920
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Since January 1, 2014
- A History of the World since 1300 (67)
- History of Rock, 1970-Present (50)
- A Brief History of Humankind (48)
- The Modern World: Global History since 1760 (35)
- Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science (33)
- The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future (28)
- Introduction aux éthiques philosophiques (27)
- Roman Architecture (25)
- Jesus in Scripture and Tradition (25)
- Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender (23)
- Descubriendo la pintura europea de 1400 a 1800 (22)
- Introduction aux droits de l'homme (19)
- Buddhism and Modern Psychology (18)
- Calvin: Histoire et réception d'une Réforme (17)
- The Ancient Greeks (16)
- The French Revolution (15)
- À la découverte du théâtre classique français (15)
- Christianisme et philosophie dans l'Antiquité (14)
- Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases (14)
- Letters of the Apostle Paul (14)
- Egiptología (12)
- Western Music History through Performance (10)
- Phenomenology and the Conscious Mind (9)
- Human Evolution: Past and Future (9)
- Greek and Roman Mythology (9)
- Alexander the Great (9)
- The Great War and Modern Philosophy (9)
- The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture (9)
- Villes africaines: la planification urbaine (8)
- Masterpieces of World Literature (8)
- Programming Mobile Applications for Android (7)
- Introduction to Psychology (7)
- Fundamentos de la escritura en español (7)
- MongoDB for Node.js Developers (7)
- Pensamiento Científico (7)
- Greeks at War: Homer at Troy (7)
- Lingua e cultura italiana: avanzata (6)
- A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior (6)
- The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (6)
- Reason and Persuasion Through Plato's Dialogues (6)
- Fake News, Facts, and Alternative Facts (6)
- Karl der Große - Pater Europae (6)
- The Rooseveltian Century (6)
- Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (5)
- Dinosaur Paleobiology (5)
- Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity (5)
- L'avenir de la décision : connaître et agir en complexité (5)
- Designing Cities (4)
- Problèmes métaphysiques à l'épreuve de la politique, 1943-1968 (4)
- The Kennedy Half Century (4)
- Introduction to Public Speaking (4)
- Emergence of Life (4)
- War for the Greater Middle East (4)
- Postwar Abstract Painting (3)
- Découvrir l'anthropologie (3)
- Analyzing the Universe (3)
- The Music of the Beatles (3)
- La visione del mondo della Relatività e della Meccanica Quantistica (3)
- Initiation à la programmation en Java (3)
- Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life (3)
- History of Rock and Roll, Part One (3)
- La Commedia di Dante (3)
- Devenir entrepreneur du changement (3)
- Moons of Our Solar System (3)
- Orientierung Geschichte (3)
- Paleontology: Early Vertebrate Evolution (3)
- Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe (3)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (2)
- L'art des structures 1 : Câbles et arcs (2)
- Art History for Artists, Animators and Gamers (2)
- Introduction to Classical Music (2)
- Galaxies and Cosmology (2)
- The Science of Gastronomy (2)
- The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (2)
- Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity (2)
- Philosophy and the Sciences (2)
- Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication (2)
- The European Discovery of China (2)
- Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (2)
- Découvrir la science politique (2)
- Introduction à la programmation en C++ (2)
- Introduction à la philosophie de Friedrich Nietzsche (2)
- Géopolitique de l'Europe (2)
- Gestion des aires protégées en Afrique (2)
- Lingua e letteratura in italiano (2)
- The Changing Landscape of Ancient Rome (2)
- Materials Science: 10 Things Every Engineer Should Know (2)
- Highlights of Modern Astronomy (2)
- La Philanthropie : Comprendre et Agir (2)
- The Science of Religion (2)
- Advertising and Society (1)
- America Through Foreign Eyes (1)
- Superpowers of the Ancient World: the Near East (1)
- The Art of Poetry (1)
- Bemerkenswerte Menschen (1)
- Big History: From the Big Bang until Today (1)
- Controversies of British Imperialism (1)
- Age of Cathedrals (1)
- Christianity: From Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200-1650) (1)
- Narratives of Nonviolence in the American Civil Rights Movement (1)
- Constitutional Law - The Structure of Government (1)
- Contagious: How Things Catch On (1)
- Care of Elders with Alzheimer's Disease (1)
- The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art (1)
- Programming Mobile Services for Android Handheld Systems (1)
- Animal Behaviour (1)
- From the Big Bang to Dark Energy (1)
- Configuring the World (1)
- Introduction to Data Science (1)
- Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society (1)
- The Law of the European Union (1)
- 21st Century American Foreign Policy (1)
- Éléments de Géomatique (1)
- History and Future of Higher Education (1)
- The Age of Jefferson (1)
- The Magna Carta and its Legacy (1)
- A New History for a New China, 1700-2000 (1)
- The New Nordic Diet (1)
- A la recherche du Grand Paris (1)
- What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1)
- Exercise Physiology: Understanding the Athlete Within (1)
- Physique générale - mécanique (1)
- Subsistence Marketplaces (1)
- Practicing Tolerance in a Religious Society (1)
- Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life (1)
- Andy Warhol (1)
- Web Intelligence and Big Data (1)
- Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics (1)
- Learning How to Learn (1)
- Imagining Other Earths (1)
- Vital Signs: Understanding What the Body Is Telling Us (1)
- Développement durable (1)
- Dinosaur Ecosystems (1)
- The Civil War and Reconstruction (1)
- Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance (1)
- Introducción a la genética y la evolución (1)
- Poetry in America: Whitman (1)
- Anthropology of Current World Issues (1)
- Escribir para Convencer (1)
- Découvrir le marketing (1)
- Créer et développer une startup technologique (1)
- Frontières en tous genres (1)
- Une introduction à la géographicité (1)
- Gestion et Politique de l'eau (1)
- Theater and Globalization (1)
- Handel’s Messiah and Baroque Oratorio (1)
- Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1)
- From Goddard to Apollo: The History of Rockets (1)
- Miracles of Human Language (1)
- Human Origins (1)
- The Computing Technology Inside Your Smartphone (1)
- Intellectual Humility (1)
- Introduction to Italian Opera (1)
- Magic in the Middle Ages (1)
- Making Sense of News (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (1)
- Mobilité et urbanisme (1)
- Moral Foundations of Politics (1)
- Mountains 101 (1)
- The Biology of Music (1)
- Oriental Beliefs: Between Reason and Traditions (1)
- In the Night Sky: Orion (1)
- Visualizing Postwar Tokyo (1)
- The Renaissance and Baroque City (1)
- The Rise of China (1)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (1)
- Социокультурные аспекты социальной робототехники (1)
- Science of Exercise (1)
- El Mediterráneo del Renacimiento a la Ilustración (1)
- Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1)
- The World of the String Quartet (1)
- Switzerland in Europe (1)
- The Talmud: A Methodological Introduction (1)
- William Wordsworth: Poetry, People and Place (1)
- Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis (1)
- The World of Wine (1)
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:




Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:
Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
Imagined Hierarchies in History
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on October 11, 2013 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
jati, discrimination, Brahmin, privileged, justify, Africa, segregation, impurity, viscous, dominance, undereducated, souls, Barbie, ethical, Ham, Gypsies, stratified, caste, children, hygienic, evolutionists, moral, race, itself, spoiled, circumstances, biological
what accounts for all the different societies and hierarchies throughout history?
in most cases, hierarchies were based on historical and then simply perpetuated over many generations
Hindu system
the peoples of central Asia invaded the Indian sub-continent and subjugated the local population, created a society in which they were on top
invaders were fewer in number than local populations
feared that over time, they might lose their status
to prevent this, they divided the population into castes
each caste had a different legal status, privileges, and duties
mixing of castes was prohibited
became an integral part of Hindu religion
in order to give legitimacy to the stories they tried to convince everyone including that this caste system was not a human invention, but that it reflected some kind of cosmic order and that it was there to protect society against some kind of
many religions teach that particular groups of people are impure and contact with them will lead to impurity
e.g. women were often seen as a source of pollution, so they shouldn't go near he scriptures or mix with men, etc.
e.g. if a ruling group wanted to keep Jews or out from somewhere, stories would be created that these groups of people are impure
this is a particular effective analogy for ruling classes to use since people in general had experience of others coming in contact with impure substances such as rotten corpses or food and as a result becoming ill or dying, and so this analogy was particularly useful in convincing , superstitious and gullible people of imagined stories of their religions
it was was a way a hijacking scientific knowledge of substances which can truly harm you and extending it through analogy in order to coerce populations of people into behaving in certain ways
this was common in the Hindu caste system where where taught to not only stay away from garbage and contaminated water in order not to contaminate their bodies, but also to stay away from the lower caste of people in order to not contaminate their .
as people grew up, these ideas became deeply embedded in their culture, and continued to be fearful of caste pollution
over time the caste system changed, at the beginning there were only four castes, but over the years more castes were added, in the end there was the concept of " " or birth, in which there were over 3000 kinds of jati that you could be born into
a person's jati determines where you can live, whom you could marry, and what kind of job you could have
even today, matters of marriage and career are still heavily influenced by freeing people from the idea of castes
American society and imagined stories regarding race
the story of in America has many similarities with the story of castes in India
it began with the importation by European conquerors of millions of people from Africa who were forced to live and work as slaves
why did Europeans choose to import slaves from instead of employing the local inhabitants or importing labor from Europe? There are many reasons and all of them are quite accidental:
1. the reason they didn't employ or enslave local inhabitants for the most part is because Europeans brought with them many unfamiliar diseases which decimated the local populations, for example, in Mexico it is estimated that 90% of the population, or 20 million native Americans died of imported diseases in the 16th century, so there were simply not enough local inhabitants to work the plantations, so the European masters had to look for free labor some other source
2. the reason why slaves were imported from Africa and not from Europe itself, or India, or China is because Africa was simply closer so it was cheaper to transport slaves from e.g. Senegal to Brazil than from Vietnam to Brazil
3. in Africa, there already existed a very well-developed slave trade, mainly Muslim slave traders had developed in the previous centuries a slave trade in which slaves were exported from central Africa to North Africa and the Middle East, so it was easier for Europeans to begin at and extend a market that already existed than to create one
4. American plantations of sugar, cotton and coffee were located mostly in hot, humid and tropical areas such as Haiti, Brazil, Louisiana and Virgina, and these places were plagued by diseases such as malaria and yellow fever which had originated in Africa, and Africans had developed at least partial immunity from these diseases
because of this slave history, the countries in the Americas tended to be divided into a ruling class of white Europeans and a subjugated group of black Africans from Africa.
in order to explain this segregation and domination of one group of people over another, the European masters did not mention the above four reasons since these are not just, but created imagined stories, for example:
1. European theologians invented the story the Africans descended from , who was cursed by his father Noah that his offspring would be slaves, and this is why, they suggested, it is for Europeans to own slaves
2. European biologists and argued that is was ethical to enslave black Africans because according to their science, blacks were supposedly less intelligent and had less developed senses than whites and so it is okay if they are kept as slaves by whites
3. European doctors argued that blacks spread diseases because they have worse habits and therefore they should be kept apart from and taken care of by whites
even after Britain outlawed slavery in 1833, and the United States in 1865, these imagined stories continued to dominate public thinking as an accepted cornerstone of American society which perpetuated up into the 1950s and 1960s.
1865 after slavery was abolished
most black families were far poorer and far less educated than white families
the stories that used to justify slavery continued to segregation
the general theme of "social pollution" was used in America just as in caste society in India to keep certain groups separated
these stories were built into other areas of society such as aesthetics in which beauty was determined as white beauty or fashion that blacks could not attain, e.g. the doll
you might think that over the years that people would gradually understand that these stories are just mythology, but in many ways, people became more entrenched in these stories, in fact, these stories were often translated into laws which were meant to safeguard the racial order which had long ago been established by the institution of slavery
this is an example how imagined realities which are based on quite accidental circumstances can go on from generation to generation and grow into viscous circles that perpetuate and expand themselves for centuries
often in history the unjust of one group of people often gets worse, not better over time
most social/political hierarchies in human history lack any objective, biological or logical basis, they are usually the result of accidental events which are supported by stories that people invented over time to justify their over others
this is one of the best reasons to study and know history
if the division between European Americans and African Americans, was grounded in an objective, reality, if people in the caste really had bigger brains, then you could study this with biology. History, on the other hand, is studying and explaining the dynamics of how
people create and use their stories to organize large societies. We can understand these phenomena only by studying the events, the circumstances, and the power relations that over time transformed the imagination of people into very real, and very cruel social structures.