Re: Re: guns, germs, steel

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I dont know if this is a work of "total genius" but it is certainly a
> masterful explanation for the differing patterns of development of
> the continents of the world. But what is so troubling for many in the
> left about this book is that it proves beyond a doubt that Africa's
> backwardness was a result of  its ecology - i.e., lack
> of domesticable animals among other things - and not some mythical
> "underdevelopment" process.

Diamond's argument is that ecology and distance explain Africans'
relatively poor command over technology as of 1500. The
underdevelopment comes later, with the triangle trade and its effect
on west Africa.

And this has always been the part of Diamond's argument that I have
had the most doubts about. East Africa seems to me at least to have
been part of the Eurasian ekumene--why else would the largest city on
the east African coast, the House of Peace, have a name from a
language whose heartland is two thousand miles north?

Brad DeLong