Diamond’s ideas seemed pretty intuitive to me. The idea that geography is the primary shaper of civilisations seems _very_ likely to be true in general. I’ve read other books on the impact of geography on military defence and how that shapes geopolitics, for example.
Having worked in academia for many years, when I see academics attack a book such as GGS my instinct is to question their motives. Academics can be very egotistical and territorial. A priori, it is very difficult to imagine a situation where academics would say to any book like Diamond’s “oh yes this is a really great point and we need to learn from this guy” and very very likely to say “this guy doesn’t know anything about (less important factors that I know a lot about)! What an idiot! He even gets the date of this event wrong, proving I am clever and he is wrong.”
So when I hear about academics attacking something that seems to be fairly obviously correct at least at a very general level, my instinct is not “oh, yes, this guy must be completely wrong” but rather “this guy is probably mostly right but of course there will be a lot of other factors and it will be very easy to pick apart his book if you so wish, especially if your ego relies on you finding fault with him.”
I’m not so easily dissuaded that GGS isn’t mostly right that geography and in particular agricultural factors are the broad strokes of history, rather than the less permanent and smaller scale “Gaussian noise” of cultural events that intuitively are likely to mostly even out over time.
In fighting there are various factors at place, the size and speed of those in the fight, the area they are in, the training. Some areas are more conducive to victory for specific body types and training. This kind of dynamic plays out everywhere, the race is not always to the swift but you should place your bets that way.
Geographical factors would seem to be this kind of importance that establishes a long dominance and strong chance of success, sure, but what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Almost all countries nowadays are industrialized therefore there is no geographical factor that prevents industrialization in those nations.
Finally, historical trends seem not really to last more than 200-400 years, which 200 years really seems like the kind of thing that can be effected by a cultural issue - somebody who was a really bad king came along and reined for 70 years and destroyed the country, now you're in a weakened condition and get picked on by everyone else for the next 130 years. Yeah - your country's rich geographical resources finally lead to comeback but it just does not seem a very profound or interesting point the more I think about it.
>Geographical factors would seem to be this kind of importance that establishes a long dominance and strong chance of success, sure, but what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Almost all countries nowadays are industrialized therefore there is no geographical factor that prevents industrialization in those nations.
the Industrial Revolution started because Great Britain had an over abundance of coal, so another point for the geographical theory?
also Rome had access to Britain's coal, there were steam turbines available in 1 B.C, in other words the geographical requirements for industrialism existed a long time ago and the people who had access to these things were not idiots and had a relatively strong organizational system.
I would say Printing is the most important explanation for the Industrial revolution, allowing spread of science through the West, and at the same time providing an example of a technology that was successful and financially beneficial. If you're smart, coming up, and see that other smart people became financially successful by building tools it drives your ambition.
Printing didn't require a lot of power. The Romans didn't have the precision (though arguably could have acquired that skill) to build decent steam engines, but more importantly they had no use for that power.
The most compelling explanation I've read about the convergence of trade, textiles, free-energy (coal), and engines is one that comes up on HN periodically:
Saying they had access to steam turbines is wildly overstating the case. They had toys that span round and round, but nothing that could produce useful horsepower.
You need metallurgy considerably more advanced than the Romans had in order to make a useful steam engine.
> the Industrial Revolution started because Great Britain had an over abundance of coal, so another point for the geographical theory?
One thing that bothers me is, before that Netherlands had an abundance of windmills. So why was the industrial english and coal powered and not dutch and wind powered?
China has a very centralized structure, he who holds the central planes is king of the hill. So technological competition like in the battle sponge of Europe never took off.
Not that it changes your point in the slightest, but China is about the size of all western Europe, so that should be more like "why didn't Shaanxi[0] have an industrial revolution?"
[0] picked for size, not mineral abundance; I don't want to waste time delving into exactly which part of China is currently mining however much coal.
> what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives?
Wasn't there a whole book devoted to exploring exactly this question?
It has been a very long time since I read GGS, but I can tell you haven't yet... and judging from this comment I bet you would find it fascinating.
To give a top-of-my-foggy-memory answer to your question about industrialization, here are some of the contributing factors as I recall:
- Head-start: agricultural settlements started in Mesopotamia about 10k BCE, and branched out from there. That's the earliest record we have anywhere in the world of a farming culture which allowed specialized classes to emerge (builders, rulers, administrators, inventors, etc etc) and the basis for emerging technology. e.g. in the Americas it looks like this happened 5k years later.
- More wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Only a small % of wild plants and animals are suitable and useful for domestication, and they were overwhelmingly concentrated in Europe. Wheat, barley, and beans were farmed earlier and are easier to farm than rice (East Asia) and potatoes/corn (Americas). There are no African or American animals with the capacity for burden and domesticability of european horses, donkeys, and oxen, and we haven't even talked about cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.
- the mix of small arable geographical area and concentrated population centers led to constant war in Europe, which drove a lot of technological innovation, especially in metallurgy. Europe is also particularly rich in iron and coal, which gave another advantage to pre-industrial tech branches (to use a Civilization analogy). In contrast, China was extremely politically stable and had less need for tools of war like hardened steel.
- The relatively limited available land and population also motivated invention in European farming methods, which was not the case in e.g. China, where human labor is in many places still cheaper than technological efficiency. Human labor intensive farming methods from the 6th century are still in use in many parts of China, because that's just more effective than the alternative.
- Constant war improved infrastructure between cities, too (thank you Roman empire). Hundreds of years later this accelerated trade beween population centers, contributing to many features that characterize industrialization as it happened in Europe. Including: a merchant class, production geogrpahically separated from sale, etc.
- Early advantages were determining factors in colonialism and wealth extraction from other continents. i.e. because Europe had better guns, more germs, and better steel (ha), when they arrived in the Americas they wiped out the indigenous populations.
Please don't take this as a unilateral endorsement of the ideas in the book - I'm not qualified! If nothing else the whole question is post-hoc... "why did Europe achieve European-defined success before any other continent achieved European-defined success?" In any case the ideas are interesting and I bet you would enjoy thinking about them, as I did.
OK maybe I'm dull here but it seems to me most of these ideas where well understood, so I don't think I would be incredibly impressed since they are mainly what I understand to be the case.
That they had more germs not sure about, my take on the germs part has always been the same thing you have with any invasive species in a new environment. It is mathematically easier for them to spread their germs to indigenous population .
So it seems like the book is mainly a condensation of the widely understood historical narrative (although maybe my knowledge of what is understood is out of date as I have not read so much history in the last 20 years, most of my history reading having been in my teens)
However, while I agree that geography is an important contributor to success in endeavors it is imho not a determinant. It seems to me that industrialism could have arisen a few places and times in the history of the world but it didn't, that it did in Britain, sure, the environment was favorable, but a lot of things led into it. So many things that it becomes in many ways a clever Connections type discussion where you connect one thing you would not think was connected to the outcome - for example does this guy talk about the Black Plagues influence on Industrialization? https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/black-death-and-industrialisa...
probably it's a pretty easy connection to make but still almost everything can be connected and when the thing comes about you say HAH all these things here together made it, the perfect soup! But there were all sorts of soups in the past that did not achieve perfection, and I don't think there is a convincing argument why that is.
on edit: tldr - I don't think the Industrial revolution was destined to start in Britain in the mid 1700s because of some combination of Geographical factors. If it hadn't started there it would have started somewhere else later - probably in the U.S. Or it could have started much earlier, but many factors did not pan out in just the right way in the past when it was possible for Industrialism to start.
That they had more germs not sure about, my take on the germs part has always been the same thing you have with any invasive species in a new environment. It is mathematically easier for them to spread their germs to indigenous population
There was one major disease Europeans brought back from the Americas: syphilis.
Otherwise, the raft of diseases Europeans brought to the Americas (which devastated the indigenous populations) can be specifically traced back to animal husbandry. The intensity of Europeans’ relationship to domestic animals plus all of the wild animals living in urban areas in close proximity to humans (such as rats) is what led to Europeans being potential carriers of so many diseases. You simply get way more disease exposure from farming (cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, poultry) and living in cities (rats, mice, cats, dogs, bats, insects) than you do in small hunting or fishing villages.
So the germs axis is part of Diamond’s geography argument. Proximity to domesticable animals and cereal grains leads to more exposure to disease, greater concentrations of population, and therefore devastating plagues. Those who survived the plagues had the potential to be asymptomatic carriers who would eventually bring destruction to the indigenous people of the Americas.
yes, that is exactly the topic discussed in the book. To what extent is this narrative, and to what extent determinism, is exactly the discussion _around_ the book. Seems like an area of interest for you which is why I recommended it. Definitely geared towards a popular audience but well-researched, engaging, and thought/discussion provoking .
I think his theory on what happened to Easter island has been debunked?
I wasn't convinced by guns germs and steel at all. It seemed to ignore the fact that western Europe was a cultural backwater for most of known history.
Anyway it was a long time ago that I read it, so I could be remembering it wrong.
Northern Europe didn't take off until the invention of the moldboard plough. The Romans took advantage of the looser, sandier soils around the Mediterranean which didn't need such a heavy plough to work. To bring the moldboard plough into fruition required the development of better steel and the breeding of heavy horses, something that was just not possible earlier on.
Diamond explicitly calls out the fact that Western Europe was a backwater for most of history until a few hundred years ago in the first dozen pages of the book.
Ah yes, the ''this feels right to me, a layman who knows nothing about it, so clearly he is right and people attacking him just are out for a cheap hit'' defense. A classic.
Well, one could always just read the paper and judge the science. Your comment above almost sounds like you won't because you think it's not worth reading it.
That’s a fair point. I skimmed it and got the gist of their approach, but I didn’t deep dive. It’s very hard to do what they’re trying to do rigorously. The real problem lies in the formulation of the question. It also doesn’t feel like they’ve “steelmanned” the original thesis, which is suspicious (tbf it’s rare in most of academia to see folks genuinely try to disprove their own position).
So you are wary of the motives of academics saying ''this is wrong for these reasons', but you dont think that Diamond has any motives, so you take his argument at face value (because it aligns with your feelings on the subject most likely)?
Not sure why downvoted, maybe because it’s a bit of a personal attack on me.
Well, we can say everyone has motives but that does not mean some incentives are more misaligned than others. So it’s not really a counter argument to say “everyone has motives”.
I wouldn’t say it’s my “feelings”, but my common sense, which is mostly derived from wider reading.
Quite often we wish to overcomplicate subjects to make them seem sophisticated. But many topics just don’t lend them to the complex analysis of say, high energy physics, they’re just much more prosaic. It’s ok to say “someone who lives near the sea has accessed to an additional food source and that’s probably beneficial” (as a random example) without having to write a thesis on it.
I defer to Charlie Munger on this topic, as he expresses it so well.
Having worked in academia for many years, when I see academics attack a book such as GGS my instinct is to question their motives. Academics can be very egotistical and territorial. A priori, it is very difficult to imagine a situation where academics would say to any book like Diamond’s “oh yes this is a really great point and we need to learn from this guy” and very very likely to say “this guy doesn’t know anything about (less important factors that I know a lot about)! What an idiot! He even gets the date of this event wrong, proving I am clever and he is wrong.”
So when I hear about academics attacking something that seems to be fairly obviously correct at least at a very general level, my instinct is not “oh, yes, this guy must be completely wrong” but rather “this guy is probably mostly right but of course there will be a lot of other factors and it will be very easy to pick apart his book if you so wish, especially if your ego relies on you finding fault with him.”
I’m not so easily dissuaded that GGS isn’t mostly right that geography and in particular agricultural factors are the broad strokes of history, rather than the less permanent and smaller scale “Gaussian noise” of cultural events that intuitively are likely to mostly even out over time.