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I would like to open up a dissucssion of Jared Diamond's book. I won't say anything (about the book) in this first post, since I would like to hear what everyone has to say first.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
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quote:Originally posted by youngnapoleon: I would like to open up a dissucssion of Jared Diamond's book. I won't say anything (about the book) in this first post, since I would like to hear what everyone has to say first.
Not that I don't trust you but, it's generally poor form to setup a thread this way. It leads people to believe you are trying to get help with homework.
Why does first volunteering your own perspective feel like a bad idea to you?
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I seem to recall another thread about this book long ago. That might be helpful to you as well.
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My first post on Hatrack was about the film on this that was aired after I read OSC's review of the book. But I never got around to either reading the book or watching the documntary on TV.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by youngnapoleon: I would like to open up a dissucssion of Jared Diamond's book. I won't say anything (about the book) in this first post, since I would like to hear what everyone has to say first.
Not that I don't trust you but, it's generally poor form to setup a thread this way. It leads people to believe you are trying to get help with homework.
Why does first volunteering your own perspective feel like a bad idea to you?
I am sorry that it seemed that way, I am in middle school, and I wish we would talk about his book in school . I read about half of it (I didn't finish it, although I would have liked to), and I agreed with some of the pints he put out, that Europe did not rise due to genetic or racial superiority. However, I think his arguements did have some flaws:
1) China and other Asian nations were not necessarily (I believe he used this phrase) "conducive to large isolated empires". I recently read a good essay by Theodore F. Cook Jr. on the subject of a possible Chinese "Age of Discovery", which was far from impossible. China had fleets that sailed to Madagascar and Mozambique, and possibly America. In Zhang He they had the easy equivalent of Vasco de Gama or Henry the Navigator, an ambitious emperor in Zhu Di, and the world's largest and best equipped navy in the beginning of the 15th century. In fact, the Ming navy was suited perfectly suited for colonization and expansion, with "floating fortresses" ready to bombard any stubborn natives, troop transports, provison ships, freshwater transports, and smaller, lighter, ships to chase down pirates. In 1402, a fleet was assembled to explore the Indian Ocean. I will continue and post again tomorrow, but I have to go.
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That's a good essay by Cook Jr. (if its the one I'm thinking of), and I agree for the most part, but I think Diamond's point is that while Zhang He could have initiated a Chinese "Age of Discovery" the fact of the matter is that he didn't. The Chinese empire had this vast fleet, but never used it. Why? Because they forgot it was there? I haven't read Guns Germs and Steel in quite a long time so I won't try to rehash Diamond's arguments, but it seems to me that Diamond comes to this conclusion at least partly because of the way the story turned out. By rights China's "Treasure Fleets" should have wiped the floor with a piddly little fleet like de Gama's, but they didn't and there must be a reason, which Diamond investigates.
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As a point of interest, de Gama's fleet managed to fall apart from plain wood rotting; the ships literally disintegrated. No hostile native empires required. But it's worth asking whether this is the relevant metric. Fleets at the level of technology de Gama had didn't conquer India, either; that was 200 years later.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr Strangelove: That's a good essay by Cook Jr. (if its the one I'm thinking of), and I agree for the most part, but I think Diamond's point is that while Zhang He could have initiated a Chinese "Age of Discovery" the fact of the matter is that he didn't. The Chinese empire had this vast fleet, but never used it. Why? Because they forgot it was there? I haven't read Guns Germs and Steel in quite a long time so I won't try to rehash Diamond's arguments, but it seems to me that Diamond comes to this conclusion at least partly because of the way the story turned out. By rights China's "Treasure Fleets" should have wiped the floor with a piddly little fleet like de Gama's, but they didn't and there must be a reason, which Diamond investigates.
Actually, the fleets were very active between 1408 and 1433, after which they lost support. This happened for several reasons. The fleets were expensive, a bolt of lighting struck the palace after a parade in honor of the ships that caused Zhu Di to wonder if the fleets had put the world out of balance, and the Mongols started getting uppity north of the border. Zhu Di died, and was replaced by his son Zhu Gaozhi, who reversed many of his father's policies. He in turn was quickly replaced by Zhu Zhanji, who actually launched a large expedition. However, Confucian ministers, distrustful of Zheng He, convinced Zhu Zhanji to instead spend money on agriculture. The Mongol threat grew, and the army needed money. After that, China turned inward, issuing a number of decrees that severely cut back on naval spending. Merchants fled the coast, the grand treasure fleets rotted, and outright xenophobia took over. If China continued the voyages after Zheng He's death in 1433, and met a much weaker Portugese fleet, it is unlikely the Europeans would have tried to colonize Asia, Africa, and America. China would have spent more on sea voyages and prehaps colonization, seeing the obvious rewards. Trade and science would boom, maybe allowing more funds in general. The Ming army would actually be able to handle natives quite easily, since they used gunpowder weapons. China was not adverse to trade, the Silk Road is an obvious example of that.
I also disagree with Mr. Diamond on some of his points about European geography. European countries with similar latitudes often have very diffrent climates, like Holland and Poland. England was the domiant empire, and I think (I admit I am not 100% sure) England imported a lot of food, as opposed to being an agricultural society.
Also, being seperate is obviously not an advantage historically. In Japan, There were plenty of small independent states. In the American Civil War, the rebels were divided. Germany was composed of hundreds of principalities, which were insigificant until Bismarck unifed them. In a unifed society like China there were obvious advantages over Europe that I don't think I need to name.
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I think you're missing my point. I'm well aware that the fleets were active for a time, but the fact of the matter is that they did not achieve the same results as the European fleets (and point taken, KoM - it did take the European's a while ). You're playing with counterfactuals, and while they can be fun, if you want to come to any sort of meaningful conclusion you must start with what did happen, not what could have happened, and go from there. The fleets were active and clearly had the capacity to be active and productive, and yet they were never put to their full use. Why? You gave some good reasons, Diamond gives some deeper reasons.
I think Diamond's whole point is that all of the reasons you mentioned for the Chinese fleets losing support happened not just randomly, but because of deeper causative factors. As I said, I'm not entirely convinced by his arguments either. Again, it's been a long time since I've read it, but I seem to remember distrusting the vague sense of environmental determinism coming from him.
What do you think about the notion that the Reconquista was the driving force behind European exploration and expansion? Was there ever such a confluence of ideological, economical, and military interests in the East that would drive them to expand?
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As I recall, Diamond's argument is this: Because China was united and centralised, the Emperor (or his government, if you prefer) was a single point of failure. The Emperor gave orders for resources to be moved into the army, and boom, the navy is gone. If, say, the king of Spain had done that, France, England, Portugal, and Holland would have jumped into the resulting power vacuum at sea. Indeed, this happened several times to France: They'd have a period of peace, a competent ministry would build up the navy to challenge Britain in the next war, and then the war would start and they'd find that, dangit, they needed more soldiers or they were going to lose the land war in Germany/Italy/the Low Countries. The one time France and Britain fought it out only at sea, without France engaged on land, it did not go well for Britain.
Further (I'm not sure whether Diamond makes this argument), China was pretty self-sufficient. It could do without trade goods from the rest of the world. Now, of course European nations could do so as well, if they wanted to run their economies at the tech level of 1200. But had they done so, they would have been instantly conquered by someone with the brains to take advantage of gains from specialisation and trade. Autarky makes you poor; rich nations did better in war; China could afford to be autarkic because it had no nearby peer competitors, while Europeans could not.
A test of this latter theory would be to see whether China's half-vassal tributary states did a lot of trading. If they did, that may account for their ability to stay semi-independent in the face of China's enormous size. It would be especially interesting to test whether states closer to China (or otherwise less defensivel) do more trading.
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Diamond's main point in that book was that environment is a far larger reason for success than most other factors. particularity climate. If your climate can support a population of large domestic animals you have a much greater chance of surviving as a culture.
He attacks the notion that the reason European culture spread all over the world was because it was superior to other, and argues that some populations had advantages based on climate and large domestic animals that the other cultures lacked, or were at least not as strong as the European's background was.
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quote:The entire book in five hundred words or less: Cultures dominated other cultures mainly by means of a few variables: superior weapons, immunity to diseases, and on a broader scale technological and societal advancements unrelated to weapons. There are two important factors that set the stage for these conquests. Plant domestication and animal domestication.
Plants: Every crop has attributes that make it either easier or harder to domesticate. Peoples who happened to live in areas with crops that were easier to domesticate were able to switch from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to a more sedentary lifestyle. This allowed the birth rate to increase for a few reasons
1)hunter gatherers have a limitation on how many young children can be carried over long distances
2)the increase in food production associated with farming allowed populations to support more offspring
Animals: Similarly, animals have certain criteria that lend them be easier or harder to domesticate. Those peoples who happened to have domesticatable animals around were thus able to domesticate them. This not only provided populations with a valuable food source, but a valuable source of work energy to assist in agriculture.
This combination of plant and animal domestication directly led to the following advantages by means of allowing a sedentary lifestyle with a surplus of food
1)societies were able to support individuals not engaged in the struggle to find food. This includes examples such as government and bureaucracy, a military, and inventors
2)societies were able to support highly dense populations
3)due to a combination of issues regarding the sanitary nature of sedentary dense populations, as well as a close proximity to animals, early societies to adopt these lifestyles were prone to many diseases brought on by these afore mentioned things. While initially devastating this gave these people’s advantages in the future by creating populations genetically immune to many diseases.
These conditions led to an environment fruitful to technological advancement, including writing, transportation, and weaponry.
One last important aspect is the means by which information and materials were able to spread. This is the geographical axis that continents lie on. Information traveled quickly through Eurasia, but slowly or not at all in Africa and North and South America. This is because Eurasia runs on a East-West axis, where climate, day length, and seasons were similar, allowing for crops to flourish and ideas to spread easily. Geographical conditions in other continents created an impediment to materials and information traveling easily both due to the survivability of crops, as well as the ease of trade and travel between groups of people.
All these factors combine to explain much of human history and development, a premium example of which is how Europeans were able to develop large boats to travel to the Americas to(instead of visa versa), accompanied by horses and weapons to decimate the native American peoples, as well as infect large amounts of those same people with diseases which the Europeans were mostly immune to but which also decimated native populations(due to their lack of domesticated animals this transfer occurred in only one direction).
The latter half of the book focuses on particular cultures and Diamond's theories as applied to their histories.
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The book does a pretty good job of explaining why European countries were able to conquer America and Oceania. It is reasonable on explaining why Middle Eastern powers and China, who in theory had the same advantages the Europeans did, fell behind. It has a real problem when it comes to India; none of the explanations that apply to the Middle East and China can be made to fit India.
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Thanks all. I think from the summaries, particularly KoM's, it doesn't sound remarkably different from the common wisdom (or one of them anyways) on Zheng He's fleet. But it sounds in general, interesting anyways.
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The book was great. I agree with many of his arguments and found it explained things nicely. However, the one area that I don't remember his addressing was the impact of philosophy or cultural paradigms on the rise of civilization (and their technologies and uses in particular). IMO, that cannot be ignored.
Societies that were influenced by the Greek concept of "science"- logical deduction, classification, research and experimentation- were more prone to use newly discovered (or recently imported) technologies and ideas in novel ways. For example, Gunpowder in weaponry, the compass, the printing press, paper, and so on. James Burke (in Connections at about 4:35 in) argued that that was because of the holistic view of the world (and their manner of studying that world) that the Chinese had. In "The Day the Universe Changed (here at about 6:00 in and continued here) he argued that that was why the Greeks could take geometry from the Egyptians and then bring it to a whole other level. And geometric analysis and proof, or rather the methodology of that, could be used for everything with powerful results (or it might be the other way around. Could be a chicken or egg situation- methodology already discovered applied to geometry.)
The point being, it is inarguable that cultural paradigms and beliefs would affect how quickly new knowledge is attained, used, and expanded on. We have 3 centers of civilization following the route outlined in GGaS. But the Chinese and the Indus valley civilizations, while extraordinary in their advancements (I mean, look at all the Chinese invented), do not proceed in the same way those civilizations that adopted that Greek paradigm did. (And, of course, I would argue that the humanistic age of reason- of which our modern age is a direct result- occurred because of both the casting off of church thought control culminating in the reformation and the Renaissance and it's rediscovery of Greco-Roman beliefs that universe and it's laws were knowable, and the mental tools for examining and using the world and the subsequent discoveries they continued to make.) I would argue the differences were partly (if not largely) due to their world-views. Things like the cyclical reincarnation (with it's inherent acceptance of life and its social positions as karmic justice), strong authoritarian governments, and idealogical systems that did not promote the idea that the material world was comprehensible- able to be broken down into it's parts and understood (what I might call the discretization of the universe and it's laws)- had to also play a role.
Of course, I am not ignoring the many discoveries and inventions made in those civilizations. But the level to which the were used, the number of discoveries made, and the novel uses they were put to differs drastically.
And I would also add that a holistic methodology to studying the universe is also necessary. Complex adaptive systems (ecological, cultural, neurological, economic, etc) must be studied and analyzed as a whole and resist being broken down- or rather, breaking them down only tells so much, since it's the system of how things are working together that matters.
If you liked GGaS, I would also recommend The Human Web which attempts to show the development and strengthening of connections within tribes (interestingly, in which music and dance played a part), how they connected up to form larger and larger webs, and how all of this facilitated human advancement and technological growth and created the modern world. Fascinating book.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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IanO, I have just started reading the book so I am not fully versed in it but so far I get the impression that he is leaving those things out because they are secondary causes. The book is about root causes. Everyone knows that Greco-Roman culture was a major influence on our world already. He is trying to explain why the Greeks and Romans did it before anyone else.
He isn't trying to explain the "impact of philosophy or cultural paradigms" but instead why they appeared where they did in their respective form.
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ahh, but Indus valley and Chinese civilizations where roughly contemporaneous with Sumerian (with its derivative civs) and Egyptian cultures. And they stayed roughly at the same level throughout that period. But it was Greek thought and later Roman efficiency and practical application that catapulted the region of southern Europe forward. And of course, the proximity to northern Europe and a Roman empire that seeded those areas with these fertile and practical ideas is what made western Europe the natural heirs to that tradition. Obviously, othet factors and peoples were involved including the Byzantine empire, the Ottoman, the barbarian invasions, and so on.
But the point is, Western Europe ran further and expanded farther than those others. It seems to me that Diamond's arguments only gets you to Fertile crescent, Chinese, and Indus valley civs. They don't explain western European dominance/advancement over, which was also part of Yali's question he was trying to answer. And cultural paradigms must play some role in that.
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Diamond is not the first person to claim some form of geographic determinism in history. There are also historians who will point to large coal deposits existing in most of the wealthier industrial nations, including China for that matter, that lead to certain advantages.
The problem with geographic determinism and Marxist history is simply that it tries to one shot why things worked out the way they did. The problem is that Diamond overlooks a lot of rather important early history. Such as, why did the Mongolians never run through Europe, for that matter why did the Islamic empire not crush right on trough Spain etc. Not to mention the fact that Diamond, as many modern historians do, takes a very basic look at military history. Which is certainly fine for some studies, but not something on the grand stage of global history.
Europe had/has many advantages, geographically and otherwise, but Diamond has a lot of hindsight bias in his work, not to mention some serious biases as far as anthropology goes.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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Black Fox, thank you for bringing those points to the table, and actually I was going to use one in my next post, the Mongolian invasion of Europe. The Mongols could have easily ran wild through Europe, and sent it back to the Stone Age. They did not only because of complications in the line of sucession, causing the Mongols to return home. The main problem I found in Mr. Diamond's arguements was that it ignored the ability of single people and events to shape history. I would point to the siege of Vienna in 1529 in this case. Had the Ottomans laid sucessful siege to Vienna, which they probably could have without the rain that caused them to only bring light siege weapons, they would have shaken Europe badly at the least
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Well, I have read some very well written military histories on why the Mongolians did not try and invade Europe as well as why they would have been unsuccessful. Mainly it was the fact that Western Europe was insanely well fortified, but not in a centralized manner. However, that is subject for another day.
That and the Turks are another matter. Many people today take an anachronistic view of the Turks and tend to forget that by the time of the siege of Vienna not all of the European powers were so sad to see Charles V lose power. Not to mention I believe it was Charles the V who said he spoke French at home, Spanish at court, and German to his horse. He was not nearly as worried about his eastern holdings, but I digress.
Over many hundreds of years Europeans became extremely proficient at killing people, more so than anyone else on the planet. Take that as a good thing or a negative thing.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Black Fox: Over many hundreds of years Europeans became extremely proficient at killing people, more so than anyone else on the planet. Take that as a good thing or a negative thing.
Exactly!
Hiram Maxim was an inventor and tinkerer looking to make some money:
Maxim was reported to have said: "In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.
And so he did. He invented the Maxim gun. The first portable, essentially modern machine gun used by all sides to such efficiency in WWI.
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I haven't had time to post fully until now, so I think my arguements weren't comphrehensive enough. China didn't expand, and the book asks why it (and everyone else) didn't. China found riches in the far away places hat Zheng He's fleet traveled to, and glory is always a motivator. While they had no religous motivation to expand, money usually enough . I think many westerners (possibly including Mr. Diamond) somewhat stereotypicaly think that China is inward focused. The Silk Road is one obvious example that China has never been adverse to trade. Historically (before 1433 at least) China has had a strong class of merchants and sailors. China didn't need to go to America or Africa, it could have expanded in it's own sphere, maybe controlling an empire like the Japanese empire C. 1942. Another thing I have always wondered about is what lies behind the Chinese inferiority in technology? The Chinese had to fight the Mongols, which would be cause to reasarch military technology, and China invented many very important things (gunpowder weapons, the compass, paper, etc.). It seems to me that this was primarily because of a cultural diffrence between the East and West, because of ancient traditions in both cultures. Also, I don't see why India or Egypt never became great powers, since none of Mr. Diamond's explanations fit them.
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And I think that's where specific cultural paradigms then provide the advantage. To be honest, until I came to that realization, Diamond's arguments made me wonder why western European hegemony had occurred, as opposed to any of the others who had followed his model so successfully (China, Indus Valley, Fertile Crescent, Inca, Maya, etc). It seemed like they only got so far (though it was a quite a bit ahead of traditional hunter-gatherer/subsistence farming societies). There was a gap in Diamond's arguments. They got you only to that point.
It was only when I was remembering and then researching the specific influences of our modern era (sort of in rebuttal to the cherry-picked data and ridiculous myopic arguments of "the 5000 Year Leap" being so touted and haled by Glen Beck and many of my fellow co-workers) that I realized how cultural paradigm will actually govern how we think and interact with and learn about the world and that can bestow a further advantage above that of domesticable plants and animals and their affect on population density, specialization, and government.
The "Renaissance Man" was the epitome of western thinking and that kind of methodology is what gave birth to scientific rationalism, the scientific method, objectivity, etc, all of which spilled over into government, religion, philosophy, art, literature, architecture, etc, and thus led to our modern age. And yet that epitome was distilled and enhanced version of Greco-Roman thought (as the Romans were the quintessential practical appliers and expanders of Greek science).
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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A point to consider: China did expand. Very successfully. Han Chinese are today found in a much wider range than they originally occupied; they drove off or assimilated any number of other ethnicities. Also, China was always striving to vassalise or extract tribute from Korea, Tibet, Vietnam, and the other peripheral states. I suggest that China expanded, overland, to the point where muskets, horse-born couriers, and other premodern expedients no longer sufficed to maintain central authority; then it spent the next few hundred years oscillating about that equilibrium, until Europeans with superior firepower sent it into a death spiral from which it is only now recovering. Observe that China is currently occupying Tibet, is the only supporter of the North Korean regime, has considerable influence in Vietnam, and so on. It remains to be seen whether modern methods of central control will enable China to expand beyond its previous equilibrium point, or conversely whether modern weaponry favours the defense sufficiently that the peripheral states can maintain their independence. I expect we'll see an alliance between Japan, Russia, and India to contain the Chinese; of course each of those states has their own problems, so it may not work. But the main point here is that the statement "China did not expand" is just not correct. Modern China did not spring full-blown from the brow of Jupiter occupying its current area. Like Russia, it did a lot of expansion. It's just rather far in the past, being roughly contemporaneous with the expansion of the Roman Empire. Explaining why China didn't expand is much like explaining why Rome didn't expand: Barking up completely the wrong tree. The interesting question is rather why China was able to recover from its occasional collapses and Rome wasn't.
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It all depends on what do you call "China". During Europe's New World period it was the Ming Dynasty that ruled China. Also, if you take a look at a map you will notice that China expanded until it hit major mountain ranges, Siberia, and Tropical rain-forests to the South.
The Yuan Dynasty, which was Mongolian, united the disparate parts of "China" and the Ming Dynasty basically flipped out the Mongolian rulers and held onto most of the land. The Qing Dynasty, which was the most successful was Manchurian.
Also once the Chinese no longer had to deal with serious Mongolian aggressions there were no great competitors in the region until much later in history. The Eastern Roman Empire had to deal with the Sassanid Empire, which in many ways was just as powerful as Rome, if not more so. The Sassanid were really just replaced by the Islamic Empire, which also helped to keep China "boxed in", not to mention basically defeat every neighboring nation in battle except the E. Roman Empire.
King Of Men, Rome's collapse is a Western European invention. The Eastern Roman Empire, which had become the focal point of the Roman Empire long before the Western Roman Empire fell apart, continued on for another thousand plus years. Especially when you consider that in many ways the Ottoman Empire is just a Turkic Eastern Roman Empire. The name of the "Byzantine Empire" is a complete invention, the Eastern Romans never referred to themselves as that. It was Western European politics and the Great Schism that led to Western Europeans to refer to them as "The Greek Empire." ( for this reason the Romanovs and the Russians considered themselves the new Roman Empire as they continued on the Orthodox tradition)
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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Also part of the problem that we have is we try to identify with kingdoms of old with the thought of nations and states that we have today, that really do not fit most of these periods. For example, in many ways the Sassanid empire, and the Parthinians before them, are Hellenistic kingdoms.
To say India never created any great kingdoms or empires would be rather incorrect. That and we have an Indian political science professor who talked during my Nationalism honor's seminar and said the two things keeping India together was Ghandi's notion that all the different cultures in British India had a certain similarity ( not enough to be a single nationality ) and the love for cricket. You have the Mughal Empire, which was a major player for a period of time.
Why did Egypt not become a great power??? Egypt was a major power during many reigns. Not only with the Egyptian Empire of old, but it was a serious power under the Romans, Islamic Empire, Mamluks etc.
Do not fall sway under the evils of anachronism, which 99.9% of us do.
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China is an island. It is surrounded by mountains and jungles, into which it has been historicaly unable to expand. Since it never rebuilt it's navy, Chinese expansion was impossible. While this does support Mr. Diamond's point, on the other hand China could have expanded by sea.
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Like they did with Japan. The thing is even with European discovery of the "New World" there was no real effective exploitation of the majority of the New World until hundreds of year later.
Even with a navy the sea voyage from China to the western coast of Americas is quite a ways in the Pacific. Even if they reached the West Coast with a large navy they would then need to hold ground there.
Then there is the question of course of the economic costs, why would China want to put a bunch of people in the Americas? Europeans did it as there were a great deal of "exotic" plants ( sugar cane, eventually tobacco, etc.) that only grew in a few small locations in Europe, but were in high demand across the continent. This and the Europeans had no access to great quantities of Gold and Silver with which to buy wonderful eastern products. This lack of Gold and Silver i actually probably/was the real push for explorers. It is why the Portuguese went sailing around Africa looking for Priester John etc.
As a small side conversation, Chinese exports actually led to a silver drain of sorts, that is China became a huge hole for silver from Japan, eventually Mexico by way of Spain, and the rest of the world really. Led to a surge of inflation back in the day that played havoc with the world's economy.
That and I am in the camp that the exploitation of the New World was not even required for European success. The exploitation of the East Indies was in many ways more lucrative then the West and introduced many important products, like cotton textiles, to the West that would be important in jump starting the industrial revolution. By not having the New World it would have simply pushed European interests into the East.
I could go on and on, but what you should really do is just take a course on modern world history at any "good" university and you will have lots of time to chit chat over such issues.
However, I am a big believer in the fact that Western military prowess and application of reason/science to warfare is what really propelled the West into the forefront on the world scene. This is not a beloved position in the realm of academia as military history as a whole tends to be looked down upon by most universities. It also does not help by what many people publish as "military history", which end up being something like action-adventure novels inspired by history.
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quote:However, I am a big believer in the fact that Western military prowess and application of reason/science to warfare is what really propelled the West into the forefront on the world scene.
This, I think is the point. The combination of REAL science (with all the social/mental infrastructure necessary for it's incremental development) and warfare is what led to Western European hegemony.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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I think you are missing the point, a bit. According to Diamond, part of the reason WE was able to produce such armies, and such tek, was because of underlying benefits given to them by having such a strong agricultural and large beasts of burden. That allowed for larger populations, as well as time for people to expand the sciences, and adapt science from other cultures.
Diamond actually makes a huge point of NOT saying WE'c culture is a "better" one, and he directly refutes the idea that WE was destined to become dominant because of any special built in superiority.
He never said culture didn't play a part, but he wanted to focus on other things, things he felt were being neglected.
You know, smallpox killed far more American Indians than bullets did. It's hard to measure the impact of a huge number of diseases that have swept though the world, each one of them taking the old and young. Some cultures never recovered, I am sure. And domestication of large beasts, as well as living in cramped quarters, ultimately gave WE and HUGE edge in immunity.
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I don't think anyone said it was "better" or "superior" in some sort of moral sense.
But the arguments Diamond uses about what gives certain areas an edge (domesticable crops, domesticable animals, the resultant agricultural lifestyle, immunity to deadly diseases, food abundance, a dominant east-west axis, etc) only serves to explain the formation of civilizations in the fertile crescent, the Indus valley, China, and those few in central and south America (obviously, where the e-w axis argument doesn't apply).
They do not explain WHY it was WESTERN Europe (as opposed to those other equally advanced civs that also benefited from those things) which became the worldwide dominant force (for better or for worse). Certainly not race genetics (which isn't actually anything). Certainly not moral superiority or anything stupid like that.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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. I read about half of it (I didn't finish it, although I would have liked to), and I agreed with some of the pints he put out, that Europe did not rise due to genetic or racial superiority. However, I think his arguements did have some flaws:![[Wink]](wink.gif)
