Just Finished Reading: Guns, Germs and Steel – A Short History of Everybody for the last 13,000 Years by Jared Diamond

I’ve had this book on my shelves for some time now and thought that it was about high time I read it. Diamond starts with an interesting, though deceptively obvious, question. Why is it that the West dominates the world and not Africa or South-East Asia? Why is it that Europe ‘discovered’ the America’s and not the other way around? The obvious answer is because of our technological advantages – but, why did we become so advanced? It would seem, from Diamond’s well argued text, that basically we got lucky in that Eurasia had several natural advantages denied to other continents.

One of them is that we started agriculture long before anyone else in the Fertile Crescent (now ironically largely desert) – though it is arguable that a similar process took place in what is now China and, possibly, South America. On top of this head start was the ready availability of high energy cross – wheat – and large mammals that could be domesticated for their meat, milk and pulling power. This was a huge leap forward allowing the building of the first cities and the stratification of society which lead to diverse activities such as politics, religion, a military cast and much else including artisans and inventors. Added to this was the important consideration of continental axis. Eurasia runs East-West with bands of climate, day length and seasons in common for thousands of miles. In these bands we can grow the same crops, cope with the same diseases and farm the same animals. Other continents whose axis is North-South do not have this advantage. Movement of crops between civilisations separated by a thousand miles would likely mean crossing difficult climatic barriers. Progress, if any, would be reduced to a crawl. Not so in Eurasia where wheat grown in Persia could be cultivated on the Spanish plain without much difficulty.

Many of our worst diseases apparently originated with our livestock – animals with whom early Western civilisations had a close relationship, often occupying the same dwellings. Without exposure to these various pathogens the other civilisations dotted across the globe – often in blissful isolation had no experience of or immunity to diseases Eurasia populations took for granted. It is unsurprising, therefore, that when the civilisations did eventually meet it is we that passed on our diseases and not the other way around. Of course the classic case – used in this book – of the clash of civilisations is the Spanish assault on the Mayan and Aztec cultures. Despite being vastly outnumbered the Conquistadors prevailed because of their use of steel weapons, horses and, most importantly, they were carriers of smallpox to which the locals had no immunity and which killed an estimated 90% of them.

It is understandably difficult to précis a detailed and closely argued hypothesis in a short review but I hope that I’ve given at least a hint of Diamond’s argument. I personally found it compelling helped along by case studies and an amazing breadth of knowledge of world history. Obviously covering 13,000 years of history in just over 400 pages relies on a broad brush approach to things but such an approach is required to give history a much needed larger context. Although I can’t say that I’m a convert to the author’s way of thinking it has given me some serious food for thought and further research. I think that he’s definitely on to something and this book should be required reading for all budding historians.