The Deadliest Company In Human History | Answers With Joe

okay um i know it's kind of gross when youtubers like you know flex about their lifestyles and whatnot but i have something downstairs that's actually pretty impressive um come here let me let me just show you you know before i do this i just want to remind you i'm just a regular guy i promise i'm not like a billionaire i'm not like the prince of brunei or something like that but check this out huh [Music] [Applause] okay obviously the gag here is that there's nothing all that impressive about my spice collection in fact it's basic af and uh i'd be surprised if half of them weren't past the expert oh good lord but four or five hundred years ago all of these would have been a luxury this collection would have been the envy of the most wealthy noblemen people would have marveled at the world traveling that i must have done and asked about my bloodline and wondered what this weird soft colored metal must be and probably hang me as a witch let's not go there i mean there's a lot of things about the way we live today that's totally different from the way our ancestors lived but maybe none more radical than the way we treat spice in fact i'll make the argument that if you could point at one thing that most explains the world the way it is today it would be spices this thing that we completely take for granted today and just kind of pick up for a few bucks whenever we happen to be at the store it used to be worth as much as gold men traversed the entire world trying to find it it built and destroyed empires enslaved millions and created the most powerful corporation the world has ever seen in fact it kind of created the entire economic system that we all live under today this video is about the history of spices in the world it created [Music] how is it that something we pretty much all take for granted today was so insanely valuable hundreds of years ago i mean sure the world has changed technology's changed it's not like they had iphones back then or anything but but spice i mean i'm not even trying to make a dune reference here but for hundreds of years humans went through extreme measures to make sure that the spice must flow i want to be clear spices weren't the only commodities being traded around the world and trade didn't start with spice people have been trading across empires and tribes for thousands of years but spice was a huge part of this global trade network and there are a few theories why one theory is just that spices covered the taste of spoiled meat yeah this was long before refrigeration so again something that we completely take for granted today was a major concern for people hundreds of years ago so there you go problem solved there are a few problems with this theory first of all spice was expensive like actually way more expensive than the meat that it's supposed to be saving in fact in medieval europe a pound of ginger could buy a whole sheep that would be like putting your iphone in rice to save the rice the spoilers theory seems to come from a book by a food scientist named jc drummond and he based it on historical records that referred to green meat but historians think that green was used in the sense of like fresh like newly cut meat besides in the old days they had a different way of keeping meat fresh they just kept it alive yeah before refrigeration shipping meat wasn't a thing they shipped pigs they shipped chickens and cows and goats and sheep and then the end user would you know do the dirty work like on sea voyages and caravans they didn't you know pack meat and stock up on mead and take that with them they just they just brought the animals along and then there was the added benefit that the animals could walk so they had meat that carried itself also meat was just a much smaller part of people's diets back then of course not everybody could afford to have livestock or gardens and they did have to take some efforts to prevent spoilage but often this involved things like pickling or salting foods so you know i mean if you consider salt to be a spice now having said that some spices do actually help prevent food spoilage because some spices are antibacterial and anti-fungal and there's a reason for this it's because spices are basically poison have you ever wondered why people who live in hotter climates tend to eat spicier foods there was a theory going around for a while that eating spicy foods kind of paradoxically makes you feel cooler because it activates your sweat glands or it just kind of makes you feel cooler on the outside because your insides are on fire and there could be some truth to that but the general answer is a lot simpler they eat hotter food there because that's where the spices grow most of the hotter spices your peppers and chilies they tend to grow along the equator where it never really gets cold and plants grow year round they don't have the luxury of a winter freeze that can kill off the bacteria and fungus and bugs that can attack and kill these plants so they had to just sort of develop a chemical weapons system of sorts in spices it's capsaicin and tobacco and coffee it's nicotine and caffeine but that kind of gets to the heart of this whole thing right the climate in these specific areas caused plants to create chemicals that make us feel things could one make the argument that the spice trade was really the first drug trade only if one wants to be demonetized of course many spices and teas were used medicinally because of their antibacterial properties of course they didn't have the germ theory of medicine back then so they didn't know why it worked they just knew that it worked it was also used ritualistically the ancient romans would burn it as incense and egyptians actually used cinnamon to help preserve their mummies think about that the next time you're choking down a cinnabon but maybe when it came down to it spices were a flex kind of like what i was doing at the beginning of this video especially in europe spices were exotic they came from far away places and they were expensive in a way they were the ultimate status symbol i mean gold and jewelry are nice but i mean what better way to show off how cool you are than to serve your guests a food that they had literally never tasted before oh this is moroccan wow so what's your story this is actually true of a lot of foods pineapples are a good example of this sailors and travelers would bring pineapples home from more tropical places and they would just serve it to everybody and these giant parties and eventually pineapples kind of just became a symbol of hospitality and there would be you know representations of them up on hotels and stuff like that actually it's a fascinating history but that's that's for another time but yeah like pineapples like the tulip craze that came later on spices took on a value that were way beyond their practical use they were valuable because they were valuable they were like nfts that you could eat they were a symbol of wealth and high status in europe combine that with their medicinal and practical uses and uh oh yeah i haven't even mentioned yet they make food taste good and that doesn't sound like a lot but food holds a powerful place in our cultures and traditions i mean think about how many holidays have specific foods attached to them and how emotional we get about having those foods on those holidays those tastes that we're so emotionally attached to are made by the flavorings and spices that go into them and once upon a time those spices were only grown in certain parts of the world so join me on a journey through the history of spice was that was that overdramatic too much went too far okay one of the first known spice roots was well established by the 3rd century bc known as the incense route it ran from india to africa with stops along the way one of those stops was the city of petra in modern day jordan here they traded everything from indian textiles to rare african woods along with pearls precious stones gold and incenses like frankincense and myrrh petra is also where indiana jones would later punch some nazis in the last crusade petra of course is right down the road from bethlehem which is why the fabled three kings from the bible came bearing gold frankincense and myrrh and you know if you're anything like me when you were a kid you probably made jokes like you know uh mr murr over here needs to step it up some guy over here's got gold you know or or mr gold over here is overcompensating for something you know but the fact of the matter is frankincense and myrrh were as valuable as gold back then another hub was alexandria today alexandria is mostly known for its wonders of the world like the lighthouse of alexandria in the library of alexandria well you know something had to pay for these wonders and that thing was spices boats would sail from india around the arabian peninsula and up the red sea into the gulf of suez where they eventually couldn't sail any further this was long before the suez canal but there were roads that would carry goods and transport them to the mediterranean sea and caravans and this is where alexander the great saw an opportunity so he built his grand port city through which goods could be spread throughout the entire mediterranean and because of the strategic positioning alexandria became one of the most powerful and richest cities in the world apparently trade was so lucrative there in alexandria the mint couldn't stamp coins fast enough for the currency exchange a much more famous trade route later on was the silk road which wasn't just a road it was actually several trade routes but they didn't just move silk also spices and jade glass bars and slaves but also spices and technologies paper and gunpowder are both invented in china but found their way into europe on the silk road great explorers travel to silk road like marco polo and even battuta who wrote vivid accounts of their journeys often these were the first exposures that their readers back home would ever have to these cultures and the ideas that came with those cultures and one of the major port hubs along the silk road was constantinople and it was founded pretty much for the same reason alexandria was it's situated on the bosphorus strait connecting the black sea to the mediterranean sea and just like alexander the great saw an opportunity to control shipping across the mediterranean into europe and created alexandria the byzantine emperor constantine saw the same opportunity so he created constantinople tiny egos on these guys but he was right constantinople became a powerful port city and eventually when the roman empire split in two it became the capital of the eastern roman empire and actually survived long after rome itself fell into ruin the silk road was an incredibly successful and durable network that flowed spice across europe and asia for 1500 years and constantinople which is one of dozens of cities that sprang up along the silk road from turkey to china and india many of which still exist to this day and many others have been lost a time like the aforementioned petra of course you won't find constantinople on the map today but it's still there it's just called istanbul you know the song constantinople fell to the ottoman turks in 1453 who changed the name to istanbul to be more islamic because constantine was a christian emperor and this was way more than just an interesting quirk of history and geography this changed everything for europe because they were now in control of the spice and they wielded that power restricting the supply and raising prices yeah that whole stereotype of arabs being shrewd and ruthless traders that's where it comes from all right so it's the late 1400s and europe is suffering from spice withdrawal so they decide it's time to just kind of go straight to the source this time by bypassing the middle east by going all the way around africa sea routes have been a part of the silk road for a while but nobody ever actually sailed all the way around africa before and this is when portugal said hold my sagras portugal had been a seafaring powerhouse in europe for a while again because of geography their location at the tip of the iberian peninsula gave them equal access to the mediterranean and the northern baltic seas where actually another trading route existed across scandinavia and russia called the volga route this route was mostly controlled by dutch merchants who partnered with the portuguese so if any country had the skill and resources to go around africa it was a portuguese so in 1488 bartolomeu diaz did just that creating a new trade route directly to india but this was not an easy trip the seas around the southern port of africa are notoriously treacherous with violent storms and massive swells so of course they named this the cape of good hope they also found that sailing south along the african coast was especially hard because there was a northward current along the coast that sort of slowed things down to a crawl you're basically swimming upstream they later figured out that the current was created by the south atlantic gyre and it was actually faster to sail westward a bit and let the current carry you around to the tip of africa but still this was a ridiculously long voyage that made it more expensive and also more dangerous so still not a great option which is why in 1492 christopher columbus thought he could do better by just you know sailing west yes the new world was discovered in an attempt to find spices and gold and yes they knew the world was round that's why he went that way he thought that he could sail all the way around to india it's also why he named the islands that he discovered the west indies and named the natives who lived there indians a name that is stuck to this very day columbus sailed for spain of course and they continued to explore and exploit the resources of the new world including gold and silver and of course chiles and allspice they also conquered native peoples and populated wide swaths of territory which is why much of central and south america speaks spanish meanwhile portugal continued going around africa because that's where their spice was but remember how i said that they learned to sail west to take advantage of the south atlantic gyre well in 1500 one of them went a little too far west his name was pedro alvarez cabral and on his journey they had a small navigational error and accidentally landed in south america he figured while he was there he might as well claim that for portugal which is why unlike the rest of south america brazil speaks portuguese but cut back to the spanish they did trade in spices from the new world but their main cash crop was sugar which was harvested through the enslavement of native americans and west africans you know sugar and spice and everything horrible okay so i don't want to go too much into slavery here because it is a whole thing but while slavery has been around as far back as we have records the actual transatlantic slave trade that we all think of when we think of slavery that begin with portugal sailing down the west coast of africa and realizing hey here's a whole continent full of slaves it actually started with them purchasing slaves from tribal leaders already in africa but as other european nations came on board it just spiraled into kidnapping and conquest ultimately tens of millions of africans were shipped over to mostly central and south america and the caribbean to work in the sugar fields where conditions were so bad that the average life expectancy was seven years so they had to keep them coming slavery of course made its way out to north america which caused all kinds of problems including the the economic disparity that we're seeing today and it all started with portuguese traders trying to find a new spice route so throughout the 1500s spain got super powerful off their new world exploits to the point that in 1580 when portugal experienced a crisis in succession in their royal family king philip of spain swooped in and took over portugal and their first order of business was to cut the dutch out of that lucrative deal with the portuguese yeah the dutch kind of had their own thing going on this whole time basically serving as trade facilities for northern europe with the volga route coming in over land in the portuguese ships feeding them goods from the indies they had become exceedingly wealthy so wealthy in fact that when this portuguese deal is the bed they just came up with a new solution and being the shrewd merchants that they were it was a decidedly capitalist solution they created the world's first publicly traded company they basically just invented the entire concept of a corporation for spice this allowed the public at large to invest in literal trade wars and it was so based on spice the dividends were often paid in mace or cloves again it kind of helps to think of spice as a currency this was the birth of the ferendi ustindish company or the voc also known as the dutch east india company and yet these guys had no chill they immediately set their sights on a chain of islands in modern day indonesia that were so rich in spices like cloves mason nutmeg they were known as the spice islands the portuguese had tried to trade with the natives earlier but were met with hostility so when the voc arrived in 1605 they came with a massive fleet of ships and quickly took over an old portuguese fort their early successes brought on more investors and by the 1620s the voc had conquered parts of india indonesia southern africa in both north and south america they held monopolies on the spice islands all the trade routes between africa and india and they were the world's largest suppliers silver copper silk porcelain cotton and textiles they were not only the richest company arguably in human history they had the largest military in the world at the time with over 30 000 troops and more than 200 warships once again just a reminder this was not a country this was a company oh and they weren't alone the british had their own east india company or eic and these two companies fought each other with wars and i'm not talking about like cola wars between colic and pepsi no i'm talking about firing cannonballs at wooden ships filled with human beings this was the birth of capitalism oh and by the way the eic was a massive company itself and would eventually spread british influence to all seven continents but they couldn't hold a candle to the power of the voc and nowhere was that proven more true than in the spice islands the spice islands were actually a chain called the banda islands and the natives of these islands were called the bandanese and at the time this was the only place in the world where nutmeg grew how valuable was nutmeg it was selling at the venice markets for the same price per pound as gold and the voc was obsessed with getting a monopoly in this gold so they literally slaughtered and displaced the entire civilization of bandanese people in 1620. the details of this situation are horrific i literally couldn't talk about it here without getting to monetize but it's such an amazing story i had to make a video on it so i actually put a video together and i'm uploading that to nebula it goes into detail about how they subjugated the population by slaughtering their leadership and then torturing and enslaving everybody and the personalities involved that went into this that actually became heroes in their native lands and actually i'd like to make a whole series of videos off of this topic i'm calling it forgotten atrocities i want to i want to dig into some of these horrible events that have happened in history that have kind of been forgotten to time i know let me know what you think i think it'd be really interesting i'd like to dig into it nebula of course is the streaming service that i'm a part of as well as many of your favorite educational youtube creators where you can see all of our content early and ad-free this means the youtube pre-rolls but also sponsor reads like this one so you won't have to deal with them there it's also the only place you can see my series mysteries of the human body and other nebula originals from other creators that you can't find anywhere else and now we also have nebula classes where you can learn new skills and ideas from your favorite creators in a structured format that you can really dive into subjects you love and you get all that for free when you sign up for curiosity stream which is pretty much the best streaming service for documentaries on the internet here you can find thousands of documentaries from award-winning filmmakers from all around the world no matter what you're into science technology art history whatever you're curious about you can stream it there and you can get both of these services for 26 off the annual subscription making it a grand total of 14.79 that is not per month that's for an entire year for two streaming services it's bonkers so if you're curious just head over to curiositystream.com joe scott to get started and yeah then you can see my companion video about the vocs massacre the band of people trust me it's nuts that was not a nutmeg pun i promise but one last crazy fact about the voc like i said they were obsessed with having a total monopoly on nutmeg so much so that there was only one tiny island in the banded chain called rand that the british owned and there was nutmeg that was grown there and they had to have it so they kind of deal with the british to literally trade islands the british gave them the island of ran and in return the dutch gave them a small island off the coast of north america where the dutch had a small settlement that dutch settlement was called new amsterdam the british changed its name to new [Music] old york york was once new amsterdam why they changed it i can't say the dutch traded it for the island of ren by the way i don't think it's a coincidence that a city founded by the hyper capitalist dutch would go on to become one of the biggest financial centers in the world in so many ways the world that we live in today was shaped by spices and the fact of the matter is the spice trade never really ended in fact there's more spices going around the world right now than ever before most of it exported out of china although the netherlands is still the world's third biggest exporter and second biggest importer of spices and they ruled the banda islands in all of indonesia for that matter until 1949 but globalization increased the supply and made it possible to grow in more places which is why now you can go into a grocery store and get pretty much any spice you want for fairly cheap except saffron saffron's always expensive you know we always ask like what would people from the past think of our our modern day today and we think of that in terms of technology and sure they would probably be blown away by our technology and be really confused by it but i'm starting to think that the cheapness and availability of spice might be the biggest mind blower for them i mean it's about the same as having grocery store shelves lined with gold bars now this video is obviously an oversimplification of a very complex story throughout human history but you know i gotta say it was really interesting to me when i started researching all this and i realized that like holy crap it was it was about spice all along but anyway i hope that was interesting for you and i don't know maybe made you think a little bit about you know what we value today and why we value it and how future generations might take it completely for granted thanks again to curiosity stream for supporting this video again if you go sign up with them you'll get access to nebula and you'll be able to see the corresponding video to this one but i also want to shout out the patreons the answer files who are supporting this channel being awesome there's also the channel members that are forming an awesome community being cool people i need to shout out some names real quick we got cassie moore travis koch jeff ochsen henrik otter jensen brian aviation angelo dower karen sheets marcie lee murray joe daniel francesca ferreira i think jason johns adam and stephen forbes thank you guys so much if you would like to join them get early access to videos access to exclusive live streams and more get a little thing on your name that makes you sound and look really more interesting down the comments just hit the little join button down below please do like and share this video if you liked it if this is your first time here maybe check this one out and google things you might like that one or any of the others down here that have my face on them a little icon and if you enjoy them i do invite you to subscribe i come back with videos every monday all right that's it for now you guys go out there and have an eye opening week stay safe and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 860,707

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: NtCgZmdzWNE

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2022