Crash Course US History: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

In which John Green kicks off Crash Course US History! Why, you may ask, are we covering US History, and not more World History, or the history of some other country, or the very specific history of your home region? Well, the reasons are many. But, like it or not, the United States has probably meddled in your country to some degree in the last 236 years or so, and that means US History is relevant all over the world. In episode 1, John talks about the Native Americans who lived in what is now the US prior to European contact. This is a history class, not archaeology, so we're mainly going to cover written history. That means we start with the first sustained European settlement in North America, and that means the Spanish. The Spanish have a long history with the natives of the Americas, and not all of it was positive. The Spanish were definitely not peaceful colonizers, but what colonizers are peaceful? Colonization pretty much always results in an antagonistic relationship with the locals. John teaches you about early Spanish explorers, settlements, and what happened when they didn't get along with the indigenous people. The story of their rocky relations has been called the Black Legend. Which is not a positive legend.

Series details

• Title: Crash Course US History
• Format: Documentary
• Language: English
• Premiere date: 2013-01-31
• Final broadcast date listed: 2014-02-06
• Status in TVmaze: Ended
• Web channel listed by TVmaze: YouTube
• Typical episode runtime: 10 minutes
• TVMaze ID: 31077
• TVDB ID: 266451

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 2013-01-31; final listed air date 2014-02-06.

Source and licence

Adapted from Crash Course US History on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.