The Rise of Russia and Prussia: Crash Course European History #17

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 Tsar Peter) reformed many aspects of Russian governance, realigning them toward the way things were done in western Europe. In Prussia, efficiency of institutions became a thing, and Prussia turned into "a large army with a small state attached."

Thanks to the following patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:

Eric Prestemon, Sam Buck, Mark Brouwer, Timothy J Kwist, Brian Thomas Gossett, Haxiang N/A Liu, Jonathan Zbikowski, Siobhan Sabino, Zach Van Stanley, Bob Doye, Jennifer Killen, Nathan Catchings, Brandon Westmoreland, dorsey, Indika Siriwardena, Kenneth F Penttinen, Trevin Beattie, Erika & Alexa Saur, Justin Zingsheim, Jessica Wode, Tom Trval, Jason Saslow, Nathan Taylor, Khaled El Shalakany, SR Foxley, Sam Ferguson, Yasenia Cruz, Eric Koslow, Caleb Weeks, Tim Curwick, David Noe, Shawn Arnold, William McGraw, Andrei Krishkevich, Rachel Bright, Jirat, Ian Dundore
--

Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?

Sources
Hosking, Geoffrey. Russia: People and Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Hunt, Lynn et al. Challenge of the West: Peoples and Cultures from 1320 to the Global
Age. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1995.
Kivelson, Valerie A. and Ronald Grigor Suny. Russia’s Empires. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Stites, Richard. Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia The Pleasure and the Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

IMAGES and FOOTAGE:
Wikimedia Commons
iStock/fotoVoyager
Storyblocks/guillaumelynn

[wzainuddin]

"As we learn from history, paradox is not unusual"

Also not unusual: learning history from Paradox.

[sprucemoose]

The Rise and Prise of Russia and Prussia

[matheuroux]

Can you imagine being 6'9 in the 18th century when everyone was like a foot shorter than they are now. Absolute lad.

[SaiyanHeretic]

6'9" is just over 2 meters, but 3 meters is only off by 1, so close enough!

[agentjohn]

Jhon Green: is Sweden have 12 kings named Charles??
France: Louis the 18th.

[peeves]

Mr. Green! Mr. Green! are we getting a crash course Asia in near future??

[fairhair]

"Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state."

[elonwhatever]

"Every European state has an army, except for Prussia, Prussia's army has a state"

[xqogltp]

"there were problems and they proved to be catastrofic"

*Laughs in Bolshevik*

[verdatum]

Anyone notice that John speaks waaaay slower than he did in the earlier CC History series?

[alvedonaren]

The reason the Swedish Charles' have such high numbers is due to a fictional history of Sweden published nder the reign of Gustav Vasa that invented a boatload of fictional kings, many of them named Charles and Eric (which was the name of Gustav Vasa's oldest sons). The latter of these eventualy went insane and stabbed a guy which is why you don't see any Swedish kings named Eric anymore.

[ryleighelizabeth]

The first time I heard 'Prussia' was from a history teacher from Germany with a THICC accent and for half the semester I thought he was mispronouncing 'Russia'😬

[aasante]

So far he has talked about :
Germany
Italy
France
Turkey(if you want to make that Europe)
Russia
The Netherlands
Poland
Lithuania
Spain
Portugal
England
and some how still hasn't about the most important European country, Andorra SMH.

[dehavillandvampire]

Minor gripe: Sweden by the time of Charles XII had only had *6* Charleses
But the Swedes at some point in the 1500s decided to set their regnal numbers by the equivalent of the Historia Regnum Britannia I.e. a work of fiction.

[DAJDC]

Charles (Karl) is the most common name for Swedish kings, and we're actually on number 16 now. However, a fair few of them never really existed as numbers 1-6 were just made up in the middle ages to make Sweden sound more ancient and important than it actually was. We also invented a whole bunch of Eriks etc.

[TheOtherBeckham]

Mr Green, Mr Green!
I am a big fan of what you're doing in the community and a while ago you inspired me to produce a similar project to crash course aimed at primary school children. It's been a while since then but I'm finally beginning to put writing into action and get some of it filmed.
I am a teacher in England and have used small excerpts of your show for the 8 year olds I teach, however the whole videos are usually too adult focused or intense for the kids. As a teacher I am always looking for good educational videos and last year decided that there is such a gap for well produced educational videos for kids like mine (which do not talk down to them) that I should just do it myself.

I watched your Ted Talk two days ago and loved every thing you said and it made me so excited to potentially be part of an online community of educators and learners that I decided it would be good to comment on the video and hopefully communicate a wish to you and the crash course team.
What I'd like to humbly request is a behind the scenes video that explains how you make these brilliant shows and what hurdles you had to clamber over to get to this point. I think that if a community of learners is what you'd like to grow then this would be like putting the fertilizer down to help it grow... (Except the fertilizer in this case doesn't stink!)
Thanks for reading, I'll see you next week for the enlightenment!

[scopophobemusic]

Fun fact about that battle at Narva, Peter the great had the habit of inviting foreign experts to advise him on various things. At narva he left during the winter to return to saint petersburg and left a foreign expert in charge the only issue was that this expert was french and spoke no russian and so could not actually properly order the troops to form up to repel the swedes.

[ata-ayitehunlede]

Bravo, congratulations Mr. Green. Fantastic narration of this important part of European History

[zigzag]

“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.” ~ Voltaire

[barker]

I hope you do an episode on the fall of Poland Lithuania. It's a very interesting case study in the failure of democracy and legislative gridlock