• I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    7 months ago

    Watching historical stuff on youtube (I download and watch during my commute), today I learned how the Portuguese managed to get a very firm hold on the western coast of India in the early 1500s. The TLDR version is that they managed to get the cities that were vassals of Calicut under their wing, and even managed to fight off a massive siege the raja of Calicut sent to destroy their small garrison at Kochin in 1504: a 50k strong force was beaten by a garrison of 90 Portuguese soldiers + ~200 local Nayar warriors + 3 Portuguese ships (1 carrack and 2 caravels).

    Before it got to that part, I also learned that Vasco da Gama, who led the initial demands on Calicut, was a short tempered psycopath and violent maniac hell bent on teaching “those muslims” a lesson.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        7 months ago

        Flash Point History - The bit on Kochin was in the last 2 or 3 videos about Duarte Pereira, I watched via the compiled stuff “Forging an Empire - The Portuguese Empire - Part 2 Commerce”

        I’m not exactly fond of the excessive use of AI generated images, especially when the host could’ve used more historical pieces from wikipedia, but the overall structure of the video is really good.

        • DdCno1@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          Thank you!

          I have to say though, the AI imagery is off-putting as an idea alone, because what else from the video is AI-generated? Text and perhaps even voice as well? I’ve seen this before, entirely artificial videos with absurd mistakes as part of the content or even entirely nonsensical content.

          • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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            7 months ago

            I share that sentiment. I can understand using some AI to give more visual candy so people have more help their imagination as to what things might have looked like. AFAIK, however, all the map and “token movement” (moving the portraits, ships, etc) can’t be done by AI, so there’s plenty of human meddling in the creation of the video.

            A somewhat related channel that might interest you then is SAMA - Study of Antiquity and Middle Ages. Seems to be more focused on archaelogical findings than written history, the video on Sunken Sciences taught me a lot about stuff found in now submerged coastlines, as well as the Yonaguni Monument (with a nice tangent on why some people insist in conspiracy theories about “lost continents”)

            A more directly related channel is Kings and Generals, it goes into good details of historical conflicts and battles. Seems to use the same graphic pack/map software as Flash Point

            Fall of Civilizations podcast also releases big videos sometime after the podcast proper, and it’s always amazing.

    • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Before it got to that part, I also learned that Vasco da Gama, who led the initial demands on Calicut, was a short tempered psycopath and violent maniac hell bent on teaching “those muslims” a lesson.

      Kicked out of his command because instead of establishing a trading post in Calicut he bombarded the city for two days when they refused to expel their Muslim population.