foreign rulers or their ambassadors
would come to China and engage in a debasing

ritual

called the kowtow

wherein they acknowledged the
superiority of the Chinese emperor

and offered him or her
but usually him

gifts in return for the right
to trade with China.

The opportunity to humble yourself
before the Chinese emperor was

so valuable that many a prince was
happy to jump on a treasure ship

and sail back to China
with Zheng He.

Also, these tribute missions brought
lots of crazy things to China,

including exotic animals:

From Africa, Zheng He brought
back a zoo’s worth of

rhinos, zebras, and even giraffes.

Basically, he was like the
medieval Chinese Noah.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So the Chinese were world
leaders in naval technology,

and they wanted to dominate
trade here in the Indian Ocean.

So why, then, did these voyages end?

One reason was that Zheng,

He couldn’t live forever,
and sure enough, he didn’t.

Also his patron,
the Yongle Emperor, died.

And the emperor’s successors weren’t very
interested in maritime trade.

They were more concerned
with protecting China from

its traditional enemies,
nomads from the steppe.

To do this,

they built a Rather Famous Wall.

The Great Wall was mostly built under the
Ming with resources that they had because

they stopped building gigantic ships.

Just imagine what might have happened if the
Ming emperors had embraced a different strategy.

One that was based on outreach
instead of isolationism.

And now,
to the blue corner…

Representing
Portuguese exploration,

we have Vasco da Gama.

Couple things about Portugal:

First, it has a fair bit of coast line.

Secondly it was also
relatively resource poor,

which meant it relied
upon trade to grow.

Also, the Iberian peninsula was the only place
in Europe where Muslims could be found in

large numbers in the 15th century,

which meant the Christian Crusading spirit
was quite strong there, presumably because

Muslims had brought so much stability
and prosperity to the region.

And chief among these
would-be crusaders was

Prince Henry the Navigator,
so called because

he was not a navigator.

[What is in a name,
Metta World Peace?]

He was, however, a patron, not only of sailors
themselves, but of a special school at Sagres

in which nautical knowledge was collected
and new maps were made,

and all kinds of
awesome stuff happened.

And all that knowledge gave Portuguese sailors
a huge competitive advantage when it came

to exploration.

Henry commissioned sailors
to search for two things.

First,

a path to the Indian Ocean
so they could get in on

the lucrative spice trade.

And second,

to find the kingdom of Prester John,

a mythical Christian King who was supposed
to live in Africa somewhere, so that Henry

could have Prester John’s help in a crusade.

Da Gama was the first
of Henry’s protégés

to make it around Africa,
and into the Indian Ocean.

In 1498,
he landed at Calicut,

a major trading center on
India’s west coast.

And when he got there, merchants
asked him what he was looking for.

He answered with three words:

Gold and Christians.

Which basically sums up
Portugal’s reasons for exploration.

So, once the Portuguese breached
the Indian Ocean,

they didn’t create, like,
huge colonies,

because there were already
powerful empires in the region.

Instead,

they apparently sat in the middle
of the Indian Ocean doing nothing.

Actually, they were able to capture
& control a number of coastal cities,

creating what historians call a

“trading post empire.”

They could do this thanks
to their well-armed ships,

which captured cities by

firing cannons into city walls

like IRL Angry Birds.

But since the Portuguese didn’t
have enough people or boats

to run the Indian Ocean trade,

they had to rely on extortion.

[C.R.E.A.M. Get the money-
Dollar, dollar bill y'all.]

So, Portuguese merchant ships
would capture other ships

and force them to purchase
a permit to trade

called a cartaz.

And without a cartaz,
a merchant couldn’t trade

in any of the towns that
Portugal controlled.

To merchants,

who’d plied the Indian Ocean
for years in relative freedom,

the Portuguese were
just glorified pirates,

extracting value from
trade without

adding to its efficiency or volume.

So, the cartaz strategy sort of
worked for a while, but

the Portuguese never really took
control of Indian Ocean trade.

They were successful enough
that their neighbors Spain,

became interested in their
own route to the Indies,

and that brings us to Columbus.

But first, let’s dispel some myths:

One:

Columbus and his crew
knew the earth was round.

[Some folks still
aren't convinced]

He was just wrong
about the earth’s size.

Columbus used
Ptolemy’s geography

and the Imago Mundi, based
on Muslim scholarship—

and ended up overestimating
the size of Asia and

underestimating the size
of the oceans.

Two:

Columbus never thought
he’d made it to China.

He called the people he
encountered “Indians” because

he thought that he’d made it to

the East Indies,
what we know as Indonesia.

Three:
Columbus was not a lucky idiot.

He navigated completely unknown
waters primarily relying on

a technique known as
dead reckoning,

in which you figure out your position
based on three pieces of information:

The direction you’re going,

your speed,

and the time,

which you figure out via hourglass.

With only that technology
to guide you,

its not actually that easy
to hit a continent.

Come here people who are
saying he didn’t hit a continent,

that he only hit some islands.

Come here.

Dahhh!

Oh,

it’s time for the Open Letter?

An open letter to
the Line of Demarcation…

But first,

let’s see what’s in the
secret compartment today.

Oh,
its a globe. T

hanks Stan!

Just what I always needed.

Dear Line of Demarcation,

You have so much to teach us

about the way that the world
used to work,

and the way that it works now.

In 1494, Pope Alexander VI

settled a dispute between
Portugal and Spain by

dividing the world into two parts:

The Spanish part, and
the Portuguese part.

This whole thing, at least

according to
Pope Alexander VI,

could be split between
Spain and Portugal.

At least when it came to
so-called unclaimed land.

I mean, unclaimed by whom?

You know all the
American Indians were like,

“wait, this land is available?
In, in that case, we’ll just,

we’ll just keep it.

If its all the same to you.”

Anyway, Line of Demarcation,

I have great news for you.

What Alexander VI did

totally worked.

We haven’t had a
problem since.

Best wishes, John Green.

So, Columbus’s first journey

(he made four,

the last three of which
were pretty calamitous)

was tiny,

and he initially landed on a s
mall Caribbean island he called

San Salvador in search,
like the Portuguese,

of Gold and Christians.

He was able to convince

Ferdinand and Isabella
of Spain

to fund his expedition by

promising riches and
conversions of the natives,

hopefully to sign them up
for yet another crusade.

And there’s a long-standing
myth that Columbus tricked

Ferdinand and Isabella
into paying for his trip,

but in fact they’d commissioned
two different sets of experts

to analyze his plans,
both of which agreed,

he was [totes cray cray].

One called the plan,

“Impossible to any educated person.”

But even so,

Ferdinand and Isabella
footed the bill,

partly because they were
full of Crusading zeal

after expelling the
Muslims from Spain,

and partly because they were
desperate to get their hands

on some of that pepper richness.

[Also some Kleenex, to help with
the subsequent sneezy richness?]

Columbus of course,
failed at finding riches—

he returned with
neither spices nor gold.

He did create some Christians, as
we’ll discuss in a future episode,

but in terms of
goal accomplishment,

Columbus was much less
successful than either

Zheng He or Vasco de Gama.

[and most certainly, David Yates]

But within two generations
of Columbus,

Spain would become
fantastically wealthy,

and for a time they were
the leading power in Europe.

Columbus’s voyages also
had a huge, largely negative,

impact on the people the Spanish
encountered in the Americas.

And excitingly
from my perspective,

once Columbus returned
from San Salvador,

we can speak for the first time
of a truly world history.

Except for you Australia.

So who was the greatest
mariner of the 15th century?

Well, as usual,

it depends on your
definition of greatness.

[Eccleston, Tennant, Smith?
Frak it... Adipose?]

If you value

administrative competence
over ill-advised adventure,

than Zheng He is
certainly the winner.

But the reason we remember
Columbus over him

or Vasco de Gama

is that Columbus’s voyages had
a lasting impact on the world,

even if it wasn’t
necessarily a positive one.

And that makes me wonder what
kind of person you’d want to be:

A capable administrator and
brilliant sailor like Zheng He?

A daring captain like de Gama?

Or the bearer of a complicated
but famous legacy like Columbus?

Let me know in comments.

Thanks for watching,
and we’ll see you next week.

Crash Course is
produced and directed by

Stan Muller,

our script supervisor is

Danica Johnson.

The show is written by my

high school history teacher

Raoul Meyer and myself,

and our graphics team is

Thought Bubble.

[Seriously, no Canadians made
it past Stanley Cup Round 1?]

Last week’s
Phrase of the Week was,

“You smell pretty.”

[missed an opportunity
for banjo picking there...]

Thanks for that suggestion,
by the way.

If you want to suggest
future phrases of the week,

you can do so in comments

where you can also guess at
this weeks phrase of the week

or ask questions about today’s video

that will be answered
by our team of historians.

Thanks for watching
Crash Course,

and as we say in my home town,

Don’t forget you're Stuck In My
Heart Now, Where My Blood Belongs.