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Review: [untitled]Author(s): Philip R. P. CoelhoReviewed work(s):

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. by Jared DiamondSource: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 1179-1181Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2566898Accessed: 17/03/2009 19:18

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Book Reviews 1179

sents an apology for the unfair politics of wealth distribution in the language of "scientific objectivity." As an intellectual historian, Irwin can ill afford to ignore these issues.

Finally, the most persuasive argument against free trade emerges not from economists, but from individuals and organizations concerned with the sentiment that forms the core of the free trade argument: benevolent self-interest and its accompanying materialism. They point to the social consequences of the inevitable economic dislocation that accompanies the pendulum of international trade. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers realized that the moral dimension played a critical role in the debate over free trade. Hopefully, Irwin will address these issues at some other time.

FRANCK SCHUURMANS, Madison, Wisconsin

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates ofHuman Societies. By Jared Diamond. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Pp. 480. $27.50.

Jared Diamond has won the Pulitzer Prize and much acclaim for this book, and de- servedly so. It is a path-breaking book that will serve as a landmark for future historians, anthropologists, and economists who are interested in the long-run development of the human economy and society. The book is not perfect; it has flaws that stand out because so much of the book is so good and original.

Diamond motivates his investigation into the development of the human economy by attempting an answer to the question posed to him by a politician (Yali) from Papua New Guinea: why is the West rich and New Guinea poor? With some digressions, Diamond's answer encompasses this book. His explanation is based on geography and is heavily deterministic: from prehistory to the present, given the resources available to them, humans did as well as could be expected in their various environments. His narrative is over the very long run, the past 13,500 years, give or take a millennium.

Starting with the shape and position of continents, Diamond observes that the Eurasian land mass extends thousands of miles further in the east-west direction than do the other inhabited continents. Eurasia, unlike the other continents, also has relatively mild barriers to east-west migrations. The shape and position of continents affect the spread of both fauna and flora. Animals and plants evolve in specific ecologies and have difficulties in adapting to the different climates that the earth's tilt imposes upon its north-south axis. This means that when plants and animals were first domesticated they spread relatively easily on the Eurasian continent, (east-west migration), but slowly on the African and the American continents (north-south migrations). Plants domesticated in one latitude were not easily adapted to another latitude because of the different amounts of sunlight, warmth and grow- ing seasons. For example, American corn (maize) domesticated about 3500 B.C.E. in Mesoamerica was not a major crop in what is now the Eastern United States until the beginnings of the current era (200 C.E.); and corn was not a major crop in the more northern areas (New Jersey, New York, New England) until after 800 C.E. Contrast corn to wheat which was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent by 7000 B.C.E. and had almost reached the English Channel by 5000 B.C.E. Plants adapt to different localities along the (approximately) same latitude much more easily than by going north or south.

The Eurasian land mass also had the advantage of having the largest area of Mediterranean- type lands, stretching east-west from the Fertile Crescent to Iberia, and north-south from southern Europe and the Black Sea area to North Africa. This was advantageous because annual grasses with relatively large seeds are evolutionary responses to Mediterranean climatic conditions. A number of these "Mediterranean" grasses became a major part of humanity's food crops (wheat, barley, oats, rye). Other Mediterranean-type areas (Southern California, the southern tip of Africa, Southwest Australia) were much smaller, and as a consequence oftheir

1180 Book Reviews

size, fewer native grasses evolved, which gave their aboriginal peoples a smaller pool of potential domesticates. While having a larger selection to choose from does not guarantee that you will find the best grain, the odds favor it. And the size differential of the Mediterranean climatic region ofEurasiawas vastly greater than those of other regions. In fact, the aboriginal inhabitants of Southern California, South Africa and South Western Australia did not fmd suitable crops, and never took up farming before contact with Europeans.

In Diamond's view, the transition from hunting-gathering to farming is important because it leads to a greater population density and a settled lifestyle. A greater population density means that there are more minds tackling the diverse problems that affect humanity. A society with more minds does not guarantee that its solutions to problems will be more effective than a society with fewer people, but once again, that is the way to bet. A settled lifestyle allows humanity to shape and create things that hunter-gathers find too burden- some to possess. The manipulation ofthe material world allowed the human race to acquire the knowledge and skills that created the modern world. Once a problem was solved, the solution spread rapidly through Eurasia. Consequently few problems had to be solved many times (metallurgy was discovered twice, an alphabet once). If people know there is a solution, they will discover it even if the actual process is unknown (the Cherokee alphabet was made by an illiterate Cherokee, Sequoyah, who had observed the advantages white people had from making marks that recorded speech). Consequently, the peoples who now inhabit the richest parts of the modem world are not the heirs of smarter people than their impover- ished counterparts, they are just the fortunate survivors of peoples who faced fewer con- straints and had a larger stock of knowledge.

Diamond implicitly rejects the Malthusian Doctrine-implicit because neither Malthus nor his Doctrine is discussed. Malthusian impoverishment is just not relevant to Diamond. Not that population growth has no unintended or unfortunate consequences. Settled agriculture and population growth allowed the transmission of zoonoses to humanity from herds of domesticated animals and the parasites (fleas, ticks, rats, and other vermin) that followed humans and their animals. These infections ravaged the Eurasian peoples giving them (among other diseases): mumps, influenza, typhus, chicken pox, plague, and probably small pox. The east-west orientation of the Eurasian land mass facilitated the transmissions of diseases because, like other organisms, pathogens favor certain ecologies over others. A deadly pathogen in one area may be a minor one in another or even unviable (for example, yellow fever in the Arctic). Over centuries these diseases became endemic to Europeans who developed resistance to them. But when these diseases went with the Europeans to the Americas, Australia, and Polynesia the native peoples of these areas were devastated (in some areas more than a 95 percent decline injust 150 years). The aboriginal inhabitants of these areas had no similar panoply of diseases to infect the Europeans because they had either no settled agriculture at all (Australia) or few domesticated animals (Polynesia and the Americas). The lack of animals relative to the Eurasian peoples is, once again, a result of the immense east-west spread of Eurasia that allowed early peoples a greater selection of potential domesticates. (Once the animals were domesticated, many of their herds and flocks spread rapidly along the east-west axis.) Diamond attributes the European conquest of the Americas to germs in conjunction with technology (guns and steel). European hege- mony was assured when the Chinese opted for isolation during the fifteenth century. This left the Chinese unaware of the changes in technology and warfare the more competitive Europeans were creating. European competitiveness was itself a function of geography: the mountains, rivers, peninsulas, and islands that divide Europe allow for political fragmentation. Political fragmentation meant that if a nation did not keep up, it would be divided up.

Thus, for good or for evil, the patrimony of geography and history is visited upon the inhabitants of regions and their descendants. This is the essence of Diamond's message, but there is much that is very good, but peripheral to his main theme. Some examples are: the

Book Reviews 1181

nuances of radiocarbon dating, the difficulties of domesticating animals, the lives of primitive peoples (Hobbesian), Pleistocene extensions, tracing populations from linguistics, and so on. The range of his knowledge and scholarship are extraordinary, so it is understandable that he should make some mistakes.

The errors that he makes are of two types: one group is so gross they are almost carica- tures. These could easily have been corrected by a knowledgeable historian. Examples of these are the following: the calvary did not dominate warfare until World War I, it was of marginal importance in land warfare from the end of the middle ages; what is now the United States did not import "millions of sub-Saharan black Africans" as slaves, only about 660,000; and the debate over whether the QWERTY keyboard is an example of path de- pendency is continuing. Diamond does not recognize that there is any debate; he takes QWERTY as a proven example of path dependence. These and other errors could easily have been corrected, and are really not central to Diamond's argument.

Diamond also makes errors of a more complex nature. One is that he does not carry his basic argument far enough. While he mentions the importance of diseases, he also empha- sizes the decisive role of European military technology in their conquests. But conceive of a hypothetical alternative: suppose that when the Europeans first made their voyages of discovery they did not have firearms but, instead, had lower-cost and more reliable shipping. Would the Europeans have had an easier or more difficult time conquering the Amer- icas? I believe that lower-cost shipping would have brought Old World diseases to the New World more rapidly than actually occurred, and that would have depopulated the Americas even more rapidly than actually happened. In other words, diseases were even more important than Diamond implies with his emphasis on "guns and steel." Pathogens were the sine qua non behind the Europeanization of the New World and Oceania. Africa and East Asia were not amenable to Europeanization (temporary conquests, yes; permanent replacement of populations, no) because these areas had their own deadly pathogens that more than offset those that the Europeans brought. European military superiority enabled them tempo- rarily to conquer vast parts of Africa and Asia. It was a temporary conquest because the excessive mortality of Europeans in those areas prohibited Europeanization. Excess mortality had the direct effect of reducing the European population, and the indirect effect of inducing sensible Europeans not to migrate to these regions.

Another error that Diamond-and many others-make is to assume that the game is over. The author writes about the eventual dominance of Europeans and their descendants as if it were permanent. But, if we are to believe Diamond, East Asian countries with open and honest capitalist systems have a density advantage over the West. The next millennium may see a re- ranking of regional economic advantages. For someone who espouses the long run (with a vengeance) approach to history, Diamond curiously ignores it when looking into the future.

But these are relatively minor flaws in a magnificent book. Diamond has pointed out new vistas toward an understanding of the development of the human economy, and how and why Homo sapiens transformed itself from hunting-gathering to modern technology. This book has made a major contribution to our knowledge of ourselves.

PHILIP R. P. COELHO, Ball State University

The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. By Rodney Stark. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 245. $24.95.

The Christian faith grew from a few score in the mid-first century C.E. to become the dominant religion of the Roman Empire by the end of the fourth century. Rodney Stark, using the tools of the social sciences, explains this growth by emphasizing Christianity's competitive advantages vis-a'-vis other beliefs. The advantage Christianity had was not

Review: How the West Won: History That Feels Good Usually Isn'tAuthor(s): David FrumReviewed work(s):

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared DiamondSource: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1998), pp. 132-135Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049056Accessed: 17/03/2009 18:34


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Review Essay

How the West Won

History That Feels Good Usually Isn't

David Frum

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by jared diamond.

New York: W.W. Norton, 1997,48?

pp. $27.50.

Virgil claimed that it was Rome's task to

show mercy to the conquered and over

throw the proud. Two thousand years

later, America's professors have assigned themselves the old Virgilian project. Book after book is published in a vast

effort to convince Americans to think

more highly of foreign peoples and

cultures?especially those once deemed

primitive?and less highly of themselves.

This is sometimes called the "thera

peutic" approach to history, but it might be more accurate to call it the anti-imperi alistic approach. The imperialist writers

of a century ago sought to show how once

small, backward peoples?the English, the Americans, the Prussians?built states

and then, through their own superior

personal qualities, rose to dominate a

continent or the globe. The new anti

imperialist writers want to tell exactly the opposite story. The rise of the West, as they tell it, reflects no honor or

glory on Western civilization. If it happened at

all?and some anti-imperial writers deny it?it only proves the West's superior ruthlessness and cruelty. Or else, as other

anti-imperial writers say, the rise of the

West was the result of happenstance: the good luck of having plenty of iron and coal conveniently close, a temperate

climate, easy access to the sea. Much of

the anti-imperial school's writing can

immediately be recognized as exercises in

excuse-making. But as the screenwriters

of Hollywood occasionally remind us,

even very bad genres can sometimes

produce good works.

A good example of a bad genre is

perhaps the best way to describe Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and SteeL

David Frum is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

[132]

How the West Won

Diamond is an evolutionary biologist

by training, but over the past quarter

century he became interested in what

he calls "Yali's question." Yali was a

local politician Diamond got to know while doing fieldwork in New Guinea. Diamond describes him as inquisitive and charismatic but tinged with resent

ment. As Diamond remembers it, Yali's

question was posed like this: "Why is it that you white people developed so much

cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" The world has been grappling

with this question for the past 400

years. Diamond is one of the very few

authors to produce an answer that is

both original and convincing. Diamond's intentions are, as he frankly

confesses, apologetic. He believes that

most Westerners inwardly explain their

success in racial terms, and he aims to

show that white Americans, Europeans, and Australians owe their prosperity and

power much more to chance than to their

own merits. Despite his polemical intent, he has produced one of the most fascinat

ing works of history in recent times.

TRAPPED IN A BUBBLE

Diamond believes that the peoples of

Eurasia got a head start over the rest of the

world 13,000 years ago and that they owed

that lead to the accident of the distribution of wild grains. Diamond convincingly con

tends that the ancient Fertile Crescent?

the arc of arable land that spreads from

Palestine across southern Anatolia and

down through Mesopotamia?was

uniquely abundant in potential food crops. Wheat was

indigenous to the Fertile

Crescent. So were lentils and chickpeas. No other place

on earth was equally

blessed. America might have had maize

and apples, but what convinced early humans to switch from hunting to farming

was not the availability of any one food

but a sufficient number of them to offer a

balanced and secure diet, which America,

Africa, and Australia each lacked. Early

agriculture competed with hunting as a

way of life, and only in places where the

plants existed to prove agriculture clearly

superior could it take off. The Fertile Crescent met that requirement better

than any other place, and so it was there

that agriculture began. Ditto for the domestication of animals.

Eurasia boasted more usable species of

animals than any other region. By Dia

mond's calculation, of the world's 148 big wild land herbivores, only 14 are suitable

for domestication and only five can thrive

across a broad range of climates: sheep,

goats, cows, pigs, and horses. Of the five

major and the nine minor domesticatable

animals, 13 are indigenous to Eurasia,

one (the llama) is indigenous to South

America, and none are indigenous to

North America, Australasia, or sub-saharan

Africa. Africa has animals that can be

tamed, like the elephant, but none that

has ever been domesticated.

Eurasia's agricultural head start led to

its head start in every other way. The first

societies to become agricultural were the

first to develop complex social structures,

specialized armies, and eventually the

guns and steel of Diamond's title.

As for the third element ofthat title, germs, that too was an

advantage trace

able to Eurasia's agricultural head start.

Most infectious diseases originated from

human interaction with animals. Because

Eurasians developed animal husbandry earlier than anyone else, and with a wider

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- September/October i??8 [ 13 3 ]

David Frum

variety of animals, they developed stronger immune systems than either native North

Americans or native Australians.

The Fertile Crescent's agricultural and

epidemiological breakthroughs spread throughout Eurasia because of another

lucky break: unlike America and Africa, which extend northwards and southwards, Eurasia extends eastwards and westwards.

For primitive humans, this was an

important difference: crops and herds move

more easily between regions of similar

climate than they do from warmer to

colder regions. It took thousands of years to create species of maize that could grow in the northeastern United States. The

wheat of southern Turkey, by contrast,

could quickly and easily spread to southern

Europe, north Africa, northern India, and

eventually northern China. Likewise,

humans move more easily westward and

eastward, where they encounter similar

kinds of germs. Diamond writes, "The

cool highlands of Mexico would have

provided ideal conditions for raising llamas,

guinea pigs and potatoes, all domesticated

in the cool highlands of the Andes. Yet the northward spread of these Andean

specialities was stopped completely by the hot intervening lowlands of Central

America. Five thousand years after llamas

had been domesticated in the Andes, the Olmecs, Maya, Aztecs, and all other

native societies of Mexico remained

without pack animals and without any edible domestic mammals except dogs."

What was true for agricultural tech

nology was true for technology of other

kinds. Diamond observes that all early Old World wheels were made in the same

odd way?by joining three planks together around an axle?which suggests that the

idea was diffused. The same seems to

have been true for writing. But while

writing quickly spread throughout Eurasia, it was unable to make the much

shorter hop from Mexico, which had a

writing system, to the Andes or the mouth

of the Mississippi, where sophisticated agricultural societies could have made use

of it. As Diamond tells it, non-European societies were

trapped in ecological bubbles

by their geography and in intellectual bubbles by their illiteracy. Describing the ambush and capture of the Inca emperor

Atahulpa by Francisco Pizarro's Spaniards at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca in November 1532, Diamond wonders

why the Indians were so easily tricked.

His answer: illiteracy made them gullible. "From books, the Spaniards knew of

many contemporary civilizations remote

from Europe, and about several thousand

years of European history. Pizarro ex

plicitly modeled his ambush of Atahulpa on the successful strategy of Cortes. In

short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs

to a huge body of knowledge about human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahulpa have no conception of the

Spaniards themselves, and no personal

experience of any other invaders from

overseas, but he also had not even heard (or

read) of similar threats to anyone else, any where else, anytime previously in history."

SCHOLARSHIP AS SOCIAL WORK

This summary cannot do justice to the pre cision and scientific learning of Diamond's

account. Like William McNeill's Plagues and Peoples y this book's melding of disci

plines, in this case botany and zoology with history, alters the way one thinks. It

is not to be missed by anyone interested

in the ancient problem of why some

nations are rich and others poor. It is a

[134] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume7yNo.5

How the West Won

much better book than David Landes'

overpraised The Wealth and Poverty of Nations?a series of brilliant individual

insights linked by a badly out-of-date belief in investment-driven growth and

command economies. And its conclusions

are even more provocative than Thomas

Sowell s Conquest and Cultures, although

Sowell's teaching that war, conquest, and

enslavement are the historical norm?a

norm that has often made future progress

possible?is a useful antidote to Guns,

Germs, and Steel.

And yet, as fascinating as this book is, it is also in important ways destructive. It is

untrue to claim, as Diamond does, that the

traditional account of the rise of the West was an implicitly racist one. At least in

this century, the traditional account of

the rise of the West has given credit to its

propitious political and social institutions. That is not true only of recent times, when

the institutions in question are liberal ones,

but of more ancient history as well, when

the West benefited from the devolution of

power implicit in feudalism and the scope for free thought created by the indepen dence of the medieval Christian church

from political control. And that traditional account agreed, with varying degrees of

certainty, that those traditions were more

or less available to anyone else and would

have more or less similar results wherever

they were tried. Today Latin American

and Asian countries are rocketing toward

prosperity (with a bump or two along the way) by mimicking the institutions

painfully evolved in England and North America. Curiously, at the very moment

when the evidence seems strongest for

this insitutional theory, we seem most

eager to believe that backward countries

are the helpless victims of their pasts.

This reproach is especially pertinent in Diamond s case because his own intentions

are so stridently polemical. He wants to

scold Westerners for ever having looked down on others and to lift up those others

who feel demoralized by the West's

superior success. "We keep seeing all

those glaring, persistent differences in

people s status," he writes. "We're assured

that the seemingly transparent biological explanation of the world s inequalities as

of AD 1500 is wrong, but we're not told what the correct explanation is. Until we

have some convincing, detailed, agreed

upon explanation for the broad pattern of history, most people will continue to

suspect that the racist biological explana tion is correct after all."

We can all agree that racist arrogance is wrong, both in fact and on principle.

But today, racist arrogance is both less

prevalent and less dangerous than the

opposite danger: a self-pitying refusal to learn from the success of others. History has its victims, of course, and Diamond's

account of how those victims became

victims is powerful and illuminating. But the best way to deal with one's victimhood is by putting it behind one, rather than

lounging upon it and indulging it. History should not be written with the intent to

help: it is scholarship, not social work, and its only criterion of success is truth.

Still, if it seeks to help, it ought actually to be helpful. And despite its originality and erudition, the lesson that this book seeks to impart is anything but that.?

FOREIGN AFFAIRS September/October 1998 [135]

Review: [untitled]Author(s): Roger D. MastersReviewed work(s):

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared DiamondSource: Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Sep., 1998), pp. 228-229Published by: Association for Politics and the Life SciencesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4236446Accessed: 17/03/2009 18:45


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Book Reviews

References

Boyd, R. and P.J. Richerson (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. and M.W. Feldman (1981). Cultural Transmis- sion and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chagnon, N. and W. Irons, eds. (1979). Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press.

Durham, W.H. (1991). Coevolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Somit, ?., ed. (1976). Biology and Politics. Paris: Mouton. Wiegele, T.C. (1979). Biopolitics: Search for a More Human Political

Science. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, 480 pp. US$27.50 cloth. ISBN 0-393-03891-2. US$14.95 paper. ISBN 0-393-31755-2. W.W. Norton, 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110, USA.

Roger D. Masters Dartmouth College, USA

Why did Europeans conquer the New World?and not the

other way around? When and where did centralized states

with laws arisen?and why? Is there a reason that cultural

change and political power have followed a different course

on each continent of the globe? Answers to these questions are essential for anyone who claims to understand human

history, yet they are rarely asked and almost never explicitly answered.

The issues are important. We lack a coherent explanation for the success of Western civilization in gaining economic,

political, and military control over the world. One of two

opinions result. Either the success of the West is attributed

to superior intelligence and ability (which implies a racial

superiority of Europeans over the indigenous peoples of

Africa and the New World if not over Asians), or our power is attributed to evil intentions and brute force. In short, the

global triumph of Europe since the Renaissance is explained either by racism (blaming the defeated) or by historical

accident (hating the victors).

In this important book, Diamond suggests a third option:

biogeography. His argument, based on evolutionary biol-

ogy, integrates disciplines as diverse as geography, plant

genetics, and epidemiology. As a consequence, Diamond

presents what may be the most comprehensive explanation of agricultural production, social classes, centralized gov- ernments, organized warfare, and market economies since

Marx and Engels wrote the German ideology in 1843-44.

Indeed, one has to go back to Rousseau's Discourse on the

Origin of Inequality (1755) to find an account that answers

these questions while also weighing the available scientific

evidence on hominid evolution and the social behavior of other primates.

If nothing else, Diamond's book contradicts three princi-

pal arguments against evolutionary analyses ofhuman social behavior.

? First, biology is not necessarily racist. Guns, Germs, and

Steel provides a convincing case for the psychological and cognitive unity of Homo sapiens. Indeed, Diamond

explains why members of hunter-gatherer bands and other so-called "primitive" tribes are probably superior to us as social problem solvers as well as observers of the

physical environment. ? Second, biology does not necessarily imply genetic de-

terminism. Environmental factors have played a central

role in human history. Guns, Germs, and Steel focuses

attention on such biogeographical factors as the distribu-

tion of plants and the orientation of continents. For ex-

ample, edible wild plants are not equally suitable for

domestication?and there were more indigenous species that could become agricultural crops in Eurasia than

elsewhere. The same was true for wild animals suited to be domesticated for food or traction. In addition, the

north-south orientation of the Americas impeded diffu-

sion of crop cultivars and domesticated animals, whereas

Roger D. Masters is Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Govern- ment Emeritus at Dartmouth College and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Re- search. His publications include The Nature of Politics (Yale University Press, 1989), Beyond Relativism: Science and Human Values (University Press of New England, 1993), and Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power (Notre Dame University Press, 1996). He also has coedited a number of volumes, including Primate Politics (with Glendon Schubert, Southern Illinois Uni-

versity Press, 1990), The Sense of Justice (with Margaret Gruter, Sage, 1992), and The Neurotransmitter Revolution: Serotonin, Social Behavior, and the Law (Southern Illinois University Press, 1994). He is also Editor of the "Biology and Social Life" section of Social Science information. Correspondence should be ad- dressed to Department of Government, Silsby Hall, Dartmouth

College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA (E-mail: roger.d.masters @dartmouth.edu).

228 Politics and the Life Sciences September 1998

Book Reviews

in Eurasia there could be east-west movements across

similar climate zones. ? Finally, biology does not ignore the unique events of

human history. Specific combinations of environmental

factors and sequences of human actions led to different

historical outcomes on each continent. To take an important example, the species Homo sapiens had become a

highly efficient hunter during the two million years pre-

ceding the crossing of the land bridge from Asia to what

is now Alaska. During hominid evolution, large mam-

mals in Africa and Eurasia had learned to fear our ances-

tors and avoid them. In contrast, the relatively late arrival

of humans in the New World coincided with (and prob-

ably caused) the rapid extermination of large mammalian

species on the continents of North and South America.

What was the result of this? Unlike Eurasia?though, for different reasons, like sub-Saharan Africa?the

New World was relatively lacking in large animals, like

cows, sheep, or horses, suitable for domestication. In-

digenous New World societies were thus deprived of

sources of traction and food that developed throughout Eurasia.

The value of Guns, Germs, and Steel is especially clear in

Diamond's account of the origin of centralized states. In

order to organize very large human populations, exceeding the size of the preliterate hunter-gatherers or horticulturists,

agricultural surpluses were necessary. Equally important was the emergence of social class divisions (made possible

by a productive surplus) and the technologies of production,

communication, and warfare. As Diamond shows, only a

complex, multifactorial theory can explain the rise?and

frequent collapse?of centralized states.

Some experts have challenged details and specific aspects of Diamond's stunning synthesis. Their concerns only rein-

force the central lessons of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Without

a scientific theory that can explain why states exist and

conquests occur, social scientists all too readily build theo-

ries of law and government on foundations that are

essentially ideological. Worse, to defend liberal and prag- matic notions of universal "human rights," much of our

conventional thinking ultimately relies on an ethnocentric

approach to human diversity. For example, I would personally put a little more weight

on the role of individual leadership at those critical moments

when a society had most, but not all, of the attributes for the

establishment of centralized political and legal systems. It is

an old tradition, exemplified by the status accorded to foun-

ders and given theoretical formulation by Machiavelli, that

some leaders have a combination of genius, skill, and intui-

tion that makes possible the successful creation or mainte-

nance of political institutions. From Hammurabi and Moses

to Washington, Napoleon, and Lenin, individuals seem to

have shaped human events (though of course without "caus-

ing" them in any simple sense). Sometimes, such individuals

overreached the capacity of their society or undermined their

own success with false beliefs. On other occasions, they seem to have contributed to lasting success. Today's aca-

demic bias is against the "great man" theory of history, but?as Diamond's descriptions show?powerful central-

ized states did not always arise in societies that had the

potential to sustain them. But this is a matter of emphasis more than a criticism.

Ultimately, Diamond is surely correct to insist that com-

plex, multifactorial pathways led to the formation of political institutions. Contemporary theories in the social

sciences, which take the state for granted, attribute it to

chance, or explain it with crudely simplified models (of which the Prisoners* Dilemma is a good example), are no

longer tenable. Surprisingly, a broadly evolutionary ap-

proach can do better. Much better.

Anyone seriously interested in law, political institutions, or human behavior needs to be aware of the issues Diamond

has posed so clearly. If his answers are not the last word,

they at least point the way toward a satisfactory under-

standing ofhuman history. For faculty as well as students in

social sciences, humanities, and law, Guns, Germs, and Steel

should be required reading.

Politics and the Life Sciences September 1998 229

Review: Evolutionary HistoryAuthor(s): Peter TeminReviewed work(s):

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared DiamondSource: Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Winter, 1998), pp. 405-415Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/205422Accessed: 17/03/2009 19:38


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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxvIII:3 (Winter, I998), 405-415.

Peter Temin

Evolutionary History

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. By Jared Diamond (New York, W. W. Norton, 1997) 480 pp. $27.50

Diamond has written an entertaining and intriguing evolutionary history of the world. It deals with all of human history from the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution to the present, from West- ern Europe to the Pacific Islands. It is decidedly not Eurocentric. As befits such a large canvas, time generally is measured in millennia and space in continents. The shorter time spans and re- stricted areas that most historians examine are used as examples, much in the way that we might use the comments and experiences of individuals to illustrate an analysis of national affairs.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an interdisciplinary history, drawing on anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and sociology-although, sadly, not economics. As Diamond's temporal reach extends beyond typical histories, so does his intellectual reach extend beyond most interdisciplinary histories. He summons geography and all forms of biology, from botany and zoology in the large to immunology and genetics in the small. He extends McNeill's thesis-first presented twenty years ago-that disease was a neglected factor in historical conflicts and that the interaction of agricultural peoples and their domestic animals was key to the etiology of many deadly diseases.1 The theme that ties these various approaches together is evolutionary theory.

It is characteristic of Diamond's approach and his sprightly prose that he does not claim to have set out to write the history

Peter Temin is Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Lessons of the Great Depression (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); editor of Inside the Business Enterprise: Historical Perspectives on the Use of Information (Chicago, 1991); coauthor, with Charles Feinstein and Gianni Toniolo, of The European Economy Between the Wars (Oxford, I997).

? 1997 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

I William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York, I977).

406 I PETER TEMIN

of the world, but to answer a question posed to him by Yali, a politician in Papua New Guinea: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [that is, trade goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own" (14)? This is one of the central problems of the late twentieth century; Yali was hardly the first person to pose it. Cameron, for example, opens his economic history of the world with Yali's question in more prosaic form: "Why are some nations rich and others poor?"2 Diamond is not the first person to pose an answer. Political scientists and those who follow their lead cite the form of government in the third world as a reason. Economists and those who follow their lead focus on the economic policies of the less developed countries (LDCs). All social scientists direct their attention to events of the past few decades, making the implicit assumption that questions of relative income involve compara- tively short-term processes. This account appears to be confirmed in the dramatic economic progress of the newly industrialized countries (NICs) of Asia. It finds expression in a recent presidential address to the American Economic Association that wondered how the policy recommendations of the United States to LDCS

during the Cold War could have been so wrong, which presup- poses that enough time has passed for us to know that these policies were misguided.3

Diamond hardly talks about events since World War II. To answer Yali's question, he reaches back into history more than o0,000 years. By contrast, the literature about economic growth

and development barely contains any references to events o00

years ago. Even Cameron, who extends his investigation to Paleo- lithic times, discusses the Neolithic revolution only briefly before proceeding to more recent events.4 Which approach is more informative? Are the approaches cumulative or competitive?

This essay discusses the implications of doing such long his- tones and of drawing from such varied sources. The upshot is that evolutionary history and more conventional theories of economic growth complement each other, collaborating to make a more

2 Rondo Cameron, A Concise Economic History of the World (New York, I997; 3d ed.), 3. 3 Anne 0. Krueger, "Trade Policy and Economic Development: How We Learn," American Economic Review, LXXXVII (I997), I-22.

4 Cameron, Concise Economic History.

EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY | 407

complete explanation. In addition, Diamond's evolutionary theory illuminates events in the distant past that growth theory generally ignores. Diamond has written a fascinating history of the world, filled with illuminating anecdotes from both past and present, as well as with curious historical facts about familiar and unfamiliar phenomena and events.

After 400 pages of narrative and analysis, Diamond states, "The hand of history's course at 8000 B.C. lies heavily upon us" (417), reflecting that the people who first introduced agriculture in the Neolithic Revolution still dominate the world today. We have more cargo than Yali's constituency in Papua New Guinea because our distant ancestors were located in more fortunate settings than his. This strikingly simple conclusion follows directly from Diamond's use of evolutionary theory.

Biological evolution is a slow process. Events I0,000 years ago are still relevant to the distribution of wealth because evolutionary processes are slow-ponderously slow. There is no di- rected activity. Chance slowly produces mutations, and natural selection determines which ones survive and multiply, resulting in major changes only after many generations. In evolutionary terms, millennia are short periods. Applying this model to human history produces the emphasis on the longue duree in Diamond's book.

The historical application of evolution is based on two as- sumptions. The first is that a bigger population provides more opportunities for mutation or, when we move from biology to history, innovation. In economic jargon, there are economies of scale in the production of new products, new productive processes, and new organizations of these processes. Many economic models of the "new growth theory" that try to approach Yali's question formally have embodied this reasoning.

New growth theory differs from old growth theory by not taking changes in productivity to be exogenous, that is, unex- plained.5 Many models of economic growth include the production of knowledge, and many of them share the characteristic that productivity grows more rapidly when the population is larger.

5 Robert M. Solow, "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," QuarterlyJournal of Economics, LXX (I956), 65-94. For a more recent description of both old and new growth models, see David Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics (New York, I996).

408 | PETER TEMIN

The reasoning is evolutionary; more people generate more ideas. Kremer tested the proposition that population growth-used as a proxy for productivity growth-has been a positive function of population size throughout the past "million years." Looking at continents during the same long periods that Diamond surveyed, Kremer verified that larger areas had greater population density and more rapid population growth.6

The second assumption is that geography matters. The physical setting of people determined their biological setting, which in turn determined their opportunities to change from hunter- gatherers to farmers. Innovations of all sorts moved more easily to the East and West than they did to the North and South. People located on "horizontal" continents had more opportunities to extend their inventions and benefit from economies of scale than people on "vertical" continents. (Eurasia is counted as one large, horizontal continent.)

Social scientists concerned with the short run tend to ignore geography. Appeal to the conditions in which people live is thought to lie outside any respectable model. Although economic historians have cited the role of coal deposits in the Industrial Revolution, the causal effect of resources is not without contro- versy.7 According to one view, the influence of natural resources has declined over time. Resources either are endogenous-a creation rather than a cause of economic growth-or irrelevant to economic growth. The United States provides an example of the former condition; Japan, of the latter.8

Diamond takes issue with this reasoning. He stresses the importance of location, although he also defends himself against the charge of "geographical determinism" by asserting, "Without human inventiveness, all of us today would still be cutting our meat with stone tools and eating it raw, like our ancestors of a

6 Michael Kremer, "Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to I990," Quarterly Journal of Economics, CVIII (1993) 681-716. For "evolutionary economics," see Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1982). 7 Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe: 1760-1970 (New York, 1981). 8 Gavin Wright, "The Origins of American Industrial Success, I879-I940," American Eco- nomic Review, LXXX (I990) 651-668; Yasukichi Yasuba, "Did Japan Ever Suffer from a

Shortage of Natural Resources Before World War II?"Journal of Economic History, LVI (I996), 543-561.

EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY | 409

million years ago" (408). Diamond is a sophisticated geographical determinist who allows for the evolution of human behavior as well as the evolution of species.

The history based on these two evolutionary premises begins with the Neolithic Revolution.9 Agriculture emerged inde-

pendently first in the Fertile Crescent and then in China, Central America, the Andes, and the eastern United States. It may have originated or spread to a few other sites as well, like the New Guinea highlands, even before its indigenous introduction in some

places. Diamond explains why only a few plants, a few trees, and a few animals could be domesticated, although not why the plants and animals suitable for domestication differed among regions. Agriculture spread across longitudes far more easily than across latitudes; the East-West pattern typifies the migration of people throughout history. The growth of population that resulted from

agricultural productivity eventually led to writing, political or-

ganization, and religion (which Diamond, like Karl Marx, sees as a tool of politics)-in short, to civilization. Population density and interaction with domestic animals led originally to greater disease and then to resistance to these diseases. Diamond links all of these

developments, particularly the ecology of germs, to the growth of agriculture.10

The second stage of this evolutionary history began with the

ability to navigate the oceans. Those who had the best agricultural resources and had been farming the longest had the most efficient

technology, the most dangerous germs, and the most articulated organizations. They overwhelmed their opponents, often exter-

minating them. Those who got a late start or had fewer animals to domesticate in the Neolithic Revolution and were not killed

by disease or warfare became the poor of the world-in answer to Yali's question.

Social scientists ask why these survivors did not adopt the

technology of the invaders. Diamond's approach does not delve into this matter. In biological evolution, populations at risk adapt or die-adaptation occurring at the glacial pace of evolution.

9 See Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee (New York, 1992), for his account of history earlier than the Neolithic period. Io For an sympathetic approach to the history of ancient Egypt, see Robert C. Allen, "Agriculture and the Origins of the State in Ancient Egypt," Explorations in Economic History, XXXIV (I997), I35-I54.

410 PETER TEMIN

Diamond infers that human populations under duress cannot move more quickly to adopt new technologies or organizations than they would under other circumstances. They may even stagnate completely if diseases from the invaders decimate and disorganize the resident population.

The Industrial Revolution-typically the centerpiece of world history-figures only tangentially in Diamond's history because of his preoccupation with population interactions. The growth of population and income in isolation is, for him, a simple consequence of the Neolithic Revolution. Any acceleration since

800o is peripheral to his main story. The demonstrated capacity for travel and transport is far more important; industrialization counts mostly to the extent that it made air travel and transport feasible.

To support this thesis, Diamond weaves a variegated fabric of evidence, drawing on disciplines usually omitted from "interdisciplinary" history. The most striking data come from biology. Charles Darwin observed domesticated plants and animals to research natural selection in the wild; Diamond describes natural selection in the wild to provide evidence for his story of domestication, involving plants and animals, as well as germs. The importance of this last item has been appreciated only recently. Diamond reasons that the many diseases originating from the domesticated animals of invaders proved lethal to the populations invaded. He infers that domesticating populations became resistant to these diseases through childhood illnesses or natural selection.

Evidence for economies of scale is provided by the experiences of Austronesian migrants to the Pacific islands. Small populations on the islands did not advance technically; sometimes they regressed to hunting and gathering. The presence of economies of scale for larger populations is less direct; Diamond draws on the inventive history of large societies and on sociological theories to support his theory.

As befits the time frame of millennia, Diamond draws heavily from archaeology, accompanied by a linguistic analysis that is as unusual as it is illuminating, to chart population movements. Diamond argues that languages diffuse and evolve in ways that mirror the spread of a biological population. Linguistic evolution is faster than biological evolution, but still slow compared with conventional historical time.

EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY | 4II

For the progress of sedentary populations beyond the Neo- lithic Revolution, Diamond retells a story that becomes increas- ingly familiar as it approaches the present. He relies on sociology and anthropology to describe less formal organizations of society, reinterpreting much of what conventional history regards as autonomous development as the result of population density allowed by agriculture and, more recently, by industry.

It is an ambitious undertaking to recast all of human history in this evolutionary framework. The account of European expansion fits this story, but it is only one example.l1 We would like to have another test of this model, with another population to confirm that the variables isolated in the evolutionary account are critical.

Although Diamond does not test his theory like Kremer does, he offers an illuminating counterexample, using his beloved New Guinea. He recounts the expansion of the Neolithic Austronesian population from what is now southern China to Taiwan and on into the South Seas. This population of farmers, with all of its attendant advantages over less advanced resident populations, for some reason did not expand into the highlands of New Guinea. Does the evolutionary model tell what kept them out? It does. The New Guinea highlands were one of the sites for the early adoption of agriculture. When the Neolithic Austronesians con- fronted the New Guinea highlanders, they had no advantage with which to dominate. These were two Neolithic populations at roughly the same level of development. The resulting stand-off, whereby Austronesians circled the highlands of New Guinea without penetrating them, confirms the evolutionary model (3 I). It is an exception that proves the rule.

The evolutionary story is compelling, but it deals with extraordinary events and long time periods. How does it relate the smaller events and shorter periods of conventional history? Dia- mond grapples with this question in an epilogue: Just as we can safely predict that ioo coin tosses, or, even more precisely, I,ooo coin tosses will come up heads approximately half the time but not so safely that a single coin toss will do so, his evolutionary model can handle large time frames better than it can handle

ii Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, goo-1goo (Cambridge, I986).

412 I PETER TEMIN

events lasting Ioo years, or ,000o, for that matter.12 This logic assumes that certain events affecting a single coin toss-such as the spin imparted by the person flipping the coin-do not alter the odds of repeated flips, but it would not hold if, say, weight were added to one side of the coin. Are the events that we analyze in conventional history like the spin or like the addition of a weight? Do ordinary historians chart froth on the surface of history or events with long-run effects?

Although Diamond does not want to be known as a geographical determinist, he cannot resist applying his evolutionary model to problems of more conventional history. He speculates that his theory can help to resolve issues within continents and millennia, such as why the Industrial Revolution took place in Europe instead of in Eurasia where agriculture began, in the Middle East, or in China. Diamond rules out Eurasia on account of the environmental damage caused by farmers who turned the Fertile Crescent into desert. China lost out because it was a unitary state that stifled progress at a critical time, and its very unity was a function of a smooth coastline and an absence of large islands or high mountains that might have produced separate political units or impeded integration. By contrast, Europe's vaunted geographical fragmentation, with its myriad peninsulas, islands, and mountains, not the culture, religion, or intelligence of its inhabitants, led to its early industrialization. Diamond argues similarly that the Asian NICs have grown spectacularly in the past several decades because of migration from China, one of the Neolithic leaders.

This aspect of Diamond's work brings attention back to the events of the past few centuries. Most of the inequality that perplexed Yali arose in the past 200 years as a result of industrialization. Maddison reports that the ratio between per capita income in the richest and poorest countries was three-to-one in 1820 and seventy-two-to-one in 1992.13 While evolutionary his-

tory suggests its explanation for the site of the earliest industrialization, the social and legal structures emphasized by economic historians like North indicate another.14 These two intellectual traditions appear competitive, but they may be complementary.

I2 Diamond uses the sex of babies to make this point about probabilities (423). 13 Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy, 1820-1992 (Paris, I995), 22. 14 Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, I981).

EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY 413

Economists interested in economic growth often summarize their work in "growth regressions"-that is, in attempts to explain the different rates of countries' growth since World War II-add- ing variables to those suggested by Solow in an effort to improve explanatory power.15 Most of these variables come from either the new growth theory or the institutional context stressed by North and others. Geographical location is one that appears to be statis-

tically robust, that is, to have a clear impact on the level of income and the rate of economic growth.16 Economists do not have a

theory for this variable, but Diamond does. Evolutionary history provides part-but not all-of the answer to Yali's question. Geographical variables reflect the importance of processes of longer duration than most other variables, their robustness in

growth regressions being evidence of the importance of evolu-

tionary processes. Hence, evolutionary history is a partial answer to Yali's ques-

tion, as it is for other historical events. The evolutionary argument leaves ample room for individual initiative and unpredictable outcomes-for example, transformation of the Fertile Crescent into a desert. Diamond notes that this environment was fragile, but that is an ex post description. Had the irrigation systems of the ancient world survived, the agriculture now returning to the Middle East might have existed without interruption. Moreover, the Chinese rulers, as Diamond notes, had discretion for good or ill. Nothing in the evolutionary model entails that they had to act for ill or predicts when they would reverse themselves and act for good. Gerschenkron used to talk about the tension within eco-

nomically backward societies that found relief in dramatic political change.17 The difference between the NICS and their less prosper- ous neighbors may have more to do with which group is in charge than in the general composition of the population.

I5 Robert Barro, Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1997). I6 See the symposium about empirical growth research-Robert E. Hall and Charles I.

Jones, "Levels of Economic Activity Across Countries"; Xavier X. Sala-i-Martin, "I Just Ran Two Million Regressions"; Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M. Warner, "Fundamental Sources of Long-Run Growth," American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, LXXXVII (I997), I73-188. A case for geographical influence also has been made by economic historians. See

Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, "Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Rates of Growth Among New World Economies: A View From Economic Historians of the United States," NBER Historical Paper 66 (December, I994). I7 Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., I962).

414 | PETER TEMIN

The evolutionary model has some uncomfortable corollaries. An example comes from the inverse of the NICs. African-Ameri- cans came to North America from a continent the backwardness of which is well explained by the evolutionary model. But if Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia retain their Neolithic edge even now, it follows that African-Americans carry their Paleolithic handicap with them. More generally, an open immigration policy has brought immigrants to the United States from parts of the world that were not in the Neolithic vanguard. Does the evolutionary model predict that integration of these diverse groups will force this country's population to fall to their level instead of raising them to ours?'8

It is awkward to draw this conclusion from evolutionary history because Diamond is a great pains at the start of his book to assert that groups of people do not differ in their intelligence. As Goody argued, the difference between savages and civilized people is in their tools, not in their intelligence.19 Diamond goes further to assert that the harsh life of primitive peoples selects out the slow ones and produces a more intelligent population. Yet, his discussion of population movements and his assertion that

evolutionary processes are slow compel him, in the end, to dis- tinguish people by groups-perhaps not by intelligence, but by a trait less tangible that inclines in the same direction.

Such inferences stretch the evolutionary model to the breaking point. Evolutionary history provides a vision of the grand sweep of history, but its logic may not extend to all questions. Even if universally valid, evolutionary history may be like the second law of thermodynamics. Even though, in principle, entropy increases, long and extensive decreases in entropy can occur. Nothing in thermodynamics determines how long they can last. The evolutionary theory of history may indicate that China is bound to deviate ever more from Yali's New Guinea, but the timing could vary as much as several centuries. In the fullness of evolutionary history, it may not matter whether China's lag behind Western European industrialization lasts for two, three, or four centuries, but it surely matters to us now. As John Maynard

18 For a controversial approach to this question, see Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles

Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class in American Lffe (New York, I994). I9 Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (London, I977).

EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY j 415

Keynes succinctly put it, "In the long run we are all dead." What happens in the short run of decades, and even centuries, is our vital interest, and it is still the province of more standard interdisciplinary history.

But even the most conventional historian will want to con- sider the questions raised by evolutionary history, and all the interdisciplinary ones certainly will enjoy reading the results of stretching the usual boundaries of our field. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a tour de force. Evolutionary history provides a way to unify the broad reaches of history.

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