Technological Innovations in Sea-Based Empires [AP World History] Unit 4 Topic 1

Hi and welcome back to Heimler’s History. In this video we’re moving on to Unit 4 of the AP World History curriculum but we’re still in the time period 1450-1750. In the last unit we were concerned with the growth and maintenance of land-based empires.

In Unit 4 we’re going to look at how states, especially European ones, began to establish sea-based empires. Let’s get to it. Now if you’ll remember, one of the most significant means by which land-based empires grew, at least in Afro-Eurasia, was by the employment of gunpowder.

But in maritime empires—wait, hard stop. Maritime: what does that mean? You’ll see this word all over the curriculum and if you don’t know what it means, you’ll have endless troubles.

In fact a couple years ago, one of the essay questions on the national exam was all about maritime empires, and a huge proportion of students got zero points on that question because they didn’t know what it meant. So Ima splain it up real nice for you. Maritime just means “related to the sea.

” YOu know, because if you’re on a ship, you’re generally having a mari-time. Who’s with me? Just me, okay.

Okay, just don’t miss that. So as I was saying, maritime empires didn’t grow necessarily because of gunpowder, but because of several other factors, and we’ll discuss all of them in coming videos, but in this video we’re only going to talk about the technology that enabled such growth. Now Europeans had long benefited from trade on the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean.

But because Muslims controlled many of the ports and much of the land that those trades crossed through, it was difficult for Europeans to establish trade on their own terms. And a significant question began to press itself upon them, namely, is there another way to Asia. And to answer that question, they looked westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

But before they could go traipsing off into the sunset, the Europeans needed some new technology for their ships. Now, they had learned plenty from the Greeks and the Asians and the Muslims, who at this time were advanced far beyond the Europeans. One thing the Europeans inherited was increasingly accurate records of wind patterns.

Also they inherited increasingly detailed astronomical charts. Now maps of the stars had been around for a long time. The Mesopotamians produced them; the ancient Chinese did as well.

But over the centuries, the maps had become far more complex and detailed. Also Europeans inherited technologies like the astrolabe, the magnetic compass, and the lateen sail. The astrolabe told sailors how far north or south they were from the equator.

The magnetic compass gave sailors the ability to know exactly which direction they were headed thanks to the north/south magnetic field that runs across the earth. And the lateen sail was a triangular sail that could catch wind on both sides of the ship, as opposed to the old square sails that could only catch wind from one direction. And for those ships that successfully combined square sails and lateen sails, that meant they could travel further into the ocean and therefore expand trade routes.

Now let’s talk about new maritime technology from two countries in particular: the Portuguese and the Dutch. The Portuguese created a new ship called a caravel. And some of the chief advantages of the caravel compared to the older technology of ships are as follows.

The caravel was much smaller and therefore was highly navigable along coastlines and rivers. Not only were they small, but they were fast. And that was because of their combination of square sails and lateen sails.

But despite their diminutive size, these caravels could carry metric buttloads of cargo for trade. Now let’s visit our Dutch friends and see what they’re up to. The Dutch invented a new kind of ship as well, and theirs was called a fluyt.

And this ship was truly a game-changer, and here’s why. You see, most merchant ships before this time were built in such a way that if they were needed for battle in a navy, they could be easily converted into a warship. And for all sorts of reasons that aren’t important here, that meant that these ships were very expensive to build and required giant crews to sail them.

But when the Dutch built their fleet of fluyts—is it me or does that sound like a good band name? I call it—when the Dutch built their fleet of fluyts, they built those ships exclusively for trade. And that meant that they were built with enormous cargo bays which could carry far more tradable goods than before.

That also meant that they could sail these ships with much smaller crews. And that ALSO meant that to build these ships was about half the cost of the older technology. And the result of all of this is that the Dutch had a growing competitive advantage in maritime trade.

Now you take all of this, throw it in a pot, and baby you got a stew going. And when you pull the ladle out and taste some of that stew, what does it taste like? It tastes like the rapid expansion of European trade in 1450-1750.

Now I said earlier that gunpowder wasn’t the primary means by which European maritime empires grew, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t use it—oh they used it. Add a little gunpowder to our stew and the Europeans have all they need to sail fast, dominate maritime trade, and blow up copious amounts of their fellow humans. Alright, that’s what you need to know for Unit 4 Topic 1 of AP World History.

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Heimler out.