me:
>> Were the Incas mere "victims," as in the one-dimensional story of
>> European immorality sketched above? or is the world more complex than
>> that?
Louis:
> I vote one-dimensional.
The description of the Inca empire that Louis posted doesn't fit that vote.
>> In sum, the Incas _did_ conquer other peoples, allowing them to
>> collect tribute from them. The answer to my alleged "gotcha question"
>> is thus "yes."
Louis:
> No, it was actually no.
Again, that doesn't fit the description that Louis posted.
me:
>> Why did the Inca empire lose to the Spanish one? If it's not geography
>> which put them at a disadvantage, allowing Spanish to conquer the
>> Incas, what was it? Did the Incas have a greater unwillingness to
>> conquer other peoples that was based in their genes? (after all, their
>> "imperial army wore the clothing and when it conquered a new tribe,
>> they presented the victims with a new wardrobe!" I read this as saying
>> that they were nice guys in some way!) Did the Incas have an
>> inherently less expansionist culture than the Spaniards? or was it due
>> to a combination of a bunch of causes? Or what?
Louis:
> The Incas lost mainly because of disease and because the Spanish
> exploited resentments against them but people in their Empire,
> just as they did in Mexico.
To Diamond, disease is an important part of his geographical story
(it's #2 in the book's title after all). He has an (unoriginal)
geography-based explanation of why the Euros were more likely to be
immune to American diseases than vice-versa.
The exploitation of resentments of the people dominated by the Inca
empire ("divide and conquer") is a very old technique, though the
Brits seem to have perfected it. (For all I know, the Incas used it
too.) The fact that those resentments existed and that the Inca elite
couldn't handle them suggests that their empire was suffering from
some internal weakness even before the Spaniards arrived.
me:
>> If I were to try to answer this question, I wouldn't rule out
>> geography as one of the causes, along with the specifics of the Inca
>> mode of production.
> I have been reading your messages defending Jared Diamond for over
> 13 years now. I could understand a misguided infatuation with
> "Guns, Germs and Steel" early on but at this state of the game I
> find it difficult to understand why a Marxist professor would be
> so enamored of a man who libels Papuan New Guinean peoples in the
> New Yorker magazine and writes encomiums to Chevron Oil and
> Walmart in the NYT op-ed pages.
>
> Love is blind, I guess.
I am not "enamored" with Diamond. There's no "infatuation" or "love"
about it. Again, I don't see how Louis can read my mind and attribute
intentions to me. And to do so wrongly.
Rather, I'm a social scientist, trying to understand the world rather
than to leap into making moral judgments.[*] The point is not to set
up an "enemies list" of various scholars that I disagree with and thus
reject their work _tout court_. Karl Marx knew that people like Adam
Smith and David Ricardo had their "dark sides" but didn't reject
everything they wrote. He even accepted some of the work of that
dreck-head Thomas Malthus! Sometimes, one can learn from even the most
distasteful characters. I haven't dipped my toe into that pond, but
it's even possible that one could learn from Hjalmar Schacht.
As I said before (even in this thread), "just because someone's a
creep or a fool on some or even many issues (e.g., Papua New Guinea)
doesn't mean that all of his work should be rejected out of hand."
That's hardly a ringing endorsement of Diamond.
I agree with Michael that this thread should end, but I _also_ think
that pen-l is a not place for such crap as the insulting references to
my being "enamored" with Diamond or suffering from "infatuation" or
"love" with him. I make an effort not to insult people (or to
attribute motives to them) and I don't see why other pen-pals can't do
the same.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
[*] Though it's a good idea to try to get the facts and theory right
before making moral judgments, that doesn't mean that fact and value
can be really separated in practice. My values help determine which
questions I ask, for example.
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