(machine clicking) - We made it to New York City. (light music) Every time I'm in this city, I find myself asking the same question. Why is this place so giant? Why does NYC feel like the
epicenter of the world? (light music) - This city, are you kidding? - Back in the 70s, The New
Yorker magazine made this map, showing how New Yorkers see the country. I grew up in rural Oregon and so this map sort of resonated with me. I felt like New York had
this outsized presence in our country, that everyone thought that the United States was New York, like it had some sort of
huge poll on everyone's mind. And when I say huge, I don't mean the eight and a half million people that are packed into this city. I also mean the outsized
cultural gravity of this city. ♪ New York, New York ♪ - It seems like every other
movie I watch, or book I read is somehow connected to New York City. So as we biked around this
city and had socially distanced hangouts with our friends, and as we ate the delicious things
this city has to offer, I started to go down this rabbit hole of how this city came to be
and how it became so damn big. - [Man] This is New York,
the world's largest city. - So I've boiled it down to three reasons, the three reasons why New York
City is so big and important. Number one, water. (moderate music) Let's look at a map real quick because, you know, I like to look at maps. The growth of New York
City is primarily a story of perfect access to water. Look at where it is compared
to the Atlantic Ocean. It's not right on the ocean,
like it's not a beach, you've got this nice long
island called Long Island protecting it from the
elements and from invaders. Zoom in and you see that
Staten Island is also here to protect this city
from the wrath of the sea or from conquers, and yet Manhattan is just this tiny skip away from the ocean for any boat fairing person
who wants to come and go. Plus, these waters are super
deep, creating nice deep ports which don't freeze during the winter. They allow for loads of traffic from bigger and bigger boats. The first Europeans to
arrive and settle this land were the Dutch, who were no strangers to the economic advantages
of controlling water. In fact, I made a whole video about how the Dutch are obsessed
with controlling water. So anyway, the Dutch arrive and they see this prime piece of land and they're like, "Yep, this is a sweet piece of land. "We need this piece of land, let's name it "after our favorite city back home "that also has amazing access to water." And New Amsterdam was born. (moderate music) The Dutch taking over this piece of land is really the beginning of the
modern history of New York. And I wanna tell you that story
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supporting this channel and let's get on with the story. What are the Dutch up to
on the island of Manhattan. (light music) As always, there were
people living on this land who were not really familiar with the concept of owning plots of land, which clearly belonged to the earth dah! And so the Dutch arrive and they're like, "Oh, so you don't mind if
we buy this land from you "and exploit it to get super rich?" And so the Dutch paid the natives $24 and now the Dutch begin to
control this little plot of land that is so perfectly connected to and protected from the water. (light music) They kept the original name
that the Algonquian people had given this island
which was Manna-hata. And then they named
their surrounding areas after Dutch names like Brooklyn and Bronx. The British eventually took
over this piece of land from the Dutch and renamed it
after one of their own cities, that had nothing to do with water, and after a few years
of settling this land, the British really started
leveling up when it came to controlling the water. They started navigating up this river called the Hudson River. (moderate music) So that they could connect
with the newly constructed Erie Canal, which went all
the way to The Great Lakes. (moderate music) And so now you have this one city that has protected access
to the Atlantic Ocean as well as to the Great
Lakes all through water. Okay, so perfect access
to water is number one and the main reason why New
York City became so huge. Number two is that New York
became the world's factory. (light music) So it's the 1800s, and
there are three industries that are really taking over the world. Number one is the mass
production of clothing. Number two is the publishing of books since there's all this
sciency stuff going on and people wanna write
it down and publish it, share it and everyone
wants to get really smart. And number three was
the refining of sugar, which European powers were stealing from all over the world to
feed the growing obsession with sugar back home. These three have something in common, they require some raw material
to be shipped in somewhere to be transformed or refined or rearranged and then shipped out as a final product to customers all over the world. To us in the 21st century
this seems super obvious that our products would
travel around the world to be transformed and manufactured before they end up with us. But back in the 1800s, a global
interconnected supply chain was sort of a newish
thing, and New York City was uniquely placed to take
advantage of this new process. To add to this momentum back in Britain, they were kinda pissed
off that their settlers had declared independence from them, and then had beat them in a war. So as a matter of pride,
they sort of refused to trade with any of the major revolutionary cities like Philadelphia or Boston. So this meant that New
York City was the place to do global business, and the
city exploded with industry. (light music) This boom in factories
and industrial production is really what built this
city, from the actual buildings and infrastructure, to the population, as workers flocked to the city for jobs. Which gets me to my next point. The third and potentially
most important element that built the New York City that we know today, is immigration. As this city became the
industrial hub for making stuff for people around the world, a steady flow of immigrants started
flowing into New York City, mainly from Europe at first. Some of them were fleeing war
or oppression, starvation, and some were just looking for a new life, to take a risk, to try something new. And New York was there to meet them. So millions of immigrants started to flow into New York City, many getting on ships and arriving on this island. By 1860, almost 70% of adults in New York were foreign born, 70%. (upbeat music) These immigrants didn't just fill the jobs of the industrial and commercial
growth of New York City. This influx of immigrants from
so many different backgrounds began to lay the foundation
of the incredibly diverse multicultural experience
that is New York City today. (upbeat music) But even though they all came
from different backgrounds, they also had one thing in common. Immigrants tend to be a self
selecting group of risk takers. After all, they made
the long arduous journey into the unknown to start a new life. In other words, they're
natural entrepreneurs. Look what we found. Best tacos on the East Coast. Coz they just like Tijuana, here we go. (murmurs) - Now let's go to that park. - [Woman] Num-num? - Yeah.
- So you take a bunch of risk takers and you gather them into one large growing
city to build a new life, and that creates a culture of its own, a culture of new ideas, new
businesses, new inventions. And when you have a
bunch of new businesses and new inventions and new ideas, you often have rich people show up to try to bet on those ideas to see whose idea will actually
win, with the intention of making money on a
successful idea or invention. I'm using a bunch of words to describe the process of investing or finance. For many years in the
United States, the epicenter for banks and lenders was Philadelphia. But as New York City filled up with entrepreneurial
immigrants, the epicenter of investing slowly
shifted to the place where the best bets were happening. And New York City became
the financial epicenter. All of the industrial
production and factories eventually went away, but the
banks and the stock exchange that were built on its shoulders stayed and became the economic
foundation of modern day New York. (moderate music) This explanation of New York
City helps me understand the more elusive mystique
about this place. And that it's poll isn't just about the eight and a half million
people that live here, but that those many people, their stories, where they came from, the
lives they built here, all from different backgrounds, and yet they were all engaged
in the same experiment, cramming into this city to build something that had never been built before. - [Presenter 1] New York City
is as amazing in its own way as the Grand Canyon. - [Presenter 2] New York City.
- [Presenter 3] New York City. - [Presenter 4] New York City. - So there you have it,
New York City is a place that had a perfect
connection to the water, that was perfectly placed
to be the world's factory, as the global economy started to blossom. All of this attracting
risk taking immigrants, who built the population
but also planted the seeds for the uniquely New York
character that we know today. (upbeat music)
Stanten Island?