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:
Columbus: Last Man of the Middle Ages, Vespucci: First Man of the Modern Age
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on January 21, 2014 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
scientific, Asia, conquer, German, colonize, empires, Zheng, obliged, compete, empty, complete, Middle, sustained, Ottoman, natural, data, Brazil, around, Pinta, uncharted, Persians, Japan, Scandinavia, Britain, 1602
early European maps (e.g. 1459) left no part of the world was and gave you the impression of familiarity with the world
in the 15th century Europeans began to draw maps with many spaces, indicating that they were ignorant of large parts of the world
1492 Christopher Columbus' voyage was based his " " world maps from the Middle Ages
when the reached the first island in the Bahamas, Columbus thought he was somewhere in the Indonesian islands or India and so called the people Indians
Columbus never realized or admitted that he discovered a completely unknown continent
Columbus died a man of the Ages
Amerigo Vespucci
first demonstrated that and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts
Italian sailor started to sail in 1500
1504: texts argued something revolutionary
new lands were of a new continent unknown to philosophers, kings, and the Bible
Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520)
cartographer
called the new continent "America" based on Amerigo Vespucci
the discovery of America was what really began the revolution because it taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions
it the Europeans to start searching for new knowledge quickly
if Spain and Portugal wanted to control the new territories, they would have to gather enormous amounts of new
even their maps with their blank spaces admitted that they didn't know what was out there
this was an admittance that there are important things that we don't know
the European explore-and- expeditions are so familiar to us, we tend to overlook how unique they were
nothing like it had ever happened before in history
long distance campaigns of conquest are not a undertaking even for empires
most empires were so busy with local conflicts with their neighbors, they never occupied themselves with long-distance discovery
at the most, empires would conquer familiar lands them
Rome conquered wider and wider areas to defend their outlying areas, but Romans wouldn't have sailed directly to , explore it and conquer it
even Alexander the Great's campaigns had the goal to take over a known and existing empire, the
closest parallel were the Chinese in the 15th century, their exploration of the Indian Ocean including East Africa
He had 300 ships and 30,000 sailors compared to Columbus' 3 ships
Zheng He explored the ocean, but he did not try to conquer or the countries he visited
after Zheng He, not explorer of his ambition never set sail again from a Chinese port
prove that Europe did not enjoy any technological advantage at the time, but what they did have was and unparalleled ambition
the Romans never had any interest in conquering or India
the Persians never attempted to conquer Madagascar or Spain
the Chinese learned fairly quickly about European's new discoveries, but they continued to believe that the world revolved around Asia, and so they didn't
even countries as small as Scotland tried to send out ships to conquer new lands in the Americas, but not one Chinese, Indian, , or Arab ship was sent to conquer new lands in America, they simply had no interest
the first time that a non-European power sent an expedition to the American continent was in World War II when sent an expedition to Alaska that managed to conquer two small islands, capturing 10 U.S. soldiers
so for 300 years after Columbus, Europeans could fight among themselves for the new lands in the newly discovered continents
it was the wealth that the Europeans gathered in the New World that enabled them to eventually compete against as an equal, and when the Asian countries realized this, it was to late.
the first world map in China that showed America was published in , and even that map was published by a European missionary
the first important science was geography, as it gave Europeans accurate knowledge of new lands and oceans
other areas of science followed, and in this way, opened the way for science, and science opened the way for empires
Ideas and Concepts:
Via today's History of Humankind class: "Columbus never realized or admitted that he had discovered a completely unknown continent. He had based his knowledge of the world on hundreds of years of maps. To understand Columbus' complete disbelief that he had encountered a new continent, you would have to imagine that, after Apollo 11 had completed its lunar landing and returned to earth, that people began suggesting to the astronauts that they had actually landed on another moon that had never been detected. It simply didn't fit into Columbus' understanding of the world, and he died thinking he had reached India, a man of the Middle Ages."
Via tonight's History of Humankind class: "The discovery of America was what really began the scientific revolution because it taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions. In this respect, Amerigo Vespucci was the first modern, scientific man, as he was the first person to have the courage to admit that there was a huge continent lying out there that no philosopher, no king, and no religious wise man had ever known of, and if Spain or Portugal or any other country wanted to control these vast, unknown territories, they would have to gather enormous amounts of new data about the geography, the climate, the animals, the people, and the languages of the continent. And thus, science was born out of the admittance of extreme ignorance, but ignorance combined with sustained ambition to gradually replace it with knowledge and power."