Re: Jared Diamond

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

CB: I'm a Euro-peripheralist. I think you gotta leave culture in there, and
say that it was European culture's moral _inferiority_ ( not superiority)
coupled with the unfortunate coincidence  of technological, and derivatively
military, superiority that led to Europeans conquering the Western
Hemisphere and the rest of the world , essentially. Diamond's approach
sounds a little too much like "The Environment made the Europeans do it",
i.e. conquer the world. Recall, as I am sure Diamond does, that the Chinese
had gunpowder first , and for culturally superior reasons did not set about
to militarily conquer the world.
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JD: Diamond doesn't say that the "environment made the Europeans do it." Rather, it's a matter of the environment creating the creation of medical immunities, technologies, and organizational forms that _allowed_ the Europeans to do so. But, strictly speaking, in Diamond's theory, it's not "Europe" that's central. Rather, it's Eurasia, north of the Himalayas, which includes Siberia and China. The fact that Western Europe beat China seems to be a matter of luck in his story.

I don't know how anyone can say that any ethnic group has a culture that is inferior than others. Almost all cultures with armies have tried to conquer others.