Guns, Germs, and Steel
I’ve just finished reading a book that came recommended by mkbawa (and winner of the Pulitzer Prize): “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond.
The book takes 480 pages to answer question posed in 1972 by Yali, a politician from New Guinea: “Why do the white folk have all the cargo?” (I’m paraphrasing here). Yali was curious as to why all the visiting white people ha such cool stuff, stuff like guns, germs and steel. Actually, he only liked the guns and steel.
Book Cover
Yali’s question had great implications, and the author used the question to launch an evaluation of the development of today’s social and anthropological environment. H explores what he believes are the factors that have contributed to ‘white europeans’ becoming imperialists and ‘ruling’ the modern world. What he found can be boiled down into the following points:
- Geographical diversity means biological diversity, which allows for plants that can be cultivated
- Longitudinally oriented continents allow plants, animals and technology to be spread among cultures
- Large animals suitable for domestication are necessary for success
- Domestication of animals leads to the introduction of diseases. Although diseases can be damaging, the introduction of diseases over time allows societies to adapt, as has occurred in the old world. Conversely, the introduction of multiple diseases to previous unexposed societies is devastating, and has provided a great advantage to old world societies looking to conquer new lands.
- Societies and states within a region must be diverse enough to allow for competing technologies to develop, yet not so different that ideas are not allowed to spread between states.
There are some other points, but you can get an idea of where he is coming from. His aim seems to be to dismiss the idea that any people are genetically inferior, and he attributes much of social development to environmental factors. At times it seems his agricultural focus gets a bit overbearing (which is warranted when you consider the author’s background), but you always have the option of skimming through.
What the book is successful in doing is using small case studies, like Micronesia, to illustrate factors that have affected larger societies and continents. It is great to see his theories in action on a smaller scale – and it brings about the realization of how seemingly dissimilar cultures will natrually adapt in similar ways (and in ways that are reflected in the dominant cultures of today), or face elimination.
Despite the strong anthropological and biological focus, the book has received attention from business leaders, with Bill Gates being among those recommending the book. I personally was expecting more in the book that could be applied to organizational/ managerial practices, but there was some relevant material. Diamond does summarize some of the business applications in the epilogue, but he clearly does not have much of a business background, and states himself that he was surprised at the attention the business world has given the book. The most useful info relates to optimal workgroup sizes, and transfer of information and technologies within organizations.
Overall, I do recommend the book, but I would also recommend skipping through some of the drier material, such as the frequent in-depth analysis of wheat (unless that’s your kind of thing).
Here’s some info on the author:
Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, began his scientific career in physiology and expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeography. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and has received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Phi Beta Kappa Award, the Burr Award of the National Geographic Society, and the National Medal of Science. He has published over 200 articles in Discover, Natural History, Nature, and Geo magazines.
Book rating: 4.0 of 5.0 stars
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I haven’t read the book so everything I say below might be irrelevant but this is what I thought when I read your review.
Europe is not a longitudinally oriented continent (one the books says allows plants, animals and technology to be spread among cultures). So it wouldn’t have that advantage.
The Middle East isn’t longitudinally oriented either and that’s one of the places in which settled civilization and imperialism started.
Also, Europe as a whole did not succeed in becoming imperialistically successful but really only western Europe.
And, of course, since western Europeabn countries are far from being the only successful imperialists, how does their success differ from that of the other imperialists like the ancient Greeks and Romans, Arabs, etc.
Perhaps, it’s just a matter of technology, as it develops, allowing for a wider geographic scope of activity.
That makes the book’s singling out of whitey as imperialist as kind of a false question if we are talking in general terms about a country’s successful power plays. And a mere historical question if we’re not.
Headhunter, the book operates on a very large scale.
Europe, the middle east, and asia, are all part of Eurasia, as there are no great natural barriers preventing the spread of techonology. Consider North America, South America, or Africa. The difficulty in moving agricatulture from different lattitudes is what has hindered growth of these cultures.
Secondly, it’s best to look at history without a eurocentric view (the one we’ve become so familiar with), and ask why it isn’t africans, Haida, or polynesians that have come to colonized the world. Each of those imperialists that you’ve listed are either fertile cresent, or european based, and have benefitted from the type of environment that the book has identified as optimal.
Instead of considering individual countries it is much more useful to think of continental regions. It takes more than a one single country’s power plays to create the kind of disparity in power that has been observed over the last 200 yrs. The book has shown how innovation (and innovation that could have lead to real societal advanatages) has arisen in cultures and has been allowed to die, because of environmental conditions.
The whole focus of the book is environmental, and it isn’t a critisism of ‘whitey’, but an analysis of the parallels between different cultures, and how similiar environment will precipitate similiar developmenets, regardless of ethnic background.
Sorry if i was’t clear, but it is a bit diffucult to sum up so broad a work in so few words.
Guns could have ended my life, but guns also saved my life.
G-G-G-G-G-Unit.
Guns Germs and Steel is perhaps one of the flimsiest historical theories I have ever encountered and I can not understand how Jared Diamond has garnered the attention that it has. Leave it to a Physiologist/linguist to take on the job of an Anthropologist/Archeologist and get it all wrong. I believe what Jared Diamond is attempting here is justification for Western stereotypes and misconceptions about the rest of the world. In fact, he seems to believe that nobody outside of Eurasia has contributed anything of value to world history or civilization.
Ironically, Northern and Western Europeans have contributed among the least to what we would consider human civilization. For example, there is no sign of a civilization ever existing in Scandinavia.
African nations have been trading with other parts of the world for millennia. Ancient Nubia had strong trade relationship with nations inside as well as outside of Africa for thousands of years and at one point even ruled over Egypt. Ethiopians were also among the first people to adopt Christianity in 4th century AD. How could this have come about if there was little contact with countries of side of Africa? Yemen is only a stone’s throw from Ethiopia; the countries are divided by the “Bab el Mandeb� (Red Sea/Gulf of Aden).
To convince one’s self and that civilization and technological have only come about within the parameters of an arbitrary border system is ridicules, especially in the face of Archeological and Anthropological evidence to the contrary. Any first year Cultural Anthropology student would know this.
In East Africa Swahili were building ships for centuries that were superior in quality to early European ships called “mtepe;� and were trading with China, Arabia and India by sea, becoming very wealthy as a result. Most of China’s ivory for some time came from direct trade with the Swahili. According to many authors including Schmidt and Avery (1978, 1979, 1986) and a review in American Anthropologist (Kusimba, 1997), Africans between 1500-2000 years ago were smelting iron at temperatures not reached in Europe until the industrial age. These Africans (in Tanzania) are believed to be among the first to produce carbon steel, using a special preheating method.
In West Africa the civilizations of Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Timbuktu attracted people from all over the world. In the early part of the fourteenth century to the time of the Moroccan invasion in the late sixteenth century, the city of Timbuktu became an important intellectual and spiritual center of the Islamic world, attracting people from as far away as Saudi Arabia to study there. Great mosques, universities, schools, and libraries were built under the Mali and Songhay Empires, some of which still stand today.
A large number of innovations that many Europeans today recognize as being uniquely their own, such as fire arms and the old trade ships once used for commerce (The kind used by Columbus for example) trace their history back to technologies and influences acquired through Islamic contacts in the Iberian Peninsula. In the year 711 AD, Islamic invaders conquered that part of Europe known today as Spain and Portugal and ruled over the region for close to 800 years (711 to 1492). Europe as a result saw a number of improvements in various areas of life and interest, ranging from the medical sciences to military; to paved roads, and street lamps. The Moor also introduced Europe to its first Universities and the numerical system currently in popular use today.
Scholars describe the Moor as originating in the Senegal River valley in Southern Mauritania as Almoravides, and then gathering followers from many ethic groups before overwhelming the Iberian Peninsula. The Almoravides were a group of devout Muslims also partially responsible for the destabilization and eventual demise of the Kingdom of Ghana — located in what is today Northern Senegal and Southern Mauritania — in and around the same time as the Iberian siege.
The spread of Islam into Africa is not mentioned in Jared theory, nor is the fact that the Saharan Desert is only between 5000-2000 years old, making his claims isolation seem all the more rediculous in relation to Africa. Further, it has also been shown that the current inhabitants of Europe do not resemble Neolithic and bronze age Europeans in craniofacial form (Brace et al, 2006). I am curious why Jared Diamond does not incorporate these bits of historical, geographic and Anthropologic information into his seemingly post hoc hypothesis. His deficient theory is a manifestation of Eurocentrism polished and meant to persuade lay audiences.
At the time of Columbus’s arrival in the America’s the Aztec were using math, astronomy and agriculture that was also superior to Europeans. If it were not for contact with South American Amerindians (initially by accident) much of Europe would have likely died of starvation; as the continent was experiencing sever famine at the time. It was South American agriculture and crops that saved Europe from near death. Ironically, in exchange for this vitally needed learning the Europeans inadvertently killed off between 80-95% of Amerindian populations; completely wiping out many Aboriginal Caribbean native groups with new-world diseases, and then slavery.
THE REASON EUROPEANS CONQURED THE NEW WORLD IS BECAUSE THE TURKS WERE BLOCKING EUROPEAN PASSAGE TO THE SILK ROAD, AND SO THEY HAD TO FIND ANOTHER ROUT TO INDIA/CHINA. IN ATTEMPTING THIS BY SEA THEY WOULD EVENTUALLY DISOVER THE AMERICAS, INADVERTLYING, THROUGH SHERE INCOMPETENCE (NAMING THE NATIVES “INDIANS”). THIS ENCOUNTER WOULD END UP WIPING OUT 80-95% OF THE NATIVE POPULATION WITH EUROPEAN BORN DISEASES. MAKING LATER CONQUEST ESPECIALLY EASY!
Africans had access to guns, too – but like the Arabs, who introduced the weapon to Europeans, initially found them inconvenient for their kind of warfare. In effect, Africans also had guns germs and steal, which would refute a large second of Jared Diamond’s ridiculous theory.