Re: guns, germs, steel

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam P. writes:
> I haven't read Diamond but his theory, if one can call it that, seems like
> a more sophistacted variant of the old Euro-centric theories that Europe
> advanced over the rest of the world because Africa and Asia lacked the
> physical resources necessary to build capitalist civilization e.g.
> tropical soils are inferior hence lower productivity agriculture, arid
> cultures require irrigation and such societies are necessarily stagnant.
> But other climates are not necessarrily inferior though they are different.

Yeah, but his work takes into account a hell of a lot of research that's
been done since the old theories were developed. It's more complete and
more sophisticated. Also, I don't see why a theory that points to the role
of geography is inherently Eurocentric. As I said in my original review,
Diamond makes a big effort not to be Eurocentric (though of course some
leaks in). The fact that his theory of the Eurasian conquest ends up being
similar to that of the rabbits taking over their ecological niche in
Australia (but much bloodier and nastier) does not make the conquerors look
very good.

> There seems nothing new about Diamond. William Mcneil in his *Plagues and
> Peoples* defends the idea that mass demographic disasters are the prime
> mover in social change. For example, he argues that the black plague
> diffused out of inner China into central Asia and finally into Western
> Europe. The mass die off created a labor shortage that greatly strengthed
> the hand of the the Eurpean yeomanry in their struggle against the upper
> classes.(Brenner?)

As I noted in my original review, Diamond is a synthesist. He cites Mcneil
and similar sources.

> Further, Diamond seems to fall into the trap of using China as a test case
> for a theory about Europe. In assessing why China and other societies
> lacked dynamism and failed to develop, he is offering a theory about
> Europe yet what makes China China and Africa Africa cannot be learned from
> a theory about Europe. These societies need to be explained in their own
> right as Mao (ReporT From Hunan) and Mariategui (Seven Theses on
> Peru)realized early on.

As I've said several times, he really doesn't spend much time on the issue
of why Europe beat China (since his emphasis is on why Eurasia as a whole
-- which for him includes North Africa -- beat the rest of the world). But
when he does, he tries to apply his more general theory, which is not
derived from studying Europe. Rather, it's from ecology, genetics, and
evolutionary biology, with some anthropology.  Also, he does study China.
However, as a Grand Synthesist, his results are probably seen as
superficial by those who are experts on China. As I noted, his story of
"why Europe won" isn't very satisfactory.

> As for defences against disease, that is a matter of natural selection and
> played one of the primary causal roles in the destruction and conquest of
> indigenous cultures by Europeans though the spread of diseases was more
> often unconscious than conscious. The Europeans didn't want to destroy the
> natives (which they ended up doing), they needed christian converts and
> cheap labor.

Diamond is conscious of the conscious effort to utilize the Native
Americans' lack of immunity to the "crowd diseases" of the Old World, as
with the use of smallpox-infected blankets. My reading suggests that he's
right that the results of the European invasion of the New World weren't
planned ahead of time. Not only didn't the Europeans not want to kill off a
potential slave labor force, but they shot themselves in the feet (in the
long run) by destroying infrastructure such as the Inca irrigation systems.

> On a more abstract level, Diamond's ideas bear a prima facie similarity to
> a type of historical materialism defended by Alan Carling
> built on an analogy to natural selection (i don't think actual natural
> selection plays a role in Carling) where societies with lower development
> of productive forces are selected out by societies with higher development
> of pf's through a variety of causal mechanisms like superior weapons. I
> wonder of Diamond has read Carling.

It's hard to tell, since Diamond doesn't have a bibliography, forcing us to
slog through a bibliographical essay. Diamond's theory is similar, but then
again, at least as you describe it, Carling's theory doesn't seem very
original.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine