Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #45 - The Gunpowder Revolution

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #45 - The Gunpowder Revolution

Okay, so good morning. Today we are doing the gunpowder revolution. Specifically, we are going to ask the question, how did Europe, starting about the year 1700, conquer the world? So after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe became divided, very poor, and very weak, compared with the rest of the world. But then starting in the year 1700, Europe very quickly, and only about 20 years time, will go on to conquer the entire world.

So today we are going to examine how this happened. Okay. So before we begin, I want you guys to remember a very important concept that we have been developing throughout this course. And the concept is this. The nature of the military determines the nature of the political system in societies, in nations. Okay? So the four specific examples we've looked at are Sparta, Athens, Macedonia, and Rome. Because Sparta had a Hoplite army, it became an oligarchy.

Oligarchy means rule by the field, the rule by the elite. And hoplites were farmers who could afford their own armor and weaponry. Athens had a navy, and so it was a democracy. And the idea here is that anyone and everyone can roll a boat. And if you can roll a boat, you can fight a war, you can help Athens win, and therefore you can participate in the political process. So Athens was a democracy. Macedonia, where Alexander Great is from,

it was a cavalry-based army. And because only the nobility could afford horses, it was a monarchy. And the last example is Rome. Now, the thing about Rome that made it distinct from these societies is that it was willing to make tremendous sacrifices on the battlefield because it could replenish its soldiers with allies from neighboring nations in the Italian peninsula. And as such, it was a republic. Now, the

difference between a republic and democracy is that in democracy, everyone has the right to vote. So the decisions are based on majority rule, okay? But in a republic, it is ruled by laws and tradition in history. So people will do what has been traditionally accepted as a norm. And as such, you can bring in immigrants into your society very quickly. This is important for us because Rome will become the model for America. America is not democracy, it is republic, a very important difference. So I want you guys to remember this idea. The military, the nature of the military, will determine the nature of your political system in your society. Okay?

All right, so let's go over some basic military history. In Greece, when the Polisers were fighting each other, in very much the same way that the warring states were fighting each other in China, the main soldier is called the hoplight. The hoplight means shield in Greek. And the thing about the hop light, that's very important, is that it was a self-sufficient soldier,

meaning that most of the time he was a farmer, but when there was a war, he would grab his armor and his shield and his spear and he would go to war. You didn't need an economy to allow the hoplight to exist. This was a self-sufficient system. Over time, the Macedonians will take the Hoplite formation and turn it into the Macedonian phalanx. And the Romans will have their legion. Now the difference between the Macedonians and the Romans, sorry, the difference between this system and the judicial Greek system is, now you have a standing army.

These are professional soldiers that must be supported by the cloblastion. economy. This is cavalry, the Roman cavalry, and obviously these are nobility because only they can afford to have horses. These are the Vikings that we've studied before. Again, this is pretty self-sufficient. The Vikings are able to build their own ships very quickly and repair them, and they are able to go off in small bands.

The steppes people became archers, right? So the Mongolians are the classic example. And again, the thing here is that these people, ever since they were born, could ride forces and shoot arrows. And that's why they were so effective soldiers. And that's why, for the longest time, the steps people were the dominant military force in the world. could come in and conquer all the agricultural empires.

This will include the Yamaya, which we talked about, but it will also include the Turks and the Mongolians. In medieval Europe, they develop a new system where the knight becomes the main military force in the army. Now the knight, as you can see, it requires armored horses and armored and weapons and this is very expensive and so and you have to train from an early age become a knight and that's why you now have a system called feudalism where the entire economy revolves around maintaining nights for war purposes okay this is

where feudalism comes from what makes feudalism stick is the idea of castles so So feudalism is about decentralization, where the knights and the lords have control over the local territory, and there's something the king can do about it. Why? Because maybe if there's a fight between the lords and the king, and the king comes with his army, well, the lords can just hide in their castle. And as you can see, it's very hard to besiege and destroy a castle. First of all, there's a defensive perimeter, the moat, and then the high walls. And eventually, the king will have to give up. So in the feudal system, the king is more like a figurehead, who is appointed as maybe the chairman or the elected leader.

But the king does not have that much power over the local areas. This changes in 1453, okay, in the city of Constantinople. So for about close to a thousand years, Constantinople was the wealthiest, most powerful city in Europe. They are the here to the Roman Empire. They consider themselves the Eastern Roman Empire. And they are invincible because of their high walls. Remember, we talked about the Byzantine Empire before. And for about a thousand years, Constantinople was powerful because they were invincible.

You cannot besiege the city. But in 1453, this changes because the Ottoman Turks come in with cannons, and they laid siege to Constantinople and they destroyed the walls. And this was unimaginable before. And so it's gunpowder that allows the Ottomans to destroy the once impenetrable Constantapole. And this marks a revolution now in Europe. Now people understand that you need gunpowder if you are to win wars in the future. Okay? This is a revolution now in Europe.

So over the centuries, what will happen is this. Gunpowdered will radically remake the world. in three fundamental ways. The first way, that's important, is the step people cease to be a threat. Okay? So for thousands of years, the steppes, the Mongolians, the Turks, they have Naya, they drove history

because they could come in and conquer empires and establish new societies. Now, with gunpowdered, the cities can defend themselves against a step people, And eventually over time, the Russians will colonize the steps, and they will cease to be a factor in development of global history. Okay? So this is the end of the steps. That's the first fundamental change.

Second is, this will mark the beginning of Europe as the dominant global power in the world. It is China that invents gunpowder, right? about over a thousand years ago. But it is Europe that will perfect gunpowder as the ultimate military weapon. And it will allow Europe to defeat everyone, including Ottoman Turks, including the Chinese, everyone. And the third and most important fundamental change

is that gunpowder will usher in a whole society revolution that will remake the fabric and structure. structure of European society. So I will explain all three as we move on. But these are the three fundamental impacts of gunpowder. Alright, let's talk about the steps. So before we discussed why the step people, the Vikings, the borderland people, they usually tend to win out against empires,

even though empires have much more resources, much more people, much more technology, okay? So this is the chart that explains why the borderlands wins out in the end. Because the borderlands have energy. The people are much more courageous, they're much more hungry, they're much more determined. Openness. The borderlands people tend to be much more innovative. They're opening new ideas.

They don't invent things, but they take inventions and they apply it to the society. The last is opportunistic where they will only attack you if they think you're weak. they think you're weak. Okay? The empire has three advantages, mass, organization, and death. Mass just means a lot of people. Organization means essentialized bureaucracy. And then death just means that they can afford to lose a lot of battles.

Okay? And for most of human history, the borderlands had advantages over the empire. But with the advent of gunpowder, the dynamic changes. So now that the empire is able to control and crush the borderlands. The main reason why is with gunpowder technology, you need organization. You need centralization. Remember before armies were self-sufficient. You needed to go to war.

You told everyone, let's go to war. And then the people who were soldiers would get their armor and they would rush to battle. That's what the Greeks did against the Persians. But with gunpowdered, you need a professional army, you need engineers, you need the resources that allow you to make gun powder. So you need specialization. With specialization, you need centralization, hierarchy,

and bureaucracy. And that's what empires do very well. And the borderlands don't do this, okay? And that's why eventually the empires will win out against the borderlands in the long term. All right. So there are four major gunpowder empires, meaning these four societies are most equipped, most ready to take advantage of the gunpower revolution.

The first and most important gunpower empire are the Ottomans, right? They're the ones who took the cannons, their artillery, and they're the ones who destroy Constantin-Pol. And the Ottomans, after that became the dominant power in Europe and the Middle East. the Ottoman Empire. What made the Ottoman Empire so fierce was the use of professional soldiers called genocaries. Genesaries are young boys

who became who are Christian, and they became slaves to the Ottomans. And they were educated to become professional soldiers. And because they're basically slaves, they owe their entire loyalty to the Sultan, the king of the Ottoman Empire. Okay? And these are professional soldiers who made very effective use of gunpowder in battle.

So that's the Ottoman Empire. But then you also have the Mogul Empire, which was the height of Indian civilization. They were also, for the longest time, essentialized bureaucracy, and they were also able to take advantage of gunpowder. Then you have the Sephir Empire, which is in modern day Iran, they are the heirs to the Persian Empire. And remember, what you learned last semester is it was really the Persians who created bureaucracy in the world. And of course, the last, an argument that was powerful of these gunpowder empires is China. This is the Ming Empire.

Remember it was China who invented the gunpowder. But what's interesting is when China invent the gunpowder, it was not used that effectively. The Chinese army used gunpowder mainly as bombs or as fireworks, as incendiaries to blow things up, okay? It was, but because of the Islamic Golden Age and because of Genghis Khan's conquest, globalization came into being. And the technology of paper and gunpower spread all the way to Europe. So it's the Europeans who innovated gunpowder and turned into a propellant, okay?

That's something that you shoot people at, a projectile. And that's what we have cannons and muskets. And so it's the Europeans who actually invented gunpowder as a projectile. And then what would happen is the technology would come back to China, and China would adapt this into their own army, okay? So that was a process. Yeah, so this is China and the use of gunpowder. Okay, so the paradox is this.

It was China who invented the gunpowder and the four great gunpowder empires are the Ottomans, the Saphrodites, the Mughals, and the Chinese. But at the end of the day, it is Europe that conquers the entire world. That's a paradox. That's the mystery that we're looking at today. And so the thesis, the answer is, European nations would surpass the gunpowder empires because they would adopt a whole society approach to warfare. So what does that mean?

It means that if you are to have, if you are really to integrate gunpowder into your military effectively you need to change the structure of your society you have to change the status quo you have to move from a society that is heavily centralized to one that is both centralized and open as well okay so I'm going to explain to you what changes your path to make in order to move to become a modern military okay the first change is it went from a feudal system to a nation-state system. Does that make sense?

Feudal is decentralized local powers. Nation-state is you have a centralized bureaucracy. You need that, and that's what Europe did. Second change is it went from a focus on villages, on agriculture, to a focus on towns and industry. Right? Because with gunpowdered, you need specialized workers, you need engineers, you need iron workers, and that happens in towns and not in villages.

Does that make sense? Okay. Also, when you move to towns, you start to create portal capitalism. So the merchants become much more important than the bureaucrats, because the merchants who go and procure resources necessary for gunpowder. The third major change that happened in Europe that really didn't happen anywhere else is a shift and focus from religion to science. Religion is asking a question, what does God want from us?

How can we best serve God? Science is asking a question, how can we win this war? How can we make gun power much more effective? How can we kill more people? So these are the three major revolutions that happened in Europe that really didn't happen anywhere else. And when they happen in Europe, it will unleash these extremely violent and powerful revolutions as well, including the French Revolution, which we will study the American Revolution. And it's a bloody process that takes centuries to unfold and to develop.

But it will make Europe into the dominant power in the world. It will allow Europe to conquer the entire world and force nations like China. like China to adopt European social frameworks. Does that make sense, guys? So that's the main idea here. Okay, the main advantage that Europe had over the rest of the world was also its main disadvantage, which was Europe, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire

was always divided and poor and all the world. and poor and always fighting each other. Okay, this is what, the concept we use for this in our class is open cooperative competition. This is the main driver of innovation in the world. When was China most creative during the war in states period, right? Okay, so this is consistently true throughout history.

Whenever a society is fractured and the different constituent parts are forced to fight each other, this will lead to massive innovation, not just in the military, but also in society, in philosophy, and literature. So we talked about the three revolutions in Europe that came about because of the gunpower revolution.

All right. So one thing to keep in mind is, in the beginning, it was not obvious to people gunpowdered was a revolutionary force. It would take centuries before society the military used gunpowder as the main weapon. And the reason why is, in the beginning, gunpowder was very unstable.

It was hard to store, it was hard to make, and the guns that you used were too heavy. So they were only a small part of your military. Also, what's important for us, remember, is that there's always been a battle between artillery fortification okay so even though the Ottomans use the cannon to destroy consented pole engineers would figure out ways to better defend the city okay so the first strategy against gunpowder was the idea of earthworks basically

and it's very simple you just take trenches around your city and then therefore the canons cannot get get come into range of your city okay does that make sense so there are different strategies you can use to negate the advantage of gunpowder. So Earthworks is one advantage. But then what they figured out was something called a star fortress. And this is another revolution in the military.

A star fortress is designed differently. Most fortress before were rectangular, because they were the most intuitive in the east is to build. But with a star fortress, you have different points in the fortress so that even if one part gets destroyed, Guess what? You can fill the gaps, right? This part gets destroyed, but then you fill the gaps here. That part gets destroyed, you feel the gaps here, okay? So you basically have to attack the entire fortress at once.

And most armies don't have these resources to destroy the entire fortress at once. You can only do it part by part. Okay? You want to breach the fortress, but the star fortress allows you to be resilient, okay? To be flexible. The word that we use for this is ductile. Dectile just means the resilience of materials. The gunpowder revolution will also mark radical changes in military formation, organization, and hierarchy. So again, at this particular stage, gunpowder is only a small fraction of the entire army.

Most people are using spears and pikes together. together. They also have cavalry as well. So the problem for the Europeans is how do you best utilize all these resources in a much in a efficient and effective manner? Okay, so this is one possibility where the pikes are at the back, the gunpowders are in the front and the cavalry is to the wings, okay? And this provides more flexibility in your army. And because Europeans are always fighting each other, they're always able to to figure out new strategies. This is a picture of an European army

in the 16th century. All right, so let's talk about very quickly the formation of gunpowder. How is gunpowder made? Well, gunpowder is made using three different resources. They are salt pepper, sulfur, and charmed. Tarko. Tarkro is pretty easy to get. Okay?

Sulfur you get from basically from volcanoes. And in Europe, the place where they had the most volcanoes was Italy, on the Italian Peninsula. So if you look at the history of Europe, most wars, the vast majority of wars, were actually fought over the Italian peninsula. One, because you need sulfur for gun powder, but also because the Italian peninsula controlled trade with the rest of the world,

and also because the church was there, the pulp was there. Soap pepper is, the technical name is potassium nitrate, and it comes from manure, okay? Mnure. It doesn't really grow naturally, so they have to farm it, they have to make it. They make it basically by taking horse manure and animal manure and planting the ground

and then farming it, okay? So this became an industry onto itself. And soap pepper is important because as they chemically enhanced gunpowder, they discovered that salt pepper should go from 41% to almost 70%. So salt pepper was the main ingredient in gunpowder. And the Europeans had to figure out ways to mass produce salt pepper. And that's why they came up with these nitri, okay, or farms.

Okay? And this became a very important part of European society. You also are chemists, working laboratories to better refine the technology of gunpowder. Because one huge issue of gunpowder is it's very hard to store. So for example, if it rains, guess what? No more gunpowder. So they constantly have to refine. refine the chemical composition of gunpowder to make it resilient against rain to make it easier to store to make it easier to transport there's also a good

possibility that along the way the gunpowder explodes on you okay so this was an absolute necessity to figure out how to better make store and use gunpowder you also had iron works right because you need iron and metal to make cannons, which was the main use of gunpowder. These are foundries where they will make gun powders. And again, this helps us explain why towns became much more important than villages, right? Because it's towns where you have the specialization going on and not the villages. The thing to remember about the early guns called the

arquebus is that they're very heavy. Now these are metal. Okay, so the soldier basically needs something to stabilize the gun. But even once a gun is stabilized, it's not very accurate. You can't, I mean, you're better actually off with a bow and arrow, and that's what most people are using, bow and arrow, okay? The other thing about the arquebus and the musket is it's very, very slow. Right? You have to aim it, then you have to fire it,

and then it's reload it. That could take maybe 10 minutes, half an hour. You know, like the technology will get better and better over time, but it's very slow. So you have two issues with the guns, the musket, the archibus. One is that it's not very accurate, and second of all, it's very slow. So the only solution is to have mass army.

You have a lot of soldiers firing at once. So you don't even care. You don't want to aim, you just want to shoot it directly at cavalry or soldiers, okay? And that's the idea. And that's why these armies, like the Ming and the ornaments, were most able to use gunpower effectively, because they could organize mass armies. Okay, so the Ming were one of the main innovators of gunpowder armies using some called a folly. Okay, so what would happen is, soldiers were sent in line, they would come up, shoot it, then walk to the back, a new line would come up and shoot it again, okay? They weren't aiming. They were just shooting it. And this is what we call volley fire. So this is the main tactic. Okay, so does this make sense to you guys so far?

But over time, gunpowdered will become much more effective, much more accurate, much faster. And now what you can do is conscript more soldiers. So in other words, what is required now is more conscripts for your army. So this is a picture of a battle. But not only that, but you need your soldiers to be obedient, okay? Because you're asking them to charge into gunpowder.

And so you needed a change the nature of people into basically peace-loving pretty simple individuals who are used of freedom to ones who were obedient, who are bloodthirsty, and who could kill other people. And that's why you now have the invention of something called schools. Okay? If you want to know where schools come from, it comes from the needs of the needs. to create as many soldiers as possible for your mass army. So a concept that I want to introduce you today and we will go over a lot in this master is the

idea of synchronicity. Synchronicity is to structure your society so the people in society are able to follow the rules. They're able to follow the rules, then your society can be able to follow the rules, then your society can be able to follow the rules. become much more prosperous and become better, can have more effective militaries. So the two classic examples in this world of synchonosity, the two societies that do synchronosity the best are Germany and Japan, okay?

Go to Germany, go to Japan, and go to subway. Guess why, guys, even though it's really, really crowded, everyone stands in line perfectly. Everyone knows his or her position in the line, and everyone's willing to wait in line. That's why in the 12th century, Japan and Germany had such effective militaries. And also why they also have very effective industries.

Schools is preparing people not just for the military, but also for the assembly line, the workplace. And again, societies that are most able to stand in line orderly will be the most effective in terms of industry and military. And that's usually the European societies and Japan as well. So again, gunpowder marks a whole society revolution, changing not just the military and how wars are fought,

but changing the very nature of what it means to be human. Doesn't make sense. If you wanna know where schools come from, it comes from the need to fight wars. All right, and again, China will adopt all these policies and social structures for itself. Okay? Let's go over some wars.

So what's really important about Europe at this time and why Europe became the dominant power in the world is it never stops fighting each other, okay? It's always fighting wars internally and externally against the Ottomans. Okay, so the wars between Europe and the Ottoman. between Europe and the Ottomans are called the Hungarian Ottoman Wars and this will last for about 300 years and in the beginning This really important is the Ottomans destroy the Europeans

The Ottomans are able to destroy Constantopol and they're able to take over most of Eastern Europe Okay, so the Ottomans for many centuries up until the year of 1700 It's a dominant military power in Europe and around the world at this time There's also something called the Hundred Years war that is fought in between France and England. Let's now go over some wars, and what I will do now is show you the cashiery account, like how many people are killed in action.

All right? So again, as I mentioned, a lot of wars are being fought on the Italian Peninsula. So the second Italian war, there's many 200,000 killed during this war, okay? These are soldiers killed, not civilians. But when you get to, but a few years later, it's 31,000. Okay?

And then it goes up to 30,000, and then 75,000. Okay? These numbers are going up. Why? Because the armies are getting larger, and the weapons are getting much more precise and effective. Okay? This is the reason why more people are dying. The English-Spanish War, it is really important.

Forty thousand will die. This is important because, remember, last class, we talked about how Spain is a dominant naval power in the world, and that's what allowed Spain to colonize South America. But in this war, England will destroy the Spanish Armada, the Spanish Navy. And England now will become the dominant navy in Europe and around the world.

And they will maintain this position until America in World War II, okay? So this is a really pivotal point in history, the sinking of the Spanish Amarra by the English. We said this 30 years before, which was a religious war between the Protestants, Protestant Europe, and the Catholics. This will kill between 4.5 million to 8 million people over a spending of 30 years. This is the worst war in Europe before World War I.

World War I. Okay, so these wars will become much more violent, much more deadly. Spanish-Portuguese war, 80,000. Franco-Spanish war, 108,000. Okay, you're seeing these numbers go up, right? Franco-Dutch war, 342,000. War of the Holy League, almost 400,000. This is important because this is when Europe is finally able to defeat the Ottoman Empire. This marks a a radical turning point where Europe will now become the dominant military power in the world and the Ottomans will now decline rapidly. Now you may have be asking yourself, wait a minute here, why are all these wars being fought? And the answer is, Europe is divided among different kingdoms. And the main policy of all these kingdoms is balance

of power. So whenever a new power arises, the other powers get together and try to take down that empire, okay? So before it was Spain, then Spain was destroyed, then it was France, then it was Russia, then it was Germany, okay? So that's the idea here. Nine years war, almost 700,000. The seven years war is really the first World War

because it's a war fought between France and England for control of the entire world, okay? It's being fought in North America, and it's being fought in Europe. And almost a million people get killed in this war over seven years. French Revolutionary Wars, we'll discuss this later on, but 663,000 killed. The French Revolution Wars is important historically because a lot of people who fought this

war, they are not professional soldiers, they're just citizens who have revolutionary devotion and fever. They love their country, they want freedom for the country, so they take up arms and they're able to defeat much more powerful European adversaries. So this is the beginning of what we call the nation state, when a citizen is completely loyal to the nation. All right, we'll be talking about this later on, the French Revolutioner Wars. And then of course the climax is World War I.

And you get 20 million people, 20 million people die in this war. So you can see how the cash rate just go up exponentially over the decades. And that just shows you how fast the Europeans are innovating. They're innovating in terms of bureaucracy, meaning that they're able to tax or citizens much more effectively, and they're able to conscript more soldiers effectively. They're also innovating in terms of technology because of science, right? They now have like machine guns in World War I. They also have trenches.

We'll be talking about this later on. All right. So as I said before, the thing about, you know, the thing about Europe is that it's always divided into different factions who are always fighting against each other. And what you will see, what these maps will show you is two things. First is that the status quo is always switching back and forth between different nations. So in the beginning, in 1448, the Holy Roman Empire is a dominant power in Europe with a population of 15 million people. Okay?

The first thing I want you guys to notice about these maps. The dominant power is always changing over time. The second thing that you will notice is that even though, this is really interesting, even though these wars are deadly, they're continuous, and they become much more violent, the population of every nation in Europe goes up over time. So 1554, the Ottomans now are in control. they're at 24 million, the Holy Roman Empire goes under 19 million, but France is arising, so it's Russia. 1623, the Holy Roman Empire is still around. So Holy Roman Empire and almonds are the dominant powers.

But by the time of 1660, France actually becomes a dominant power in Europe. And because France becomes the dominant power in Europe, all the nations decide to go against France. Okay, and this leads to a series of wars. 1727, France has 23 million. That matches the population of the ornaments. Russia is rising now. Okay? Right before the French Revolution, 1780, France is now the most populous country in Europe, okay? Europe, okay?

27 million, the Ottomans have 26 million, okay? And this is right before the France Revolution. 1824, the Russians are now at 49 million. They become now the dominant military power in Europe. And this will bring them in conflict with the rest of Europe. So England and Russia will fight something called the Great Game. We'll be going over this in the future class, okay? So the rivalry between the United Kingdom and Russia, which still goes to the United Kingdom, which still

goes on today by the way okay it's still going on today the great game um germany is now rising in 1890 okay this is right before war war one and so germany now is a dominant power in europe so guess what happens all the nations in your combined together to attack germany and this leads to something called war war one okay all right so that's the introduction to the history of the military revolution in Europe. We'll be going into specifics in future classes. All right, any questions about this? Was this clear to you guys?

Any questions? in the society, how is how can be it is to recover from the future? Okay, great question, okay? So the question is, these wars are so deadly, right? And so how's it possible for these societies to be resilient and to recover? Okay, so there are many different reasons, there are different many factors going on, okay? But what's important is to rise of something called a nation state. So the nation state replaces the role of religion in people's lives.

Before, you had to sacrifice your life to the will of God. You have to serve God. Now, with the French Revolution, you now have to dedicate your life to the nation. The glory of the nation. And what does that mean? It means that you have to do whatever it takes in order for your nation to beat other nations in war, which includes... working hard, making a lot of money, but it also includes basically having a lot of children.

And this is facilitated by the scientific and agricultural revolution. Remember in the last class we talked about how, because of the age of exploration, the Europeans were able to bring back the potato, corn, tomatoes, squash. These are pretty easy to grow and they provide a lot of nutrition for the European nations. But what's important is what's really driving the population growth is war and the necessity for having a large population. So the government will provide a lot of policies that promote population growth. Does that make sense?

We'll be discussing this in future classes. And I mean, I know it's hard for us to imagine, but war gives people meaning and purpose. Okay, does that make sense? It's like rooting for a sports team. You want your sports team to win no matter what. You're going to go and cheer them on. That's what war does. War really galvanizes the energy of people.

So people feel extremely patriotic during wars even though their children are getting killed. The other thing that's really important about war is that it gives people hope in the future. I know this is paradoxical, okay, but so let me explain. With war, a lot of people die. With death comes opportunities that didn't exist before. That creates social mobility. So it's probably possible that you're a peasant, but because of war, the nobility dies off, and your son can go, join the army, become like a captain or a lieutenant,

come back and start his own business. And that wasn't available before, right? Because in peace time, the social hierarchy stays stagnant. Does that make sense? So yeah, I mean like, and so if you think about it, it's because we live in a world of peace. Okay, something called the Pax American, the American Peace. And that's why a lot of young people refuse to have children. Why are young people who refuse to have children?

They really don't see a future, right? It's like, I'm not going to rise to. up in a social hierarchy my kids are going to rise up in the social social social hierarchy there are fewer fewer economic opportunities yeah all people aren't dying okay they're not dying I mean I know a lot of old people who are extremely successful and they will live over a hundred they are like 90 80 right now and they are extremely healthy they're happy with their lives they're very wealthy they don't have they don't have any reason to die and they won't

die so all that wealth becomes monopolized by old people and so young people were like why would I want to have children why would I want to work hard why why don't even want to be ambitious there's no point okay does that make sense okay all right good great question and any more questions before I continue all right so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna summarize what we learn okay just so you have a clear understanding of how everything fits together all right So, feudalism. What is feudalism?

This is a system that was in Europe for 100 years, okay, in something called the High Middle Ages or the late Middle Ages, which was maybe about a thousand to 1,400, okay, 1,500, okay? So how does Philism work? Philism works because each part of society, it's partitioned into different lands run by lords, okay? Maybe Lord A, Lord B, Lord C, Lord D. And the king was more of a figurehead.

And he really didn't have that much authority over the local regions, because each region has their own army with castles. It was very hard to invade every single part. And so whenever there's a war, what happened is the king says, okay, guys, we need to go to war. So A would come in with his army, B would come in with his army, with his army, then C, then D. And they would fight independently, okay?

And what all would happen is that maybe C betrays the king, okay? This would happen a lot in European history. But this is how most wars are fought in the feudal era. Okay? Now with gunpowder, with gunpowder, you need centralization. Why? Because the thing about gunpowder, as I discussed, is you need a huge army in order to best effectively use this gunpowder. So you need two things. Taxation and conscription.

And therefore, you need a bureaucracy. Does that make sense, guys? You need to resolve these two issue you have to tax people to create a central army and you need to constrict people to fill the ranks of your army you can only do it through a centralized bureaucracy therefore at this time historians say that the feudalism transition into an absolute monarchy where the king now has absolute power because a king on the king can organize a centralized bureaucracy okay So now what happened is that the king would ask for conscripts from all lands to create a centralized army.

Okay? So why you need to do this is the nature of gunpowder. So remember before, soldiers were sentinelized. soldiers were self-sufficient. If there was a battle, they just went and got their armor, and then the sword, and then they'll go off the battle. With gunpowdered, you need different elements. First of all, you need material.

The two main material is sulfur and salt pepper. And therefore, you needed to do trade and production. You needed to create a gunpowder economy if you are to have a gunpowder army. But you also need specialists. Specialists are just people who are able to make gunpowder and who are able to use gunpowder in battle. You need industry.

Industry are people who manufacture gunpowder and manufacture cannons. You need research. And these are the scientists who help you refine gunpowder over time. You also need a bureaucracy to coordinate. And you also need a military hierarchy. Why?

Because these soldiers need to be trained on how to use the guns. Okay, so you need a hierarchy to control the training of soldiers and the deployment of soldiers in battle. So, I mean, like, this is very simple. what I'm doing but as you can see what this means is you need a what we call a whole society approach okay you have to rapidly transform your society so that it is all resources are directed to the use of gunpowder in battle and the society that is most able to do this will be the most effective in war, okay?

And who are the people who are most able to do this over time? The Prussians, which will become Germany, and the Japanese, and these are just two examples. Also the Americans as well. And they are the most effective in war, a whole society approach. Now the question then is, well, okay, the logic here makes sense, but why is it that it's Europe that use a whole society approach and not China, not the Ottomans, not the Indians.

Okay? And the reason why is, whole-setter approach means a radical transformation of your social hierarchy and social order. That's the reason why. All right? So the three major changes, as we discuss, is to go from feudalism,

basically in aristocracy, to a bureaucracy, a national bureaucracy, bureaucrats. So the power shifts from the aristocrats to the bureaucrats. Okay, that's one radical social change. But then you have to go from agriculture to industry. Who, the merchants. So now you have to give the merchants, the capitalist, trades people more power in society.

Right? And the burghats don't want that. Okay? And then you have to go from religion to science. So now the people with the most authority in your society are no longer a priest, which has historically been true, but scientists. So this is a radical social transformation that overturns the entire social hierarchy. hierarchy and that's why this is really important this is a process that will take centuries and which will lead to traumatic social revolution including

the French Revolution in the American revolutions okay we'll be discussing this later on okay so that's what you have to do and most societies are not willing to do this because the elite don't want to give a power okay it's that simple okay The elite do not want to give a power. Their power has to be taken away from them. So let me give you an example to illustrate how hard it is to transform society, okay? All right, so let's look at China. Let's look at Europe.

Hey guys. So China is one of the first societies to centralize. And when you centralize, you accumulate a lot of resources, and these resources allow you to make great inventions. And so the four great inventions of China are the compass, paper, print making, and gunpowder. These are the four great inventions of China. China was the first to invent this by hundreds of years, okay? So the printing press in China was maybe about the year 800.

In Europe it would be 1400, okay? So this is like a huge advantage over Europe. But these four inventions did not really impact society in China. They had no impact on society. But in Europe, when they go over to Europe, the compass will bring in the age of exploration, right? It will allow Europe to conquer the entire world. the age of exploration right paper and printmaking what does it do it creates

universal literacy everyone in Europe is now able to read and write because of paper and printmaking it radically transformed the entire fabric of European society and because you are now able to read and write it gives rise to a renaissance the president of reformation it's not a revolution okay and the gunpower allows Europe to conquer the entire world conquest okay so think about that your China was the first event all four and Europe was able to take all four and radically transform the society and make Europe into the dominant power in the entire world right so then the question then is why is it China didn't make use

of these four inventions. Just look at paper and printmaking, okay? The problem in China is that you have these confusion bureaucrats, and what is their source of power? It's the monopoly over literacy and knowledge production, right? So they didn't want to make it possible for everyone to read it right, because that would reduce their power over the people, right? Does that make sense?

Same thing with the compass. The compass would allow Chinese to explore the world and bring in new ideas and new goods. The bearers didn't want that. They want to protect the social hierarchy. With gunpowder, yeah, it's fine, but the problem is if now everyone has a gun,

they can revolt against you, right? So for China, it was much more important to maintain a social hierarchy than it is to innovate and to dominate the world. In fact, what's important for us to remember is that if you give governments a choice, they would always choose to maintain a social hierarchy rather than to innovate, because that's just the easiest thing to do. But, and this is important, Europe didn't have a choice in a matter.

It was a matter of life and death. You either innovate or you will get destroyed by your neighbor. Okay? Does that make sense? Okay. Great. Okay. So we did a broad overview of the history, and we'll go into very specific details over the next few weeks, okay? So next class will be on the Enlightenment,

which will then give rise to the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Okay? All right. So, but this is a very broad overview. All right. So, questions, guys? Yes. Yes. Okay, so why did Europe innovate, right? Okay, great.

So let's look at Europe. Like, let's just look at France, okay? Okay, so as a nation, you are under two types of pressure, external. Okay? External just means Britain, Russia, Germany, Holy Roman Empire. You have a lot of enemies. And so you're competing against them.

At the same time, it's really important. You have internal pressure. pressure as well, okay? Because remember, what they're doing now is they're recruiting more more people to join your army. And the general rule is that if you will fight for you, if they die for you, they also have a say in your society, okay? Also, you need you need to get people to have children to replenish your population. You need to get you get them to work hard, okay? So, you need to get people to have children to replenish your population. So you're always afraid of revolution, discontent, and also the idea of indifference, right?

People don't care anymore. So you're under these two pressures. So because of these two pressures, it creates contradictions in your society. And these contradictions force you to balance these contradictions which leads to innovation. Does the logic here make sense to you? Right? This creates conflict and contradiction. right which will then lead to innovation and if you don't do innovate then you have a

revolution or defeat okay does that make sense if you don't innovate your enemies will come and conquer you or your people will rebel and overthrow you okay those are the two options you don't have so you don't have a choice in a matter but to innovate but sometimes the innovation can keep up with the social change and that's what happened in the French Revolution which which we will discuss later on is that okay the government was trying to make these changes but you have too many social classes the merchant class the educated middle class lawyers basically you have all these different social groups now who want a greater say in

government but then you have this hierarchy of like clergy nobility and and bureaucrats who want to maintain their privileges okay and And if you can't resolve this conflict, then the only outcome is revolution. All right. So it's either you choose to resolve it or it will be resolved for you, okay? So this is a process of constant innovation and revolution. Yeah? Yeah.

Okay. and there are natural boundaries that protect China, okay? So the sea, the mountains, the desert to the north. So China has these natural boundaries that Europe doesn't have. So from the perspective of Chinese bureaucrats, they're not afraid of external enemies, okay? Because like Japan, Korea, they're not really threats to China at this time. They're more afraid of internal revolution.

Okay? So that's where the focus is on, like, how do we maintain internal coherence? And the best way to do that is by co-opting the local elite, by bribing the local elite. Okay? And the best way to bribe the local elite is by helping them stamp out local discontent, ensuring that the people that are most loyal to you are always empowered in local areas. Okay? Does that make sense?

So, the example is this. The example is, think back to the, um, the example is, think back to the, um, the example, you know, the the Japanese invasion of China, okay, World War II. You look at the KMT, the Gooming Dong, which is a dominant power in China. Japan is coming in, conquering most of China, controlling the industrial heartland, and what is Jiangxia doing? Does he care about the Japanese? Not at all. He cares about the Communist Party. These peasants in these caves in North West China, Why?

The Japanese are much greater military threat, but they are not a threat to the social hierarchy. You can work with the Japanese, right? The Japanese are perfectly willing to work with you to control China. The communists represent an overturning of the social hierarchy, therefore they are a much greater threat. Does that make sense? But that's a logic in China. a social hierarchy if foreigners want to come in caucus China that's fine because we can

work with them to maintain a social hierarchy okay but these peasant rebels are the real problem okay so if the Chinese are the best way civilization why how we're done to still not laughing wrong if they're like to hear only value for different powers because they're not mind that which emperor is exactly Yeah, okay, so that's a great question, okay? Why is it that Chinese sidelicists don't last very long, right? Okay, so I know this is hard to understand, but what Chinese civilization is, it's a bureaucracy,

okay, bureaucracy, because the bureaucracy represents a social hierarchy. Confucianism. If the confusion culture lives on, China lives on. So what's important is to protect the Confucian culture, which puts scholar officials to bureaucrats at the top of society. So you can have the Mongols, you have the Japanese, you can have, I don't know, Zhu Yuan Zhang, who cares? The emperor doesn't matter.

You understand? The emperor doesn't really matter in the system. What matters is the bra. And that has been consistent for 2,000 years. Does that make sense? So the intention, the strategy is to maintain a bureaucracy, even though you may need to put in a foreign leader. In fact, you're better off a foreign leader

because the foreign leader is much more dependent on the bureaucracy than maybe a local leader. Yeah, it doesn't matter. The emperor is just a figurehead. The emperor has no power, right? Because if you think about it, the emperor is just one person. the emperor's just one person but the information that he gets is often bureaucrats and therefore you can control and manipulate the emperor based on the information you provide him

right so it's a bureaucracy that has all the power and that's why China doesn't innovate because the bureaucracy is too powerful does that make sense okay great questions someone like the ability about intermality or even though divided they are they are basically one big family okay so for example the Germans the Russians the English they were just like one big family they were just like one big family they were cousins of each other but they still went to war and they still killed millions of people okay um so how to explain this and the answer is um we can use game theory okay game theory native game theory is that you can be related to each other but you're all

participants in a game in which they're going to be one winner right so um um um um um um um um um you still have to think about your own survival and you can survive as long as you have the as long as you have authority and legitimacy among your people right because if they think that you are representing a foreign interest your soldiers won't be loyal to you they'll kill you okay does that make sense okay and also like like look look there's a very common very simple where it's very common that a king dies, right? And guess what?

The two sons start a civil war. They're brothers, but why are they fighting a civil war? The reason why is, okay, this is really interesting is, they represent different political factions, who are all striving for power. And the sons are just figureheads for these political factions. factions it doesn't make sense okay okay so civil wars are fought between different political factions and they will appoint maybe son a to be the head okay

and son a if he doesn't agree they'll find someone else okay so everyone's trying to be the top dog everyone's it's really okay yeah so so this theory but the theory is called status what we really want is status right and so brothers hate each other the most because only one can have status the other must obey and that's why throughout history so much violence has been between princes okay who are striving for this top top position so there are different theories Okay. Great.

Any more questions? Okay. Okay. And that you mentioned that kind of kind of also about the idea

So let's go over the history of schooling, okay? So the modern schooling model that we use today is from Prussia. Okay, pressure. Okay, schools. Okay, and so if you are a military, you need soldiers. And what you discover is if you want soldiers to be obedient, you need to train them from an early age. But not only that, but you need to separate them from their families at an early age.

Does that make sense? Because if they are separated from their families, they feel more anxious, they feel more stress, their less love, therefore they're much willing to accept authority. And they're much more willing to kill other people. So that's a basic theory of schooling. Make them obedient from an early age and separate them from the families from an early age and then train them to be soldiers from an early age. And this is a model that we adopt for today, universal schooling.

And every country uses this system because not only is it good for the military, but it's also good for industry, right? Companies also want this system where you go in and you work hard because you're anxious. You want to make money, you want to prove yourself. Whereas if you feel love by your family, you don't care. You're like, you know, like, I don't like this boss, I'm going to go home and be with my mother. Okay, so that's why every nation adopted the system. Because it was not it for the military, but it really helps with the industry, okay?

So the question then is, why did China adopt this? Well, because of industry, right? Because China needs factory workers. And this system gives you the best factory workers. Okay, doesn't make sense? Great. Any more questions? Okay, so great questions.

I really enjoy it when you ask questions and like they're really perceptive okay and I think that by asking them you learn a lot as well so next class we do the enlightenment okay and this will pave the way for the American and the French revolutions there's no class next week because of midterms but I'll see you after the midterms okay okay