African History Disproves “Guns Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond

There’s a question in the history profession that if sufficiently answered could not only reshape how we conceive ourselves, but reveal the best course of action for politics around the world. What makes the West strong? While there are many answers, the most popular of these has been Jared Diamond’s "Guns Germs and Steel." You’ll see his argument all over the place, including a NatGeo documentary. But of course it has its detractors, to the point that some historians consider it pseudo-history. Now I think that’s going too far, but there are enough problems with his thesis that we can’t take it as the final answer to these questions. So let’s talk about that.
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errata
10:32 - not "Blaut's theory" but "Diamond's theory" (thx PunkSci)
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references:

Michael C. Campbell and Sarah A. Tishkoff, "African Genetic Diversity: Implications for Human Demographic History, Modern Human Origins, and Complex Disease Mapping," Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 9 (22 September 2008): 403-433.

Richard York and Philip Mancus, “Diamond in the Rough: Reflections on Guns, Germs, and Steel,” Human Ecology Review 14, no. 2 (2007): 157-162.

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[Oxtocoatl]

It bears remembering that in Africa, germs protected the locals, not the colonizers. Europeans
couldn't survive in the interior before quinine was introduced from South America and grown on mass plantations in Indonesia. The New World fell to smallpox, steel swords and horses, but Africa remained impossible to take until the Europeans had access to the resources of the entirety of the rest of the world and the industrial revolution had kicked into high gear, producing machine guns and steamboats. It's weird that Africa is seen as a place that was easy to divide up, considering it was only done when Europe had gained a massive upper hand and even then lasted less than a hundred years in most parts of Africa.

[puffapuffarice]

I'm on the fence with this video. It feels like it just ended almost mid thought. I think you might want to

[TJ-hsqm]

I can travel by horse from Portugal to Korea; however, horses do badly in jungles and rainforests. And approximately 50% of the continent can be considered inhospitable, accessible only to highly skilled and experienced people. 30% to 35% for the Sahara and the Namib Desert, and roughly 20% is rainforest. Adding to this, there are huge challenges navigating the rivers and waterfalls, which is still a main obstacle for the transportation of food and goods. Africa has very few natural ports compared to its size as well as a rugged and steep coastal line. Climate and geography undoubtedly play significant roles.

[meganc]

I never finished reading Guns, Germs and Steel - I lent my copy to a friend from Rwanda, who never gave it back (because he was fascinated by it, rather than having thrown it away). Hearing the challenges you bring up makes a great deal of sense... I feel that Diamond's explanation should be combined with how Europe's geography created a natural selection push to colonialism. They were: A) constrained to a way tighter area than any other compeating nations, B) had huge areas of exposed coast lines, pushing them to compeat in developing stronger and more aggressive Navies (a quick look at who successfully invaded whom typically involved boats, especially as centuries passed), C) used up their own resources rapidly and had to go seeking resources elsewhere to keep compeating with each other. The explanation that, whatever other factors were relevant, Europeans had much more intensive forced competition than other continents, and especially competition involving invading by boat, and that they were jammed together in a way that involved much more spreading of diseases than other places with more natural distance, seems like it explains a fair bit... Not everything, but quite a lot. This isn't a question of superiority, btw, just specialisation.

[thomasking]

I always think a good way of putting the size of Africa into perspective is that the Sahara alone is larger than the 48 contiguous states.

[brotlowskyrgseg]

I'm not sure if Jared Diamond also goes into this, but isn't Africa's relative lack of navigable rivers and the great distances between them a much better geographic explanation for the continents lack of development than his idea of continental axis? Europe by contrast has tons of natural waterways, which makes it much easier and cheaper to exchange goods and thereby ideas over long distances.

[elgatto]

The entirety of africa: conquered

Ethopia: y'all hear somn

[Steampunkkids]

The Cynical Historian, I may not agree with all of your counter-arguments, but I get where you were going with it. My perception of the book comes from a different place than yours. I feel Diamond wasn’t saying that the geology of Africa made it impossible to grow certain crops or have certain animals. I perceived Diamond’s message to be more about the grains and animals that were indigenous to different areas of the world. And, due to the limitations to what was indigenous, society’s could only develop so far.

To me, Diamond’s message was more a out how people shouldn’t treat those of African or Native American decent as lesser than Eur-Asian simply because Eur-Asia developed better technology first. To me, the message was about seeing how not all society’s started with the same resources and that they shouldn’t be judged. Is that not the message you got?

[thepangwin]

The axis is a small part of it. What really drives the hypothesis is the animals that were available for domestication. For instance horses vs zebras. Different temperments. And in the Americas there were no big domesticated animals that were very useful for agriculture.

[coreywilliams]

Gun Germs and Steel was my first step into the world of history. At the time, it was novel for me to listen to someone try to reason out their arguments with primary and secondary sources. Jared Diamond might not have had all the answers, but I appreciate the time he put into writing that book. I might not be on the journey I am today without him.

[UsefulCharts]

I really appreciated this video. Like many people who dabble in history, I was familiar with Guns, Germs, and Steel. However, I was not familiar with some of the academic responses to it. So this was helpful. Definitely helps dispel some of the common misconceptions about Africa.

[catocall]

I want to thank you for correctly explaining why the Mercator projection is the way it is. It was always meant for maritime use and was never meant to be a political statement.

[guillaumerusengo]

I do agree with Diamond that spreading ideas and skills was made much easier and faster thanks to latitude and the geography of Eurasia.

[Luvurenemy]

“My mom says there are a lot of black people in Africa.” - Cartman, South Park

[GnarledStaff]

You have not discredited any of Diamond's arguments, only pointed out that they are not monolithic, which he admitted in the book.

The argument was not that continental shape determines the outcome of civilization, but rather that continental axis can influence the spread of plants and animals.
Yes, humans crossed the Saharaearly on. To refute Diamond's argument you need to show that they brought plants and animals which thrived after crossing the Sahara- on those earlier trips, not centuries later.

That eurasian plants thrived below the sahara when later introduced does not disprove the theory like you seem to claim. Rather, Diamond points out that the sahara, as well as other climates in Africa, prevented those crops from getting to the latitudes where they thrive until much later. The point is that latitude acts as a barriers that slows, not prevents, the transport of domesticated animals and plants.

[Le-cptr]

I’d actually argue the opposite, that African history is a great example of some of the principles in Guns, Germs, and Steel. For instance, West Africa has historically been a regional powerhouse with some of the wealthiest empires like the Mali calling it their home. However, because of the geographical barriers in Africa like the large mountain ranges, Sahara desert, thick wildernesses and difficult to navigate rivers, it was hard for trade to occur on a large enough scale for prosperity and advancement to be spread as easily as it could elsewhere. There’s a reason that East Africa remained mostly city states despite having trade with China and India, and that’s because external barriers prevented that prosperity to allow a major empire to flow

Also note that Diamond’s argument is more meant to address why civilizations developed where they did and NOT about regional power shifts and the rise and fall of empires which are largely circumstantial

[infidelheretic]

Concerning your first point. Africa’s East west axis is still smaller than Asia’s by a significant margin.

Moreover Asia’s East West axis sits along a more temperate latitude.

[avaevathornton]

When I was reading GG&S, I never got the impression that it was meant to explain the differences between Europe plus the white Anglosphere plus Japan and the rest of the world. The vast majority of the text deals with the differences between the major continental landmasses _before_ the 15th century. The events of the last 400 or so years, in which Europe accelerated ahead of the rest of the world and in which Subsaharan Africa was left behind even by other developing regions, are only mentioned briefly toward the end of the book and these parts are clearly less developed than the main body of the text. To me these parts read more like offhand speculation than a position the author was seriously trying to defend.
Certainly the book has nothing to say about the difference between British and Iberian settler colonies, it has nothing to say about the difference between Japan's rapid modernization and China's slide into utter misery and carnage, and it has nothing to say about why countries like Botswana, Costa Rica, China, and Malaysia have done so much better in recent decades than countries like DR Congo, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Niger. And I don't think it ever intended to.
I'm not sure if Diamond has claimed that his book explains _current_ inequalities between countries or if I just wasn't paying enough attention, but I feel like a lot of people have taken this book and turned it into something much more profound than it was ever meant to be.

[hochmeisterjer]

I think the problem with your counter-arguments to Jared is with scale. You claim Africa and its' civilizations had access to the same crops through trade and sometimes had similar political systems. You also claim Africa wasn't isolated, which is true. But the reasoning behind Jared's arguments still stand. Africa was isolated "enough" so that none of the crops that could have spread through trade were adopted (with notable exception of rice near madagascar). They had complex politcal systems but not "often enough" for them to rival the hundreds of states throughout Eurasia. History, especially at such a large scale, is complicated enough to find rareties to point out as proof for counter-arguments. However you ignore the big picture by doing this. Africa was definitely more isolated than Eurasia despite trade on the east coast and trade through the Sahara. They definitely had worst crops and domesticated animals. They definitely had great barriers to expansion and trade (Sahara, inner jungle regions). Pointing out singularities like the few sub-saharan states and how once entrenched european crops did grow there is insufficient proof for the overwhelming differences observed between continents.

[julietfischer]

In the introduction of the book, Diamond didn't say he had THE answer. It's not his fault that people uncritically accepted his argument rather than investigating his ideas.