FYI... (x-posted from H-ASEH)
Stefanie Rixecker
ECOFEM Coordinator
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 16:41:05 -0500
From: Dennis Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Drummond on Diamond _Guns, Germs and Steel_
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Send reply to: "American Society for Environmental History (H-NET List)"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
PUBLISHED [EMAIL PROTECTED] (August 1999)
Jared Diamond, _Guns, Germs and Steel - The Fates of Human Societies_. New
York and London, Norton, 1999. 480 pp. Tables, maps, photographs,
annotated bibliography, index. $14.95. (paper). ISBN 0-393-31755-2.
Reviewed for H-ASEH by Jose Drummond, Ph. D. ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Political Science Department, Universidade Federal Fluminense Niter�i, Rio
de Janeiro State, Brazil
Environmental History and the Clash of Civilizations
The availability of environmental history texts in Portuguese, for Brazilian
and other Portuguese-speaking readers, has improved only cautiously, despite
the fact that a few translated texts received critical and public acclaim.
Since 1989, at least five important titles were translated from English:
Warren Dean's _Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber_ and _With Broadax and
Firebrand_, Alfred Crosby�s _Ecological Imperialism_, Frederick Turner's
_Beyond Geography_, and John Perlin�s _A Forest Journey_. From the French
there was the translation of several texts by Fernand Braudel, the ranking
French historian of the Annales school, from whom many environmental
historians have taken inspiration. There are voids that could have already
been filled had there been more initiative by Brazilian publishers, such as
Donald Worster�s classic _Nature's Economy_, or William Cronon�s unique
_Nature's Metropolis_. The fact is that, since 1989, one good environmental
history book has been translated and published in Brazil about every two
years.
It is time for Brazilian publishers to take action once again, if not to
reduce the backlog, at least to keep up with the times. There is a new
English-language book in the field of environmental history deserving
translation, and it is a winner. The title is _Guns, Germs and Steel - The
Fate of Human Societies_, by Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the
UCLA School of Medicine, and ranking researcher of biological diversity. For
decades he has researched the distribution of plants and animals in New
Guinea and several islands and archipelagoes of the Pacific ocean, but this
is a book about, so to speak, the distribution of human societies on the
planet
The book won a Pulitzer prize in 1998. However, its best recommendation is
the boldness of its theme. Diamond seeks answer to an old and persistent
question: Why are there so many cultural, technological, economic and
civilizational differences between peoples spread on the different
continents, sub-continents and islands of the planet? His basic research
question can be put as: What happened in the last 11 to 13 thousand years
that made the human experience so varied from time to time, from place to
place, and even at the same time and the same place?
His basic answer is: Different human societies, despite a basically similar
potential to build civilizations, were strongly conditioned by natural
factors (climate, biology, geology, etc.) that did not always yield to their
cultural and technological capabilities. Diamond therefore gives
explanatory value to non-human and non-social factors in the discussion of
human and social differences. This has been, I believe, the most valuable
asset of the best of environmental history. Diamond works within a
framework of cultural relativism with which most historians and social
scientists can feel comfortable. He directly refutes any explanations based
solely on biological, racial or genetic differences. However, his
familiarity with the instruments of the natural sciences and with natural
processes enables him to argue selected natural facts as explanatory of
selected social facts. Diamond stretches this approach at least as much as
any other study that I know of, but what makes his contribution so
challenging and original is that he covers such a large period of
pre-history and history, for which supporting evidence is mostly
archeological and paleontological. He daringly combines evidence pulled
together by archeologists, anthropologists, historians, linguists,
climatologists, biologists, geographers, geologists, and so on, analyzing it
and reaching original conclusions and insights. One may not agree with
Diamond's answers, but it must be recognized that he makes all the questions
(including the "uncomfortable" ones) and provides his answers in a
systematic, serene manner.
The fact that originated the research contained in the book is worth being
mentioned in this review. In 1972, Yali, a native of New Guinea and a
friend of the author, asked him a question about a difference that he
perceived between the Europeans colonizers and New Guineans:: "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?" ("Cargo" is the generic
name that Yali and his people give to the paraphernalia that Europeans make
and carry with them everywhere - matches and watches, axes and umbrellas,
shoes and guns, etc.). Diamond did not have an answer, but since then he
engaged in a long series of "social" readings - anthropology, archeology,
history of civilizations, linguistics, technology, epidemiology. Combining
this with his training as a natural scientist, he spent almost 30 years
studying for and writing this book that can be classified as a "history of
human civilizations as modified by human factors". It is his belated but
substantial answer to Yali�s question.
This long, carefully presented and well-argued answer can be summarized in
the following manner: The peoples that developed systems of food production
(agriculture and domestication of animals) gained, over the last 11,000
years, an enormous advantage over those peoples that did not go beyond
systems of food collection (hunting, gathering and fishing). The first
learned how to produce much more "cargo" than the second. From a situation
of virtual similarity 11,000 years ago on all continents (inferred from
archeological evidence), some human groups started to differ markedly from
others and from their own predecessors. Food producers controlled and
expanded the productivity of plants and animals and created highly efficient
artificial systems, more productive and dependable than the natural systems
from which food collectors took their shares. Accordingly, the "cargoes" of
the first became much heavier. This change - to which archeologists and
historians gave the well-known name of "Neolithic revolution" - was for
Diamond a major divide in terms of the social, cultural, technological,
political and economic diversity of different branches of humanity over the
last six to eight thousand years.
Simply put, Diamond argues that raising plants and animals was the single
most important factor of the civilizational distinctions of the past and
present. The much more recent phenomena of industrialization and
urbanization, usually the object of deeper concern among environmentally
concerned researchers and citizens, are treated only in passing by Diamond
as derived from the birth and spread of food producing systems. Industries,
cities and services of the contemporary world also have a very irregular
distribution among peoples and continents of the contemporary world, but for
Diamond this distribution is ultimately explained by the much more ancient
revolution in food production. In other words, industrialization followed
the steps of food production. The specific "industrial cargoes" only added
to the already fatter cargoes of food producers.
In this part of his discussion, Diamond's book can be read in comparison
with a series of famous books, such as David S. Landes� _The Wealth and
Poverty of Nations_, Samuel P. Huntington�s _The Clash of Civilizations and
the Remaking of the World Order_, and even Alvin Toffler�s _The Third Wave_.
All of them discuss the differences among peoples, although they focus much
more on the modern and contemporary world. Another book that can be
compared with Diamond's is Louis Mumford�s classic _Techniques and
Civilization_, in which there is a quite similar discussion about the role
of technology in the different pathways of civilization.
The highly charged Chapter 3 was well placed by Diamond at the beginning of
the book. He uses is it as a dramatic illustration and a source of facts
and processes of the differences between peoples. He narrates the famous
episode of the encounter between the small group of Spanish conquistadores
under the command of Francisco Pizarro and the numerous armies of Inca
emperor Atahuallpa, in Cajamarca, 1532. The Spaniards represented a
vanguard of the expanding Europeans (ultimately inheritors of the food
producing revolution of the Old World), while the Inca were among the New
World peoples that had advanced the most in the food production pathway
(they had agriculture, domesticated animals, irrigation, a centralized
state, an organized religion, tribute-paying dominated peoples, specialized
armies and so on). About 170 Spaniards, without allies or supplies, but
helped by their metallic weapons, guns and pathogens, broke the back of
Atahuallpa�s armies of 80,000 soldiers with amazing ease. Diamond uses this
episode to show that even the most advanced food producers in the New
World - including the Aztecs, also conquered relatively easily by Hernan
Cortez a few years earlier - did not pack enough "cargo" to resist the
aggression and the expansion of Europeans. Incas and Aztecs, in the early
1500s, were still short in some basic ingredients of the paraphernalia of
most successful food producers - metallurgy, a diversified stock of
domesticated animals, writing, resident epidemic diseases. This explains
their collapse in the face of often confused, unruly and small bands of
Europeans who stumbled on their lands without even knowing exactly where
they were.
Despite taking excellent advantage of this episode, Diamond actually spends
most of the book looking at quite different confrontations - those between
food producers and food collectors. His attention goes mostly to the
thousands of food collecting peoples of all continents who invariably
succumbed to food producing peoples, recently or far back in history and
pre-history. This dominance of food producers over food collectors is
considered by him to be "the broadest pattern of history" (see diagram on p.
87). The more remote factors that explain this pattern are: The more
homogeneous latitudes of Eurasia (making the spread of domesticated plants
and animals easier); the existence of larger numbers of plants and animals
prone to be domesticated in Eurasia; actual domestication; the production
and storage of surplus crops; the formation of societies with dense,
numerous, sedentary and stratified populations. The more recent
explanations are: technological improvements (guns, steel, metallic weapons,
boats and ships, navigation technology, etc.), writing, centralized states,
professional armies and transmissible diseases of animal origin. These are
the components of the prevailing civilizational "package" that Diamond
summarizes as "guns, germs and steel". In this discussion, Diamond's study
is similar to Crosby�s _Ecological Imperialism_, although Crosby focuses
much more on Europeans of historical times.
As demanded by his own arguments, Diamond presents very well organized and
documented chapters about the domestication of plants in a planetary scale,
showing the advantage of the Eurasian or Old World "agricultural package"
(see, for example, Table 7.1, p. 127-128). Table 8.1 (p. 140) shows that
the Old World had the decisive advantage of hosting 33 of the 56 native
species of grasses with big seeds (such as wheat and rice) that became prime
domesticated plants. Many other important domesticated plants were also
native of Eurasia. With a larger number of plants prone to domestication,
actual episodes of domestication were more probable and more successful in
Eurasia.
A similar discussion is made about domesticated animals. Table 9.1 (p.
160-161) has the names, the places of origin and the favorable traits of the
"ancient fourteen species of big herbivorous domestic animals" (goat, sheep,
cow, pig, horse, camel, reindeer, water buffalo, llama, etc.), the world's
major domesticated animals. Only one of them is from the New World - the
South American llama. Table 9.2 (p. 162) gives more data and shows that
again the Old World had natural advantages: It had 72 animal species prone
to domestication (13 were domesticated). Sub-Saharan Africa had 51
candidates for domestication, but none was domesticated. Among 24 candidates
In the entire American continent, only the llama was domesticated.
Chapter 11 expands the discussion about domesticated animals by examining
the "lethal gifts of livestock" - the diseases that humans gained through a
more intimate contact with their selected stock of tame animals. Despite
the difficulties implied by such diseases to the original domesticating
societies, the advantages of domesticated animals was highly made up for -
in terms of meat, milk, hides, transportation and traction. But the
animal-originated diseases carried by domesticators proved to be immensely
more "useful" as weapons against food collecting peoples who lacked
domesticated animals and resistance to these types of diseases. Food
collectors have been invariably decimated by such diseases when entering
contact with food producers, a supplementary natural or biological advantage
for the latter
Diamond uses other chapters to discuss quite different advantages that have
systematically helped food producers to prevail. These are more familiar to
social scientists: Writing, metallurgy, accounting, pottery, navigation
equipment and knowledge, the wheel, machines, organized religions,
centralized states, professional armies, social stratification, division of
labor, etc. His discussion highlights the very high correlation between
these features and food production, reminding us that food collectors rarely
developed these features, let alone the entire "package".
The only part for which the natural scientist Diamond did not do all the
necessary "homework" is, in my view, Chapter 14, about the emergence of the
centralized state. Although he works with a classification of political
organizations (bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states) that is appropriate for
his analysis, he relies to heavily on the argued opposition between the
"egalitarianism" of bands and tribes and de "hierarchical cleptocracy" of
states. If the state - the political organization typical of all food
producers - was built on a basis as fragile as institutionalized robbery, it
would not have been such a powerful instrument to conquer and subordinate
food collectors. The importance given to "cleptocracy" actually undermines
the strength of the state as a crucial actor in what Diamond himself calls
the broadest pattern in history - producers overwhelming collectors. The
explorers, armies and colonists and other vanguards of food producers have
indeed been backed by centralized states, but they were moved not by a
manifest belief in "cleptocracy", but by other important considerations such
as nationalistic or ethnic loyalty, religious righteousness, ambition, need
for territory and resources, migratory urges etc. These contents are
missing in Diamond's analysis and we are left to wonder about how the state
could be such a powerful actor (as shown by Diamond himself) if based on
nothing else but the legitimate robbery of its own citizens who fought
fiercely for it. .
The book concludes with five chapters dedicated to case studies of
confrontations between food producers and food collectors. Episodes or
processes of human migration, confrontation and escape are analyzed for
Australia and New Guinea, East Asia, the so-called Austronesia, America and
Africa. These short chapters illustrate well most of the points argued
along the text in a more generic manner. Even in these chapters Diamond
focuses on pre-historical periods, using analytical arguments based on the
expansion of domesticated plants and animals, languages and technologies to
understand the clashed between producers and collectors.
The book is innovative, daring, well researched, and well documented. The
prose is excellent and the reading is actually fun. Diamond produced an
encompassing and broad text, but it never lacks substance. The reader
always feels that important things are being asked, discussed and answered.
He comes out with a solid answer to the question about the diversity of
human experience on the planet. The question is both old and contemporary,
and even in the current wave of globalization, in which distances are
shortened and information travels quickly, nothing indicates that it will
go away. Every time that the question is made, Jared Diamond's book will
have at least a good portion of the answer. He wrote it not only for Yali,
but for all of us.
Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied
for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the reviewer and
to H-ASEH. For other permission, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
************************************
Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker
Division of Environmental Management & Design
Lincoln University, Canterbury
PO Box 84
Aotearoa New Zealand
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 64-03-325-3841
************************************
