Nah, there are still plenty of Arabs who aren't Muslim to this day. One happens to be typing this message right now, technically, though I've never really considered myself an Arab. But the term "Arab" was used for a very, very small number of people before the Islamic expansion. Today, it tends to be applied to every speaker of an Arabic language in the Middle East, but even in its most minimalistic usage it applies to every Semitic person who isn't Jewish that lives in Western Asia.
So you reject historical determinism?
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Tahuti
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Aren't you forgetting Assyrians, Samaritans and Druze?
History_Buff
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Technically yeah, but I'd bet you most Europeans/Americans/East-/South-Asians would just think of them as Arabs.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
I like this thread. And Mouthwash. It's so cute when he plays 'Me Against The World'. <3
ParkCungHee
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Arthur was Brythonic, Arthur conquered the world. That was easy.
Tahuti
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Also, Manchus.
Their geographical position pre-disposed them to greatness.
sophie
Break My Heart
It's the notion that certain factors (be they geographic, demographic, cultural, technological, what have you) have determined the scope and flow of history from the outset. For example Jared Diamond argues for geographical determinism in Guns, Germs, and Steel by stating that the west-east axis of Europe, combined with the favorable Mediterranean climate predisposed it to dominate over the rest of the world.
Tahuti
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While I wouldn't argue for historical determinism, history is often a matter of odds (that is, odds that are near impossible to perceive). Many of the factors Diamond listed as reasons for Western dominance could arguably have increased the odds of Western dominance by a significant margin, in the same way any society that is physically deprived of food will starve en masse, no matter the course of agency. However, it more often than not boils down to agency: Societies and individuals may response to technological progress with enthausiasism causing a technology boom, but it may also backlash from it.
So while history flows from agency, it is fairly reasonable to say that are significant geographical, technological, psychological and natural limits to what agency can achieve. The Cornish may one day achieve World domination, but an extinct language that is completely forgotten will never become the world's most spoken language. The Determinism vs. Agency debate is a false dilemma since both are true to some extent. Only the most boneheaded Marxists would insist on the former, and the most boneheaded Libertarians on the latter.
Traitorfish
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Historians these days don't tend to think of structure and agency as absolutely opposed forces, but rather as mutually productive (e.g. geographical determinants are given meaning by how humans navigate that geography), so while it's true that "agency v. determination" is something of a false dilemma, it's not as simple as saying that "they're both true".
There's some, as KG and TF state. Diamond's macro-history is actually somewhat decent; it's when he attempts to use his overall points - the big one being that immunities to illnesses that Eurasians had meant that when they contacted the Americans the latter would suffer catastrophically - to describe how things actually happened - ie, the Eurasians were destined to conquer the Meso-Americans for this reason - that it fails. Certain geographical and cultural phenomena can lend themselves to certain advantages; steppe-nomads are obviously going to make splendid cavalry. But unless you combine that with contingent events and agency, it doesn't amount to much.
I remember reading Eric Evans making the excellent point that while an historian can look at past events and come up with trends, he can't make laws about the progress of history. You can say, for example, that the trend in world government is away from religiously-backed monarchy and towards democracy, but you can't turn this into a law which says that it will always be that way.
By the same logic, the poor farmers of the southern USA, living hard, outdoor lives and used to using firearms, should have made far better infantry than northern city-dwellers.
By the same logic, the poor farmers of the southern USA, living hard, outdoor lives and used to using firearms, should have made far better infantry than northern city-dwellers.
Phrossack
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Pretty much all steppe peoples from the breeding of riding horses to the 20th century produced lots of excellent cavalry. Mongols, Oghuz, Kypchaks, Tatars, Huns, Pechenegs, Kara-Khitai, Kazakhs... the list goes on. They learned to ride shortly after learning to walk, they rode most days if not every day until they die, and rode when doing their livelihoods of herding, hunting, and raiding. They were accustomed to killing animals daily, herding flocks of sheep (not unlike poorly trained infantry blocks), archery from horseback, and above all, riding. The steppe is poor in resources, the "sown" or settled peoples were comparatively rich and most of them are not accustomed to fighting, and the nomads raided as a way of life. It's no surprise that steppe nomads routinely terrorized their sedentary neighbors until the 17th or 18th centuries, and were sought-after mercenary horsemen.
Similarly, peoples who spent a lot of time with the sea were often good sailors, like the Polynesians, Phoenicians, Portuguese, Greeks, Venetians, and Norse. And it's worth mentioning that the Confederate rebels often killed a lot more US troops than they lost, though this may be due to other factors like initially crappy US leadership and in any case a lot of Northerners were also rural agricultural gun-users.
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