 Cover of the first edition, featuring the paintingPizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru byJohn Everett Millais | |
| Author | Jared Diamond |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Environmental history,geography,history,social evolution,ethnology,cultural diffusion |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Published | 1997 (W. W. Norton) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover andpaperback), audio CD, audio cassette, audio download |
| Pages | 480 pages (1st edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-393-03891-2 (1st edition, hardcover) |
| OCLC | 35792200 |
| 303.4 21 | |
| LC Class | HM206 .D48 1997 |
| Preceded by | Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality |
| Followed by | Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed |
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (subtitledA Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years in Britain) is a 1997transdisciplinary nonfiction book by the American authorJared Diamond. The book attempts to explain whyEurasian andNorth African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasianhegemony is due to any form of Eurasianintellectual,moral, orinherent geneticsuperiority.
Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by variouspositive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favoured Eurasians (for example,written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance toendemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasiangenomes.
The book proposes that the environmental and geographical conditions of Eurasia and North Africa provided significant advantages, such as access to a greater variety ofdomesticable plants and animals, as well as an east–west continental axis that allowed for easier transfer ofcrops,livestock, and technologies. These conditions accelerated the development ofagriculture, population growth, and political complexity, which in turn led to technological advancement and the spread ofepidemic diseases to which Eurasian populations gradually developed resistance. By contrast, regions such assub-Saharan Africa, theAmericas, andOceania faced geographic isolation and ecological barriers that slowed similar developments. Diamond argues that such environmental constraints, rather than any differences in intelligence or culture, determined the pace and direction of societal evolution.
It received widespread recognition for itsinterdisciplinarity, combining insights frombiology,geography,anthropology, andhistory. In 1998, it won thePulitzer Prize forgeneral nonfiction and theAventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book, and produced by theNational Geographic Society, was broadcast onPBS in July 2005.[1]
The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation withYali, aPapua New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the differences in power and technology between Papua New Guineans and theEuropeans who dominated the region for two centuries, differences that neither of them considered due to European genetic superiority. Yali asked, using the local termcargo for inventions and manufactured goods, "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?"[2]: 14
Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin ... dominate ... the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists."[2]: 15
The peoples of other continents (sub-Saharan Africans,Indigenous people of the Americas,Aboriginal Australians,New Guineans, and the original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and South Africa's indigenousKhoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farm-based societies such as Eurasians andBantu. He believes this is due to these societies' technological and immunological advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after thelast ice age.
The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations and maintained dominance though sometimes being vastly outnumbered, so that imperialism was enabled by guns, germs, and steel.
Diamond argues geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics which favored early development of stableagricultural societies ultimately led to immunity to diseases endemic in agricultural animals and the development of powerful, organizedstates capable of dominating others.
Diamond argues that Eurasiancivilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.
The first step towards civilization is the move fromnomadichunter-gatherer to rooted agrarian society. Several conditions are necessary for this transition to occur: access to high-carbohydrate vegetation that endures storage; aclimate dry enough to allow storage; and access to animals docile enough fordomestication and versatile enough to survive captivity. Control ofcrops and livestock leads to foodsurpluses. Surpluses free people to specialize in activities other than sustenance and support population growth. The combination of specialization and population growth leads to the accumulation of social and technological innovations which build on each other. Large societies developruling classes and supportingbureaucracies, which in turn lead to the organization ofnation-states and empires.[2]
Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia hasbarley, two varieties of wheat, and three protein-richpulses for food;flax for textiles; and goats, sheep, and cattle. Eurasian grains were richer in protein, easier to sow, and easier to store than American maize or tropical bananas.
As early Western Asian civilizations developed trading relationships, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, such as horses anddonkeys for use in transport. Diamond identifies 13 species of large animals over 100 pounds (45 kg) domesticated in Eurasia, compared with just one in South America (counting thellama andalpaca as breeds within the same species) and none at all in the rest of the world. Australia and North America suffered from a lack of useful animals due toextinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of thePleistocene, and the onlydomesticated animals inNew Guinea came from the East Asian mainland during theAustronesian settlement around 4,000–5,000 years ago. Biological relatives of the horse, includingzebras andonagers, proved untameable; and althoughAfrican elephants can be tamed, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity.[2][3] Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of theAnna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. He argues that all large mammals that could be domesticated, have been.[2]: 168–174
Eurasians domesticated goats and sheep for hides, clothing, and cheese; cows for milk;bullocks fortillage of fields and transport; and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Large domestic animals such as horses and camels offered the considerable military and economic advantages of mobile transport.
Eurasia's large landmass and long east–west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided more plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Equally important, its east–west orientation has allowed groups of people to wander and empires to conquer from one end of the continent to the other while staying at the same latitude. This was important because similar climate and cycle of seasons let them keep the same "food production system" – they could keep growing the same crops and raising the same animals all the way from Scotland to Siberia. Doing this throughout history, they spread innovations, languages and diseases everywhere.
By contrast, the north–south orientation of the Americas and Africa created countless difficulties adapting crops domesticated at onelatitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of theRocky Mountains to the other). Similarly, Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from north to south: crops and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's east–west orientation: in thefirst millennium BCE, theMediterranean areas of Europe adopted Southwestern Asia's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in thefirst millennium CE, the rest of Europe followed suit.[2][3]
The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported madedivision of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen andscribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using guns and steel, particularly after the devastation of native populations by the epidemic diseases from germs.
Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans.Smallpox,measles, andinfluenza were the result of close proximity between dense populations of animals and humans.Natural selection endowed most Eurasians with genetic variations making them less susceptible to some diseases, and constant circulation of diseases meant adult individuals had developedimmunity to a wide range ofpathogens. When Europeans made contact with the Americas, European diseases (to which Americans had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around. The "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia, where endemic malaria andyellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave".[4] Some researchers saysyphilis was known toHippocrates,[5] and others think it was brought from the Americas byColumbus and his successors.[6] The European diseases fromgerms obliterated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain dominance.[2][3]
Diamond proposes geographical explanations for why western European societies, rather than other Eurasian powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers.[2][7] He said Europe's geography favoredbalkanization into smaller, closer nation-states, bordered by natural barriers of mountains, rivers, and coastline. Advanced civilization developed first in areas whose geography lacked these barriers, such as China, India and Mesopotamia. There, the ease of conquest meant they were dominated by large empires in which manufacturing, trade and knowledge flourished for millennia, while balkanized Europe remained more primitive.
However, at a later stage of development, western Europe's fragmented governmental structure actually became an advantage. Monolithic, isolated empires without serious competition could continue mistaken policies – such as China squandering its naval mastery bybanning the building of ocean-going ships – for long periods without immediate consequences. In Western Europe, by contrast, competition from immediate neighbors meant that governments could not afford to suppress economic and technological progress for long; if they did not correct their mistakes, they were out-competed and/or conquered relatively quickly. While the leading powers alternated, a constant was rapid development of knowledge which could not be suppressed. For instance, the Chinese Emperor could ban shipbuilding and be obeyed, ending China's Age of Discovery, but the Pope could not keepGalileo'sDialogue from being republished in Protestant countries, orKepler andNewton from continuing his progress; this ultimately enabled European merchant ships and navies to navigate around the globe. Western Europe also benefited from a more temperate climate than Southwestern Asia where intense agriculture ultimately damaged the environment, encourageddesertification, and hurtsoil fertility.
Guns, Germs, and Steel argues thatcities require an ample supply of food, and thus are dependent on agriculture. As farmers do the work of providing food, division of labor allows others freedom to pursue other functions, such as mining and literacy.
The crucial trap for the development of agriculture is the availability of wild edible plant species suitable for domestication. Farming arose early in theFertile Crescent since the area had an abundance of wild wheat and pulse species that were nutritious and easy to domesticate. In contrast, American farmers had to struggle to develop corn as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor,teosinte.
Also important to the transition from hunter-gatherer to city-dwelling agrarian societies was the presence of "large" domesticable animals, raised for meat, work, and long-distance communication. Diamond identifies a mere 14 domesticated large mammal species worldwide. The five most useful (cow, horse, sheep, goat, and pig) are all descendants of speciesendemic toEurasia. Of the remaining nine, only two (thellama andalpaca both of South America) are indigenous to a land outside the temperate region of Eurasia.
Due to theAnna Karenina principle, surprisingly few animals are suitable for domestication. Diamond identifies six criteria including the animal being sufficiently docile, gregarious, willing to breed in captivity and having a social dominance hierarchy. Therefore, none of the many African mammals such as thezebra,antelope,cape buffalo, andAfrican elephant were ever domesticated (although some can be tamed, they are not easily bred in captivity). TheHolocene extinction event eliminated many of themegafauna that, had they survived, might have become candidate species, andDiamond argues that the pattern of extinction is more severe on continents where animals that had no prior experience of humans were exposed to humans who already possessed advanced hunting techniques (such as the Americas and Australia).
Smaller domesticable animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, andguinea pigs may be valuable in various ways to an agricultural society, but will not be adequate in themselves to sustain a large-scale agrarian society. An important example is the use of larger animals such as cattle and horses in plowing land, allowing for much greater crop productivity and the ability to farm a much wider variety of land and soil types than would be possible solely by human muscle power. Large domestic animals also have an important role in the transportation of goods and people over long distances, giving the societies that possess them considerable military and economic advantages.
Diamond argues that geography shapedhuman migration, not simply by making travel difficult (particularly by latitude), but by how climates affect where domesticable animals can easily travel and where crops can ideally grow easily due to the sun. The dominantOut of Africa theory holds that modern humans developed east of theGreat Rift Valley of the African continent at one time or another. TheSahara kept people from migrating north to theFertile Crescent, until later when theNile River valley became accommodating. Diamond continues to describe the story of human development up to the modern era, through the rapid development of technology, and its dire consequences on hunter-gathering cultures around the world.
Diamond touches on why the dominant powers of the last 500 years have been West European rather than East Asian, especially Chinese. The Asian areas in which big civilizations arose had geographical features conducive to the formation of large, stable, isolated empires which faced no external pressure to change which led to stagnation. Europe's manynatural barriers allowed the development of competing nation states. Such competition forced the European nations to encourage innovation and avoid technological stagnation.
In the later context of theEuropean colonization of the Americas, 95% of the indigenous populations are believed to have beenkilled off by diseases brought by the Europeans. Many were killed by infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. Similar circumstances were observed inAustralia andSouth Africa. Aboriginal Australians and the Khoikhoi population were devastated by smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases.[8][9]
Diamond questions how diseases native to the American continents did not kill off Europeans, and posits that most of these diseases were developed and sustained only in large dense populations in villages and cities. He also states most epidemic diseases evolve from similar diseases of domestic animals. The combined effect of the increased population densities supported by agriculture, and of close human proximity to domesticated animals leading to animal diseases infecting humans, resulted in European societies acquiring a much richer collection of dangerous pathogens to which European people had acquired immunity throughnatural selection (such as theBlack Death and other epidemics) during a longer time than was the case forNative Americanhunter-gatherers and farmers.
He mentions the tropical diseases (mainlymalaria) that limited European penetration into Africa as an exception. Endemic infectious diseases were also barriers to European colonisation of Southeast Asia and New Guinea.
Guns, Germs, and Steel focuses on why some populations succeeded. Diamond's later book,Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, focuses on environmental and other factors that have caused some populations to fail.
In the 1930s, theAnnales School in France undertook the study oflong-term historical structures by using a synthesis of geography, history, and sociology. Scholars examined the impact of geography, climate, and land use. Although geography had been nearly eliminated as an academic discipline in the United States after the 1960s, several geography-based historical theories were published in the 1990s.[10]
In 1991, Jared Diamond already considered the question of "why is it that the Eurasians came to dominate other cultures?" inThe Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (part four).
Many noted that the large scope of the work makes some oversimplification inevitable while still praising the book as a very erudite and generally effective synthesis of multiple different subjects.Paul R. Ehrlich andE. O. Wilson both praised the book.[11]
Northwestern University economic historianJoel Mokyr interpreted Diamond as ageographical determinist but added that the thinker could never be described as "crude" like many determinists. For Mokyr, Diamond's view that Eurasia succeeded largely because of a uniquely large stock of domesticable plants is flawed because of the possibility ofcrop manipulation and selection in the plants of other regions: the drawbacks of an indigenous North American plant such assumpweed could have been bred out, Mokyr wrote, since "all domesticated plants had originally undesirable characteristics" eliminated via "deliberate and luckyselection mechanisms". Mokyr dismissed as unpersuasive Diamond's theory that breeding specimens failing to fix characteristicscontrolled by multiple genes "lay at the heart of the geographically challenged societies". Mokyr also states that in seeing economic history as centered on successful manipulation of environments, Diamond downplays the role of "the option to move to a more generous and flexible area", and speculated that non-generous environments were the source of much human ingenuity and technology. However, Mokyr still argued thatGuns, Germs, and Steel is "one of the more important contributions to long-term economic history and is simply mandatory to anyone who purports to engage Big Questions in the area of long-term global history". He lauded the book as full of "clever arguments about writing, language, path dependence and so on. It is brimming with wisdom and knowledge, and it is the kind of knowledge economic historians have always loved and admired."[12]
Berkeley economic historianBrad DeLong described the book as a "work of complete and total genius".[13]Harvard International Relations (IR) scholarStephen Walt in aForeign Policy article called the book "an exhilarating read" and put it on a list of the ten books every IR student should read.[14] Tufts University IR scholarDaniel W. Drezner listed the book on his top ten list of must-read books about international economic history.[15]Charlie Munger called it one of the best books of its kind that he had ever read, and one of the rare books he read twice.[16]
International Relations scholarsIver B. Neumann (of the London School of Economics and Political Science) and Einar Wigen (of University of Oslo) useGuns, Germs, and Steel as a foil for their own inter-disciplinary work. They write that "while empirical details should, of course, be correct, the primary yardstick for this kind of work cannot be attention to detail." According to the two writers, "Diamond stated clearly that anyproblematique of this magnitude had to be radically multi-causal and then set to work on one complex of factors, namely ecological ones", and note that Diamond "immediately came in for heavy criticism from specialists working in the disparate fields on which he drew". But Neumann and Wigen also stated, "Until somebody can come up with a better way of interpreting and adding to Diamond's material with a view to understanding the same overarching problematique, his is the best treatment available of the ecological preconditions for why one part of the world, and not another, came to dominate."[17] HistorianTonio Andrade writes that Diamond's book "may not satisfy professional historians on all counts" but that it "does make a bold and compelling case for the different developments that occurred in the Old World versus the New (he is less convincing in his attempts to separate Africa from Eurasia)."[18]
Historian Tom Tomlinson wrote that the magnitude of the task makes it inevitable that Professor Diamond would "[use] very broad brush-strokes to fill in his argument", but ultimately commended the book. Taking the account of prehistory "on trust" because it was not his area of expertise, Tomlinson stated that the existence of stronger weapons, diseases, and means of transport is convincing as an "immediate cause" of Old World societies and technologies being dominant, but questioned Diamond's view that the way this has transpired has been through certain environments causing greater inventiveness which then caused more sophisticated technology. Tomlinson noted that technology spreads and allows for military conquests and the spread of economic changes, but that in Diamond's book this aspect of human history "is dismissed as largely a question of historical accident". Writing that Diamond gives meager coverage to the history of political thought, the historian suggested that capitalism (which Diamond classes as one of 10 plausible but incomplete explanations) has perhaps played a bigger role in prosperity than Diamond argues.[19]
Tomlinson speculated that Diamond underemphasizes cultural idiosyncrasies as an explanation, and argues (with regards to the "germs" part of Diamond's triad of reasons) that theBlack Death of the 14th century, as well assmallpox andcholera in 19th century Africa, rival the Eurasian devastation of indigenous populations as overall "events of human diffusion and coalescence". Tomlinson also found contentious Diamond's view that humanity's future can one day be foreseen with scientific rigor since this would involve a search forgeneral laws that new theoretical approaches deny the possibility of establishing: "The history of humans cannot properly be equated with the history of dinosaurs, glaciers or nebulas, because these natural phenomena do notconsciously create the evidence on which we try to understand them". Tomlinson still described these flaws as "minor", however, and wrote thatGuns, Germs, and Steel "remains a very impressive achievement of imagination and exposition".[19][20]
Another historian, professorJ. R. McNeill, complimented the book for "its improbable success in making students of international relations believe that prehistory is worth their attention", but likewise thought Diamond oversold geography as an explanation for history and under-emphasized cultural autonomy.[3][21] McNeill wrote that the book's success "is well-deserved for the first nineteen chapters–excepting a few passages–but that the twentieth chapter carries the argument beyond the breaking point, and excepting a few paragraphs, is not an intellectual success." But McNeill concluded, "While I have sung its praises only in passing and dwelt on its faults, [...] overall I admire the book for its scope, for its clarity, for its erudition across several disciplines, for the stimulus it provides, for its improbable success in making students of international relations believe that prehistory is worth their attention, and, not least, for its compelling illustration that human history is embedded in the larger web of life on earth." Tonio Andrade described McNeill's review as "perhaps the fairest and most succinct summary of professional world historians' perspectives onGuns, Germs, and Steel".[18]
In 2010,Tim Radford ofThe Guardian called the book "exhilarating" and lauded the passages about plants and animals as "beautifully constructed".[22]
A 2023 study in theQuarterly Journal of Economics assessed Diamond's claims about topography influencing Chinese unification and contributing to European fragmentation. The study's model found that topography was asufficient condition for the varied outcomes in Asia and Europe, but that it was not a necessary condition.[23]
Theanthropologist Jason Antrosio describedGuns, Germs, and Steel as a form of "academic porn", writing, "Diamond's account makes all the factors of European domination a product of a distant and accidental history" and "has almost no role for human agency—the ability people have to make decisions and influence outcomes. Europeans become inadvertent, accidental conquerors. Natives succumb passively to their fate." He added, "Jared Diamond has done a huge disservice to the telling of human history. He has tremendously distorted the role of domestication and agriculture in that history. Unfortunately his story-telling abilities are so compelling that he has seduced a generation of college-educated readers."[24]
In his last book, published in 2000, the anthropologist and geographerJames Morris Blaut criticizedGuns, Germs, and Steel, among other reasons, for reviving the theory of environmental determinism, and described Diamond as an example of a modernEurocentric historian.[25] Blaut criticizes Diamond's loose use of the terms "Eurasia" and "innovative", which he believes misleads the reader into presuming that Western Europe is responsible for technological inventions that arose in the Middle East and Asia.[26]
Anthropologist Kerim Friedman wrote, "While it is interesting and important to ask why technologies developed in some countries as opposed to others, I think it overlooks a fundamental issue: the inequality within countries as well as between them." Timothy Burke, an instructor in African history atSwarthmore College wrote: "Anthropologists and historians interested in non-Western societies and Western colonialism also get a bit uneasy with a big-picture explanation of world history that seems to cancel out or radically de-emphasize the importance of the many small differences and choices after 1500 whose effects many of us study carefully."[11]
EconomistsDaron Acemoğlu,Simon Johnson andJames A. Robinson have written extensively about the effect of political institutions on the economic well-being of former European colonies. Their writing finds evidence that, when controlling for the effect of institutions, the income disparity between nations located at various distances from the equator disappears through the use of a two-stage least squares regression quasi-experiment using settler mortality as an instrumental variable. Their 2001 academic paper explicitly mentions and challenges the work of Diamond,[27] and this critique is brought up again in Acemoğlu and Robinson's 2012 bookWhy Nations Fail.[28]
The bookQuestioning Collapse (Cambridge University Press, 2010) is a collection of essays by fifteen archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians criticizing various aspects of Diamond's booksCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed andGuns, Germs and Steel.[29] The book was a result of 2006 meeting of theAmerican Anthropological Association in response to the misinformation they felt Diamond's popular science publications were causing and the association decided to combine experts from multiple fields of research to cover the claims made in Diamond's and debunk them. The book includes research from indigenous peoples of the societies Diamond discussed as collapsed and also vignettes of living examples of those communities, in order to showcase the main theme of the book on how societies are resilient and change into new forms over time, rather than collapsing.[30][31]
Guns, Germs, and Steel won the 1997Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science.[32] In 1998, it won thePulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, in recognition of its powerful synthesis of many disciplines, and theRoyal Society'sRhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.[33][34]
Guns, Germs, and Steel was first published by W. W. Norton in March 1997. It was published in Great Britain with the titleGuns, Germs, and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years by Vintage in 1998.[35] It was a selection ofBook of the Month Club, History Book Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, and Newbridge Book Club.[36]
In 2003 and 2007, updated English-language editions were released without changing any conclusions.[37]
TheNational Geographic Society produced a documentary, starring Jared Diamond, based on the book and of the same title, that was broadcast onPBS in July 2005.[1][38]
November 1999
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