The Plague Of Steel By Richard Diamond

Another question that I think the book pursues to answer is- Why didn 't Europeans in America die in masses from diseases like the Native Americans did from European diseases like smallpox? And the simple answer is livestock. Between the late 15th century and the late 19th century, 90% of the indigenous population of the new world died. This was not due to war, but mostly due to disease. As the Europeans came in vast numbers on their ships with livestock and their goods, with them they brought smallpox, bubonic plague, cholera, and an array of other diseases (Diamond 211). Logic would argue that if old world diseases affected and killed millions of people in the new world, new world diseases would have also killed old world imperialists. However, …show more content…
He basically rejects any racial explanations in the differences of the material wealth of the industrial world to poorer countries, and in turn concentrated on actual environmental science, history, and geography to formulate a hypothesis. I, of course, agree with this approach and think that the world would be a much better place if we could do this in more day to day issues. However, Diamond and I disagree on some other issues. In his analysis, Diamond paints very broad brush strokes. One specific criticism of mine is that he talks about China with a dismissive attitude and his theories on the suppression of technological progress under the Han Dynasty appears to be unsubstantiated. Putting these aside, my final question is- If there was a historical reset button, would Europe be the dominant civilization all the time? In reading other books like The Military Revolution (Parker) in addition to Guns, Germs, and Steel, I have come to the conclusion of agreeing with Diamond in the probability of European imperialization is by far the highest in the world. I believe China or India would be the second most probable contender, but beyond that, it seems very unlikely for example to have the world dominated by Australian indigenous population’s technological prowess and language. Guns, Germs and Steel really provides an amazing insight into how the environmental conditions affect the progress of civilization but glosses over tremendously quickly some other issues. For example, I strongly believe that European imperialism couldn’t have been possible without the history of political thought in Europe, and I think that failure to credible political thought and idea of state lead environmentally blessed countries like India to not be imperialistic. There is an array of other shortcomings too, but I think that Diamond should have put in more thought into this that the half-hearted review of