 Hey hello, how are you doing today? Hey hello, how are you doing today? Hey hello, how are you doing today? Hey hello, how are you doing today? I'm terrible! I'm awful! How are you doing today? Juice! Hey, welcome back to our stupider access to Corbin. I'm Rick. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, for more juicy content. Thanks for watching. Button because why, why, why? It helps Al go rhythm. Yes, he has bad rhythm, but it helps him. He does, and unfortunately his wife is pregnant now because of it. And we need to help Al understand the rhythm method more effectively so that he doesn't have a fourteenth child. Agreed. Today we have a video that's called, How did India fall to the Europeans? They, they too, did not know how to control the rhythm method. And I'm guessing this is from a YouTube channel called Odd Compass. And so this is basically how the colonialism started. Interesting. I don't think we've gone over that. Like when they exactly came in and like how the process started. Yeah. All informational videos, I always say, if anything's wrong, blame that video, not this video. Yes. Because I'm just taking it at face value. And so I'm going to get a little more knowledge for our brain holes here. In 1757, the British East India Company won the battle of Placie and took control of the wealthy region of Bengal. The company, a private corporation using contracted foot soldiers, now governed more people than the English crowd. Just over a century later, the British controlled the majority of the needs of continent, either directly or through princely states. But began as a trading mission transformed into total domination. The rest of Asia fared no better. But why didn't history play out differently? Why didn't Indian powers have the political, economic, and military wherewithal to resist European colonization? Why wasn't 1757 marked by Bengali soldiers sieging and taking London? And more broadly, how did the West become so much more powerful than the East? Well, Indians are not aggressors. So we were way to say colonization. The Europeans salivated over the profits near East middlemen made trading with the rest of Asia. Indian textiles, Chinese porcelain, Indonesian spices. This inspired the great powers of Europe to establish a direct trade with Asia that would circumvent the Ottomans and Mamluks entirely. But the Europeans were minor players in the global economy at this time. The prosperous Asian powers had no incentive to establish a direct trade with distant Europe. And so it was Europe who would have to seek out Asia, not the other way around. This would lead to some fascinating developments. Consider the Iberians, Spain, and Portugal. There were only two options for circumventing Ottoman and Mamluks intervention round the coast of Africa, or sail west into the unknown. In the mid 15th century, Portugal was suffering from scarce wood supplies. In response, the Portuguese crown encouraged the construction of larger, more efficient vessels by providing tax benefits to shipbuilders who built big. And so shipbuilders in Portugal began to develop larger vessels. They also incorporated innovative new shipbuilding technologies from neighboring North Africa. This led to the production of massive ocean-growing vessels that could be fitted with heavy cannons. Perfect for a long intercontinental journey. Using these vessels, the Portuguese were able to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 and reach Asia. Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama arrived on the Indian coast, making direct contact with Indian powers for the first time. Using similar vessels, the Spanish, also attempting to find a route to India that would circumvent the Ottomans, bumped into the New World. Jackpot! The discovery of the New World flooded European markets with silver, which would soon have an enormous impact on the dynamics between Europe and Asia. The sudden excess of silver made Europeans very attractive trading partners for Asian powers, who were facing a systemic silver shortage. In fact, records indicate that the silver shortage in Asia was responsible for a number of political crises across the continent. And so European merchants arriving in the East essentially bought their way into Asian trade hegemony using their new-found silver supply. With Europeans' establishment of direct trade, the new dynamic had formed. Asia generated products in demand in Europe, and Europeans paid for those products with silver. As they had an abundance of silver on hand, Europeans had become ideal trading partners. For example, the first British trading post in India, Fort St. George near Chennai, was actually encouraged by the local Poligar Lord, who so badly wanted the British trading bear that he offered to pay for half the construction cost. He also offered military protection and tax privileges. It's important to understand that Europeans adopted a conciliatory policy towards Asian Great Powers. In fact, early records revealed that the Europeans respected, feared, and even admired their most significant Asian counterparts, the Moguls, the Cheng, the Vijayanagar Empire, the Tokugawa Shogun, and others. I love these sounds. With massive, cannon-fitted ships, Europeans had an advantage in most naval battles. They could also lay siege to fortified coastal cities. Thus, early Europeans, like the Portuguese, limited their aggression to small coastal enclaves. This was not a problem for the Indian Great Powers. At times, they even encouraged European aggression. Surprise! In 1510 CE, the Vijayanagar Empire assisted the Portuguese in taking Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate. In fact, Vijayanagar even sent an Allied pirate leader with 5,000 soldiers under his command to help the Portuguese take Goa. Goa was the hub of the maritime horse trade. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It was preferable for the horse trade to be controlled by the neutral Portuguese than for it to be controlled by a rival Sultanate. So, we know that the dynamic between the European and Asian powers was largely cooperative from the 1500s to the mid-1700s. Though much fanfare has been made about early European aggression, it was constrained to small coastal enclaves and only with the explicit or implicit permission of the Asian Great Powers. But this dynamic would not last forever. Starting in the mid-1700s, more than two centuries after Vasco de Gama landed in South India, the Europeans did begin to aggressively expand. How did they transform their trading networks into colonial empires? Let's keep our lens pointed at India for now. Number 1 European institutions were stable enough that they outlasted their strongest rivals. In India, for example, the British were active for more than a century before Mughal power finally waned. The Mughals were replaced by the Marathas, Hyderbavis, Bengalis, Sikhs, Rajputs, Mysoreans, and others. With imperial power in India split between so many different entities, the British began to assemble the building blocks of a colonial empire. Number 2 European officials couldn't be easily bribed to switch sides. Though the agents of European trading companies did regularly accept bribes that could not be easily bribed into treasonous activity. Why? They would be killed. Probably like European officials could simply be replaced. Yeah. They had no independent political power. By contrast, Indian lords were easily bribed to switch sides. And most Indian soldiers were bound to their lord through land or clantize. As such, disloyal Indian lords could not simply be replaced. They had independent political power. Number 3 Europeans were not risking much by fighting far away from home. When Europeans lost battles in Asia, it did not threaten their civilizational existence or even their mission. They could simply regroup and reinforce. But when an Indian power lost battles, it could lead to total collapse. Indian powers were especially vulnerable to a total and sudden collapse due to the domino effect of local lords switching sides. This is a well-established historical pattern. The Mauryas, Guptas, Chalakyas, Palavas, Vjainagar, the list of sudden imperial collapses in Indian history goes on and on. Number 4 European militaries had superior organizational discipline. Military developments in Europe led to drill tactics in high organizational discipline. This was made even more possible by the fact that Europeans used regulars, full-time professional soldiers. Though not universally the case, many Indian militaries had not yet established this level of organizational discipline as their soldiers were not full-time. On Bengali soldiers, their motive fighting is crowding without any order and in great confusion. In imitation of their European neighbors, they form into something resembling battalions, but it is of little use. Their bravery does not compensate for their deficiency in discipline and tactics. Number 5 Europeans used local soldiers. By the mid-1700s, European armies in India fielded mostly local soldiers, ensuring that they were not at a numerical disadvantage. How did that happen? European trading companies and governors offered regular pay and commissions to saw his money. Yep, follow the money. This attracted skilled local soldiers who preferred guaranteed, timely compensation. By contrast, Indian powers granted feudal lords, land and tax assessment rights. And through that system, soldiers would eventually be paid. But this system was high risk and created additional bureaucracy. Indian soldiers would sometimes be left unpaid or underpaid. Many Indian soldiers saw European military contracts desirable. They chose to fight as regulars for the various East India trading companies, serving under European officers. How did the Europeans develop these advantages, while Indians did not? The answer lies in revolution hundreds of years in the making. The military revolution hypothesis is based on the idea that artillery innovations in late medieval Europe led to sweeping changes in society, some of which would prove advantageous for building colonial empires. Side note, India did go through a mini military revolution in response to new artillery developments too. Yeah, they put cannons on camels. Indian gunpowder empires for details. Oh well. Okay, back to the European military revolution. In the 1400s, new cannons were introduced that can break medieval castle walls, and so European rulers scrambled for a solution. This led to a new style of artillery resistant fortifications, with angled bastions and intersecting fields of fire known as star fortresses. Star fortresses were very expensive to build and required a large and costly army to garrison or attack. In fact, successful sieges could take years. These developments led to spectacular increases in budgets, taxes and staffs. European lords that were unable to manage these rising costs were eventually conquered by those with a centralized administrative apparatus that could raise more money. The pressure to centralize and extend the state apparatus consumed many smaller feudal lords. The European nation states were born, giving rise to many financial, logistical and administrative innovations. And so they suddenly found themselves advantaged. Consider the ocean-going warships that enabled European powers to establish maritime supremacy. Here's a little known fact. The great powers of the East did have the technological know-how to build ocean-going warships with heavy cannons. But the devil is in the details. Like star fortresses, ocean-going warships were very expensive, which reinforced pressures for more tax revenue and more intrusive state intervention. But in India, native powers were not sufficiently centralized. Maintaining a competitive naval fleet was simply implausible. Imperial powers like the Moguls and Vijayanagar did maintain navies. In fact, Vijayanagar used their navy to bully Pegu and Lanka into paying tribute. But to build a fleet that encountered the Europeans, Indian great powers would have had to take more direct control over their coastal feudatories. They would also have had to spend imperial resources on ships as opposed to land armies. In the Indian context, they had more pressing concerns. Land wars against ambitious Indian rivals. It was a lose-lose situation in the long-term, unless Indian powers could figure out a way to centralize their administrations and rid themselves of feudal hierarchies. Despite European aggression in the early to mid 1700s, the true shift in power began with the Industrial Revolution. Starting in the mid to late 1700s, the European development rapidly outstripped that of the rest of the world and gave rise to roughly two centuries of global dominance. What was the recipe for this great divergence? One cup luck, one pinch pause. Let's compare the Wood and Coal situation in England, India and Japan in the 1700s. In India, there were plentiful forests. As such, there were sufficient wood resources to fuel a vibrant economy. There was no need to switch to the use of coal as a power source. In England and Japan, however, wood had been over-harvested. Interestingly, the British and the Japanese approached the problem in very different ways. The Japanese sought to fix the ecological damage. They imposed very strict laws including capital punishment for wood harvesting without a license. These policies were successful. Soon, healthy forests were turned into the normal use of wood. England simply switched to the use of coal and stole the wood, which is why London was the filthiest city in the world. They didn't predict the steam engine, power loom, or high production factories. It was a lucky break that fueled an industrial revolution. And thanks to strong protectionist policies, British industries were healthy enough to take advantage of new commercial technology. Not in their lungs though. Well, the owners didn't have to worry about that. The British industry was able to produce at such a high volume and at such a low cost that they out-competed the entire Indian textile industry, which was the world's largest producer of textile. But Indian powers did not have the time to properly react. They were under fire from both colonial forces and opportunistic neighbors. Every year, industrial Europe grew more powerful and the gap between the West and the rest of the world grew larger. Conquered Indians were not useful to the British as producers or innovators. They were now only useful as raw material providers and customers. And laborers. This continent, and many other parts of Asia, was rapidly deindustrialized while Europe flourished. But the world never stands still. Today, the East is securing its historical position at the top of the global power hierarchy. Ending the West's 200-year turn. Got some exciting news for the channel. I know a lot of you have been asking about whether I'm going to start a Patreon. I've actually gone ahead and started a Creator Guild page. On Creator Guild, you can support me in a number of different ways from making custom requests to leaving tips. That was a lot of great information. Yeah, I think we've seen a few videos by this channel. I recognize the animation voices. Yeah, I think there's a couple channels that have the animation and kind of narration style. But yeah, it's obviously always very informative. Like I said, if anything is incorrect or missing, please let us know what that is down in the comments below, obviously. But it seems like it was a lot of the fact that India wasn't one full nation. And so they didn't have to conquer the entire nation. Little by little. How do you eat an elephant? Exactly. And let the infighting disseminate and dissolve the strength and the potential. It's what's going on now with the shift to Asia from the West. Because from World War II on, the West has been the dominant superpower in the world. And that has radically shifted. And it's now Asia between India and China being more powerful than the United States. And one of the contributing factors is that we are not the United States of America anymore. We are the divided states of America. And in our lifetime, you're going to see boundaries shift, successions. You know, there's going to be states that leave the Union. Oh, I can't wait. You heard about Idaho and Oregon? Yeah. Idaho, the Republicans want to move the border of Idaho West into Oregon because Eastern Oregon is more Republican, but all of Oregon is Democrat. So what's the solution? Well, we'll just move the boundary and make Idaho a bigger state so we can absorb the Republicans and minimize. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is growing and advancing. That won't happen. California's tried it. The fact that legislatures are having to spend their time on this and the fact that the kinds of things our legislatures are looking at in bills and our legal system is dealing with in the courts, the rest of the world is laughing at our stupidity as they should. We are a country filled with imbeciles. Yeah, that's true. But the world is also full of imbeciles. Yeah, but we have a massive percentage of our population comparatively. We're just loud. Are idiots. No, no, no, no, no. We're stupid. Stupid and loud. We have stupid people here. But another good informative video. Very. Obviously, the Industrial Revolution had obviously a lot to do in that sense. It's no surprise that you agreed what Japan did. I love that as opposed to like, you know, I feel like that's the route a lot of the world is going now what Japan did earlier, like in terms of trying to replenish the environmental wrongs it did. So we're trying to do it now, but we're not going to see the benefits for another at minimum 100 years of certain people like planning for us again and then coming back. You're not going to see that overnight. No. It's going to take a long time. And by that time, who knows what the technology is. Yeah. And part of that for Japan was the combination of the fact that they were being wise and looking at things from a healthy stewardship and love perspective. And they didn't have the power to just go take stuff from other people. Yeah. That's part of the problem. And it also didn't include the fact that a lot of the West's expansion and they're not the only ones to do this, but a lot of it is based on the fact of we're the enlightened ones. You're the barbarians and we're going to enlighten you by forcing you to live our lifestyle. And that's not good. No. Oh. It's why you see so much British construction in India because they say, You know what? What you guys do is unenlightened. Let us enlighten you. But you also see Portuguese, Spanish. Yeah. Because the conquerors get to build. Even some Chinese. Yeah. It's why you have so few Native American things here in America. What? What did we do to them? We just did a few things. Wow. Anyways, fantastic video. Let us know what other videos we can react to down below.