Jared Diamond's 1997 classic non-fiction book is a study of history, geography, anthropology, and other scientific disciplines. It is a readable, highly informative work that won a Pulitzer Prize and has proven very popular in its field over the past twenty years.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, attempts to answer the question of why the European powers, or rather the Western World, came to power rather than Asian, African, or South American societies. He suggests this notion was brought to him by a New Guinean friend who asked why it was the European nations who conquered and colonized, and not, for example, Oceanic civilizations. "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Elsewhere he asks why Spain invaded South America instead of the Mayans invading Spain.
His central theory is this: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." He painstakingly makes the point that societies took different paths for four reasons:
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, attempts to answer the question of why the European powers, or rather the Western World, came to power rather than Asian, African, or South American societies. He suggests this notion was brought to him by a New Guinean friend who asked why it was the European nations who conquered and colonized, and not, for example, Oceanic civilizations. "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Elsewhere he asks why Spain invaded South America instead of the Mayans invading Spain.
His central theory is this: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." He painstakingly makes the point that societies took different paths for four reasons:
- The native crops and animals in each region.
- The orientation of continental axis, which hinders or promotes the diffusion of agriculture.
- Transfer of knowledge.
- Population density.
While it is true that European historians have often attempted to use racist theories to explain Western hegemony, at times Diamond seems to go to the opposite extreme. At the beginning of his book he seems eager to explain himself as different from previous generations and free from their racial prejudice. Throughout the book, he pours on the political correctness, which is at times excruciating. He makes outrageous racist statements about white people which are as bad as what you might expect to find in a more traditional "whites are superior and that's all you need to know" sort of study.
It is easy to see why this book earned so much respect. It is incredibly well-researched and does offer a fantastic explanation for why different societies took different paths. I've heard from an anthropologist friend that political correctness is a curse throughout all anthropology these days, so I suppose you just have to suffer through that and accept it for what it is.
