Name: Eastern Europe Consolidates: Crash Course European History #16
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T04:48:12.000Z
Duration: 15 min 18 s
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Hi I'm John Green and this is Crash Course European History.

So we've talked a lot about shifting perspectives in this series; being able to see from more

than one angle helps us to be empathetic, but it also reminds us that there is no single

Zooming in to understand the individual choices of individual historical figures is important,

but so is zooming out to understand larger forces.

And if we can zoom way, way out for a moment, two of the big questions of European history

(and world history) are how centralized should government power be, and who should decide

We've seen attempts to centralize government power over large communities in western Europe,

and fights over constitutionalism or absolutism.

But now we're going to turn east, to see how another region of Europe was governing

INTRO In 1618, Poland-Lithuania was the largest

It enjoyed a consensus form of government.

When a monarch died, a successor king was elected.

Representatives from dozens of smaller political units across the kingdom were summoned to

Consensus was reached through negotiations among uppercrust aristocrats and candidates

The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania formally came into being in 1569, but in reality it

had been established with the fourteenth century marriage of a Polish queen to a Lithuanian

During the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century, Poland remained Catholic.

Also, and unusually, the consensus-style government gave freedom to individual princes who wanted

to follow Luther, Calvin, or any of the other gajillion religious reformers.

Now of course freedom for princes isn't freedom for peasants, but still…

Candidates for king even had to commit themselves to religious pluralism.

That toleration drew Jewish people from Spanish and other intolerant regimes eastward into

It was a very diverse place -- both in terms of religion and ethnicity.

The creation of Poland-Lithuania also meant that present-day Ukraine was now part of Poland's

The Commonwealth's ambitions sent its people and its government southward into Ukraine

where there were fertile lands available for settlement--not the last time that Ukraine's

abundant farmland would make it a center of expansionist attention.

And the Polish nobility followed as the kings awarded them vast Ukrainian estates, which

their new owners ruled with an iron hand—alienating both former inhabitants and new migrants.

So, at this point, Eastern Europe as a whole was complicated and competitive, as all theses

kingdoms struggled to acquire more territory for farmland and better access to resources.

To Poland-Lithuania's north, Sweden had a united Lutheran population and an excellent

fighting force; it too wanted to expand into the continent's Baltic territories.

The Ottoman empire, which was more powerful and controlled most of Hungary by the middle

of the seventeenth century, was primarily Muslim.

But because of its more westerly and northerly conquests, it had large pockets of Orthodox

And hundreds of thousands of Ottoman families had moved to the Balkans and other Ottoman

And many Jews had migrated to the Ottoman Empire because of Habsburg persecution.

In fact, compared to most other European rulers, Muslims were tolerant: they did not persecute

religious minorities by seeking them out and burning them at the stake in great numbers

Instead, they were taxed at a higher rate than Muslims were.

Which...you know, compared to being burned alive...I would take . Let's go to the Thought

The Ottoman Empire had developed politically through the efforts of some spectacularly

One was Mehmet I who in 1453 took Constantinople from the Byzantine Empire.

Then there was Selim I who conquered Egypt in 1517,

followed by Suleyman the Magnificent's series of triumphs across the Middle East

5. and further expansion into southwestern Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.

The Ottomans had a far from constitutional process for succession.

The sultan often had many concubines who lived together in the harem,

8. which was not, as is often depicted, a kind of brothel,

It was a place for state business, policy decision-making, and other important matters.

But after any one of the sultan's partners gave birth to a son,

12. she and her son usually moved to the provinces,

13. where the boy learned rulership skills while also developing a network of followers.

And then when the sultan died, the oldest son usually succeeded him,

Factions, often developed by an aspiring son's mother, struggled for a place in the empire.

Unsurprisingly, murder was often involved.

A new sultan's brothers were usually murdered on his accession to the throne so they couldn't

All in all, they could have used some good family therapy.

But on the other hand, you know, kingmaking is kind of an inherently dirty business.

Despite that not-very-secure-sounding system, the absolutist Ottoman state was among the

longest lived empires in history, lasting until 1922, at which point Constantinople

became Istanbul, clearing the way for They Might Be Giants to record their third best

In any conquered region, the Ottoman government drafted young Christian boys into its army

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Eastern Europe Consolidates: Crash Course European History #16

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express