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Unit 3 Frames
Unit 3 Frames
The connection of Afro-Eurasia with the Americas created the first truly global network, but these changes did not have the same results for all.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
Why was the Columbian Exchange the world’s first global system, according to the video?
How did European entry to the Americans—and the conquest that followed—change communities?
What were the large land-based empires that existed at the beginning of this period in and around former Mongol territory? Why did the dominance of these empires begin to fade?
What were some large changes in this period related to the production and distribution frames?
What were some large changes in this period related to the networks frame?
: The world in 1450 stood on the precipice of great change.
: You see, the collapse of the Mongol Empire had set the scene for the rise of a number of
: new, large, land-based empires, and each of them began to dominate huge swaths of the Afro-Eurasian landmass.
: And at the same time, people on the far western edge of Afro-Eurasia
: crossed the Atlantic Ocean and made contact with people in the Americas.
: What followed is called the Columbian Exchange, and it's a major change that first connected the two hemispheres.
: We often hear that the Columbian Exchange is the world’s first global system.
: We now know that Christopher Columbus was not the first person from Afro-Eurasia to make contact with societies in the Americas.
: But after his arrival,
: the Afro-Eurasian and American systems began a permanent, sustained relationship for the first time.
: And that’s a pretty big deal.
: But what really changed as a result?
: And how can we understand these changes in the context of our three frames?
: Certainly, we can look at the Columbian Exchange in terms of new ideas about community.
: The European entry to the Americas—and gradual conquest that follows—
: permanently devastated a lot of American communities.
: Before, these communities looked like loose confederations, small egalitarian communities, and
: even vast empires like those of the Inca and Aztec.
: And they never really recovered from European conquest.
: In fact, we still don’t know a great deal about some of these societies and the ways they were organized.
: And at the same time, the transatlantic slave trade became a big part of the Columbian Exchange
: and this transformation caused lasting damage to many African societies.
: All of these connections also allowed some European states to develop new oceanic empires.
: Now many of these empires were also a new kind of community even because they were run as
: partnership between corporations and states—like the Portuguese Company of the Indies and the Dutch East India Company.
: Still: the big story of the period, at least at the beginning, were the
: large, land-based empires of Afro-Eurasia which continued to look like the dominant world powers.
: Building on the example of the Mongols, these new states: the Ottoman, Mughal, Ming, Russian,
: and Safavid empires each ruled vast territories within and around the former Mongol realm.
: And they each carefully controlled the movement of people and goods through their territories.
: But by the end of this unit, their dominance was beginning to fade
: as those European empires began to challenge them.
: Now, the same historical processes that reshaped communities in both hemispheres
: also dramatically altered global patterns of production and distribution.
: The new European-based empires in the Americas, you see, created new methods to produce
: the goods they wanted, and these included two new systems: the transatlantic slave trade and the plantation system.
: Together these systems allowed the European-based empires to extract
: huge amounts of raw materials from their colonies in the Americas—like sugar and tobacco—
: and they used these to fuel production at home as well as trade abroad.
: The new colonies in the Americas also produced more silver than the world had ever seen.
: And Europeans used this silver to buy their way into the biggest markets of them all—the vast economies of China and South Asia.
: Now all of these items were circulated—sugar and tobacco crossing the Atlantic to Europe,
: silver crossing the Pacific to Asia and fine silk and porcelain coming back to Europe—
: and they were all carried on bigger and better ships and travelled through wider system of distribution than ever before.
: And people were moving along with them
: —not only traders and migrants, of course, but also enslaved people.
: To pay for these trips, Europeans developed new banking and finance technologies.
: And these new technologies—both physical and financial—moved both goods and people.
: But they also carried ideas, philosophies, and religions, throughout what was now a new global network.
: Visitors and migrants moved to new areas with new ideas. And these ideas were mixing to
: create new concepts and belief systems.
: The Americas in particular were becoming a place of cultural blending as
: Indigenous, African, and European faiths and philosophies mingled.
: Travelers were also bringing experiences back from the places they visited.
: Europe in particular benefited from experiences and learning gained by missionaries and merchants
: who traveled abroad in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas.
: But of course, not everyone benefitted equally from these new networks,
: or the new systems of production and distribution, or the new communities.
: Understanding how and why peoples’ places in these systems differed,
: and the long legacies of those differences, even up until today,