Crash Course World History

Watched the episode on Ancient Mesopotamia and i found myself wanting to unlearn everything he said just to spite him. Half the episode was just 'hip' references and 'cool' jokes and when he got to the history parts he just sped up until he could get to the 'hip' parts again.

That, and the two previous episodes were the ones I liked best- probably because I knew the least about the topics covered. Even then I had the feeling more could have been done.

I haven't even thought about the literature ones, I'm in two minds about watching the American History ones. I guess I will watch them eventually but it's a shame really as I was pretty psyched about Crash Course when it first came out/was being announced, now I'm watching almost with reluctance
 
You are so bitter and prideful at times. Cheer up man. :)
You're not very good at fake psychofanny if you're drawing that conclusion from that post.
 
inorite?

I didn't know Africa was a thing until I was 23.
/totallyserious

Wait, Africa's real?!? I always though it was fictional like Narnia, Mordor, or Scandinavia...
 
I totally thought the North Pole was a real thing until I was told Santa Claus doesn't exist.
 
Well I always thought Africa was in the Garden of Eden and since the latter can't be proven to exist, neither can the former. But this Nigerian guy in one of my engineering teams kept arguing with me over it. Don't know what his deal was. :confused:
 
Garden of Eden was in Mesopotamia, I thought.

(I assume you meant the Garden of Eden was in Africa, not the other way around. ;))
 
NO AFRICA WAS IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN THE BIBLE SAYS SO.

God I'm so sick of dealing with liberal America-haters.
 
I got round to watching up to the 10th-ish one of this, and I actually kinda like it. Most of the criticisms given here are reasonable enough, but it's an entertaining enough distraction if you just want something in the background while you're doing something else. Not much, but enough to get an overall "thumbs up" from me.

Mebbe I just like it because I know bugger all about the world before like 1600, if even that early, so he hasn't tripped over anything I might notice yet. :dunno:
 
Garden of Eden was in Mesopotamia, I thought.

(I assume you meant the Garden of Eden was in Africa, not the other way around. ;))

There are a few different views on that. Ethiopian Orthodox do in fact locate the Garden of Eden in Africa, and even teach that Ge'ez was the original language of mankind. Mormons think that it was in Missouri.
 
So has anybody seen the Youtube show, Crash Course: World History? Its basically an English major doing a web series on History I guess intended for High School and Freshmen students. They claim its written by John Green's (the host) High School Teacher, not exactly reassuring imo, but 95% of what I've seen is stuff you could basically get off Wikipedia. The host also puts a huge amount of personal interpretation in the show and passes it off as fact or widely accepted academic ideas.

What are cfc's thoughts on the series?

Yeah, I was actually watching that series on youtube a few weeks back. Someone of them are actually well done though all of them are extremely superficial.
 
Before I click the link and waste my time, did he begin in the garden of Eden and explain that all of human history is an effort of reconciliation to God and Satan's efforts to prevent the individual from doing so?

So are you like Schrödinger's creationist or something?
 
I watched the whole series in one sitting. It was great. Then I started to think about it and was less excited. Like, why are there an episode about the dark age and one about the renaissance, only to tell there was no dark age or renaissance? Don't waste time talking about what whasn't there. Tell about what was.

But i like the running (riding) joke about the mongols. And the animations.


Speaking of popularized history (if that's the right term?), I'm also a big fan of Larry Gonick's cartoon History of the Universe. Theres also a danish equivalent, Claus Deleurans Illustreret Danmarkshistorie for Folket, with far beter artwork. Unfortunately, Claus Deleuran died only 50 years old, before it was finished. It was planned to be in 7 volumes, but when he got to vol 9, he was just at the end of the viking age. Poor guy worked himeslf to death. Annyway, as I said, the artwork is great, so it's worth taking a look at, even if you don't understand danish (I think)

Spoiler :
attachment.php


632 Prophet Muhammad ascends to heaven. Yup, another danish depiction of the prophet.


Wait, Africa's real?!? I always though it was fictional like Narnia, Mordor, or Scandinavia...

Of course Africa is real. Its where Poland is.
 

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I watched the whole series in one sitting. It was great. Then I started to think about it and was less excited. Like, why are there an episode about the dark age and one about the renaissance, only to tell there was no dark age or renaissance? Don't waste time talking about what whasn't there. Tell about what was.
Unless you were emerged from a pod yesterday, it's pretty likely that you'll come with some degree of baggage in regards to this stuff, and that needs to be addressed, even in something as entry-level as this. Very few contemporary historians would agree that it's ever so simple as simply listing "what actually happened", but that it's always a matter of building, contesting and rebuilding narratives.
 
I think it works excellently as a raiser of curiosity.

We all thought feudalism was a thing when we were younger, didn't we? I know it's a lie that's supposed to die at some point, but come on, at least we got hooked and figured out how wrong we were.

This show suits exactly that purpose imo.

Also, I love Claus Deleuran. Thorfinn is my favorite comic of all time.
 
Unless you were emerged from a pod yesterday, it's pretty likely that you'll come with some degree of baggage in regards to this stuff, and that needs to be addressed, even in something as entry-level as this. Very few contemporary historians would agree that it's ever so simple as simply listing "what actually happened", but that it's always a matter of building, contesting and rebuilding narratives.

While you're right, and such debates are what make history fun, it doesn't fit with what the purpose of the show is "supposed" to be.

The host himself says that the main audience for the show is high schoolers/college freshmen taking intro courses, and especially those from that group about to take a test. Such students don't need complex analysis of these topics for school/tests. And 10/12 minutes is such an inappropriate time frame to do it that it is honestly irresponsible to try, because you will only confuse and ill inform people. A crash course is supposed just the facts. I'm all for trying to make history fun and engaging, but it upsets me a bit how the host keeps putting in his personal opinions and complex debates which he obviously doesn't understand himself.
 
I agree, they don't need complex analysis. But he isn't giving them: he's giving pretty basic introductions to historiography, which if these videos are intended for people pursuing history in an academic context is every bit as important as providing introductions to history. I'll grant you, Green doesn't always weave these issues into it as smoothly as he might, and in some videos the historical discussion seems to get a bit lost behind the historiographical meta-discussion, while in others the historiography seems to be left by the wayside in favouring of propagating some particular interpretation, but that's a matter of how he pulls it off, not the fact that these issues are addressed in the first place.

If you want him to provide facts and facts alone, then you're going to be mostly looking at tables of average rainfall and maps of potsherd distribution and extensive extracts from primary documents (probably in the original language, too, because translation is itself a form of interpretation), and a lot of other stuff that is totally unhelpful to his project. To make sense of any of this, to make history of any of this, requires interpretation, and interpretations are always up for discussion. That he acknowledges this, and makes some attempt to address it, is nothing but a good thing.

Bottom line, what's the point in learning about history, if you have no inclination to think about history? You may as well go and memorise Star Trek miscellanea, for all the good it'll do you.
 
Old school Anglosphere world history in five chapters:
-Egyptians and Persians and Greeks and stuff
-Romans!
-The Dark Ages! Only Asians (later conquered or bullied by Anglospehre people) did awesome things.
This lasts roughly until Shakepeare, or Trafalgar, or whatever (briefly interupted by [stuff]).

-Th UK is awesome!
-The US is awesome!​
...opposed to...
Enlightened Anglosphere world history in five chapters:
-Egyptians and Persians and Greeks and stuff
-Romans!
-The Dark Ages! Only Asians (later conquered or bullied by Anglospehre people) did awesome things.
This lasts roughly until Shakepeare, or Trafalgar, or whatever (briefly interupted by [stuff]).
-Th UK is awesome!
-The US is awesome!​

The difference is amazing!


This applies here a lot. I actually wrote a long, long post about it. But then i remembered why i rarely if ever visit the history forum.

Suffice it to say: If you watch the entire thing you will not know that Dutch people exist and the Reformation ever happened. Your worst preconceptions regarding the "Dark Ages" (funny English term) have been reinforced by omission but you have seen an entire episode on Mali's colossal impact on world history.

Oh and you know a lot of almost irrelevant things about Canadians and Australians, one of them being their sensitivity to "underrepresentation". :mischief:
 
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