The Enlightenment: Crash Course European History #18

Hi I’m John Green and this is Crash Course European History.

So far, we’ve seen a ton of political change and continuing warfare in the midst of the

seventeenth century’s little ice age, and history often focuses on these types of political

and military stories, but there were also other changes occurring: shifts in how people

perceived the everyday world.

The linking of phenomena like earthquakes and eclipses with human events goes back a

very long way, like to the beginning of our species, as does the belief that supernatural

forces are deeply shaping the lives of individual humans.

For instance, in a previous video about witchcraft, we discussed how earthquake tremors in Istanbul

in 1648 were seen as portents of a sultan’s death a few months later.

But a century after that, a huge earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal on All Saints’ Day

of 1755.

Tens of thousands of people died, many from a tsunami that followed the quake.

Now, some theologians argued this was punishment from God for the world’s sins, but others

pointed out that the earthquake had destroyed a lot of churches while sparing a lot of brothels.

Voltaire wrote a famous poem in response to the earthquake that included the memorable

lines “As the dying voices call out, will you dare respond to this appalling spectacle

of smoking ashes with, “This is the necessary effect of the eternal laws Freely chosen by

God?”

The way Europeans were looking at the world had changed between the Istanbul earthquake

and the Lisbon one: The Enlightenment was thriving.

[Intro] So, today we want to emphasize that the Enlightenment

wasn’t all high fallutin’ calculations of the sun’s orbit or theories about the

mathematical laws of the universe or for that matter theories about earthquake causality.

It also considered more down-to-earth situations like how people of different social classes

relate to one another, how trade and manufacturing should function, and what the relationship

of ordinary people should be to their government.

The Enlightenment or Age of Light refers to the belief that the musty old ideas needed

to be exposed to rational investigation to see if they were still valuable.

The bright light of reason needed to shine on tradition.

And this momentous challenge to tradition came about during a time in which Europe was

being completely transformed in many ways that are sometimes forgotten amid all the

excitement about Voltaire and reason.

So let’s go straight to the Thought Bubble today.

Beyond the wars and state-building we’ve already seen,

2. increasing abundance and novelty was creeping into the everyday lives of Europeans.

Coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, and other commodities led to experimentation.

For instance, one English housewife saw tea for the first time and thought it was meant

to be baked as a kind of pie filling.

A diplomat said that tea and coffee had brought a greater “sobriety” and “civility”

to everyday life in Europe.

Europe had previously been a land of famine and mere subsistence for essentially all of

its history.

But now the cultivation of new foods from the Americas like potatoes and corn,

8. along with literally thousands of other new plants, meant that available calories

were increasing,

And it also introduced the idea that maybe the world didn’t have to be perpetually

on the brink of starvation and catastrophe.

Also, by this time, tens of thousands of Europeans had traveled the world, and had experienced