1. IrvingSnodgrass - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:13 PM PT
It's been the most talked-about book in the Fray for a while now. Join host Pseudoerasmus as we discuss Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
2. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:15 PM PT
A PLAN OF THE THREAD
(1) Preface to the thread
(2) Introduction: Situating Diamond in the Intellectual History of the "Fates of Human Societies"
(3) A bit of Prehistory (chatpers 1 and 2)
(4) Summary and discussion of chapters 4-11
(5) Summary and discussion of chapters 12-14
(6) Summary and discussion of chapters 15-19
In my opinion, the pulsating heart of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies are chapters 4 through 11. (Those who don't have a copy of the book, see the Table of Contents.) Without understanding these you will miss the essence of the book, its unique contribution to the subject matter. So I will spend the bulk of my time summarising and commenting on these chapters in the order presented in the book. However, I'm going to take some liberties with the Prologue and Part One (the first three chapters), which I don't think are as well organised. Finally, chapters 12 to 19 can be deemed "applications" of the core ideas to answering a variety of questions not strictly related to the rest of the book, such as how "China became Chinese" or how "Africa became black". Many of Diamond's remarks in these chapters merely repeat what he has already said, but the topics themselves are fascinating.
Note: all referenced page numbers will refer to the hardcover edition of the book.
3. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:17 PM PT
PREFACE
"The Greatest Collision in Modern History"
[Summary of Chapter 3: the Collision at Cajamarca]
On November 16, 1532, in the town of what is today Cajamarca, Peru, the Inca emperor Atahuallpa, absolute monarch and god reigning over millions of subjects, guarded by an army of 80,000 men, was captured by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his band of 168 brigands passing for soldiers.
These Spaniards were in "unfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local inhabitants, completely out of touch with the nearest Spaniards (1,000 miles to the north in Panama) and far beyond the reach of timely reinforcements". Yet Atahuallpa was captured soon after he and Pizarro had set eyes on each other in a parley which was apparently a Spanish ruse. He was held captive for eight months, his people having to pay the "largest ransom in history", but was murdered by Pizarro anyway. His captivity did give the Spaniards some breathing space to impose a truce on their own terms, so that they could learn more about the Incas and seek reinforcements from Panama. When fighting resumed after Atahuallpa's murder, Spanish forces, though still fantastically outnumbered by the Incas, brought the Inca empire to a swift and permanent end.
4. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:17 PM PT
PREFACE
"The Greatest Collision in Modern History"
continued from Message #3
Jared Diamond then begins to ask a series of naive questions in order to trace the chain of causation that led to the destruction of the Inca empire:
"Why did Pizarro capture Atahuallpa?"
Clearly, the proximate cause was the Spanish superiority in weapons, like steel swords, steel armour, guns, and horses. The Incas had no riding animals to field in battle, were protected only by skins, and could answer Spanish steel only with stone, bronze or (mostly) wooden weapons. This accounts for the quick and easy victory of the Spaniards in battle, who were outnumbered, amazingly, 500 to 1. In the four battles between Pizarro's forces and the Incas, no more than 110 Spanish horsemen were ever required to vanquish tens of thousands of native troops. (Guns, Diamond argues, played but a minor role, for the arquebuses of the time were slow to load and unreliable.) At the battle of Cajamarca itself, not one Spaniard was slain. The image is therefore akin to soldiery being slaughtered en masse by machine-gun fire during the Great War.
Also, the psychological impression horses left cannot be underestimated. According to the many chronicles of the war, the "shock of a horse's charge, its maneuverability, the speed of attack that it permitted, and the raised and protected fighting platform that it provided left [Inca] food soliders nearly helpless in the open". The Spaniards simply had horses and knew how to use them in war, but the Incas had not and knew not.
5. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:20 PM PT
PREFACE
"The Greatest Collision in Modern History"
continued from Message #4
"How did Atahuallpa come to be at Cajamarca?"
Before Cajamarca, the Inca Empire had been riven by civil wars for succession to the throne following an epidemic of small pox which had killed most of the imperial family and its heirs. Naturally, smallpox was a European import, spread by Spanish settlers further north, to which Native Americans had never developed any immunity. Diseases were to become always an inadvertent vanguard of European conquest all over the world. Just a few years earlier, the Aztec Empire became rich pickings for Spaniards after decimation by smallpox. Later, diseases would help Europeans conquer Australia and southern Africa. (In the rest of Africa, diseases remained to the Africans' advantage for a long time.)
"How did Pizarro come to be at Cajamarca? Why didn't Atahuallpa instead try to conquer Spain?"
An obvious answer is, the Incas had no maritime technology for overseas expansion. Less obvious is the fact that Pizarro's presence "depended on the centralised political organisation that enabled Spain to finance, build, staff and equip the ships". The Inca Empire, by contrast, was too overcentralised and power was too concentrated in the god-figure: after Atahuallpa's death, the empire's bureaucracy simply disintegated. Yet another reason was probably _writing_: the Spaniards had it and the Incas had not. It was only because the "discovery" of the Americas could be disseminated quickly, in writing, rather than transmitted by mouth, that the European world could converge on the Americas like a swarm of locusts.
6. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:22 PM PT
PREFACE
"The Greatest Collision in Modern History"
continued from Message #5
"Why did Atahuallpa walk into [Pizarro's] trap at Cajamarca?"
"The immediate explanation is that the Incas had very little information about the Spaniards, their military power, and their intent", a fact once again attributed to the lack of a written culture among the Incas. Shockingly, although the Spanish conquest of Panama began in 1510, the Incas had not heard a thing about them until Pizarro arrived on the shores of Peru in 1527. "Atahuallpa [had been] entirely ignorant about Spain's conquests of Central America's most powerful and populous Indian societies". The Aztec emperor too suffered from a fatal lack of information: he mistook the venal and murderous Cortés for a returning god and welcomed him with open arms.
And there are evidences among the Incas and other Native groups of what can only be called a fatal willigness to trust, or at least underestimate the danger of, the Spaniards. By contrast, the Spaniards could not be accused of such an innocence. Unlike the Incas, they were well aware of a wider world outside their own puny country, filled with exotic and ancient and powerful empires like Cathay and India, or threatening forces like that of the infidel Muslims from whose yoke the Spaniards had only just been liberated. In short, "literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledge about human behaviour and history", an awareness simply absent from the consciousness of the Incas.
7. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:23 PM PT
PREFACE
"The Greatest Collision in Modern History"
continued from Message #6
Thus, the proximate causes of Atahuallpa's capture by Pizarro could be attributed to better weapons, literacy, superior technology, and disease immunity. Hence the eponymous guns, germs and steel. "But we are still left with the fundamental question why all those immediate advantages came to lie more with Europe than with the New World. Why weren't the Incas the ones to invent guns and steel swords, to be mounted on animals as fearsome as horses, to bear diseases to which Europeans lacked resistance, to develop oceangoing ships and advanced political organisation, and to be able to draw on the experience of thousands of years of written history?"
8. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:27 PM PT
Shit, I didn't mean to make the preface so long. But I suppose there are a lot of people who haven't read the book and thus would appreciate something more than a quick sketch.
9. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:47 PM PT
SITUATING DIAMOND IN THE LARGER INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES
[This section mixes my commentary on Diamond's book and my summary of its prologue.]
In the prologue to the book, Diamond observes:
"In the 13,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, some parts of the world developed literate industrial societies with metal tools, other parts developed only nonliterate farming societies, and still others retained societies of hunter-gathers with stone tools. Those historical inequalities have cast long shadows on the modern world, because the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies..."
"Peoples of Eurasian origin, especially those still living in Europe and eastern Asia, plus those transplanted to North America, dominate the modern world in wealth and power. Other peoples, including most Africans, have thrown off European colonial domination but remain far behind in wealth and power. Still other peoples, such as the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, the Americas, and southernmost Africa, are no longer even masters of their own lands but have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists..."
"These results are completely lopsided: it was not the case that 51 percent of the Americas, Australia and Africa was conquered by Europeans, while 49% of Europe was conquered by Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, or Africans... Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way? For instance, why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?"
10. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:48 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #9
Before answering this huge and arresting question, Diamond sets out to confute the various genetic and racialist explanations for the disparity of wealth and power among peoples. Although this undercurrent in the book is something many readers and reviewers of Diamond's book have seized upon, it's really tangential to the main ideas of the book. Moreover, no one today but cranks and crackpots believe that genetic and biological differences explain why Europeans nearly exterminated the Australian aborigines but not vice versa. So I will completely ignore this aspect of the book throughout this thread. But the concern with racism leads Diamond to misconstrue his place in the larger intellectual history of his topic. The following is my attempt to redress this minor inadequacy.
There have been lots and lots of attempts to explain why a rocky, insignificant peninsula off the coast of Asia known today as Europe acquired an amount of wealth and power so unprecedented in human history as to be able to dominate the whole world. But oday there are really two basic paradigms among respectable historians, political scientists and economists. I'll call the one "cultural theory", the other the "institutional theory".
11. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:50 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #10
The cultural explanation of the rise of the West dates back to at least Max Weber's famous polemic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Examining evidence from the city of Baden, Germany that Protestants were economically higher achievers than Catholics (and Jews even more so than Protestants), Weber embarked on the study of religion as a determinant of achievement. Basically, he argued that the set of values and attitudes we associate with the Protestant ethic, such as hard work, thrift, austerity and (at least in his view) rationality, conduced enormously to economic success. (Calvinist predestinationism plays a role too, but that would be diverting us from the topic.) He argued, "when the limitation of consumption is combined with this release of acquisitive activity, the inevitable practical result is obvious: accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save". Weber also observed what is still visible today: Protestant countries not only became rich long before most Catholic countries, but the former also continue today to be richer on average than the latter.
In The Religion of China and The Religion of India, Weber expanded his horizons and catalogued the contrasts between the benefits of the Protestant ethic and the deleterious consequences of the "highly anti-rational worldview of universal magic" found in Confucianism and Hinduism.
12. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:53 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #11
I think we can safely conclude that events in East Asia in the last fifty years have not been kind to Weber. Plus, there's that small anomalous fact that Chinese civilisation was probably the most economically and technologically dynamic society on earth in the centuries prior to 1500. Nonetheless, the gist of his theory that it's culture and ethos that matters to economic achievement, survives. Indeed it flourishes. In adjusted form, Weber's core principle can be found in the works of thinkers as disparate as the left-winger Gunnar Myrdal and the right-winger Thomas Sowell, as well as many many others. Whenever Singapore's philosopher-tyrant Lee Kuan Yew prattles about "Asian values", he's being a Weberian, whether he knows it or not. (Well, he probably does. He got a triple first at Cambridge.) To sum up, modern cultural theory of development more or less says that the people who value thrift, hard work, education, scientific rationality and practicality will get rich.
13. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:56 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #12
But in a way, the cultural theory is depressing, for how can a country wanting to emerge out of poverty simply "get" the right culture? Become Protestant or Confucian? Here enter the optimists whom I call the "institutional theorists". They are mostly economists who argue that Europe managed to achieve a judicious mix of the right political institutions and the right incentive structures which caused people to invest time and effort in the mastery of technology. Among the first of this crop of "institutionalists" were Douglass C. North (a Nobel laureate) and Robert Paul Thomas who drily asserted in their book, The Rise of the Western World: "Efficient economic organisation in Western Europe accounts for the rise of the West. Efficient economic organisation entails the establishment of institutional arrangements and property rights that create an incentive to channel individual economic effort into activities that bring the private rate of return close to the social rate of return". Sometimes they make it sound as though offering patent protection were the difference between Switzerland and Cambodia.
Culture doesn't matter: anyone can get rich if just given the chance. I grossly simplify for effect, but it's a popular view, enunciated in other books by economists such as How the West Grew Rich and Lever of Riches.
14. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 9:58 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #13
The upshot of the institutional view is that Europe, for whatever reason, was the first to get the right mix of institutions and incentives that resulted in the world-famous mastery of science and technology. The relative poverty that characterises the rest of the world is then largely a failure of other countries to assimilate the precedent of European technology and organisation, a failure in large part due to bad institutions and incentives.
Personally, I think some combination of the cultural and institutional theories answers the Big Question just about right. After all, certain cultures are probably more prone than others to creating that magic mix for thrifty, hard-working folks. Yet wealth probably can't be as easily created or scientific curiosity aroused if some whimsical autocrat keeps crushing all signs of either. And, in a way, that's the view David Landes takes in the book that came out after "Guns, Germs and Steel", the grandiloquently titled The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.
But there's something screamingly unsatisfactory about all these theories. Why didn't a "Protestant" or a "Confucian" ethic fluorish in Mesoamerica? Mercantilism along the Congo River? The ideology of institutional property rights among the aborigines of Australia? "If...scientific inquiry was supposedly stifled in China by Confucianism", remarks Diamond, "but stimulated in western Eurasia by Greek or Judaeo-Christian traditions", then one is simply forwarding puny, cowardly, chickenshit explanations which simply beg for grander, more fundamental explanations. Diamond will only tolerate "history's broadest patterns".
15. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 10:01 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #14
Of course, there have been many grand histories, among two of the most famous being William McNeill's The Rise of the West and Eric Jones's The European Miracle. But these and most others I've read assume as a matter of course that the rise of Europe is the principal historical anomaly to be explained, with the rest of the world lumped together as contrast and precursor.
What Diamond realised is that if you looked at the world from the point of view of 1500 -- when Cajamarca took place -- then the far more interesting pattern to be explained is not the disparity between Europe and the rest of the world, but between the rest of the world and _Eurasia_. It is the peoples of Eurasia as a whole, rather than just Europe, who have been richer, more powerful than the peoples of the Americas, Australasia and Africa. In fact, this disparity is implicit in most world histories. For the non-European peoples one generally reads about in history books are not the Aztecs or the Maoris or the Zulus, but the Arabs and the Indians and the Chinese, the "great civilisations" that seemed perennially in the running with the Europeans for that imaginary first place of history books.
Diamond's great insight, however, is to postulate that the great disparity in wealth and power between Eurasia and the rest of the world was already determined in pre-history. "Until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 BC, all peoples on all continents were still hunter-gatherers. Different rates of development on different continents, from 11,000 BC to AD 1500, were what led to the technological and political inequalities of AD 1500."
16. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 10:02 PM PT
Context for Diamond, continued from Message #15
However, "it is not the case that societies on the different continents were comparable to each other until 3000 BC, whereupon western Eurasian societies suddenly developed writing and began for the first time to pull ahead in other respects as well. Instead, already by 3000 BC, there were Eurasian and North African societies not only with incipient writing but also with centralised state governments, cities, widespread use of tools and weapons, use of domesticated animals for transport and traction and mechanical power, and reliance on agriculture and domesticated animals for food. Throughout most or all parts of other continents, none of these things existed at that time; some but not all of them emerged later in parts of the Native Americas and sub-Subharan Africa, but only over the course of the next five millennia; and none of them emerged in Aboriginal Australia. That should already warn us that the roots of western Eurasian dominance in [AD 1500] lie in the preliterate past before 3000 BC..."
The reasons for the disparate rates of human development on different continents are neither biological, nor genetic, nor social, nor political, nor cultural, nor to do with "great men", nor "economic" in the conventional sense, but environmental, perhaps even geological. For Diamond, economic history is a game in which all societies possess approximately the same ability to manipulate nature but were dealt different hands by geography.
What follows is a magnificent and exhilarating synthesis of history, ethnology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, botany, agronomy, zoology, geology and epidemiology -- all in the service of producing possibly the most original contribution to the topic of inequality of human societies.
17. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 10:05 PM PT
OK, after that, no more prolixity. Tomorrow, I'll add some comments on David Landes's book, which I know many have read or have been reading.
18. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 10:10 PM PT
By the way, the scope of this book is really really broad, over thousands of years. So broad events like the conversion of Rome to Christianity or the destruction of the Sung at the hands of the Mongols are mere trivialities by the standard of analysis in this book. Personal details that some people really like in history are have no place. So if your idea of history is the salacious memoirs of Empress Theodora or the battle tactics of General Sherman, it's not your kind of book.
19. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 28, 1999 - 10:11 PM PT
so broad THAT events like....
20. Slackjaw - Feb. 28, 1999 - 10:30 PM PT
aside
what do economic historians have to say about the relationship between "culture" (do the historians treat this as something other than an institution?) and political & economic institutions? Obviously certain cultures are more likely to go along with a particular type of political organization--e.g., say, the "Catholic ethic" is more conducive to autocracy, kleptocracy, etc than the Protestant.
In short, what is made of the idea that the cultural and institutional explantions are not only both partly responsible for development outcomes, as you argue in message 14, but inextricably linked to one another as inputs?
21. MrSocko - March 1, 1999 - 2:32 AM PT
Well, I'm kind of pissed off. The book isn't available down here at the end of the world. How long will this discussion be going on? I'm going to be in America in a few weeks time, and would enjoy jumping in at that point, after starting the book en route from California to Washington. Will this be too late?
22. SaraBand - March 1, 1999 - 4:08 AM PT
The "Big Question"? Can you tell I'm wearing a garter belt under this skirt?
23. MrSocko - March 1, 1999 - 5:09 AM PT
Message #22
No, I can't tell. Why should I?
24. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 5:56 AM PT
A grand start.
I was struck by how important horses were to the Spanish victory. Perhaps because, like many people, I associate horses with North American Indians, even though I recall (having learned it much later) that horses were not indigenous to Mesoamerica.
I wonder about the guns. While Diamond makes it clear that far more deaths were caused by swords than guns, I wonder if the explosions of guns contributed psychologically to a believe that the Spaniards were unconquerable/gods.
25. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 6:33 AM PT
"Diamond's great insight, however, is to postulate that the great disparity in wealth and power between Eurasia and the rest of the world was already determined in pre-history"
"What follows is a magnificent and exhilarating synthesis of history, ethnology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, botany, agronomy, zoology, geology and epidemiology -- all in the service of producing possibly the most original contribution to the topic of inequality of human societies."
I couldn't agree more, PE.
What an excellent introduction and development of the context for the book. And I see your "plan" does follow what I thought would be good, so, of course, I'm all compliance.
One other powerful element of this book that I found very compelling was Diamond's discussions of aggressive peoples. He avoids falling into that trite modern view that Western Civilizations are unique in their disdain for, and desire to ravage, other peoples. By discussing the ease and speed with which tribes eliminated one another when they could, he clearly disspells any notion that only western societies wiped other cultures and peoples out. The example of the Maori was particularly interesting.
26. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 6:54 AM PT
There is also something very satisfying about Diamond's approach because it IS really, really broad. It's sweeping in its range and scope, and he effectively demonstrates that other explanations for the rise of inequalities between societies MUST be subsumed within this larger vision.
Wrt the cultural explanation for why wealth and power is distributed unevenly throughout the world, Diamond repeatedly shows how the introduction of better crops and livestock into areas where they were not native were quickly adopted by any and all cultures given the opportunity. But that is for later discussion, I only note it here to indicate how Diamond confronts the cultural barriers explanations for inequalities.
27. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 6:59 AM PT
I was fascinated by the child spacing of hunter/gatherers (4 years) contrasted to farmers (1-2 years). A recent article claimed that a 1.5 year spacing was optimal from the perspective of minimizing birth problems such as low weight or birth defects. If so, then the closer spacing of children of farmers might contribute more to the growth of population than the raw birth numbers might suggest. (That is, a higher proportion of births resulting in strong adults.) This would add to the population pressure on food requirements in a negative way (thereby contributing to the irony that farming increased caloric production per worker, but reduced the calories available per consumer.)
I wonder if any child developmental experts might comment on whether there are important psychological effects of the different spacing. I wonder if the children of hunter/gatherers, with siblings more distant in age would grow up differently than the children of farmers, with a closer spacing.
28. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 7:11 AM PT
"Diamond sets out to confute the various genetic and racialist explanations for the disparity of wealth and power among peoples. Although this undercurrent in the book is something many readers and reviewers of Diamond's book have seized upon, it's really tangential to the main ideas of the book. Moreover, no one today but cranks and crackpots believe that genetic and biological differences explain why Europeans nearly exterminated the Australian aborigines but not vice versa."
Well, I think you dismiss this too quickly because I see these same views repackaged in the cultural views of economic disparity. A certain arrogance on the part of Judeo-Christians, particularly those from protestant perspectives, that their religious views are confirmed as "right" by the fates of history.
Diamond not only addresses the racial/genetic arguments, he indirectly addresses these cultural arguments as well, as I pointed out in my previous message. He addresses them and marginalizes them as important to explain anything, although he does acknowledge that cultural resistance to change may help explain some short term outcomes. Again, though, the utility of the sweeping vision he takes is demonstrated here, over the long run, there is no evidence that cultural factors explain much in the way of why some peoples prospered and others didn't.
Diamond does give due weight to the importance of institutions, particularly political institutions that support a relatively large class of non-producers who are then free to do things like create rationales for kings to conquer other peoples, and to allow standing armies to be maintained. However, these are all dependent on the creation of surplus, and that is, of course, dependent on crop yields and productivity, which, of course, is dependent on nature's gifts.
29. ptboya - March 1, 1999 - 7:30 AM PT
What impressed me was the paradigm laid out in Chap. 2, “A Natural Experiment Of History.” Given Diamond's work with birds in New Guinea, it seems fitting that he would borrow from Darwin the concept of speciation. Darwin's famous work on finches in the Galapagos, pretty clearly showed that the combination of isolation on various islands, and the variable environmental niches therein, resulted in (at least) five different species of the birds there, all from one founding population.
Diamond uses this paradigm to illustrate the *Cultural speciation that occurred in Polynesia. He says, “The ultimate ancestors of all modern Polynesian populations shared essentially the same culture, language, technology, and set of domesticated plants and animals.”
*I'm using the term Culture here in a more anthropological sense than that previously proposed by PE. This I understand to include political organization as well as music, dance, the collection and storage of food, marriage customs, religious practices, etc. In sum, all of the habits, customs and norms of a people. To argue the duality of small “c” culture (as outlined with reference to Weber) versus politico-economic organization is to argue proximate causation, something Diamond is assiduously trying to avoid. He posits a choice between ultimate causes: genetics, which he rejects, and environment. I agree that the case for genetic causation is put forward by “cranks,” but they are influential cranks and the arguments marshalled against them need to be as thoughtful as the ones put forward by Diamond.
30. ScottLoar - March 1, 1999 - 7:41 AM PT
This "gods" thing is overdone, at least in the case of the Inca -
"These Spanish victories cannot be written off as due merely to the help of Native American allies, to the psychological novelty of Spanish weapons and horses, or (as is often claimed) to the Inca's mistaking Spaniards for their returning god Viracocha", pg. 75. Furthermore, "(t)hat envoy saw the Spaniards' at their most disorganized (en route inland from the coast), told Atahuallpa that they were not fighting men, and that he could tie them all up if given 200 Indians", pg. 79. This is hardly the stuff gods are made of. Recall as well, the disdain with which Atahuallpa treated the first physical contact, and his shame at being captured. Again, by his acts Atahuallpa knew it was not the work of godheads.
As to guns Pizzaro had but a dozen arquebus, loud but not effective, and Bernal Diaz in The Conquest of Mexico emphasizes that it was Spanish swords, the Spaniards' desperate defense, and unit discipline that defeated the Aztec. I don't see why the Inca would be different. The Grand Inca especially was given faulty intelligence about the nature of the men he had come to see, their capabilities and intentions. Later, when the conquistadores were clearly mortal, they still overwhelmed the Inca forces.
31. ScottLoar - March 1, 1999 - 7:44 AM PT
Surely there's no denying there are aggressive peoples, more properly "aggressive communities", and even among the very aggressive and warlike are those most aggressive and warlike still. What makes them so is not genes or race or biology but circumstances and custom.
32. JaDeGoLd - March 1, 1999 - 7:51 AM PT
SL;
That's the thrust of Diamond's book. He uses the example of the Maori; the Maori were compelled by their geographical environment to war against and conquer neighboring tribes. Thus, their activities were geared toward making war and fighting. Similarly, some tribes were compelled by their environment to be more docile, relying on diplomacy and cooperation for their survival.
33. ptboya - March 1, 1999 - 7:56 AM PT
What makes them *effectively* aggresive is at point though. There is no question that the Inca's were also aggresive in consolidation of their territories previous to the invasion. Diamond posits that it was the shift to agriculture that ultimately produces societies in which classes other than food-producers can give free rein to their abilities. The technologies that radiated from this simple change in food production eventually resulted in the overwhelming superiority of the Maori versus the Moriori and later the defeat of the Maori at the hands of the British.
34. ptboya - March 1, 1999 - 7:58 AM PT
Whoops… Make that "aggressive."
35. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 8:07 AM PT
Hmm, SL
I don't think custom has much to do with Diamond's explanation, although circumstances, if you take that to mean environment, does.
As I said before, the key is surplus, and the move to food production allows for the accumulation of it, as well as the development of well entrenched sedentary communities that begin to develop hierarchies and established classes of non-producers (food).
36. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 8:09 AM PT
Everybody, for the benefit of those who haven't read the book, let's not try to get ahead of ourselves. If possible, please try to stick to the plan of the book.
(Given the high quality of the discussion here, I'm not sure why a host is needed!)
37. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 8:13 AM PT
ScottLoar
Good point on the “god” issue as it is often overdone in popular literature. Diamond makes it clear that Atahuallpa did not mistake Pizzaro for a god, (but does say one way or another what the masses might have thought.) He did note (p. 80) that Montezuma mistook Cortés for a god, resulting in the conquering of the Aztecs, so there appears to be something to the “god” legend.
I understood that Diamond described the harquebuses as loud but not effective. However, he does say that they “did produce a big psychological effect” and that was the point I wished to emphasize. Surely there are people today afraid of thunder, despite knowing its harmlessness. I can only imagine the fear that might be engendered by these few guns, even if not a single person was hit.
38. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 8:16 AM PT
ptboya
“Diamond posits that it was the shift to agriculture that ultimately produces societies in which classes other than food-producers can give free rein to their abilities.”
Yes, I took that as a key insight. An observation that seems obvious after it is made, but one not emphasized in the (admittedly meager) history I have read.
39. ScottLoar - March 1, 1999 - 8:24 AM PT
That agricultural societies produce a surplus which allows a division of labour and classes other than agriculturalists is one of the oldest imperatives recognized in modern historical analysis, something I learned in grade school forty years ago.
40. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 8:26 AM PT
Message #20
"In short, what is made of the idea that the cultural and institutional explantions are not only both partly responsible for development outcomes, as you argue in message 14, but inextricably linked to one another as inputs?"
Well, that culture and the choice of institutions are inextricably linked was a point I tried to make but apparently did not make clear in Message #14.
"...do the historians treat this as something other than an institution?"
Historians, sociologists and others who embrace the "cultural theory" of economic development generally treat culture as a set of values and beliefs and attitudes, an ethos.
"...what do economic historians have to say about the relationship between 'culture'...and political & economic institutions?"
Not much. North & Thomas, Rosenberg & Birdzell and Mokyr are pretty much fixated on how the right institutions created the right incentives for entrepreneurship and technological innovation. There isn't much on culture. In fact, I would say that Mokyr rather dislikes the cultural explanation. The Nobel laureate and economist Arthur Miller treats the cultural dimensions of economic development in The Theory of Economic Growth, but any links he might make between culture and institutions are superficial.
41. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 8:26 AM PT
Message #20
In his huge and barely readable "The Asian Drama", Gunnar Myrdal does present one interesting speculation that connects culture and what could be called public choice theory. The absence in Asia of loyalty to society as a whole contributes to nepotism, graft and corruption in general. There is in Asia a "general asociality that leads people to think that anybody in a position of power is likely to exploit it in the interest of himself, his family, or other social groups to which has a [stronger] feeling of loyalty [than to society]".
Karl Marx perhaps anticipated some aspects of Mancur Olson's argument in The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities when he remarked that Britain was "causing a social revolution in Hindustan" through such innovations as a professional army, the free press, a national education system, and steam propulsion. British rule, he opined, "undermined an undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life that evoked wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction".
Landes, who is an economic historian trained in history rather than economics, is the only one to explicitly intertwine the "cultural theory" and the "institutional theory". He argues that the twin inheritances of Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian cultures made Western Europe far more likely to embrace the idea of property rights than other cultures. He quotes some stuff from the Old Testament, as well as cites the fact that the Western church in Rome was generally independent of any political authority, unlike the Eastern Church, which was utterly subservient to the eastern Roman emperor.
42. ScottLoar - March 1, 1999 - 8:32 AM PT
What prompted Diamond's book is here, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo (stuff) and brought it back to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" - pg.14. And the "thrust" of Diamond's book is here, "On the one hand, the proximate explanations are here: some peoples developed guns, germs, steel, and other factors conferring political and economic power before others did; and some peoples never developed these power factors at all" - pg. 24. Diamond tries in the remaining 400 pages to explain why.
43. CoralReef - March 1, 1999 - 8:39 AM PT
Those unable to get the book can read the first chapter here.
44. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 8:40 AM PT
Message #26
"There is also something very satisfying about Diamond's approach because it IS really, really broad. It's sweeping in its range and scope, and he effectively demonstrates that other explanations for the rise of inequalities between societies MUST be subsumed within this larger vision."
Yes, after the great historian William McNeill reviewed his book, Diamond doubly reiterated that point in a reply. McNeill took Diamond to task for short-shrifting cultural dynamics in historical causation. Diamond replied that although culture may drive events in the short-term, culture must get driven by environment and circumstance in the long-term. In other words, the direction of causation changes with the scope of the historical investigation.
Message #28
"Well, I think you dismiss [Diamond's concern with racialist explanations] too quickly because I see these same views repackaged in the cultural views of economic disparity."
I disagree. There is a huge difference between saying that Protestant or Confucian cultures are better suited to economic development than other cultures and saying that whites are biologically more oriented to succeed than blacks.
"Diamond does give due weight to the importance of institutions, particularly political institutions..."
Of course, but again, whereas institutional theorists of economic development posited the "right institutions" as the cause and origin of economic development, Diamond inquires into where and why certain institutions originated at all. A more fundamental explanation.
45. jayackroyd - March 1, 1999 - 8:54 AM PT
McNeill's response to Jared's summary is disappointing. A simple reiteration, with no extension of the argument, but with a crankier tone.
46. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 8:54 AM PT
Message #29
Excellent remark about the parallel between Darwin and Diamond. Cultural speciation is exactly the right term.
"I'm using the term Culture here in a more anthropological sense than that previously proposed by PE."
No. The cultural theorists of economic development use "culture" in the sense meant by sociologists and cultural anthropologists, i.e., the set of intangibles like attitudes, beliefs, values, etc. Diamond uses "culture" in the broadest sense physical anthropologists use -- that is, any behavioural traits dictated by, manifested in or attributable to the physical environment. The difference in the two definitions of culture reflect different assumptions about where culture originates. I, like Diamond, believe that the two senses of culture are really identical, and like you, find the "duality of culture versus politico-economic organization" spurious. In fact, that's why I said that the "cultural theory" and the "institutional theory" of economic development are "screamingly unsatisfying", because they don't offer a basic enough explanation.
I made exactly the same point nearly a year and a half ago in the Fray during a discussion of the rise of the West. Scroll down to message #12238.
47. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 9:11 AM PT
Message #33
Message #38
Message #39
As Loar says, the idea that "agricultural societies produce a surplus which allows a division of labour and classes other than agriculturalists" is hardly an observation novel or original to Diamond. In fact, I would say Diamond makes a slightly different observation, something we will get into later.
Diamond's contribution to the subject matter was _why_ and _how_ and _where_ an agricultural civilisation could emerge at all.
In the prologue, he quickly dismisses the so-called riparian theory, which argues that large-scale agricultural production could only emerge in certain river valleys like the Nile or the Indus and that things like writing and centralised bureaucracies emerged out of the need for organising large-scale irrigation systems. However, "detailed archaeological studies have shown that complex irrigation systems did not accompany the rise of centralised bureaucracies but followed after a considerable lag. That is, political organisation arose for some other reason and then permitted construction of complex irrigation systems. None of the crucial developments preceding political centralisation in those same parts of the world were associated with river valleys or with complex irrigation systems". The Nile Valley remained a "cultural backwater for about 3000 years after village food production began to fluorish in the hills of the Fertile Crescent". The river valleys of Australia failed to produce agriculture at all.
48. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 9:16 AM PT
"There is a huge difference between saying that Protestant or Confucian cultures are better suited to economic development than other cultures and saying that whites are biologically more oriented to succeed than blacks."
I'm sorry, I don't see it as a huge difference when the explanations are used as rationales for inequalities and their persistence. Rather, they seem like a continuum to me, with the cultural explanations less strident and more benign than the racial ones. The upshot, however, is one of smug superiority used to justify inequality, and certainly fitting well within the "cult of blame".
However, I speak of vulgar interpretations of the cultural explanations, which simply replace the vulgar interpretations of the racial/genetic ones.
I think Diamond's discussion of these issues important precisely because it marginalizes the cultural explanations so effectively.
49. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 9:16 AM PT
Message #42
Well, of the three different "stories" the subject of the book could be introduced -- with Yali's question, Atahuallpa's capture, and the Maori decimation of the Moriori -- I thought Atahuallpa's the best. So I decided to ignore Yali's question.
50. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 9:16 AM PT
Btw, the genetic/racial explanations for inequalities are alive and well in books such as _The Bell Curve_.
51. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 9:24 AM PT
Message #48
Well, the two theories of economic development -- the cultural (Weberian) and the genetic (crank) -- are similar in the sense that both cultures and genes are difficult to change simply by force of will. (However, that didn't stop Gunnar Myrdal from arguing that state planning and education could do just that.)
But a much more important difference between the two is that the cultural theory of economic development contains an extremely large grain of truth. In the short-term (i.e., a span of hundreds of years rather than thousands), Protestantism _was_ a better "cultural endowment" than Catholicism, more conducive to industrialisation, political pluralism, and all the good things we associate with modernisation.
I think you're mixing up cultural chauvinism and the cultural theory and thereby becoming less than dispassionate about these matters.
52. marjoribanks - March 1, 1999 - 9:30 AM PT
Irv,
If possible, I'd like to know more about the similarities/contrasts between Javanese and Indonesian. Are there any links you could point me to, or could you summarize the difference?
53. marjoribanks - March 1, 1999 - 9:31 AM PT
Whoops, wrong thread.
Sorry.
54. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 9:36 AM PT
continued from Message #51
Also, once you realise that these differeneces in "cultural endowments", whether Confucianism or Protestantism or whatever, are results of adaptation to environment, anyone trying to get chauvinistic mileage out of the cultural theory is effectively deflated.
The Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel once nicely illustrated how the differences in the geography of Costa Rica and Nicaragua produced altogether different political cultures, despite the two countries sharing the same Hispanic heritage of Catholicism and autocracy. Basically, Nicaragua, having lots of arable land, enslaveable Indians and mineral resources, attracted the "dregs of Castilian society", those second and third sons of the Spanish gentry dispossessed by primogeniture. They sought to recreate in the New World an idyllic and parasitic life of the Spanish aristocracy. By contrast Costa Rica, relatively poor in mineral resources, enslaveable Indians, and arable land, attracted a completely different sort, the Spanish equivalent of the pilgrims. The conditions of the land forced them to toil harder.
The result, in Rangel's description, is the world of difference between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The one, an impoverished country wracked by civil war and exploited by dictators; the other, an upper-middle-income country with a long tradition of stable democracy.
55. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 9:37 AM PT
Message #50
Yeah, and the book is discredited, except among yahoos. And they are not going to be reading Diamond's book anyway.
56. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 9:42 AM PT
"Also, once you realise that these differeneces in "cultural endowments", whether Confucianism or Protestantism or whatever, are results of adaptation to environment, anyone trying to get chauvinistic mileage out of the cultural theory is effectively deflated."
Well, yes, that was precisely my point wrt the importance of Diamond's discussion of this issue. It is glaringly obvious that any cultural explanations are minor appendages to the main issue of the book.
57. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 10:00 AM PT
Message #56
"It is glaringly obvious that any cultural explanations are minor appendages to the main issue of the book."
Cultural explanations _are_ important if you scale down your scope of investigation.
Diamond's thesis brilliantly explains the disparity between Eurasia and the rest of the world between prehistory and ca AD 1500, but it can't really explain the disparity _within_ Eurasia that developed after AD 1500. That is, why the fortunes of Europe and Asia diverged after that date is not something the book adequately explains and, to be fair, is not something which falls within the book's purpose. And I think cultural/institutional explanations loom larger in this shorter time span.
Which makes a good pretext for mentioning David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations once again. It's a much less interesting work, containing very few original thoughts, but it is a grand synthesis which addresses what Diamond doesn't, namely, why Europe and Asia diverged after 1500.
In that sense, Diamond and Landes are complementary.
58. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 10:07 AM PT
Okay, I yield.
I admit to a somewhat knee-jerk reaction against cultural theory explanations, they become such hatchetmen for cultural imperialists.
I much prefer institutional theories.
59. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 10:35 AM PT
Message #40
ERRATA the Nobel laureate and economist mentioned is not Arthur Miller, but Arthur LEWIS.
60. JaDeGoLd - March 1, 1999 - 10:39 AM PT
One point that Diamond glosses over, IMO, is the Great Leap Forward.
Diamond appears not to even forward a theory on this event.
Any comment?
61. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 10:48 AM PT
Diamond states that the “Great Leap forward poses two major unresolved questions, regarding its triggering cause and its geographic location.”
Diamond argues for the perfection of the voice box as a cause, but because this is the subject of another on of his books, he chooses not to go into it in any more detail here (I'm guessing).
He suggests that the answer to the location question is still unresolved.
62. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 10:50 AM PT
Perhaps I should have added that the voice box led to modern language, a subject near and dear to the heart of many Fraygrants.
Diamond also mentions an alternative theory for the Great Leap Forward, (a change in brain organization) but it also leads to modern language as a cause.
63. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 10:58 AM PT
One last element of introduction to the book:
Diamond briefly dismisses an old competing theory for why different peoples on different continents experienced different rates of development. The climatological explanation (also sometimes known as "moral geography") basically asserts that temperate climates like Europe's are better suited to pretty much everything, whether work or invention. But Diamond observes that "the peoples of northern Europe contributed nothing of fundamental importance to Eurasian civilisation until the last thousand years; they simply had the good luck to live at a geographic location where they were likely to receive advances" such as agriculture, wheels, writing, metallurgy, etc. Moreover, in the New World the most materially advanced societies were found near the equator, a fact which seems inconsistent with the climatological theory.
This observation also contradicts the second chapter of David Landes's aforementioned The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, where he presents a more sophisticated climatological argument based on germ transmission and water availability. But the pearl of historical explanations based on germ transmission remains William McNeill's Plagues and Peoples.
64. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 11:24 AM PT
The people's of Northern Europe might not have done much, but southern Europe certainly had influence. Also, other civilizations which prospered lived in non-tropical climates, like China, Persia, Ancient Egypt, etc. So while the difference between southern and northern europe may not have been great for long term difference, I don't think it follows that a temperate/tropical rift is not a big difference.
One could argue that the pre-Columbian American civilizations were anomalies based on peculiarities of the American continents, like the lack of a good pack animal. Clearly the climatological argument is a ceteris paribus one.
I seem to recall reading about an economic study showing that tropical countries sacrifice a point or two of GDP growth per year solely based on their tropical location. Does this ring a bell with anyone?
65. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 11:36 AM PT
I wasn't dismissing the climatological theory, I was merely reporting Diamond's opinion of its inadequacy.
But I still find the climatological theory Landes posits implausible. Most tropical and semi-tropical climates have exhibited high population densities. If they were so poor because the climate made hard work so difficult and year-round germs made life so perilous, why the relatively dense populations?
"One could argue that the pre-Columbian American civilizations were anomalies based on peculiarities of the American continents, like the lack of a good pack animal."
I don't understand what you mean.
66. ScottLoar - March 1, 1999 - 11:37 AM PT
But there was a good pack animal in South America - the llama - and it was so used.
67. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 11:42 AM PT
Scott: yeah, native to the Andes, which is what I was getting at.
68. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 11:45 AM PT
Well, why don't we leave off discusson of the climatological argument until we get through more of Diamond?
69. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 11:47 AM PT
But isn't the llama a rather poor cousin to the horse, mule, ox, and camel? Sort of like a poor man's yak?
I don't know whether anyone keeps track of work output of these animals, but my guess is that a llama is far down the list. Have llama's ever been used for plowing?
Llama info
70. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 11:48 AM PT
But isn't the llama a rather poor cousin to the horse, mule, ox, and camel? Sort of like a poor man's yak?
I don't know whether anyone keeps track of work output of these animals, but my guess is that a llama is far down the list. Have llama's ever been used for plowing?
Llama info
71. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 11:50 AM PT
Raskolnikov
Actually, as I just learned, the llama was native to North America. Had been there for about 20 million years. Only in the last three million has it migrated to South America. Llamas existed in North America until about 10,000 years ago. (Wiped out by ice age, or man?)
72. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 11:51 AM PT
Pseudo: My understanding is that the key to civilization growth was productivity. One can easily have a dense, not-as-productive, population. Landes was arguing that germs and weather affected productivity by increasing morbidity, restructing hours of work, increased lethargy, etc.
73. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 11:53 AM PT
Sorry, llamas originated in North America *40* million years ago.
74. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 11:53 AM PT
Pseudo: fair enough. Assuming the llama discussion is within the Diamond theme though... (where is niner, anyway?)
FTC: doesn't matter if the llama was in outer mongolia 3 million years ago. When humans arrived in the Americas 10k years ago or so, it was in the Andes.
75. pellenilsson - March 1, 1999 - 12:11 PM PT
PE Message #47
"Diamond's contribution to the subject matter was _why_ and _how_ and _where_ an agricultural civilisation could emerge at all."
Yes, this is a question that interests me hugely. Agriculture *could* have emerged in so many places but it *did* emerge in Anatolia (at least that was the accepted wisdom not long ago. Diamond may have other ideas). I lean towards the simple thought that the place and the time was a random thing, but I will be pleased to be convinced otherwise. I hope you will return to the subject in more detail.
76. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 12:18 PM PT
pelle
Diamond's argument is precisely the opposite. Only a handful of areas were candidates for agriculture to emerge, and those were winnowed down even further as one examines the plant/animal offerings within each.
This discussion is really contained in chapters 4-9, and yet to come. I agree with PE that the heart of Diamonds book is in Part 2 (4-10), plus chapter 11. Everything else simply supports the basic analysis presented therein. We must be patient and not jump the gun in the discussion.
77. Msivorytower - March 1, 1999 - 12:20 PM PT
As a forerunner of that discussion, Pelle
Think about the problem of agriculture as one of trading off the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (in terms of caloric benefits) for growing one's own food.
78. pellenilsson - March 1, 1999 - 12:25 PM PT
Ms
OK, I'll wait (but impatiently)
79. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 12:31 PM PT
Message #74
Diamond has a big chapter on the domestication of animals.
Message #75
The rise of agriculture is one the main topics of this thread.
Message #72
Barring other evidence, economic historians and historical demographers generally consider rapid population expansion and population density as prima facie evidence of economic activity. So the argument Landes makes that tropical climates hindered productivity is not necessarily true empirically. Moreover, what about southern China? While it's true that civilisation rose first in northern China, and there has always been some disparity between the two regions, southern China has seen its share of advanced civilisations. The Sung, for example, which held out against the Mongols for two generations while the northern kingdoms had succubmed.
80. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 12:40 PM PT
Raskolnikov
You're right of course. I had my time lines mixed up, and I was thinking the llama/human times lines in North America overlapped. Not true (unless the theories of earlier humans in NA hold up).
81. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 12:44 PM PT
I don't mean to obsess on llamas, but I think it may be important that llamas were not used for plowing, while other domesticated animals were used (wrt development of agriculture). But I may be getting ahead of the reading, so I'll leave it there for now.
82. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 12:50 PM PT
Pseudo:
"Diamond has a big chapter on the domestication of animals."
I knew that from reviews, and it makes sense to me that if the only domesticable work animal on two continents is the llama, and it is located in the Andes, then there will be some pressure for civilization to arise in the Andes, ceteris paribus again.
"Barring other evidence, economic historians and historical demographers generally consider rapid population expansion and population density as prima facie evidence of economic activity. So the argument Landes makes that tropical climates hindered productivity is not necessarily true empirically. "
I mentioned a study done on the productivity penalty of the tropics (I read about in the Economist). I might be able to dig it up if it isn't ringing a bell to you.
I don't think it is tough to reject a climatological determinism argument, and I will agree that Landes takes it too far vis a vis northern Europe, but the germ (ha ha) of the argument strikes me as making sense, both logically and empirically. Of course, the extent to which this argument is balanced by other factors (proximity to resources, environmental influence on culture, etc.) is why I find this a fascinating subject.
83. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 1:05 PM PT
Raskolnikov: Lots of people have observed a "growth premium" for distance from the equator. I think the Barro-Lee dataset even has some data on it under the label "absolute latitude". But the premium surely isn't great enough to pin the emergence of civilisations on it.
84. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 1:14 PM PT
Message #82
An agricultural civilisation also arose in the tropical and semi-tropical climes of Central America (and later in central Mexico).
85. CoralReef - March 1, 1999 - 1:14 PM PT
I haven't read the Landes book but William McNeill in _Plagues and Peoples_ (mentioned earlier by PE as the mother of all climate arguments) claims Africa's underdevelopment is not merely because its climate was of the sort hospitable to disease but also because as the cradle of human evolution it was a nest of anti-human diseases unparalleled on earth, rendering much good farmland simply uninhabitable.
Equatorial America would not have had this problem, other than having areas that were hospitable to disease, as did India and China, and other hot, wet areas, a situation which apparently hindered development but did not stop it to the degree as in Africa.
86. pellenilsson - March 1, 1999 - 1:23 PM PT
CoralReef
The "mother of all climate arguments" is Montesquieu's (1689-1755) "De l'esprit de lois".
87. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 1:30 PM PT
Pseudo: a small annual difference in growth rate is huge when left to accumulate over a few thousand years (a 1% growth difference means that I double your economic output every 70 years or so, leading to 2x in 70 years, 4x in 140 years, 8x in 210, etc.). I can't see how any sustained difference large enough for economists to detect would not become a juggernaut in a 1000 years time.
88. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 1:34 PM PT
Message #86
Good call. Montesquieu's work is hardly that. According to M., law being human reason applied to the government of men, various laws are applications of this reason to particular circumstances, such as the physical and moral conditions of the people. And climate is listed as but one of the many conditions, among others wealth, religion, liberty, etc.
89. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 1:37 PM PT
Message #87
I don't think I've even seen a premium as high as 1%. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the same premium would have existed 5000 years ago! One of the salient features of preindustrial societies is a positive growth rate near zero.
90. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 1:39 PM PT
Anyway, you can't capture a transition from hunter-gather society to an agricultural civilisation in the parlance of economic growth rates! It's preposterous.
91. FreetoChoose - March 1, 1999 - 1:44 PM PT
Raskolnikov
Actually, my initial reaction to a one-point differential is that it is huge. It implies an increasing divergence over time. This is hard to swallow, and troubling if true. I'd be interested to see the backup. Of course, merely observing a one-point differential over a modest time frame is easily believable.
92. pellenilsson - March 1, 1999 - 1:45 PM PT
PE Message #88
Let's not start a mini-debate about M. But I think you agree that his ideas about climate (possibly taken out of context) have been used quite a lot to explain the "superiority" of Europe. I heard some jerk referring to him on the radio only a couple of months ago.
93. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 2:03 PM PT
well, I only brought up the modern premium as empirical evidence of a productivity penalty for the tropics. I'll defer to your economic history knowledge of pre-industrial growth rates. But it does seem to me that if presence in the tropics can penalize economic growth, it can penalize other things that were more important than productivity thousands of years ago.
94. Raskolnikov - March 1, 1999 - 2:08 PM PT
FTC: usually, you don't want to extrapolate outside the range of your dataset (the only reason I did so was emphasize the possible importance of a "small" difference), so who knows what will happen. But when I read that, I got depressed over the idea of ever ending the gap between rich and poor countries any time soon.
95. uzmakk - March 1, 1999 - 2:10 PM PT
Just had the Diamond book(audio) delievered. Within 2 days I shall be able to dispense my opinion in 2 cent increments.
96. AzureNW - March 1, 1999 - 2:26 PM PT
uzmakk -
What book did you mention in the Religion thread that theorizes divergent evolution in modern human brains causing some modern humans to hear voices while others do not?
97. AzureNW - March 1, 1999 - 2:31 PM PT
uzmakk -
This statement from Message #10
"...no one today but cranks and crackpots believe that genetic and biological differences explain why Europeans nearly exterminated the Australian aborigines but not vice versa..."
would tend to make one think only a crank would suggest such significant evolutionary change in human neural physiology could have happened in the last 13,000 years.
98. CoralReef - March 1, 1999 - 2:53 PM PT
Message #86 Pelle, thanks for the cite, I hadn't heard of it. But keep in mind in this context mother didn't refer to progenitor but to Saddam's term for the Gulf War.
99. uzmakk - March 1, 1999 - 5:54 PM PT
AsureNWMessage #96:
The book is The Origin of Conciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. The book is about the evolution of modern conciousness not about race. It is important to understand what he means by conciousness. I would say that it is not impossible to imagine one tribe or race annihilating another without being concious in Jaynes' sense. All that would be needed was a simple technique, some type of advantage, and a push in the direction of conquest. Perhaps the Sythians are a good example.
As I mentioned somewhere else, one reason that the book appeals to me is that I made one of Jaynes' observations myself. After reading the Illiad in college we were asked for comments, I said that it did not appear to me that Homer was into character develpment. I was jumped upon, called a crank and a crackpot. Could I not see the character of Achilles by his actions? The exclusivity of action is precisely what I was refering to, but couldn't express it until I read Jaynes. In all of the Illiad, the seige of a great city, the deployment of a navy, the building of the Trojan Horse, there no evidence of reflective thought. Action. Action. Action. Cogitation, yes. Reflective thought, to see oneself, to hold oneself in one's own mind's eye, no. There is no evidence of the kind of thinking we(sometimes) do today. We can still go through the day from morning to night without being concious in the sense that Jaynes means it. According to Jaynes, entire civilizations grew up and thrived without men being "concious". Far out, I will admit. But I won't dismiss the theory and it will remain on the back of my mind regardless of how our dear Erasmus may characterize it.
History is full of stories of the quacks eventually being proved right. If the quacks are not proved right, it makes little difference to me. I have other fish to fry. Anyway, that's it for Jaynes and Uzmakk for now. I shan't brin
100. Pseudoerasmus - March 1, 1999 - 6:00 PM PT
Uzmak: Frankly your distinction between "cogitation" and "reflective thought" escapes me.
It seems to me that Achilles's sulking, and his decision to seek a short glorious life rather than a long boring one (the choice his mother Thetis told him about), qualifies as "reflective thought", as far as I'm concerned.
But even if there were no "reflective thought", that's about as significant as saying that there isn't any reflective thought in a Schwarznegger action movie.