12 April 2017
Fact and Fiction Regarding the Development of Society
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, anthropologist Jared Diamond examines how some societies are more materially successful than others. Mr. Diamond also inspects what the causes were for one society’s triumph over another. He dares to ask the question concerning why Europeans & Asians were able to successfully take control of the world many times over while those such as Africans, Native Americans, and aboriginal Australians managed to make little to no mark on the Earth.
Mr. Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts during World War II. In his high school years, he attended the Roxbury Latin School and later attended Harvard College and began to do research in the science field. After his college years, Diamond got his Ph. D. in physiology. Since then began to write books and travel globally for scientific purposes. The professor has won many awards for his work both in the field and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He has gained research grants from the American Physiological Society, National Geographic Society, and Zoological Society of San Diego. In addition, he has been elected a member of all three of the leading national scientific/academic honorary societies—National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Philosophical Society.1
Before Mr. Diamond proposed it, the mass population, assumed that the Europeans and East Asians conquered the world because of their technological advancement and political savvy which led them to procure a large portion if not all of the world's surface. Once this communal acceptance had been given credence, people believed that European leadership and achievement was because of their innate superiority. These ideas accumulated to form “white man’s burden” where Europeans felt they had to take charge and bring into the light those they believed to be lost or confused, needing help and support to survive.
The true reason, however, as Jared Diamond proposes, is that Eurasians succeeded in their subjugation of others due to geographic and environmental factors that allowed them to optimize their accomplishments in the world. The anthropologist determines this by examining the history and watching the human evolution. He then concentrates on specific societies to demonstrate his discoveries. The issue with the concentration on particular societies is that it skews the vision of how modern day society came to be in only one direction. This analysis is comparable to polling organizations that ask to speak to the youngest member of the household, it creates a distorted view of history which makes the telling of history exceptionally difficult.
Diamond suggested that because of the east-west design of the Old World, that Europeans, Asians, & those who resided in the Fertile Crescent began to travel east and west to trade with one another. This was made possible by the fact that climates and terrain did not drastically change from place to place which means travel was done easily and quickly. The lack of rugged terrain and varying climate encouraged trade, interaction, and development of civilizations. The fact Eurasians geographically had an advantage which allowed them to develop faster. Diamond does not fill in the reasons why they later became world conquerors and global leaders.
Another important fact used in Diamond’s argument is the one regarding the advantages of the Eurasian populous is that they had greater amounts of exposure to deadly viruses that originated in animals. The exposure came about through the domestication of animals such as the pig, horse, dog, chicken, goat, and cow which then spread throughout the human population across the continent. This benefitted Europeans who had been living close to animals for a sufficient length of time to cultivate a genetic immunity to the diseases carried by animals. Explaining that genetic immunity gives Eurasians an advantage begs the reader to ask why did the same not happen to people in the New World who were not in locations where interaction was sparse. Diamond does not even begin to analyze why people in North America who came into contact with Europeans did not have their own genetic immunity even though evidence suggests that there were tribal interaction and trade in the North America.
Contrasting the circumstances of the Old World, Diamond debates that the New World took the animals that were able to be domesticated, and hunted them to their annihilation. Those who hunted them to the point of extinction he says are those who crossed the Bering land bridge many years before the Europeans arrived. The anthropologist could have analyzed what would have happened if the first Native Americans had been less adept hunters which would have led them to have descendants who domesticated animals. If Diamond had explored these different possibilities, it could have shown that European conquest of the New World would have been far more difficult, and might never have taken place at all.2
However, despite the fact that his genius, is flawlessly presented through eloquent text and images of a world filled with tales of dominance and submission, conflict, disaster and wondrous accomplishments, Diamond overlooks some other factors that were key in the development of the world.
Firstly, given the magnitude of the task he took on, Mr. Diamond uses wide-ranging strokes to satisfy in his case. He uses this unconventional writing style to further his exaggerated desires and to identify definitive accounts rather than contiguous ones. Behind all of the distractions, there seems to be a proximate explanation of the dominance of Old World societies and technologies over the past number of millennia. One result is that many of the practicing historians have problems about grappling the same agenda and ideas but with differing viewpoints or perspectives, however being given very little notice.
Second, Mr. Diamond’s account seriously underplays the alliances with native groups that enabled European forces to conquer and rule. After some initial victories, which Diamond lavishly describes, thousands of natives joined the tiny European garrisons, assisting Hernán Cortés in subduing the Aztec Empire and Francisco Pizarro with the Inca. Without the help of the natives, who on their own lacked the strength and weaponry to overthrow the Incan and Aztec forces, Cortés’ and Pizarro’s mission for gold, God, and glory would never have succeeded. Key pieces of information and historical facts are lost in Diamond’s popular yet slightly distorted account of human history. 3
Diamond also forgets to psychoanalyze the choices made by European settlers, conquistadors, and others looking for opportunities in the New World. For example, he examines Pizarro’s assault on Atahualpa and the Incas and explains that the Europeans took over successfully due to their technological advancements, the germs that they had been living with, and new innovations that have been developed in the Old World. What he decides to leave out is that despite the Europeans ability to easily conquer, why did they and in such a merciless way. In Jared Diamond’s perspective, political and ethical choices made by those in charge of discovery are irrelevant or unrelated to the success of Europeans in the New World. He believes that the only factor worth discussing, are the ones having to do with Old World trade, the development of disease and immunities to those diseases, and the geopolitical climate that allowed for ignition of Old World leadership. The author tells about how certain acts allowed people to manufacture steel and guns while using disease as a weapon of mass destruction. The result of the lack of debate over
European ethics, interpretations such as Guns, Germs, and Steel, ultimately usurp the real historical accounts like those of Bartolomé de las Casas in the 1500s or J.A. Hobson during the late 1800s.
Professor Diamond unpeels the foundations beneath the causes of European and Asian advantages. The anthropologist’s analysis must be consumed with a grain of salt as its pure depth allows him to be a wide array of professional titles like anthropologist, archeologist, epidemiologist and technical historian. He writes the story in a fashion that paints the civilized world to appear as a multilayered surface, making humanity’s recorded history its disfigured surface. Despite its many flaws, Jared Diamond’s analysis of World History in Guns, Germs, and Steel shows a strong, compelling view of how the modern world was developed.