The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 23

Those Feisty Colonies

The English colonization of North America began in 1607 with the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. Soon England began using North America like a safety valve to rid itself of religious troublemakers, including the Pilgrims, radical Protestants who founded Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1620, and the Puritans, who founded Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1630.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING COLONISTS.

Roanoke, the first English attempt to colonize the New World, ended in failure-though no one can say why, when, or how it met its fate. Actually, this was Sir Walter Raleigh's second attempt to found a colony on Roanoke Island. Raleigh's first effort, in 1585, ended when the colonists-all men-abandoned the island and returned to England in 1586. Undeterred, in 1587 Raleigh founded a second colony on roughly the same spot, with about 150 new recruits. Unlike the earlier expedition, this group included women and children.Unfortunately, it seems the leaders of the new colonists-without any proof-decided that local Native Americans were responsible for the demise of the first colony, and in 1587 they attacked the native town on Roanoke Island. They failed to realize these natives were from a different tribe than the ones encountered by the previous colony. Worse, these natives had powerful allies on the mainland, in the Croatoan tribe.In 1590 another expedition visited the site of the second colony, where they found a European-style fort with wooden palisades and iron tools lying on the ground. Gra.s.s had grown up around the tools, indicating that they had been there for a long time. The search party found two more enigmatic clues before they left: the letters CRO carved on a tree outside the town, and the full word CROATOAN carved on a tree in town. Were the words a warning, a plea for help, or a forwarding address? This is one historical mystery that will likely never be solved.

Unsurprisingly, the colonies had rather different characters, depending who settled them. Up north, the Puritan Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts was a theocracy-and not the fun kind. Activities such as drinking and dancing were strictly forbidden, and were punishable with a day in the stocks (humiliating public imprisonment where pa.s.sersby could insult you and pelt you with rotten fruit).

By contrast, the southern colonies tended to be looser, more freewheeling places. In fact the early success of the American colonies was driven by the Virginians' discovery of one of history's most popular vices: tobacco. Meanwhile, the colony of Georgia was founded by English debtors who couldn't pay up and had decided to risk it in the New World rather than go to jail. And Maryland (named after the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots) welcomed not only Catholics but Jews as well-remarkable tolerance that drove the Puritans nuts.

Interestingly, one of England's prized possessions, New York, wasn't actually English at all. Originally named New Amsterdam, it began as a Dutch colony, founded during the first half of the seventeenth century, when Holland ruled the seas. As England made itself the dominant sea power during several "Wars of Navigation," it seized New Amsterdam and the rest of the Hudson River Valley from its sometime ally in 1664. The new English ruling cla.s.s married into wealthy Dutch merchant families to form a new "Anglo-Dutch" aristocracy, the Knickerbockers (seriously), who ruled New York into the nineteenth century.

As the Colonial economy grew, so did tension with the kings of England, who held firm to a "mercantilist" policy-the colonies were allowed to trade only with England. Meanwhile, the Brits forbade poor colonists from moving across the Appalachian Mountains, to avoid antagonizing France and the Native American tribes there.

This led to a b.l.o.o.d.y rebellion exactly one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. In 1676, accusing the English governor of "treason," a rabble-rouser named Nathaniel Bacon led an uprising in Jamestown, Virginia, during which poor whites seized the town for several months and murdered upper-cla.s.s Brits and Native Americans wherever they found them. This reign of terror lasted until Bacon died from typhus brought on by a h.e.l.lish infestation of body lice (yes, death by crabs).

France:

Bringing Home the Beavers

Louis XIV was called "the Sun King" because he was the center of European politics for his whole reign-an astonis.h.i.+ng seventy-two years, from 1643 to 1715, far longer than the lifespan of an average European at the time. He lived in opulent luxury, commanded giant armies, and made every effort to conquer the continent.

Beginning in the 1660s, Louis tried to expand French power in four directions-Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands-not realizing that a major new ideological force, nationalism, had taken root in all four places. This new sense of community meant that they would never submit to French rule. Regardless, Louis XIV launched four b.l.o.o.d.y wars to subdue them, saving the best for last: the War of the Spanish Succession, 17021713, history's first real "world war." In every corner of the globe, from Germany to America to the high seas of the Indian Ocean, France faced off against England, Holland, the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, Denmark, Portugal, and a number of smaller European states. (For some reason, Spain was not involved in this war over the Spanish crown.) Louis was decisively defeated in August 1704 at the Battle of Blenheim-but still the war dragged on for another nine b.l.o.o.d.y years.

In the New World, France found England had beaten it to the punch, seizing the most desirable land and leaving France the chillier bits to the north (Quebec, in modern-day Canada) and the malarial bits to the south (Haiti and other Caribbean colonies such as Martinique). France picked up North America's fertile Midwest, which Louis modestly named "Louisiana"-but didn't really do much with the place. Still, the colonies weren't totally useless: Quebec and the Midwest were home to beavers, whose luxurious pelts fetched a high price in Europe, and the Caribbean colonies were perfect for growing sugar, a very lucrative crop.

Russia:

Bigger, Badder, and Drunker Than Everyone Else

Beginning in the late sixteenth century, Russia rose from an Eastern European backwater to become one of the most powerful empires in history. Although it remained socially backward, its huge population, natural wealth, and geographic size terrified Western Europeans. It also spelled bad news for its southern neighbors-the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia.

Russia's rise began slowly. For hundreds of years the Mongols of Central Asia had ruled European Russia. But when the Mongols got lazy and lost touch with their nomadic roots, the tables began to turn. In 1547, Ivan the Terrible became the first czar of Russia and conquered much of Siberia by 1581. At home, Ivan was a brutal autocrat who established a long-lived Russian inst.i.tution-the secret police, or oprichnina oprichnina, which kept tabs on his enemies (and made them disappear, if necessary).

In addition to being generally "Terrible," Ivan was Unstable too, suffering a complete mental breakdown in 1581, after killing his own son. He left Russia a medieval state with a backward economy and military. But all this changed one hundred years later, when a remarkable seventeen-year-old, Peter soon-to-be-called-the-Great Romanov, a.s.sumed the throne. Russia was about to be transformed.

Peter was obsessed with the sea; in fact, as a teenager he commanded mock naval battles, and as czar he traveled incognito to England to learn how to build s.h.i.+ps. Above all he was determined to get access to the sea so Russia could trade with Europe and the Middle East.

Six years after a.s.suming the throne in 1689, Peter declared war against the Ottoman Empire to gain access to the Black Sea. After capturing the port of Azov in 1696, he founded Russia's first naval base on the Black Sea at Taganrog, in 1698. Next he declared war against Sweden. At first the war went badly, but Peter was a determined commander, and he knew he had a special advantage: Russia's sheer size. He tricked the Swedish king, Charles XII, into chasing him into the Ukraine, five hundred miles from his supply base. Peter crushed Charles's army at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. (According to legend, Charles coined the word hullabaloo hullabaloo to describe this chaotic encounter.) to describe this chaotic encounter.)

HIS ROYAL SERFNESS.

In 1698, Peter traveled to England and lived anonymously in Deptford, where he studied s.h.i.+pbuilding for several months. With secret permission from His Majesty's government for this ruse, Peter took part in strenuous manual labor every day, disguised as a common peasant, because the signs of royal office-including ceremonial clothing, entourage, and bodyguard-would have made it impossible for him to see the "nuts and bolts" of s.h.i.+pbuilding up close. He also wanted to interact with his coworkers as equals.Peter's desire to learn s.h.i.+pbuilding was sincere: before he left Russia, he had a special royal seal made that read, "I am a pupil; I need to be taught." While journeying to England through stormy seas aboard the H.M.S. Yorke Yorke, he insisted not only on staying on deck to see how the s.h.i.+p was handled, but also on climbing the main mast-amid lightning bolts-to look at the rigging.Of course Peter didn't really abandon his privileges. Everyone at Deptford knew the real ident.i.ty of this unusual foreigner, who was well over six feet tall and addressed by all as "His Royal Serfness." The czar also lived up to his reputation as a hard-drinking party animal. Sayes Court, where the Russian delegation stayed, was virtually destroyed by their carousing, with expensive antique carpets soiled beyond repair, crystal doork.n.o.bs stolen, windows broken, and valuable paintings used for target practice. Damage to the garden alone cost a then-astounding 350. After drinking huge quant.i.ties of vodka, the Russians apparently enjoyed sitting in wheelbarrows so their friends could send them cras.h.i.+ng through carefully tended hedgerows-a seventeenth-century version of Jacka.s.s Jacka.s.s.

After his victory, Peter founded a great new port city on the Baltic Sea, which he deliberately gave a German name, to emphasize Russia's new connection with Western Europe: St. Petersburg.

India:

England Nibbles Away

America wasn't the only place where England and France competed for colonies: the two leading powers of Europe went head-to-head in India, too. Their conquest of the subcontinent was slow and subtle, beginning in the early 1600s with the establishment of small trading posts that doubled as military bases along the coast. Fueled by European commerce, these soon grew into large cities, including India's main ports: Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.

Like the Portuguese and Dutch before them, English and French merchants made huge profits buying black pepper in India and selling it at a markup back home. In India they also discovered a powerful narcotic, opium, which they began cultivating and selling around the world-making the English some of history's first "drug runners."

The English began squeezing the French out in the mid-eighteenth century, when a dynamic new director took over management of the English East India Company. From 1751 to 1752, Robert Clive scored victories that spelled the end of France's empire in India. Then it was the Indians' turn, beginning with Bengal in 1757. Clive didn't conquer Bengal outright for Britain; instead, he cleverly supported a rival claimant to the throne who would do Britain's bidding. This would be the model for Britain's conquest of India, piece by piece, prince by prince, alliance by alliance.

The time now requires you to manage your general commerce with the sword in your hands.-Gerald Ungier, chief trader for the English East India Company in Bombay

China:

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

For native Chinese, the revolution of 1644 was a terrible case of deja vu, as northern barbarians poured into China and established an oppressive government, just like the Mongols had done a few hundred years before. But this time it was a different group of barbarians-the Manchu. Originally the Manchu were forest people, but Chinese immigrants taught them about farming and engineering, causing a population explosion, a technological revolution, and a newfound desire for power. Oops.

The Manchu likely killed millions of Chinese as they established the Q'ing (p.r.o.nounced "ching," meaning "clear") Dynasty. The new emperors also enforced strict rules for social and economic life, as well as simple things such as appearance. Native Chinese couldn't occupy senior government positions, Manchu were forbidden to do manual labor, and intermarriage was illegal. The Manchu created an unusual dual bureaucracy in which Chinese clerks were responsible for keeping written records, while Manchu officials kept watch to ensure the clerks' "loyalty." The Q'ing also inst.i.tuted a "literary inquisition" (wenziyu, or "imprisonment for unorthodox thought").

On the foreign-relations front, the Q'ing emperors adopted a policy of preemptive expansion, conquering Mongolia and other neighboring countries that might present a threat. But they were surprised when unwanted European merchants began showing up at China's seaports in greater and greater numbers throughout the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth century the Q'ing emperors could no longer dismiss them as a nuisance. One group, the English, even insisted on recognition as China's equals-an idea that struck the Chinese emperor as absurd. Worse, the English were selling a highly addictive drug, opium, to the emperor's subjects. Trouble was brewing.

j.a.pan:

Voting Everyone Off the Island

After a series of strong military commanders tried to unify j.a.pan in the sixteenth century, in 1600 a lord (daimyo) named Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated all his rivals at the Battle of Sekigahara. Tokugawa won by adopting modern European weaponry, including muskets and cannons, but these would be the last European inventions j.a.pan saw for a long, long time.

After making himself Shogun, Tokugawa ordered the country closed to prevent European merchants from contaminating j.a.panese culture with foreign influence, disarmed the j.a.panese peasants, and decreed that henceforth only the samurai warrior cla.s.s would be allowed to carry swords. With the country locked down, in 1633, Tokugawa's successor, Iemitsu, forbade j.a.panese subjects from leaving the islands. j.a.panese s.h.i.+ps could no longer leave j.a.panese waters, and any j.a.panese sailor caught working on a foreign s.h.i.+p would be executed.

Dutch merchants were still allowed to visit j.a.pan to trade, but from 1641, the Dutch were confined to a small artificial island in Nagasaki Harbor that the j.a.panese had originally built to house the Portuguese (who never moved in).

WHO'S UP, WHO'S DOWN

The House of Hapsburg: DOWN DOWN

The defeat of the Spanish Armada was just one of several body blows suffered by the House of Hapsburg, a sprawling dynastic family, partly descended from Ferdinand and Isabella that ruled Spain, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire. One hundred years after the glory days of Charles V, the Hapsburg Empire was torn apart by religious dissent and ambitious n.o.bles.

The Thirty Years' War was actually a series of wars between the Hapsburgs on one side and basically all the other European states, including France, England, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, on the other. As Protestant and Catholic n.o.bles battled one another for control of the Holy Roman Empire, they ran rampant in Germany, killing an astonis.h.i.+ng 20 percent of the population between 1618 and 1648-around seven million people!

The war began when Protestants in Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic) rebelled against the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II. The uprising began with some rough Bohemian justice, when two leading Catholic n.o.bles were charged by Protestants with violating religious freedom, found guilty, and without further ado chucked out the windows of the castle (the famous "Defenestration of Prague"-actually the second famous event of this name, as chucking people out windows was apparently a popular punishment in Bohemia). The lucky n.o.bles landed in a pile of horse manure and survived; meanwhile, Ferdinand II called on his wealthy Hapsburg relatives in Spain for a.s.sistance and soon crushed this uprising.

But the trouble was just beginning: now a Protestant rebellion against the Hapsburgs began in western Germany, with support from nearby Holland. Soon Denmark, England, and Sweden got involved, too. Ferdinand beat these alliances, but in 1634, France decided that the water was fine and it jumped in feet first. The last part of the Thirty Years' War (the "French" or "Catholic-vs.-Catholic" phase) was the longest and bloodiest, continuing for fourteen years, until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

When all was said and done, everything pretty much ended up back where it started. True, the Holy Roman emperor did lose authority in Germany-but this was a cosmetic change, as his had been mostly pretend power to begin with. The most significant result was the decline of Spanish influence in Germany and the bankrupting of the Spanish Empire. After the destruction of the Spanish Armada, defeat on mainland Europe spelled the beginning of the end. Spain, and the Hapsburgs, now entered a long, slow decline.

Tulips: UP, UP, UP! THEN DOWN, DOWN, DOWN UP, UP, UP! THEN DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

Sometimes sensible people (like the Dutch) do crazy things, such as obsess (and we mean obsess) obsess) over flowers. Yes, in the 1630s, Holland's economy was almost destroyed by irrational financial speculation in...tulip bulbs. How irrational? Consider this: in 1635, at the height of the tulip craze, one bulb was sold for a bed, four oxen, twelve sheep, four pigs, four tons of wheat, eight tons of rye, two tons of b.u.t.ter, a silver drinking cup, a suit of clothes, two barrels of wine, four tons of beer, and one thousand pounds of cheese! In 1635 another bulb sold for 6,000 florins-at a time when the average yearly income in Holland was about 150 florins. People sold houses, businesses, and large landed estates to raise money to buy tulip bulbs, which were traded on the Amsterdam stock exchange. over flowers. Yes, in the 1630s, Holland's economy was almost destroyed by irrational financial speculation in...tulip bulbs. How irrational? Consider this: in 1635, at the height of the tulip craze, one bulb was sold for a bed, four oxen, twelve sheep, four pigs, four tons of wheat, eight tons of rye, two tons of b.u.t.ter, a silver drinking cup, a suit of clothes, two barrels of wine, four tons of beer, and one thousand pounds of cheese! In 1635 another bulb sold for 6,000 florins-at a time when the average yearly income in Holland was about 150 florins. People sold houses, businesses, and large landed estates to raise money to buy tulip bulbs, which were traded on the Amsterdam stock exchange.

What was going on here? Had the Dutch all lost their minds? Well, kind of. Tulip bulbs were imported from the Ottoman Empire in 1559, and the flowers quickly became popular for their beauty. At first, tulip bulb prices rose because of demand from wealthy collectors who genuinely appreciated different breeds of tulip, including rare varieties with unusual coloration. But soon this growing demand caught the attention of speculators-businessmen who were in it just for a buck, buying up rare tulip bulbs on the a.s.sumption that prices would continue going up. For a while this was a safe bet, as increased demand pushed prices even higher, which drew more speculators to the market, which pushed prices even higher-and so on.

But at some point the bubble had to burst, and in 1636 it did. Eventually everyone seemed to realize, "Wait, I just sold my house to buy flowers! What the h.e.l.l?!" and the bottom fell out of the market, with prices plummeting by 90 percent. Many of the wealthiest men in Holland, not to mention middle-cla.s.s investors, were ruined by the tulip game.

Africans: DOWN DOWN

One of the worst crimes against humanity on record was entirely the product of human greed (shocking, we know). Indeed, African slavery was central to the colonial economies of North and South America. The first Africans were imported to work as slaves on Spanish and Portuguese plantations and in mines. Before this, Arabs had been taking large numbers of slaves from the east coast of Africa, facing the Indian Ocean, but there are few numbers doc.u.menting this trade. The English expanded the market with their settling of North America, importing tens and then hundreds of thousands of slaves to work the tobacco and cotton plantations of the south.

The slave trade worked by kidnapping and splitting up families, erasing names and languages, and stealing any possessions that might indicate rank or achievement. In North America, slaves were forced to communicate in broken, pidgin English; those caught speaking their native languages were a.s.sumed to be conspiring and were hanged.

By 1680, England's Royal African Company was transporting five thousand African captives every year, a figure that rose to forty-five thousand in the eighteenth century. Conditions aboard slave s.h.i.+ps were unspeakable, and once the captives arrived, masters could whip, rape, and murder them at will. Overall, Europeans probably imported about ten million slaves to North and South America. And the slaves who made it to the New World were the lucky ones, at least four million captives are believed to have died in transit. (Few merchants bothered to count dead slaves.) Slavery's effects weren't limited to the kidnapped slaves themselves. Slave-taking was almost entirely an African enterprise, in which coastal princes raided inland tribes for prisoners to sell to the Europeans. There were two main areas where coastal princes denuded the inland population: the "Slave Coast" countries of West Africa, and Central Africa, from Cameroon to Angola. In both places the demand for slaves led to constant warfare, and the loss of labor probably impaired economic development in Africa for centuries to come.

Sultans: DOWN DOWN

The Ottoman Empire just managed to muddle along, for the most part suffering under lazy, incompetent sultans until their chief advisors, the viziers, took over. This fixed things for a while-but once the viziers became lazy and incompetent, too, there was only one direction to go (guess which one). Of course, there were still "good times." The last really dynamic Ottoman sultan was Mehmet IV, who ruled from 1648 to 1687. Mehmet IV gave Europe a run for its money in 1683, when he besieged Vienna with an army of 140,000 soldiers.

Except, he lost. After his catastrophic defeat, the Turkish rulers withdrew more and more from world affairs, isolated from the real world by self-interested courtiers with no higher goal than personal profit. The Ottoman Empire basically became a cash cow supporting a small and intensely disinterested ruling cla.s.s. In fact, it was labeled "the sick man of Europe." Britain, France, and Russia decided they'd let this sick man live, but only because chopping him up meant they'd have to fight each other over the pieces.