Holy shit, that makes Jared Diamond even more of a shitty person than I thought. (He cited the Rapa Nui people’s “destruction of their own environment” as a reason for their collapse. Even used the tagline “what did the Easter islander [sic] who cut down the last tree think while doing it?” for the book.)
I’m dredging up academic book reviews from long ago out of my my memory banks, so take this with a healthy heap of salt, but the gripe about his work (specifically Guns, Germs, and Steel) is his evangelization of environmental determinism to support his thesis. Notably, I’ve not read his later book (Collapse) which I assume is the specific reference being made above, so I’ll reiterate, very healthy handful of salt.
In essence, Guns, Germs, and Steel sought to answer the question of why European societies tended to dominate other cultures (specifically American, Australasian, and African societies) and not the other way around. To his credit, he explicitly rejected any argument based on inherent racial superiority. However, the answers that he settles upon boil down to a deterministic view of history which rankles some people’s feathers. Essentially, he argues, it was inevitable that Western Europe would conquer the world because the geography of the continent enabled (or even encouraged) imperialism once certain technological thresholds had been met.
My personal, inexpert critique of Diamond’s arguments are that it feels like slapping a coat of late-90s “politically correct” paint on the same racist arguments which he purports to reject, i.e. “we cant claim white people dominated the globe because of racial superiority anymore, but what if we claimed white people’s environment was superior at generating societies with the capacity to dominate?”
This argument does a couple of things. Racists get to pat themselves on the back, inexplicably, for their ancestors utilizing the resources presented to them “better” than brown people, while white folks who feel guilty about the legacy of imperialism can rest assured that it isn’t their (or their ancestors’) fault, it’s the broadly east-west alignment of the European continent which is to blame!
To be clear, I don’t know enough about Diamond or his work as a whole to judge his personal character, and my reductive summation of his arguments should be considered for what they are: a dude on the internet remembering a couple of university lectures 15 years after the fact.
Well, those are two different arguments. No one will bat an eye at the argument that geography is a contributing cause to culture/history, but eyebrows start raising when you argue that geography is the “ultimate cause” of history. It’s the degree of determinism that sticks in my (and others’) craw.
It’s an update of old arguments which said things like, “the high temperature of the African continent explains why those people are barbaric savages; they’re too hot-blooded to create real civilizations”.
This older argument is different though in that this supposed direct effect of temperature on human behavior is unsupported.
Saying that the presence of domesticates is necessary for agriculture to arise isn’t a far stretch. We find that primary states often (not always) arise in river valleys. A sea is a hard thing to cross - it tends to isolate, unless the region has good navigators. Etc. This is all geography and they’re all constraints and opportunities for humans.
I need to nuance however something I’ve said. I said geography is the ultimate cause of history. And I do believe that on a fundamental level, but it’s an understanding that is too obvious, and unhelpful. What I mean is that the way history was going to happen was written in the very configuration of the universe. Every atom being where they are, having this much heat, being exposed to that much light, moving in that speed in that direction, having this many protons and neutrons, etc. inevitably set history to happen the way it did. It’s obvious unless you believe in the supernatural, that groups of humans have a collective soul with its own will or whatever. And it’s unhelpful because it really doesn’t tell us anything. So, sorry about that. I nuance this position by saying this: there’s also randomness, not only geography. I think randomness can set history in directions impossible to foresee in two ways:
Remarkable events and people, such as Napoléon Bonaparte. Historians can look at those events and investigate how they influenced history after them.
Butterly effects. Maybe someone coughing on July 13 1044 on the border of Lake Ontario somehow allowed the Inca empire to arise in the Andes centuries later. Historians have no way to know about those events and how they influenced history after.
No shade on you, but I don’t subscribe to your historical framework. I’m reminded of the old Carl Sagan joke: “to bake a pie, you must first invent the universe”. Yes, it’s true that events 4 billion years ago can be said to have an effect on matters today through an unbroken chain of causality, but that’s generally not a useful answer to the question being asked. For example, you could answer questions about the moon landing by explaining a hypothetical planet might have collided with the proto-Earth at the dawn of the solar system. However, the asker is probably going to be a little peeved at that response, necessary pre-requisite or not. That being said, I think you and I are on the same page about that framework’s use as a tool for general historical inquiry, so I’ll not belabor the point.
My core issue is that he preempts his own thesis by focusing on these geographical factors. Bear in mind, the question he is setting out to answer is ‘Why did European societies dominate the globe?’, not How they did it. To illustrate, I’m fine with his argument about Europe’s coal and iron reserves being easily accessible leading to a military competive advantage. However, demonstrating that a culture has the capacity to conquer does not, to me, answer why a society conquers.
To pick a single point out of a cloud of factors, I think a FAR more direct cause of colonialism was the economic theory of mercantilism which was all the rage in Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. In a nutshell, mercantilism said successful economies are based on reducing imports, maximizing exports, and hoarding precious metals. What do you do if you’re a European nation which has largely tapped out its local market capacities? You find new markets. Hmm, but your neighbors all enjoy a similar level of technology as you, and, frankly, their local markets largely have the same shit yours do. What’s this? A vast, undiscovered country to the west, full of novel goods and legends of golden cities? Well, buckle up, buttercups, we’re going on a little adventure! Say, Jeeves, who are all these people? They say they live here? Well…do they have a flag?
That explanation (“if I do this I’ll be rich”) is far more credible for the whys of colonialism than Diamond’s conclusions, even if I acknowledge that the factors he listed indirectly contributed to the end result.
I have to reiterate, though, just a schmuck in the internet, no expert claim is intended.
Guns Germs and Steel is wildly oversimplified, and he implies a background in history when his education is actually in the sciences. In general anthropologists see his assessments as shallow, a pretty common issue with popular nonfiction writers.
Holy shit, that makes Jared Diamond even more of a shitty person than I thought. (He cited the Rapa Nui people’s “destruction of their own environment” as a reason for their collapse. Even used the tagline “what did the Easter islander [sic] who cut down the last tree think while doing it?” for the book.)
And why is he shitty to begin with in your opinion?
I’m dredging up academic book reviews from long ago out of my my memory banks, so take this with a healthy heap of salt, but the gripe about his work (specifically Guns, Germs, and Steel) is his evangelization of environmental determinism to support his thesis. Notably, I’ve not read his later book (Collapse) which I assume is the specific reference being made above, so I’ll reiterate, very healthy handful of salt.
In essence, Guns, Germs, and Steel sought to answer the question of why European societies tended to dominate other cultures (specifically American, Australasian, and African societies) and not the other way around. To his credit, he explicitly rejected any argument based on inherent racial superiority. However, the answers that he settles upon boil down to a deterministic view of history which rankles some people’s feathers. Essentially, he argues, it was inevitable that Western Europe would conquer the world because the geography of the continent enabled (or even encouraged) imperialism once certain technological thresholds had been met.
My personal, inexpert critique of Diamond’s arguments are that it feels like slapping a coat of late-90s “politically correct” paint on the same racist arguments which he purports to reject, i.e. “we cant claim white people dominated the globe because of racial superiority anymore, but what if we claimed white people’s environment was superior at generating societies with the capacity to dominate?”
This argument does a couple of things. Racists get to pat themselves on the back, inexplicably, for their ancestors utilizing the resources presented to them “better” than brown people, while white folks who feel guilty about the legacy of imperialism can rest assured that it isn’t their (or their ancestors’) fault, it’s the broadly east-west alignment of the European continent which is to blame!
To be clear, I don’t know enough about Diamond or his work as a whole to judge his personal character, and my reductive summation of his arguments should be considered for what they are: a dude on the internet remembering a couple of university lectures 15 years after the fact.
The idea that geography doesn’t shape history is a strange one. What does, if not geography?
Please understand that I’m not saying that Guns, Germs and Steel isn’t full of inaccuracies or that it doesn’t oversimplify.
I’m just arguing about the idea that geography is the ultimate cause of history.
Well, those are two different arguments. No one will bat an eye at the argument that geography is a contributing cause to culture/history, but eyebrows start raising when you argue that geography is the “ultimate cause” of history. It’s the degree of determinism that sticks in my (and others’) craw.
It’s an update of old arguments which said things like, “the high temperature of the African continent explains why those people are barbaric savages; they’re too hot-blooded to create real civilizations”.
This older argument is different though in that this supposed direct effect of temperature on human behavior is unsupported.
Saying that the presence of domesticates is necessary for agriculture to arise isn’t a far stretch. We find that primary states often (not always) arise in river valleys. A sea is a hard thing to cross - it tends to isolate, unless the region has good navigators. Etc. This is all geography and they’re all constraints and opportunities for humans.
I need to nuance however something I’ve said. I said geography is the ultimate cause of history. And I do believe that on a fundamental level, but it’s an understanding that is too obvious, and unhelpful. What I mean is that the way history was going to happen was written in the very configuration of the universe. Every atom being where they are, having this much heat, being exposed to that much light, moving in that speed in that direction, having this many protons and neutrons, etc. inevitably set history to happen the way it did. It’s obvious unless you believe in the supernatural, that groups of humans have a collective soul with its own will or whatever. And it’s unhelpful because it really doesn’t tell us anything. So, sorry about that. I nuance this position by saying this: there’s also randomness, not only geography. I think randomness can set history in directions impossible to foresee in two ways:
Remarkable events and people, such as Napoléon Bonaparte. Historians can look at those events and investigate how they influenced history after them.
Butterly effects. Maybe someone coughing on July 13 1044 on the border of Lake Ontario somehow allowed the Inca empire to arise in the Andes centuries later. Historians have no way to know about those events and how they influenced history after.
No shade on you, but I don’t subscribe to your historical framework. I’m reminded of the old Carl Sagan joke: “to bake a pie, you must first invent the universe”. Yes, it’s true that events 4 billion years ago can be said to have an effect on matters today through an unbroken chain of causality, but that’s generally not a useful answer to the question being asked. For example, you could answer questions about the moon landing by explaining a hypothetical planet might have collided with the proto-Earth at the dawn of the solar system. However, the asker is probably going to be a little peeved at that response, necessary pre-requisite or not. That being said, I think you and I are on the same page about that framework’s use as a tool for general historical inquiry, so I’ll not belabor the point.
My core issue is that he preempts his own thesis by focusing on these geographical factors. Bear in mind, the question he is setting out to answer is ‘Why did European societies dominate the globe?’, not How they did it. To illustrate, I’m fine with his argument about Europe’s coal and iron reserves being easily accessible leading to a military competive advantage. However, demonstrating that a culture has the capacity to conquer does not, to me, answer why a society conquers.
To pick a single point out of a cloud of factors, I think a FAR more direct cause of colonialism was the economic theory of mercantilism which was all the rage in Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. In a nutshell, mercantilism said successful economies are based on reducing imports, maximizing exports, and hoarding precious metals. What do you do if you’re a European nation which has largely tapped out its local market capacities? You find new markets. Hmm, but your neighbors all enjoy a similar level of technology as you, and, frankly, their local markets largely have the same shit yours do. What’s this? A vast, undiscovered country to the west, full of novel goods and legends of golden cities? Well, buckle up, buttercups, we’re going on a little adventure! Say, Jeeves, who are all these people? They say they live here? Well…do they have a flag?
That explanation (“if I do this I’ll be rich”) is far more credible for the whys of colonialism than Diamond’s conclusions, even if I acknowledge that the factors he listed indirectly contributed to the end result.
I have to reiterate, though, just a schmuck in the internet, no expert claim is intended.
Your brief reply is very much in line with the pinned explanation at r/askhistorians.
I dislike the Old Place too, but r/askhistorians was really, really well moderated/curated.
Agreed. It’s one of the only subreddits that I actively miss reading through, even if I rarely had the expertise or sources to participate.
Guns Germs and Steel is wildly oversimplified, and he implies a background in history when his education is actually in the sciences. In general anthropologists see his assessments as shallow, a pretty common issue with popular nonfiction writers.