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Unit 4 Overview: Transoceanic Interconnections
Unit 4 Overview: Transoceanic Interconnections
This video will make you hungry! Learn about the history of gumbo and how the Columbian Exchange between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas cooked up this tasty dish.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
What does John Arthur mean when he says that gumbo came “from many places … and from one place”?
How were Europeans able to establish overseas empires all over the world from 1450 to 1750?
What is the Columbian Exchange and what were some positive and negative aspects of this exchange?
Why does John Arthur say that the Columbian Exchange was really more of an extraction than an exchange?
How can you analyze the history of gumbo using the themes of governance, cultural developments and interactions, social interactions and organization, and humans and the environment?
: This is gumbo. If you're not from Louisiana, there's a chance you might not know what it is,
: how it's made, or where it came from. And you're not alone . It's a complicated dish with a long history
: and no one can seem to agree on where it originated. In this dish swirls a complicated
: legacy—along with the meat, vegetables, and a bunch of other stuff. So where does gumbo
: come from? Well, we don't really know. We think people started making it and calling it "gumbo"
: at the beginning of the 18th century. As to its origins, the answer is probably from many places,
: and... from one place. So what does that mean? Well, gumbo contains foods and techniques from all over
: the world, but it's also particular to Louisiana, and the ways that cultures intersected there a
: few centuries ago. This mixing wasn't always peaceful. The story of gumbo is also a story
: of inequality and oppression, as ingredients and methods arrived in colonial Louisiana
: from Africa, Europe, and the Americas, creating this saucy global dish. How, exactly? Well, to
: prepare you for that gobsmacking answer, let's take a look at what you'll learn in this unit.
: Hi, I'm John Arthur, and this is Unit 4: Transoceanic Interconnections from 1450 to 1750 CE. In this unit,
: we're turning to the seas because just as the land-based empires of Afro-Eurasia were expanding
: their frontiers, Europeans on the far western edge of Afro-Eurasia were taking to the waves
: on journeys of exploration, commerce, and conquest. Thanks to innovations in navigation and gunpowder,
: Europeans were able to undertake trans-oceanic voyages and establish far-flung overseas empires:
: first the Portuguese and Spanish, and later the Dutch, English, French, and others set sail across
: the Atlantic Ocean and around the continent of Africa, establishing new oceanic empires. When
: they arrived in the Americas, these Europeans encountered complex indigenous societies and
: powerful empires that had developed into a diverse tapestry of communities connected by long-distance
: networks of exchange. These trans-oceanic voyages kicked off a process that historians call
: the Colombian Exchange—the exchange of plants, animals, ideas, people, and diseases across the
: world's oceans. Did you know that there weren't any tomatoes in Italian food before this unit?
: Potatoes, corn, and turkeys were also ones found only in the Americas, while wheat, cattle, and
: horses were found only in Afro-Eurasia. Christopher Columbus wasn't 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.
: The results transformed our world— and not always for the better.
: The European conquests of the Americas permanently devastated numerous American societies. Many of
: these societies, including the powerful Inca and Aztec empires, never recovered. We still don't know
: a great deal about some of these societies and the ways they were organized. At the same time,
: the transatlantic slave trade became a big part of the Colombian Exchange and caused lasting damage
: to many African societies. The new European-based empires in the Americas used the resources and
: people of Africa and the Americas to create vast new systems of wealth. They forced
: millions of Indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans to work in the plantation system.
: Enslaved labor and this new system of production allowed Europeans to extract huge amounts of raw
: materials from their colonies to fuel production at home and trade abroad. The colonies in the
: Americas also produced more silver than the world had ever seen. Europeans used this silver
: to buy their way into the biggest markets of them all—the vast economies of China and South Asia.
: In Unit 3 you learned about the world's most powerful empires in this period—
: the great land-based empires of Afro-Eurasia. These empires—particularly in China and India—
: remained the engine of the world economy. But in Unit 4, we're going to meet some rising contenders
: that would challenge the old model of empire. The maritime empires that emerge from Western Europe
: pioneered a new kind of empire and it was to become the dominant form by the end of this period.
: But this story of empire, war, and trade was also a story about how humans interacted with
: and transformed the environment. Historians might call it the Colombian Exchange, but that's a
: deceptively peaceful term that suggests both sides got something from the other. In truth, the process
: was more about extraction than exchange. Crops, livestock, and diseases flowed both ways across
: the oceans, but people in Europe gained far more from their counterparts in the Americas or Africa.
: Even the crops that came to the Americas from Afro-Eurasia ended up benefiting European empires.
: Crops like sugar and coffee imported to the Caribbean produced enormous wealth for Europeans.
: Meanwhile, American crops like maize and potatoes provided a huge new source of
: calories for people in Afro-Eurasia. At the same time, Afro-Eurasian diseases
: like smallpox combined with war and enslavement killed as many as 25 million Indigenous Americans.
: It was amid this history of violence and enslavement, exchange and innovation, that gumbo
: was born. The French began their colonization of Louisiana in the 17th century. If you've ever had
: French food you know that flower is a pretty big part of it, and many French stews call for
: roux—a thickener made from wheat flour. But wheat didn't grow well in swampy Louisiana. The
: Indigenous Choctaw people came to the rescue with a thickener called filet made from the leaves of
: the sassafras tree. But there was more innovation to come. Louisiana's first enslaved people arrived
: in the early 18th century. Enslaved women—who often did the cooking labor in West African societies—
: brought with them their own culinary methods and ingredients. The word gumbo actually comes
: from the Angolan term for okra: ki ngumbo. Okra is a vegetable native to Africa that can be ground up
: and used as a thickener for stews. To this day it's a key gumbo ingredient. As European empires grew,
: they displaced more people, brought new people to the region, and new ingredients were introduced
: to Louisiana's food culture. Peppers and tomatoes arrived from Spanish Mexico,
: once cultivated by the Aztecs and their neighbors. Rice—native to Africa and Asia—was transported to
: the Carolinas and the Caribbean, along with the expert but enslaved African rice growers
: who knew how to raise it. Rice eventually became a key ingredient in gumbo.
: Later, German migrants posed as French bakers and baked a special bread to accompany gumbo.
: And as with many local innovations, later imperialists tried to take credit for gumbo. When
: 19th century cookbooks introduced the dish they made no mention of its African or Indigenous roots,
: focusing instead on the ingenuity of French cooks. Even today there's no single agreed upon recipe or
: history of gumbo. It changed as different cultures adapted to the needs and tastes of their time.
: In much the same way, the legacy of the Colombian Exchange remains ambiguous. It's a history of
: violence and human ingenuity. People from all over the world arrived in new places, their cultures