Crash Course
Post-World War II Recovery: Crash Course European History
At the end of World War II, the nations of Europe were a shambles. Today we'll learn about how the various countries and blocs approached the problem of rebuilding their infrastructure and helping their residents recover. You'll learn...
Crash Course
Commerce, Agriculture, and Slavery: Crash Course European History
We've been talking a lot about kings, and queens, and wars, and religious upheaval for most of this series, but let's take a moment to zoom out, and look at the ways that individuals' lives were changing in the time span we've covered so...
Crash Course
Protests East and West: Crash Course European History
The post-World War II decades in Europe are sometimes called the Thirty Glorious Years. As those years wore on, tensions between East and West grew, and economic growth slowed or was unevenly distributed across Europe, protests and...
Crash Course
Modern Life: Crash Course European History
So, "modern" is kind of a loaded term, but today we're going to talk about modern life in Europe, as it looked around the time the 19th century turned into the 20th. We'll look at what life was like in the rapidly growing urban centers...
Crash Course
Expansion and Consequences: Crash Course European History
European exploration had a lot of side effects. When the Old World and the New World began to interact, people, wealth, food, animals, and disease began to flow in both directions. In the New World, countless millions were killed by...
Crash Course
Reformation and Consequences: Crash Course European History
The Protestant Reformation didn't exactly begin with Martin Luther, and it didn't end with him either. Reformers and monarchs changed the ways that religious and state power were organized throughout the 16th and early 17th centuries....
Crash Course
Scientific Revolution: Crash Course European History
There was a lot of bad stuff going on in Europe in the 17th century. We've seen wars, plagues, and unrest of all types. But, there is some good news. Huge advances were underway in the scientific community in Europe at this time. In this...
Crash Course
The Rise of Russia and Prussia: Crash Course European History
In eastern Europe, in the 17th century a couple of "great powers" were coming into their own. The vast empire of Russia was modernizing under Peter the Great, and the relatively tiny state of Prussia was evolving as well. Russia (and...
Crash Course
The Northern Renaissance: Crash Course European History
The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....
Crash Course
The 17th Century Crisis: Crash Course European History
The 17th Century in Europe was pretty rough in a lot of ways. The Thirty Years War involved a lot of countries, and a lot of battles, and it was terrible for everyone involved, as wars have aa historical tendency to be. At the same time,...
Crash Course
The Soviet Bloc Unwinds: Crash Course European History
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, protests and unrest continued continued across Europe, and the Soviet Union was having increasing trouble holding its sphere of influence together. Today you'll learn about the labor strikes of...
Crash Course
Migration: Crash Course European History
Between 1840 and 1914, an estimated 40 million people left Europe. This is one of the most significant migrations in human history. So, who was leaving Europe? And why? Crash Course is on Patreon! You can support us directly by signing...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Brian A. Pavlac: Ugly History: Witch Hunts
In the German town of Nördlingen in 1593, innkeeper Maria Höll found herself accused of witchcraft. She was arrested for questioning, and denied the charges. She insisted she wasn't a witch through 62 rounds of torture before her...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A day in the life of an ancient Celtic Druid | Philip Freeman
As the sun rises in 55 BCE, Camma lays two pigeons on the altar at the center of her village. She wrings the birds' necks and cuts them open to examine their entrails for divine messages. Camma is a druid. She conducts religious rites,...
Crash Course
The Protestant Reformation: Crash Course European History
You may have noticed that the internet is terrible at religious discourse. Well, this is not a new phenomenon. In the early 16th century, the Roman Catholic church dominated Christianity in Europe, and the institution was starting to...
Crash Course
Post-War Rebuilding and the Cold War: Crash Course European History
Sometimes, friendship isn't forever. At the conclusion of World War II, the old structures of power were a shambles. The traditional European powers were greatly weakened by years of total war and widespread destruction. The USSR was...
Crash Course
Witchcraft: Crash Course European History
During our last several episodes, Europe and the European-controlled world have been in crisis. Wars, disease, climate changes, and shifts in religious and political power threw the European world into turmoil. People were looking for a...
Crash Course
World War II Civilians and Soldiers: Crash Course European History
Our look at World War II continues with a closer examination of just how the war impacted soldiers in the field, and the people at home. For many of the combatants, the homefront and the warfront were one and the same. The war disrupted...
Crash Course
The Congress of Vienna: Crash Course European History
The end of the Napoleonic Wars left the great powers of Europe shaken. Judging from the destruction that had been wrought across the continent, it seemed to the powers that be that the Enlightenment had liberated the people, and led to...
Crash Course
Dutch Golden Age: Crash Course European History
While the English were falling apart a little, with their civil war and their restoration and their succession problems, the Dutch were getting their act together. They were throwing off the yoke of the Spanish Empire, uniting their...
Crash Course
WWI's Civilians, the Homefront, and an Uneasy Peace: Crash Course European History
World War I was a total war for millions of people in Europe. Many men were enlisted in the fighting, but the war work had implications for the daily lives of a huge number of Europeans. Women entered the workforce in huge numbers, and...
Crash Course
Florence and the Renaissance: Crash Course European History
The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say,...
Crash Course
Reform and Revolution 1815-1848: Crash Course European History
In the aftermath of the revolutions and upheaval in 18th and early 19th century Europe, there was a hunger for reform across the continent. Reformers like Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Auguste Comte proposed radical new ideas, and at...
Crash Course
Eastern Europe Consolidates: Crash Course European History
While the focus has been on Western Europe so far, there has also been a lot going on in Eastern Europe, which we'll be looking at today. The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, The Ottoman Empire, and Russia were all competing at the...