Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back.

My name is Mr. Wallace.

This is lesson 4 in our unit on the year 1492, examining why historians, some historians, have called this a turning point.

Now, over the last three lessons, we've built up quite a lot of knowledge about this, starting with the picture that you can see on the screen, on the landing of Columbus in what he thought was Asia, but was in reality the Caribbean, in 1942.

We've also built up exactly what happened in the short term and the long term, looking at the Columbian exchange in our last lesson.

Today we're going to finish this off and consolidate it, and begin to think about why historians call this a turning point, what are the different kind of short term and long term consequences which were so dramatic, we're also going to think about whether or not this is really the question we should be asking.

Now before we start, I want to make sure you've got everything you usually would have.

So make sure you've got a pen, make sure you've got a piece of paper to write on, and make sure that you've got hassle free, distraction free environment so you can get some work done today.

If you're ready, we'll get started.

If not, just take a moment and get your things.

Are we ready to go? Then we're going to answer this question.

What was the impact of Columbus' voyage? Now before we get into that, we need to bring some of the things back from the back of our minds into the front.

I'm going to take myself off.

Last lesson, we went through the Columbian Exchange, which is the name, and I never explained this in the last lesson, but it's maybe worth kind of going over now.

The Columbian exchange, named after Columbus.

It's not named after the country of Columbia, which is also named after Columbus, but it's an exchange that took place after Columbus' voyage, hence why it's called the Columbian Exchange, and it is about the transfer of things between the New World and the Old World, the Americas and the Old World continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Now, in one direction here, I've got an arrow which is in pink, going from New World to Old Word, and I've got another arrow in green going from Old World to New.

And I've given you nine different things here which were exchanged in one direction or the other.

What I would like you to do is pause the video, and I want you to write these things and put them into the right categories.

So which went from New to Old, the pink, and which went from Old to New, the green? So pause the video here, and try and note down which direction these things were exchanged in.

All right, that's great.

Let's see what you've got here.

This is really going to help with our question today because you can't really talk about why this was a turning point without the Columbian Exchange.

It's such an important feature here, so we need to make sure that's at the front of our minds.

So, the things that went from the Old World to the New, the things that are in green, I've put down here sugar, but that's actually a complicated one, we'll come back to that shortly.

But sugar was moved to the Old World so Europeans could grow it because they wanted to have more access, so they grow it in colonies in the Caribbean and Brazil, for example.

Horses, they transformed the lives of many indigenous tribes.

Colonists, people, moved over there.

Diseases, which killed millions of the people of North, Central, and South America.

And enslaved people, which were captured from the coast of Africa and shipped to work on sugar plantations, tobacco plantations, and so on.

In the other direction, you had things like corn, chocolate, tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, chilli peppers.

You had predominantly crops, food, which changed the lives of people in the Old World, who also had wealth and power, because these Old World countries like Spain, and Britain, and Portugal, were able to begin growing quite large empires.

Now, sugar is one that you could technically put in both, because originally, it was moved to the New World to grow, and then it was sold back into the Old World at cheaper prices so more people could have it.

So if you've put sugar on one or the other, I think that's acceptable.

But to begin with, it went in that direction, and when it had been grown, it went back in that direction.

Now, the Columbian Exchange is one of the most dramatic ways that 1942 and Columbus' voyage affected the world, because it affected people, it affected diseases, it affected empires, some empires fell like the Aztecs, some empires grew more powerful like the British and the Spanish, it affected the enslavement of people, it affected the food that we eat, it affected our national cuisine, it affected so much.

So the Columbian Exchange is one way that Columbus unintentionally inspired the world.

Another way is in exploration.

Now we've looked at this map before.

If you think back, we looked at this in the very, very first lesson, and this was the map of the world from before Columbus' voyage.

It's from 1489, three years before Columbus sets sail.

In the corner here, you've got Europe, Britain, France, Spain, Italy.

From about here, on the Canary Islands, that Columbus set off.

We've got Africa, and at this point no one could sail around it.

We've got Asia, and across here, where the Silk Road is, which we'll talk about a lot more today.

Here is Asia, or at the time known as the Indies.

Once Columbus had landed, he was part of and helped lead a resurgence of exploration.

Other sailors, other explorers, other countries, also wanted to continue exploring.

As I said before, it was a very, kind of romantic idea.

People wanted to explore the world, they wanted to gain prestige for themselves and for their country, and others, especially from Portugal and Spain, began sailing and trying to explore too.

So here is a map drawn in the 1500s, less than 100 years after this one, and you can see already how dramatically different it is.

So first of all, you've got the New World.

You've got North, Central, and South America, but they don't quite look right, do they? They didn't, yet, have all of the knowledge of the West Coast, but the East Coast is reasonably accurate.

But what is dramatically different here is the Old World.

Europe, Africa, and Asia, are so much more accurately drawn than before.

Look at Africa here.

It's correct, it's correct, and then it gets a little bit wrong as it goes to the bottom here, because no one has sailed around it.

Asia is, you know, this is India.

It does kind of jag out into the ocean.

China, and Indonesia, and everything around here, this is all kind of mistakenly drawn.

But here, India, accurately drawn, the East Coast of Africa, Madagascar, the islands of South East Asia, these are all accurately drawn.

Exploration of the world really began to take off in the late 1400s and early 1500s as other explorers, inspired by Columbus, began other voyages.

Here is another map, which shows us some of those voyages of discovery.

And the first one I want to focus on here is around the southern tip of Africa, 'cause in 1497, a Portuguese sailor called Vasco da Gama, became the first person to do so.

It was always very dangerous, it's very stormy.

He was able to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, and that meant he could to travel to India, and to the islands of Indonesia and China without using the overland Silk Roads.

This meant it was quicker, it was cheaper.

So more and more Europeans began doing overseas trade.

What this line more specifically shows though, is the voyage in 1519 of Magellan.

Magellan's voyage and his ships became the first to circumnavigate the globe, to go all the way around the globe in one go.

So you can see here from 1519 to 1517, they sailed around the southern tip of South America in a Strait, which is now known as the Strait of Magellan, across the pacific ocean, which was named Pacific Cope by Magellan because it meant peaceful, and he was wrong.

It was very stormy as he went over, they nearly died.

They made it to Asia.

Magellan himself died in Indonesia, but his ships continued and eventually they made it back to Europe.

This became the first circumnavigation of the world, and these are two examples of the way that world exploration and knowledge of the world increased.

Europeans were beginning to make contact with parts of the world directly, without needing to go through intermediaries, through merchant, through trade route, without the time consuming difficulties of going over land.

Ships could now sail directly to other parts of the world.

So, based on this, I want you to do a mind-map, and over the course of the lesson, you're going to add a few more details to this.

The impact of Columbus' voyage to the New World, so the impact in general.

I'm not just talking about the impact on the New World, but that will be part of it, but the impact on the rest of the world too.

So can you come up with two things so far? I'm going to give you the two things that I've kind of thought of.

But based on what I've talked about so far today, what are two ways that Columbus' voyage affected the world? Pause the video here, put together a mind-map, or bullet point list if you find that an easier thing to do, and come up with two ways so far, okay? Pause.

Fantastic.

So what are the two things that we already have just discussed? Well first of all, the Columbian Exchange, you did that task at the start and we focused on this last lesson.

The Columbian Exchange had a huge impact.

The transfer of people, of diseases, of crops, the change in the empires and so on, the Columbian Exchange was a major impact of Columbus' voyage.

And you've got that fact that it inspired exploration around the world.

Magellan, Vasco da Gama, these new voyages of discovery around Africa or around the world were in part inspired by Columbus.

Other countries wanted to spread their wings, make contact with other nations, and begin to explore.

Now, we're going to look specifically at the impact of this voyage in 1492 on world trade and world empires.

These two areas.

Now we do know a little bit about these already.

We've been talking about this.

We know that it resulted in the destruction of Aztec Empire, for example.

We know that it meant they could bypass the Silk Road.

So part of what you're about to read is reinforcing things that you know, but we're doing it because they're really, really important.

Some parts of what you're about to read will be new.

So here we're going to consolidate a little bit, and again, instead of questions, I want you to put together some notes in a table like this.

So you've got before 1492, and after 1492.

Trade, and empires.

So as you read through, I want you to put together a bullet point or two in each of these boxes.

What was world trade like before 1492, and then after? And what were world empires like before 1492, and then after? And when you're done, can you add any more points to your mind-map of the impact of Columbus' voyage? So at this point, pause the video, move forward in the lesson, and read through, shorter reading than usual, read through it, fill in your table, and when you're done, come back and we'll check through the impact on trade and empires.

Excellent, welcome back.

So, we'll go through each part of the table bit by bit, and as always, if there are any parts of this which you have not included, just write them down, that's absolutely fine.

So first of all, world trade before 1492.

So it's based around the Silk Roads, those overland trade routes.

Europe was at the edge of this trading network.

They were in the corner, they could not get around Africa, they had to use the merchants of the Silk Roads.

That meant that goods became very expensive, and they were a little bit restricted.

They couldn't get those goods directly.

And the empires who controls the trading networks, such as the Abbasid Empire, they became very powerful.

If you control the trade routes, you could tax them, you could make money.

So those empires, the Asian empires, Islamic empires, they became very powerful.

After 1492, the Silk Roads begin to be bypassed.

European nations don't need to use them quite so much.

Instead, they begin trading with the colonies of the New World, so New Spain, the islands of the Caribbean, the North American colonies, Brazil, all of these colonies have settlers in them, and trade can be done over the ocean.

European nations are no longer at the edge of the map.

More specifically, they would feel themselves at the centre of the map.

The centre of gravity has moved away from the Silk Roads to overseas trade, and European nations are better placed to do overseas trade.

What about world empires? Before 1492, world empires, there were powerful empires across the world.

In the Americas, you had the Aztec, the Inca, the Mayan.

You had empires in Africa.

You had empires in Asia, such as the Mughal Empire in India.

Europe, however, did not really have any empires.

It was kingdoms, and they were regularly at war.

You've probably studied this if you think about the Norman Conquest, the crusades.

European nations were regularly fighting, and they were relatively weak in comparison to some of these empires.

After 1492, the balance of power begins to shift.

American empires are destroyed by the Conquistadors.

We studied that Cortez, Pizarro, the others, they conquered the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and others.

European empires begin to grow.

Because they have the colonies and the trade with the Americas, they've got more wealth, they've got more resources, they can exploit all of that, and that beefs them up.

That makes them more powerful.

However, it is worth noting, is there kind of limited impact, there's little impact on other world empires? We're going to look at this a little bit more later in the lesson.

But you could argue that China, India, this didn't really have much of an impact on them.

So the Silk Roads, we've used this picture before.

The Silk Roads is more than one road, and it's these series of red overland networks that went through from China, India, across Asia, across the Middle East, into the Islamic world, and ended up at the edge of Europe.

And this section here was really important.

This is like the crossroads, okay? And in this section here, a lot of business would be done.

If you control this section here, then you were able to become extremely powerful because all of the safety of the merchants was really, really important, you could tax their trade routes, you were at the heart of all of this trading activity.

As a result, the Abbasid Dynasty, for example, is a very good example of this, you could become wealthy and powerful because you control trade.

Trade is one of the most important drivers in history, drivers of change, drivers of progress, drivers of conflict, people want trade, people want goods, people want things, just like they do now.

So controlling trade routes means that you could become more powerful.

This begins to change with the discovery of the Americas.

Now a few things, this was what was known of the world before 1492, though I would ignore Australia over here.

The world was believed to have three main continents, Europe, Africa, Asia.

And there's only a limited amount of resources between all of these three groups of people, and because of the inability to get around Africa, Europe was kind of cut off here, so it had to rely on overland trade.

If they wanted all the precious luxury goods that come from the Far East, they're to pay quite a lot of money for them.

After 1492, a whole other part of the world begins to become accessible, and it's only Europeans that are getting the benefits from this.

So it's like they've got their own bank fold, just of resources of food, of crops, of gold, of land, all of this which is going straight to them, not to African kingdoms, not to Asian kingdoms, but only to them.

So the focus of trade begins to move away from here, into the Atlantic Coast.

If you were a country that had an Atlantic Coast and ports, you were going to benefit.

You could have colonies over here, and trade could be done in this way, and all of the resources of the Americas were funnelled in to these European countries.

So trade, the balance of power, moved away from Asia, into Europe, and this meant that European empires were able to reap the rewards.

They were able to grow more powerful and stronger because of this change in trade networks.

The other aspect is the focus on empires, and we've looked at this picture before with the Conquistadors.

This is the fall of Tenochtitlan by the Conquistadors led by Cortez in the early 16th century.

Now, we already know that the Spanish were far outnumbered, but they had various things on their side such as the use of horses and a bit of luck, because so many of the Aztec nobles and warriors died from smallpox, and it wasn't just the Aztecs who were defeated.

But when the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and others were defeated, that opened up space for the Europeans to colonise.

Remember, they believed in the discovery doctrine.

They believed they could take land if it did not belong to Christian inhabitants, that they had the right from God and from the pope to do that.

And so even though there were people on it, even though it did not belong to them, they believed it was the right thing to do for their empire, for their king, and to spread Christianity.

So here you have the state of world empires in around the year 1700 AD, so about 200 years after the landing of Columbus.

We've already looked at this part of the map.

We know that Spain had a huge amount of land, Britain and France had land in North America, Portugal had control of what is now Brazil.

So you begin to have these enormous land empires which can ship their resources and their wealth back to the European nations.

Other empires around the world, such as the Mughal empire, the Qing Empire in China, they continued as they were.

They were not able to reap the rewards of this.

They did not have colonies in the New World.

They did not have access suddenly to this huge expanse of land, and gold, and resources, so their empires continued.

They weren't defeated, but nor did they get the benefit of this, and it's really the funnelling of resources to Europe, which was able to make Europe much more powerful and help them rise, in comparison, I should say, rise in comparison to the rest of the world.

One of the consequences of this, one of the most tragic consequences of this was the transatlantic slave trade.

The movement, to European nations here, they built colonies, they plant crops such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton, and they want labour.

They want workers to go and harvest those crops.

Now, they had enslaved many of the indigenous people, but a lot of them had died from disease, and they begin capturing, or raiding the coast of West Africa, and about 12 million people are moved across the Atlantic to work on these plantations.

So the European nations benefit from the devastating impact of disease, because it helped them colonise and take the land, and slavery.

So it's the suffering of others, which in par built these European empires, and this transatlantic slave trade continues into the 1800s for many countries.

Brazil didn't outlaw it until the 1890s.

This was a long term devastating consequence on the people of Africa.

So, with that in mind, are there any other points that we can add here? The impact of Columbus' voyage to the New World.

So we've already got these two points from the start of the lesson, but what else could we make, what other points could we make, for example, about trade? Well, these are the two points I pointed out about trading.

You may well have put more.

First of all, you've got the decline of the Silk Road.

The Silk Road begins to become bypassed because European merchants no longer need to trade over land.

Instead, you've got trade with colonies in the New World, including the slave trade.

This boosts the profits of Europeans and makes it easier for them to get some of the luxuries that they want without having to pay high prices for them.

They can sell their crops, sell their resources into Europe, making a lot of money.

What about the impact on empires? Well, the growth of European empires and colonies is one of the most long lasting, and I would say, still visible signs of this voyage.

The fact that so many people in the Americas speak English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, that's all because of colonisation.

They speak English in America because of British settlements.

They speak Spanish in Mexico because it was once New Spain.

It's all of the Europeans colonising this land which changed the Americas for the long term, and this led to the destruction of the New World empires, that those empires that had grown in Central and South America were destroyed by the Europeans.

So, let's focus back on our question.

This is what has been in the background of all four of our lessons.

Why have historians described 1492 as a turning point in world history? I would think by now you could probably have several answers to this.

You probably know, off the top of your head, one or two reasons straight away.

So let's begin to think about it.

I've given you five bullet points there.

Four of them would be good evidence for this question.

If we're looking at examples of turning points, four of them would be evidence to say yes, 1492 was a turning point.

One of them would not.

Of these five things, I want you to just note down which one isn't evidence of a turning point? Maybe it's a change, maybe it's just something that happened, but it's not a turning point, it's not evidence that this dramatically changed the direction of history, and why? So pause the video here.

You see the little pause icon over here.

Pause the video, and note down which one isn't evidence of a turning point, and why? All right, we're good? So which one do you think it is? Absolutely right.

Columbus becoming Governor of the West Indies is an event that happened at this time period, but it didn't change history, it didn't change the world.

Columbus himself had his governorship taken away from him after a few years because of his brutal treatment of the indigenous people of the Caribbean.

The other four are evidence of a turning point.

They did have a long lasting impact.

They did help change the direction of history.

So when we're talking about turning points here, what we're thinking are of dramatic changes, long lasting changes, evidence that this had such an important impact on world history, not just a minor thing, not just a subtle change, an event, but something major.

So can you think of anything else? I've already given you four.

The Columbian Exchange, the Conquistadors destroy the New World empires, the decline of the Silk Road, and the rise in slavery.

Can you think of any other pieces of evidence to say yes, 1492 was a turning point in world history? Pause the video once more time, and bullet point.

First of all, write down these reasons 'cause these reasons are very important.

But then, write down any other reasons that you could think of.

Okay, well done.

This is getting all of that knowledge that has been building up in your brain onto the page, because on the page, there's no worry about it, and we can then use it to write a really, really great answer.

So what other points could we make? Well, millions of indigenous people died from disease.

That's a massive, massive consequence of this.

It dramatically affected the history of the New World.

The spread of European colonies, culture, and religion across the Americas.

These new empires, these new colonies such as New Spain or Brazil, culture, Christianity.

I talked before about the way that all of these nations in the modern day speak languages such as English or Spanish.

That's because of their settlement by the Europeans.

And life in Europe changes drastically because of new food and crops.

Potatoes, tomatoes, our cuisine, our culture has changed because of things that were originally in the New World that were moved to the Old World as a result.

So you've got here at least seven reasons, and you may have more.

These are all seven pieces of evidence to say this is why this was a turning point.

And on the screen, I'm going to read out to you this example paragraph, because I want you, and I'm sure your teacher would want you, to answer this question in your own words.

So I'm going to focus on the decline of the Silk Roads, and as I read through this, you're going to see me use different pieces of evidence to support my point about how the Silk Roads declined, here's what it was like before, here's the after, and then I'm going to link it back to the question.

So when you write, this is a model paragraph that would be a good thing that you could base your paragraph off, Okay? So just listen as I read this aloud.

One reason that historians have argued that 1492 was a turning point in world history is because it led to the decline of the Silk Roads as the main focus of trade.

Before the voyages to the New World, trade was mainly carried out over the Silk Roads, which stretched across Asia.

Europe was at the edge of this network, and had to rely on the Silk Roads to get many items and luxury goods.

After 1492, Europeans had access to all the resources of the New World.

Crops could also now be grown in the Americas by settlers which reduced prices for Europeans.

Furthermore, they created new colonies that they would trade with.

All of these factors meant that the Silk Roads became less important in global trade and Europe was no longer at the edge of trade routes.

Instead, Europeans were at the centre of them, because of their links to the Americas.

So I've made my point at the start.

Here is my reason.

I've given you a bit of a before and after, because we're talking about change, so what did it change from? What did it change to? And why is it so dramatic, linking back to the question, this is a dramatic change, this is a turning point because.

So this type of paragraph, that's only one of these bullet points.

There's six of this that you could write about.

Six different points that you could make.

On the screen, I've given you a series of sentence starters and keywords that if you were to include, your analysis, your answer, would be fantastic.

I would like to see it, your teacher would like to see it.

Check in with them and make sure that you're on the right track, and kind of show them a draught of what you're writing, but I would really like to see your finished piece of work here.

We've gone four lessons, some really high level thinking, some really, really intelligent work on display, I want to see it in action.

Now, one last question.

But Mr. Wallace, isn't that just a Eurocentric view of history? Okay, well I'm talking to myself here.

What does Eurocentric mean? A Eurocentric view of history means this is the way that Europe thinks about the world.

This makes us seem like we're at the centre of everything, Eurocentric.

Yes, this is sort of a Eurocentric view of history.

Everything we've talked about has focused on the impact on the Americas, or on Europe.

It made European nations stronger, it changed European nations' position in trading routes, it changed Europe from before and after 1492.

This was a major event in European history.

But is it a major event in world history? Well, one way of thinking about that is if you were to speak to a historian from India, or from China, would they have said 1492 is a turning point for them? They have different years for different events that had a greater impact on their society.

For the Qing Empire, that might be their takeover of the empire from the previous dynasty.

For the Mughal Empire, it might be when they eventually lost at the Battle of Plassey to the British.

There are different reasons why certain dates are memorable to us.

In our history, for example, if you think about the lessons that you have studied, thinking back to, for example, the Norman conquest.

1066 is one of the most important dates in English history, but it's probably not one of the most important dates in world history.

That's very much a British centric date.

So what I'm saying here is 1492 is important, 'cause it's important to Europe, it's important to us.

But it would be a bit of a mistake to think it's important to everyone, and we need to make sure that we're not using our point of view to paint the entire world in the same way, that we're not thinking that our experiences in Europe, where Europeans became richer and more powerful, or indigenous people from America were attacked and so on, that they are the only things worth talking about.

The question we've been going through is important, is significant.

Historians still talk about it, still debate the significance of it, but it is one perspective on history.

It is history that is important in one region, and when we're trying to study history, it's really important to make sure we are getting a broader scope.

So this unit would be great, and then to learn parts about other parts of the world as well.

What might other historians say are turning points in their cultures? What would be turning points in India? What would be turning points in China, In Japan, in the Ottoman Empire, in Persia, and so on? So when we're talking about Eurocentrism, it is something to be aware of, not to think that because this matters to us, that it matters to everybody, that our experiences are important to everybody.

They are experiences that are important, but we don't want to overdo it and misunderstand the rest of the world.

I've already said that I would love to see your finished piece of work, and I've said this a few times during these lessons, and especially on this lesson, because this is really kind of like the culmination of everything.

This is everything being boiled together, all of your work from four lessons being put together with one written answer, one essay in response.

I want to see it because I'm sure that if you've paid attention to these four lessons, your work is going to be fantastic.

You will know loads, so share it with me.

Share it with your teacher, and if you would like to, ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging Oak National and Learn with Oak.

I want to thank you for your hard work.

This is a really fascinating topic, I love learning about it.

I hope you have a great rest of the day, and I hope I'll see you in another one of our units.

All right, thank you.