The Book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - Literature review Example

 The Book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond The Book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond opens with a very relevant question which is now famously called as the Yali’s question after the character which asked this question. The question he asked was very simple – “Why do white people have so much cargo but we New Guineans have so little?” The question asked above is very important. It is a known fact that western powers such as Britain were able to make almost the whole world their colonies. At its peak the British and the French Empires were spread in all parts of the world. This dominance lasted for over 200 centuries. Recently after the era of colonies is over, most of the developments have taken place in limited parts of the world. If we study the patents filed and most of the modern world innovation which has taken place, the centre of it all has been either Europe or North America. Are the people of Europe and America superior to the rest of world or were their other factors which caused the dominance of these people in the world. The book Guns, Germs and Steel says that beneficiary of favorable geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics; particularly after the last ice age which led to their dominance. Thus geography and not intellect was the reason for the dominance of these countries over rest of the world. The tile of the book provides a reference to the factors which caused the world to become subservient to Europe. These factors are the military might of these countries (Guns), the diseases which they were immune to but caused epidemic among the Africans and Latin Americans (Germs) and the centralized government of these countries which promoted nationalism and propelled their military might (Steel).Diamond has argues in his book Eurasian civilization is not a product of their genius but as a result of a chains of developments of which Europeans were chance beneficiaries. The first step towards civilization is the transformation of man from hunter-gatherer to producer. As man begins to grow surplus food; the entire population need not be devoted to agriculture. This creates additional employment in the forms of artisans, organizes the society and creates nation states that are able to motivate the people and make them nationalists. Eurasia had an unparallel advantage in this respect. The people of Eurasia were able to grow wheat and barley due to the climatic conditions. They were also able to domesticate animals such as horses and camels which are easier to tame as compared to zebras and Asian Elephants which the African people had to tame. In contrast to people of Eurasia the Native Americans had to develop maize which is extremely cumbersome to grow .Thus people of Europe had a tremendous advantage due to their geographical location which provided the right kind of climate for food products and animals which can be easily domesticated. The plentiful of food supply and the dense population made division of labor possible in Europe. The rise of people who looked to other sources of income accelerated their economic growth and technological development. This also created a class of people who ruled over those and thus the first nation states were born in Eurasia. These nation states further helped in technological advancement of these nation states. These technological advancements increase the military strength of the European countries and allowed them to capture nations with armies which had numerological superiority but were no match to the Europeans in terms of artillery and logistics. Another geographical factor which Diamond points out in his book to the advantage of Europeans is the east-west spread of Eurasia and the large land mass. Due to the east west spread, whether were similar and allowed crops, animals and humans to move from one part of the continent to other part with ease. In America and Africa this movement was hindered due to the north-south spread of the continents. Due to their north-south spread the difference in climate was much more severe between North America and South America. Due to this difference in Climate crops and livestock from one part could not be transported to other regions. Human movement was also hampered due to the steep climatic changes. As the movement of people was less, their learning was also less and ideas were not easily transferrable and societies had to grow in isolation which proved to be a huge hindrance. Man is after all a social animal and gains by the experience of others. Eurasia’s dense population, high levels of trade and large domestication of animals also provided them with one more advantage. There was a large transfer of diseases among humans and also from animals to humans. Natural selection forced the people of Europe to develop immunity towards a large number of diseases. When Europeans landed in America; these diseases were transferred to the indigenous Americans who had no immunity and thus the diseases spread like an epidemic and wiped out populations. Due to this the Europeans were able to maintain control over Americans in spite of the fact that they were smaller in number. The advantage provided by immunity to diseases was somewhat nullified in Africa as even the white people had to suffer from malaria and yellow fever in Africa which caused much fewer death to the ‘immune’ Africans. The book also provides an explanation as to how geography determined the superiority of Europeans over other cultures where conditions similar to Europe existed such as China. The geography of China was suitable for large and isolated empires. In these empires policy stagnation easily took place due to the lack of competition. Due to policy stagnation industrial and military developments in these countries took place at a slower pace when compared to Europe. Europe’s geography favored smaller nation states which were quite close to each other. Mountains and rivers provided natural boundaries which could be defended. However due to the proximity of these states to each other; there was a constant struggle amongst them for superiority. This struggle led to faster technical and military developments when compared to China. The book “guns, germs and steel “dispels the notion of superior European intellect. The book states that geography as the main reason why Europeans were able to dominate the world. Geography o f the continent led to events which caused their superiority and rule the world for most parts of the last 5 centuries. This dominance continues to this day. Bibliography Read More