Age of exploration, about 1500-1800s

[Tero]

Most books cover the period from 1490-1750 in order to cover Columbus and all the early navigators, but not the 1800s which had a lot more modern technology including steam ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph ... 80%931493)

But captain Cook still falls into the discovery era and goes past 1750.

The following day, 14 February 1779, Cook marched through the village to retrieve the king. Cook took the king (aliʻi nui) by his own hand and led him away. One of Kalaniʻōpuʻu's favourite wives, Kanekapolei, and two chiefs approached the group as they were heading to the boats. They pleaded with the king not to go. An old kahuna (priest), chanting rapidly while holding out a coconut, attempted to distract Cook and his men as a large crowd began to form at the shore. At this point, the king began to understand that Cook was his enemy.[68] As Cook turned his back to help launch the boats, he was struck on the head by the villagers and then stabbed to death as he fell on his face in the surf.[69] He was first struck on the head with a club by a chief named Kalaimanokahoʻowaha or Kanaʻina (namesake of Charles Kana'ina) and then stabbed by one of the king's attendants, Nuaa.[70][71] The Hawaiians carried his body away towards the back of the town, still visible to the ship through their spyglass. Four marines, Corporal James Thomas, Private Theophilus Hinks, Private Thomas Fatchett and Private John Allen, were also killed and two others were wounded in the confrontation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook#Death

I am looking at this for a possible class for the seniors. The topic of pirates came up in our last committee meeting. We found out "the pirates lady" that had shown interest in this backed out. I think she was a retired school teacher and had done pirates for kids before. I was asked if I want to look at this and I said no, because too many people have this Disney fantasy view of pirates. I did not want to have to undo all that and make it real.

Still looking for hour long video material. The BBC documentary on sailing ships looks good but the DVD is PAL, making me haul a DVD player to class.

I probably will cover some of the 1800s colonial era.

[Tero]

Drake I am still working on. I think he would give some balance to Columbus, who I actually don't want to cover in detail as he is so well known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake

Drake is probably more typical of the explorers and there are all sorts of roles for him.

[Tero]

I've got some boring lectures coming off DVDs, so this will be the bit on Columbus, and I'll just list some dates and maps before we watch the 30 minutes on that:
The Enigmatic Christopher Columbus
Understand the complexities of Christopher Columbus who, in stumbling upon the Americas while attempting to reach Asia by heading West, touched off the massive Columbian Exchange of peoples, plants, commodities, and diseases. Dispel enduring myths, and explore Columbus's religious motives for launching what he called "The Enterprise of the Indies."

Good thing they give him credit for diseases. Exploitation, sugar cane, the idea of slavery and disease. That sums him up. Plus some sailing along trade winds which nobody had thought to look for.

[Tero]

This was on my list of books to read, a bit long.
https://www.amazon.com/Search-Kingdom-F ... 189&sr=8-3

Only if I get the other materials together for my class will I get to it.

[Tero]

the comedy thread had this item by Brian

It took hundreds of years to get a productive colony.

That might be a stretch ...tobacco and sugar got going right quick

Not now tobacco, stupid Ratz and pesky convicts and Australia.

I'm sticking to my story. Most colonies were a loss for most of the start. It was somewhere to send undesired military leaders to boss natives around. US and India did yield cotton to UK industrial revolution eventually.

Colonisation invariably has its roots in trade, but it's the application of military force which defines it's beginnings. Try not to confuse speed with scope.

Colonisation isn't a mass action like an invasion, it starts as a system of exploitation, and expands towards an overarching cultural, social, economic and political structure which subsumes, and eventually replaces, whatever was there before. If you're searching a good, clear model of colonisation look no further than the history of your country of residence from the perspective of the indigens.

I have a variety of books on the so called Early Modern Era. Sailings ships era. Some are just high school study guides for world history college credit.
One book in particular goes though a lot of studies and PhD works as well as books to catalog the world trade of the period. Picture below. It is used in college courses. I would, if I taught world history.

[Tero]

In that book, the trade of the 1500s and 1600s was already very sophisticated. Slaves were bought and sold from Africa. The chiefs in Africa and Asia wanted payment in goods, not silver, which was mainly of use to buy silk and porcelain from China.

[Tero]

[Svartalf]

was the killing of the golden goose when the english forbade manufacture of cloth in india, as they so destroyed a major source of trade material? Sorry if my comment is kind of anachronic, I'm not sure of the timeline of british colonisation in india.

[Tero]

The standard textbook picture is rather simplified. Yes the goods are as shown, but it is not the whole story. The trade was world wide at this point. Also not shown is the silver taken from Potosi to Mexico where the ships were loaded to go to Philippines. There in Manila silver was traded to goods from China. It was cumbersome ship them back to Europe as the ships were to return to Mexico. Silver was carried across by land at Panama.

[Tero]

was the killing of the golden goose when the english forbade manufacture of cloth in india, as they so destroyed a major source of trade material? Sorry if my comment is kind of anachronic, I'm not sure of the timeline of british colonisation in india.

It was when there was machinery to make the cloth in the UK. Cheap labor in India did not compete with machines. Some 80% of cotton came from the US South at that point.

[Brian Peacock]

the comedy thread had this item by Brian

It took hundreds of years to get a productive colony.

That might be a stretch ...tobacco and sugar got going right quick

Not now tobacco, stupid Ratz and pesky convicts and Australia.

I'm sticking to my story. Most colonies were a loss for most of the start. It was somewhere to send undesired military leaders to boss natives around. US and India did yield cotton to UK industrial revolution eventually.

Colonisation invariably has its roots in trade, but it's the application of military force which defines it's beginnings. Try not to confuse speed with scope.

Colonisation isn't a mass action like an invasion, it starts as a system of exploitation, and expands towards an overarching cultural, social, economic and political structure which subsumes, and eventually replaces, whatever was there before. If you're searching a good, clear model of colonisation look no further than the history of your country of residence from the perspective of the indigens.

I have a variety of books on the so called Early Modern Era. Sailings ships era. Some are just high school study guides for world history college credit.
One book in particular goes though a lot of studies and PhD works as well as books to catalog the world trade of the period. Picture below. It is used in college courses. I would, if I taught world history.

Aye. It's difficult to bound any period of history and leave out the period before. History is a series of transitions but it's easier to think of it in cultural or stylistic blocks. The era of exploration is a polite way of referring to the expansion of European colonialism, which itself was borne from the twin environmental disasters of the black death and the little ice age that heralded the collapse of Feudalism.

Then there's the boys-own romance of sea-based political and economic expansion, in which ruggedly determined, horny-handed sailors battled the terrors of the vast uncharted oceans to bring new wealth and commodities back to their patrons and sponsors. The so-called glories of this period are bound to stories of sudden wealth and deserved tribute, of the creation of financial instruments (chiefly fashioned by the Dutch) that, for a modest outlay, granted people 'shares' in the bounties of mercantile expansion, and of exploitation and violence visited upon black and brown people far away.

I guess I'm encouraging you to not leave out colonialism in the story of the era, and to represent the people who where on the receiving end of colonial expansion as well as the 'heroes' of the period.

[Tero]

Yes, in a rather overview kind of way. Mostly British India. I have a video of a guy talking 55 minutes about the colonial era. I myself usually just show maps and timelines. Some 20 slides because typically they lose interest if you show them more.

I also got a rather odd video from a TV show some 30 years back (low quality) that does however have archive film in black and white from the 1900s. Africans rowing out out to ships close to shore with loads of cocoa in bags, husks removed.

[Tero]

My topic is stretching to about 1860. But this is not a book I will ever read:

The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (America in the World, 20) Paperback – September 15, 2015
by Jürgen Osterhammel
4.0 out of 5 stars All Readers who Finish this book Should be Granted a Phd ... The Widest Perspective on a Globalising Epoch
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is one big A.. book to read but i am better informed ...

It's a big book in every sense: more than 900 pages of text, a quarter more again in the form of notes, bibliography and index. It will also be a challenging read for those who expect to be carried smoothly from decade to decade or from region to region as the book proceeds. His arrangement is topical, owing more stylistically to historical sociology than narrative history, so we get chapters on the, what i understand, as the framework of this type of Historical method. Part 1 is tiltled "Approaches".

The second part of the book is concerned with what Osterhammel calls “Panoramas”, in which he explores “eight spheres of reality”: mobilities, living standards, cities, frontiers, empires and nations, international organisations, revolutions and the state.

[Brian Peacock]

Tides of History: Rise of the Modern World, Patrick Wyman.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Modern-Wo ... 1982524006

Available free (with ads) on Google podcasts, and free (without ads) to Amazon Prime customers through the Wondery app.

[Tero]

Thanks.

I have a books of the modern world theme.

One video so far on ships. It's a bit stuck on land, as it deals mostly with ship building.

A fictional story deals with ships of the end of the era I'm covering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_and_Commander

We have occasional films into our 6 week term but it would complicate things to arrange a film showing separately.