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All through history, there is a ubiquitous theme. In life’s perpetual cycle, the Europeans always manage to overshadow the other civilizations. Why is it that the Europeans dominated the other races? Throughout Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond desperately attempts to answer Yali’s question asking “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” (Diamond, p. 14)? In the Epilogue, Diamond summarizes his answer to Yali’s question essentially attributing the environment for the success of the Europeans and discredits racial superiority of any sort (Diamond, p.405). Although other factors contributed to the rise of the European civilization, the environment was the main factor. Some specific factors falling under environment that affected the European civilization are geography, food production, and diffusion and population.
The geography of Europe contributed to its dominance over the other civilizations. The Chinese appeared to have it all. They had a rise of food production, the largest human population in the world, and developed writing and most of all they were unified country (Diamond, p.411). The European coastline was highly indented with five large peninsulas which all evolved independent languages, ethnic groups, and government. China has a much smoother coastline with land that is less scattered compared to Europe (Diamond, p.414). “Europe’s geographic balkanization” and discord among the states developed hundreds of competing, and ambitious states (Diamond, p.416). States were kept on their toes to try to out due what another state had previously accomplished because they knew “if one state did not pursue some particular innovation, another did, forcing neighboring states to do likewise or else be conquered or left economically behind” (Diamond, p.416). China’s unification based on geography led to their demise. Their government isolated them from the outside world and rejected all imports including technologies leaving them dramatically underdeveloped in a world of technologies (Diamond, p.416).
Food production also affected Europe’s dominance over the other civilizations. As stated in chapter 18, “the former absence of food production in [the Americas] was due entirely to their local paucity of domesticable wild animals and plants, and to geographic and ecological barriers that prevented the crops and the few domestic animal species of other parts of the Americas from arriving (Diamond, p.356). Domestication of animals varied among the continents because of differences in continental areas and the Late Pleistocene extinctions.
In the first chapter of Guns, Diamond establishes two main arguments that will become crucial to his thesis later on in the book. First, he goes in depth about mass extermination and further extinction of large mammals that occurred in New Guinea and Australia which were important for food and domestication, and secondly he argues that all the first civilized peoples in the world each had the ability to out develop one another, but were hindered or helped by their environment.
In the first segment of his film series, Different but Equal, Basil Davidson sets out to disprove the fictitious and degrading assumptions about African civilization made by various Western scholars and explorers. Whether it is the notion that Africans are “savage and crude in nature” or the presumed inability of Africans to advance technologically, these stereotypes are damaging to the image and history of Africa. Although European Renaissance art depicts the races of white and black in equal dignity, there was a drastic shift of European attitudes toward Africa that placed Africans in a much lower standing than people of any other culture. The continent of Africa quickly became ravished by the inhuman slave trade and any traditional civilization
Diamond wrote this book to answer the question of a New Guinean politician, Yali. He asked “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.” Diamond set out to find the answer to this question, to find out why history unfolded like it did. Diamond credits the inequalities in history to differences in environments not biological differences as so many people like to say. Most of the advantages the Europeans had were a direct result of geography. The main points that Diamond attributes to European dominance are early plant and animal domestication and as a result of close contact to animals the deadliest germs were given to the Europeans. As result of its East-West axis the diffusion of food production, technologies, humans and ideas were easily spread throughout Europe. The axis mean that there were similar climatic, geographic, and disease conditions to migrants and no barriers. So anything that could be grown in one area was sure to quickly spread and thrive in the neighboring locations. Moreover, political administration, economic exchanges, incentive for exploration and conquest, and making information available to every individual were facilitated after the development of writing.
I first read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the Fall 2003 based on a recommendation from a friend. Many chapters of the book are truly fascinating, but I had criticisms of the book back then and hold even more now. Chief among these is the preponderance of analysis devoted to Papua New Guinea, as opposed to, say, an explanation of the greatly disparate levels of wealth and development among Eurasian nations. I will therefore attempt to confine this review on the "meat and potatoes" of his book: the dramatic Spanish conquest of the Incas; the impact of continental geography on food production; and finally, the origins of the Eurasian development of guns, germs, and steel. In terms of structure, I will first summarize the book's arguments, then critically assess the book's evidentiary base, and conclude with an analysis of how Guns, Germs, and Steel ultimately helps to address the wealth question.
In Jared Diamond’s excerpt from his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he puts forward the historical narrative of how human evolution progresses at varying rates for different cultures due solely to the particular geographic region that people assimilate from. Diamond supports this thesis with specific evidence on the importance of food production, emphasizing that food is the main ingredient needed for a population to experience progress and growth, enabling that culture to expand around the world. I agree with Diamond’s dissertation and find it compelling due to his logical evidence and ethos on the topic.
I believe that the environment deiced whether a society will or will not have technology, militaristic and farming abilities imbedded within the society. That will give an advantage so that one society is better equipped than others.
The Chinese empire had once been one of the greatest and most powerful empires in the world. Before the 19th century, China had a large population and was ruled by families or dynasties. It was considered technologically advanced as China had a history of many miraculous inventions, such as: writing, magnetic compasses, movable sails, porcelain, abacus and paper money. Although China was isolated from the rest of the world, it coped well on its own, and saw no need to begin trading with the west, (as Lord McCartney proposed in 1793), since it was a self-sufficient nation. At that particular time, the Chinese empire was still able to exclude the ‘barbarians’, thus forcing them to only trade at one port. However, China soon took a turn for the worst as important ...
For several centuries the Europeans were always trying to have the best of the best in their country. Because they were so greedy they went of on several voyages to trade and gain those products they desired like silk, porcelain, tea, and lacquer-ware. With this the Europeans were always trying to out due and impress the Chinese with their clocks and their scientific gadgets. But they were never impressed, the Chinese always believed they were better and never wanted much to do with the Europeans. The Chinese were always very advanced in every skill; they believed that they had all that they needed to be a strong nation.
Over time concepts of ‘Race’, defined as a distinct group with a common linage, and ‘Primitive’ which pertains to the beginning or origin, , have been inextricably linked with the perception of Africa. The confusion of the two in the minds of people at the end of the 19th centaury, and some of the 20th, caused a sense of superiority amongst the ‘White Races’ that affected every aspect of their interaction with ‘the Black’. The ‘Civilisation’ of Africa by conquest and force was justified by these views.
“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples ' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves” (Jared Diamond). In the book Guns Germs and Steel he accounted a conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician that had asked “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?”. Diamond tries to answer this by describing the difference in use of government throughout history by bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
chapter 11 is the first in Part 3, which is entitled "From food to guns, germs, and steel". Earlier chapters traced how food production rose up is a few areas and spread, at different rates, to other places. This Part begins to show how this change in food production led to the Eurasians getting the guns, germs and steel, which, in turn, led to the answer to Yali's question about why they had all the 'stuff'.
The Great Divergence is term used to portray the gradual shift of dominance that Europe gained by establishing itself as the most powerful world civilization by the 19th century. While a case could be made that the Great Divergence occurred because of the pre-eminence of Europe and Britain, as well as their supposed superiority in invention and innovation above anywhere else in the world, this argument is flawed. A more compelling argument would be to state that it was rather through the geographical advantages that Europe obtained that lead it into eventually becoming the most powerful civilization after 1500 A.D., as this essay will strive to demonstrate.
Jared Diamond’s theory of “Guns, Germs and Steel” accounting for global inequalities is a concept which has raised many conspiracies over the years of publication. Professor Diamond’s theory answers a significantly complex question with simple answer; the reasons which ‘history unfolded differently on different continents1’ as the result of the primary basis of geography and climate. It is an interesting and arguably true notion, which agrees greatly with the facts of history, including the Australian context during 1888 to 1900. The thesis is associated to European technological superiority over the Aborigines who lived a balanced lifestyle and did not require advancement in any regards. It is therefore important to discuss the guns, germs
Europe has had one of the strongest influences on the world. Many languages that are spoken throughout the world originate from Europe. It all started way back before 1500, when the Europeans began to colonize many parts of the world. In the book “Ecological Imperialism”, Alfred Crosby talks about many of the different civilizations that have occurred throughout the world. Crosby, however, mostly focuses on how much Europe had a direct impact on the rest of the world by basically saying that Europe was one of the most dominant forces that the world had ever seen.
Africa’s struggle to maintain their sovereignty amidst the encroaching Europeans is as much a psychological battle as it is an economic and political one. The spillover effects the system of racial superiority had on the African continent fractured ...