Jared Diamond

[Winner]

Diamond's book is an apology for European colonialism. Nothing more and nothing less. All his pretensions to the contrary are merely an attempt to disguise the truth behind his actions. Mich like Niall Ferguson's more specific British apologism, Diamond attempts to describe why Europe was destined to become great, not explain why it became great.

No, it's not, just as Collapse is not an apology for famine. It is an explanation of why certain societies and civilizations got the upper hand over others. I would suggest you actually find out what Diamond says about people in the decolonized word; he's hardly any kind of a colonialist or racist, that's completely PREPOSTEROUS.

I think (my person interpretation of what he says) is that humans are pretty much the same regardless of their race (physical appearance and biological traits) and that it is, unfortunately, a part of human nature to be aggressive and expansionist. If black Africans lived in Europe and white Europeans lived in North America, and their cultures have been totally different, in all likelihood the black Africans would end up wiping out the white Europeans. In the book, he cites examples of expansion/colonization/wiping out which happen outside Europe, between peoples most Westerners never heard about, but it happened for the same reason. To allege that white Europeans are the only people in the world capable of colonialism is in itself a prime example of racism.

Therefore:

However, I think that your implication that Diamond is trying to sneakily avoid accusations of racism is completely misplaced. One of the major points of his whole venture is to argue against narratives which claim that Europeans had some sort of inherent moral, genetic or intellectual superiority. Trying to figure out why certain continents came to dominate the globe isn't trying to justify colonialism, any more than a war historian is trying to justify killing. Europe wasn't destined for greatness, Diamond doesn't claim that. However, he does claim that the temperate band of the old world's northern hemisphere possessed many geography-based features that gave its denizens a head start when it came to the ability to produce lots of food, contract and spread many diseases, and ultimately form technologically advanced states.

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That being said, I think Guns, Germs, and Steel spends WAY too much time explaining why the New World (and Australia and Africa) fell behind the Old World (Eurasia). His ideas (that the geographic/environmental starting conditions very profoundly influence the way civilizations develop) are sound and you get it very early in the book; then he just keeps on hammering you details of this thesis which may be interesting, but it's often overwhelming (I skipped some parts as well).

On the other hand, what he does not explain satisfactorily are the divergences in the Old World. Why has Europe managed to become dominant? Why India did not? If there are some underlying geographical/environmental reasons, he should have given them far more space.

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As for Collapse, I think that's one of the most important book ever written and it should be a required reading for all high school/college students.

 

[sophie]

I think (my person interpretation of what he says) is that humans are pretty much the same regardless of their race (physical appearance and biological traits) and that it is, unfortunately, a part of human nature to be aggressive and expansionist. If black Africans lived in Europe and white Europeans lived in North America, and their cultures have been totally different, in all likelihood the black Africans would end up wiping out the white Europeans. In the book, he cites examples of expansion/colonization/wiping out which happen outside Europe, between peoples most Westerners never heard about, but it happened for the same reason. To allege that white Europeans are the only people in the world capable of colonialism is in itself a prime example of racism.

So your argument as to why GG&S was not an apology for imperialism is...an apology for imperialism.

A BOLD CHOICE

 

[Plotinus]

How is that an apology for imperialism??

 

[sophie]

How is that an apology for imperialism??

"It's not our fault that we brutally and violently enslaved your ancestors, exploited your land for our own personal gain and forced you to conform to our morals. That's just human nature! We have no control over that! You would have done the same to us!"

how does that not sound like an apology?

 

[Masada]

Please also note that we have an alternative mode of hegemony in China that was largely benign.

 

[Plotinus]

He didn't say "it's not our fault". You could only reasonably attribute that view to him if you thought that actions that are part of human nature are not blameworthy. But Winner didn't say that. Personally I would tend to agree with him. It's simply true that, while individuals may vary morally, large groups of people tend to behave fairly reprehensibly, and most cultures and countries over history have done pretty appalling things one way or another. Those who haven't have generally simply not been in a position to do them, rather than been in a position to do them and chosen not to. But that doesn't mean those responsible aren't culpable. Of course they are.

Saying that something is human nature doesn't mean it's not within our control. It simply means that human beings have a tendency to act in a certain way; it's an observation about how people do, in fact, typically behave, not an assertion about what causes them to behave in that way, far less a statement about responsibility or guilt. I can say, for example, that if the national speed were raised, we could be confident that the average speed of motorists would increase; it doesn't follow that I'd be asserting that individual motorists have no control over how fast they're going. Predictability isn't determinism, particularly where it's statistical predictability concerning a very large set.

 

[Winner]

So your argument as to why GG&S was not an apology for imperialism is...an apology for imperialism.

A BOLD CHOICE

You have numerous examples of imperialistic expansionism and near genocidal attitudes to the conquered peoples OUTSIDE the Western society, which clearly demonstrates that it is not a phenomenon inherent solely to the White people or the European culture(s).

What you're saying basically is that any attempt to explain why Europeans have historically been better at it is an apology for the process, or in other words an assertion that it was morally correct. And that's not the case, ergo your accusation fails in its premises.

 

[Winner]

Please also note that we have an alternative mode of hegemony in China that was largely benign.

Interesting. I believe a part of GGS deals specifically with the Han colonization of southern China and the eradication of its native inhabitants and their replacement with the Han Chinese. Also, there is a chapter about the Bantu expansion which led to a near-complete population replacement in central and southern Africa.

Both of these are examples of the exact same process which occurred in the New World following its discovery and exploitation by the Europeans.

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Diamond also shows that the severity of this was greater the bigger the technological gap was there between the colonizers and the colonized. I.e. if the colonized people were advanced enough to be of some use for the colonizing power, they generally survived mostly intact. On the other hand, when a technological agricultural civilization met a hunter-gatherer society or a very primitive agricultural society, the result was usually a severe decimation or even complete destruction of the colonized people.

 

[Yeekim]

Diamond's book is an apology for European colonialism. /.../ Diamond attempts to describe why Europe was destined to become great, not explain why it became great.

That is effectively saying that attributing any of Europe's success to pre-existing factors rather than choice or wild chance is apologism.

It's simply true that, while individuals may vary morally, large groups of people tend to behave fairly reprehensibly, and most cultures and countries over history have done pretty appalling things one way or another. Those who haven't have generally simply not been in a position to do them, rather than been in a position to do them and chosen not to. But that doesn't mean those responsible aren't culpable. Of course they are.

Saying that something is human nature doesn't mean it's not within our control. It simply means that human beings have a tendency to act in a certain way; it's an observation about how people do, in fact, typically behave, not an assertion about what causes them to behave in that way, far less a statement about responsibility or guilt.

So true. It amazing how often people tend to confuse these things.

 

[Flying Pig]

LB, you seem to be conflating explaining something and justifying it. Morality aside - which I believe should usually be left out of history - you can explain the rationale or the causes behind an action while still leaving the responsibility for that action in the hands of the individual. I can explain that Smith killed his wife because he was drunk, and they were having a fight, and the murder weapon was lying around the house. If any of these things had not happened, Smith would not have killed his wife. It is hard to imagine that drunk, fighting, weapon-reaching Smith would not have killed his wife, to be honest. This does not imply that Smith was not responsible for killing his wife, nor that he was not wrong to do so.

I can say, for example, that if the national speed were raised, we could be confident that the average speed of motorists would increase; it doesn't follow that I'd be asserting that individual motorists have no control over how fast they're going. Predictability isn't determinism, particularly where it's statistical predictability concerning a very large set.

Also, this.

 

[HannibalBarka]

A bit late to the party as well, but y'all's (Masada and Lord Baal's) reading of Guns, Germs, and Steel is straight up wrong. For a "post hoc justification of European imperialism", he spends astonishingly little time talking about European imperialism -- 26 pages of the 427 in his book can be reasonably interpreted to be on the subject of European conquest of the Americas. A grand total of 24 can be read as even touching on the subject of Europe as a subcontinent as opposed to a part of Eurasia. And that's being pretty generous. The vast majority of the book -- 17 out of 20 chapters -- focuses on human history before 1000 AD.

Diamond explicitly states time and again that he is not talking about European but rather Eurasian dominance, and when he does digress into attempting (poorly) to explain the divergence between them, he notes: "These examples illustrate the broad range of questions concerning cultural idiosyncrasies, unrelated to environment and initially of little significance, that might evolve into influential and long-lasting cultural features. Their significance constitutes an important unanswered question. It can be approached by concentrating attention on historical patterns that remain puzzling after the effects of major environmental factors have been taken into account."

He's not a hard-line geographic determinist. He's a geographic determinist in the sense that he thinks Eurasia was predisposed to developing more lethal technology and epidemic diseases than the other continents -- which is frankly a fact. In the counterfactual that Baal offers above, where Native Americans sail to Europe and chillax for a bit before bringing back the disease to their homelands, roughly 95% of Native Americans are still going to die in that initial encounter. Sure, if they control the lines of interaction -- somehow having developed a society far more advanced than their Eurasian counterparts despite several dozen centuries of a head start on food production (this, also, is environmentally determined, and anyone who thinks otherwise clearly hasn't spent much time around teosinte) -- then they can avoid being immediately invaded after. But to think they won't be absolutely devastated and then yield whatever advantage they purchased to Eurasians anyway is absurd.

History does play quite a bit to contingency. A point, I might note, which is made by Diamond himself in a discussion on technology. And geographic determinism does not take away the agency of the peoples involved -- there were still choices all along the way, and the fact that Eurasian diseases were going to be devastating anyway does not somehow justify the dispossession of Native Americans and Aborigines (frankly, I'm a little confused as to how you could read it that way).

Most of the objections raised here appear to be directed at quite a different book -- GGS is not intended to explain why the West came out on top. It's intended to explain a much broader question of why whole continents seem to be at a disadvantage.

It's also one of the most decisively anti-Eurocentric popular history books currently written; I don't know exactly what you want from it.

This.
GGS gives a "solid" explanation about why did the Old world (Eurasia) developped more "stuff" than other world regions (Americas, equatorial and sothern Africa and Papua, Australia). He basically think the reasons are "luck" (more easily domesticable animals and crops, metals) and size (Eurasia is by far the biggest landmass were communications were feasable though difficult from an end to the other) so more peoples and nations were able to develop and more importantly exchange discoveries (tech trading as we call it here, but also crop trading, animals trading etc) which is basically why we all have an alphabet like the Phoenicians, ride horses like Ukrainians, eat Chinese oranges and know about Indian Zero.
I think his thesis is not completely dumb explaining that. I was however not convinced at all about his thesis explaining why within Eurasia different nations had different "success" (especially Europe vs the rest after 1500). But than again, that was a small chapter in his book.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I think quite a bit too much of this discussion is focused on Diamond's thesis, which, even his critics will admit, is not implausible. He's not Daniel Goldhagen.

The problem of Diamond's books, as I see it, is that he's got a relatively okay thesis supported by sloppy research. I haven't run into an area of that book yet that meets widespread academic approval for specialists in that field.

 

[Masada]

Interesting. I believe a part of GGS deals specifically with the Han colonization of southern China and the eradication of its native inhabitants and their replacement with the Han Chinese.

That didn't actually happen. What really happened was that successive Chinese dynasties used incentives - like remission from taxes, positions in the bureaucracy, land and so forth - to "civilize" the Miao. Notable signs of civilization included a veneration of ancestors, Confucian learning, proper dress, the adoption of non-Miao languages, and adherence to Han gender and family norms. Sometimes this approach failed as in the "Great Rebellion of 1854-73. But at no stage did the Qing or any other dynasty make a conscious attempt to eradicate the Miao. Sure they beat them in battle and imposed terms designed to ensure peace and kick them along the path to civilization. But for the most part the process was peaceful and it had to be because it's surprisingly hard to inoculate cultural norms through force.

Also, there is a chapter about the Bantu expansion which led to a near-complete population replacement in central and southern Africa.

I doubt this is an accurate reading of the text, and if it is I'd be highly surprised because it seems improbable.

Both of these are examples of the exact same process which occurred in the New World following its discovery and exploitation by the Europeans.

I don't think you know enough about the subject matter to draw that conclusion. I also can't think of a single instance in the New World where Europeans actually managed to more or less successfully effect the cultural "conversion" of an entire group of people over a huge area to the extent that China did. I actually can't think of a single instance where Europeans decided to even try to do that on a large scale.

 

[Louis XXIV]

On the other hand, what he does not explain satisfactorily are the divergences in the Old World. Why has Europe managed to become dominant? Why India did not? If there are some underlying geographical/environmental reasons, he should have given them far more space.

For what it's worth, he suggests one possible explanation is that Europe has not become more dominant. Or, more accurately, East Asia was more sophisticated and technologically advanced for most of their history and might very well pass the west once again. It's possible the west's current advantage is an aberration.

Either way, it's clear he only made a half-hearted attempt to explain why one is more important than the other simply because his theories support either one. I don't think such broad big picture theories as these can possibly be ever narrowed to the small picture (although I do think he wrote the chapter on China with the hopes that someone else in the future would try to do just that). Clearly, explaining why the UK succeeds over France, for example, requires far more of a details oriented approach.

 

[Gucumatz]

I think quite a bit too much of this discussion is focused on Diamond's thesis, which, even his critics will admit, is not implausible. He's not Daniel Goldhagen.

The problem of Diamond's books, as I see it, is that he's got a relatively okay thesis supported by sloppy research. I haven't run into an area of that book yet that meets widespread academic approval for specialists in that field.

Really its this.

Some of his arguments (well some of them in Guns, Germs, and Steel - not Collapse, that's mostly useless) are relatively plausible. Unfortunately some of his arguments are based on outdated information (Masada already showed an example of Easter Island whose tragedy of the commons narrative is being questioned, another example of outdated information would be his narrative of over-cutting of shrubs/trees at Chaco Canyon - something which we know that logging occurred outside of the main Chaco Canyon area and the evidence he presents which pack-rat middens is unfortunately/fortunately flawed because of biological misunderstandings of how pack-rats work)

Anyhow - the callousness of society is the problem in my opinion, not Diamond's argument and while he doesn't intend to justify racists, whitewashers, etc. this material can be used by neo-colonial sorts.
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Geographic determinism obviously did not play as large a role as some may state, but if Diamond simply toned down his arguments to say that an area's surroundings do have some impact and then derivatives like disease and weapons can be viewed from that perspective, is more beneficial to all.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I don't think whether something can be used to justify neo-colonial thinking or racist thinking should be relevant. The question should exclusively be whether it's right or wrong (or supported/not supported by the evidence). If something is accurate, we wouldn't support a false understanding of the world instead simply because of who might use true information negatively. I think this is especially true for racist thinking, where there is a substantial degree of cognitive dissonance. I think such people would use any facts to support their world view. And an environmental theory that essentially comes down to "we got lucky" is harder to use as justification than one that comes down to their own success in a series of events over time.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I also can't think of a single instance in the New World where Europeans actually managed to more or less successfully effect the cultural "conversion" of an entire group of people over a huge area to the extent that China did. I actually can't think of a single instance where Europeans decided to even try to do that on a large scale.

Quite correct, as the Native Americans see it. It was not until the colonies became the US that the attempt at cultural conversion occurred, which was coupled with massive removal and segregation of Indians who HAD become integrated and productive members of American communities.

What does Diamond have to say about that?

I should read his books, at this point.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Anyhow - the callousness of society is the problem in my opinion, not Diamond's argument and while he doesn't intend to justify racists, whitewashers, etc. this material can be used by neo-colonial sorts.

I don't think it's the usability of ammunition for those sorts that's even the problem. I think the problem is that he takes colonization of the Americas an absolute given in the circumstances.

This, I think reflects a colonial mentality, as well as being a misrepresentation of events. As Masada pointed out, there's certainly alternative models of Imperialism in China which the Europeans did not even attempt to practice on remotely the same scale.

The other thing is that, at least in the case of the English nation, colonization of the Americas was a look backwards at how the English had dealt with roughly technologically equal opponents with superior resistance to disease. Colonial techniques consciously redeployed in the America were developed in the British Isles more than 50 years before the founding of Jamestown.

The problem isn't that it's Neo-Colonial, it's that it's post-colonial, in that it's a world distinctly shaped by colonization and takes for granted something that was a conscious decision on the part of the participants.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I don't think his book argues why Europeans handled colonialism the way they did, but why they were successful at it (disease being a big factor). I think it's clear that European powers looked to recent precedents in their colonial models (England to Ireland, Spain to the Canary Islands and even to the Reconquista), but I also think, when you compare Ireland to the New World, that England's conquest of the New World (in spite of greater logistical difficulties) was easier than their conquest of Ireland. In some places, they were able to blunder into success even when the attempt was so disastrous that it should have failed (Jamestown being one example, but Plymouth Colony is another since, had 90% of the population not been wiped out, it would have been an entirely different equation).

One of the biggest reasons in North America was disease. However, he also argues that well-established populations due to a head start on agriculture is another. To draw the example away from the New World (because, quite frankly, most of the book does not deal with the new world), he uses Papua New Guinea. They had a well-established population that didn't assimilate into either Polynesian or Javanese cultures who otherwise dominated the region. He seems to also use Mexico and Peru as similar examples when compared to the northeast United States and Canada, which started corn cultivation fairly late (because they needed to develop a strain of corn that would grow in colder climates).

 

[ParkCungHee]

You know, if we're drawing things down to this, we have a rather obvious thesis (Native Americans offered less military resistance to Europeans because of the devastating effects of disease and having a lower population), combined with shoddy research in the specifics, we've got a recipe for a rather terrible, unimportant book.