World History and Jared Diamond: Ramblings and Frustrations

Source: occidentalobserver.net

One of the areas of history that I'm keenly interested in studying is a burgeoning sub-field known as World or Global History. Now of course the study of world history is not exactly a recent phenomenon. Scholars of old such as H.G. Wells, Oswald Spengler, and Arnold Toynbee took up this task, Toynbee's own work amounting to 12 volumes. But their concerns were chiefly with discerning cycles or patterns in history and usually placed an emphasis on the West's central role in World History, often relegating other civilizations to a peripheral and subordinate position. In contrast, the kind of World History that is studied today is somewhat different and owes its origins to the minority movements of the late 60's and 70's and to the K-12 (kindergarten through 12 grade) establishment.

For the longest time most school curricula provided "Western Civilization" classes which as the name indicates were focused primarily on teaching the origins and rise of the West. And because of this many other groups in history were marginalized or altogether ignored in such classes. For example, the standard background to North American history typically emphasized English history to the near exclusion of Indian or Native American history.

And so as mentioned ever increasing calls for a focus on the study of minority history likewise led to a cry for a replacement of Western Civ classes with World History classes for the purpose of curing Westerns, chiefly Americans, of their provincialism and to give due attention to those various groups of peoples that had been historically ignored in the discipline. But in the beginning no one had any idea how to accomplish such in the academic community. Thus, the testing ground became the K-12 system which over time progressed its courses to incorporate other civilizations and usually renamed or sublimated history into "social studies" classes. Eventually, World History took root on the college level as well and has since become quite successful with many more universities adding MA's and Phds in World History every year.

The method used in the field today tends towards a thematic approach as opposed to a diachronic one which is typically narrative based. Popular modes of inquiry here include examining early cross-cultural contacts, trans-atlantic or trans-pacific studies, human-animal relations...analytical topics of that sort. But also a lot of pre-history (usually somewhat arbitrarily defined as the period of human history before "written" language) has begun to be incorporated into the study of World History such that many of the sciences have become a huge part of the discussion (e.g., the magisterial Big History by David Christian). Now, I absolutely applaud this development for I have an amateur love for the natural sciences, regularly reading works in astronomy, paleontology, evolution, et al as often as I can. But this of course means historians, because most aren't trained in the scientific disciplines, inevitably make mistakes when entering into these fields of scientific inquiry.

And yet curiously enough opening the door of these traditional areas of science to historians has meant that scientists can make their way through the other side of the door and study those areas normally the sole purview of historians. I myself welcome their inclusion since I'm an avid supporter of interdisciplinary studies. Yet, just as historians often err when attempting to enter into the domain of science, likewise do some scientists when they try to engage in history. Case in point: Jared Diamond.

I have tried to give this man a chance, twice now. First, I read his highly praised, Pulitzer prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel which tries to dazzle its readers with lots of data to support a thesis of geographical determinism. Essentially, Diamond's argument in the book is that geographical placement of peoples-nations is what accounts for the modern day success of Western civilization and the "failures" of other civilizations. Now there's nothing new with such a position which is partly why I'm flummoxed that Diamond has garnished such attention over this book. I mean, the damn thing has a National Geographic program devoted to it!

 Except for a few chapters such as the one on the development of animal husbandry I found the book mostly a bore, partly I suppose because I was already familiar with Diamond's thesis, one which is ridiculously reductionist. The reasons for the success and/or failures of some civilizations vis a vis others are the result of a myriad of complex elements and cannot be reduced to one single, overarching factor. (See further my review of Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence for a bit fuller critique of the geographical determinism view.)

Nevertheless, I wanted to give Diamond another go by reading one of his early works that actually touches on his area of expertise, namely, human evolution and physiology. It's entitled The Third Chimpanzee and for the most part I found its first two-thirds or so a much more entertaining read than Guns, Germs, and Steel. I especially liked his chapter on the development of human language. And then I read his section on agriculture and became so infuriated I almost heaved the book across the room.

Basically, in this chapter Diamond reduces all of human woes to the development and prominence of agriculture in human history. According to Diamond, it was the discovery and success of agriculture which produced the great inequities and ills of our present times from class struggle, to the oppression and subjection of women, to climate change, to genocide, to George W. Bush, to the Star Wars prequels, etc. Once again I found Diamond being ludicrously reductionist in his conclusions. But worse than that, Diamond implies in this chapter that modern society would actually be better off by returning to some kind of hunter-gatherer state because he thinks that will create more equality than we currently have!

Ok, so to partly what is going on here with Diamond has to do with his New Guinea experience. For you see Diamond is also an ornithologist of sorts and sometime in the 70's (I believe) Diamond went to New Guinea to study bird species native to that island and in doing so fell in love with the tribes peoples of New Guinea, most of whom who have managed to maintain a mostly hunter-gatherer society for thousands of years. And in both of the books I read New Guinea features prominently,  ad naseum really. Diamond's New Guinea experience functions as a kind of cypher through which he thinks he can interpret the world. Time and again in these two books Diamond refers back to something that happened to him on New Guinea that he believes helps him to understand whatever it is he happens to be talking about. Quite honestly he does this so often that it's part of the reason why I found it a chore, with some exceptions, to get through his two books. My point is that he interprets just about everything under the sun in terms of New Guinea which only exacerbates his problem of reducing the complex to the simple. He seems to see the world only through the prism of the people of New Guinea.

And so I think I'm through giving Jared Diamond chances to persuade me. I won't be reading another one of his books.

Explaining the Success of Europe: A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz' "The Great Divergence"

A partial book review I wrote this year. Basically, more filler while I wrap up the semester:


The study of civilizations has been a favorite among “big history” historians. Examining the rise, decline, and fall of civilizations, teasing out their similarities and differences, and explaining why certain ones have evolved at a more rapid pace than others are all a part of the scrutiny historians have applied to this area of inquiry. Gibbon, Ranke, Spengler, and Toynbee are just a few of the classic names who have taken up this endeavor with gusto and with varying, indeed often conflicting, results. More recently, scholars such as William H. Mcneill have with equal enthusiasm continued this popular trend; the latter’s works, especially The Rise of the West, having influenced a number of historians such as Jared Diamond and Janet Abu-Lughod who’s much praised Before European Hegemony, at least judging by the author’s fulsome praise of Mcneill in the introduction and the abundant citations of his works in the book, owes much.                 

 Kenneth Pomeranz of UC-Irvine is another modern scholar who practices the study of civilizations. But Pomeranz’s goals are less “global” than the works of the previously mentioned historians. Specifically, Pomeranz aims to better understand why Europe vis a vis China (read: Asia) “became uniquely wealthy by the mid-nineteenth century” (31). And so it was without the slightest exaggeration that Pomeranz titled his book The Great Divergence since that phrase accurately captures the relative position of the two regions to one another by the middle of the nineteenth century. Pomeranz following another scholar (Eric Jones’ European Miracle) states that simply citing the Industrial Revolution is not an adequate explanation for the “great divergence” since it merely represents “the full flowering of differences that had been more subtly building for centuries” (Ibid).                                                                                                          

 Pomeranz first examines some of the other theories that have been put forward to explain such a state of events only to knock most of them down. For example, the abundance of livestock is often used to explain the gulf between Europe and China, but Pomeranz notes that in Asia the lack of a plethora of livestock, particularly large beasts of burden, made little difference since “rice farming simply does not require as much animal power” (33). Likewise, Pomeranz dismisses a possible European advantage in transportation noting that “the remarkable development of water transport in China and Japan surely offset this and represented at least an equally valuable form of capital in transport” (34). Pomeranz does the same with birthrates claiming that “it appears that various groups of Asians were at least as able and determined as any Europeans to keep birthrates down” (41).  Technological innovation is treated as well with Pomeranz showing that even here the differences were not initially so vast with Asia actually being ahead of Europe in many areas such as irrigation, textile weaving and dyeing, the manufacturing of porcelain, public health, etc. (45, 46).  Pomeranz also tackles other theories such as the place of higher wages (52-54) in the debate and at least here does give some value to the innovations made by Europe in spinning that certainly played a part in widening the gap between the two civilizations.                                                                                        

 Pomeranz’s own theory and explanation is partly ecological. He thinks the European achievement was due in large part to its ability to achieve “self-sustaining growth” (57) to which the adoption of certain New World crops such as the potato (because of its excellent calorie yield to acre usage ratio) was vital. Furthermore, Europeans began to apply scientific principles to land conversation and began to achieve a better understanding of how essential forests are to the ecosystem much of which was learned from tropical European colonies (58). Thus, “empire” in Pomeranz’s thinking assumes a crucial role here.                                                                               

The second part of Pomeranz’s theory is geographical: the location of rich coal deposits in Europe, specifically northern England played a crucial role in fostering the great divergence. On this score Pomeranz is blunt stating that “Europe’s advantage rested…on geographic accident” (62). (Related to this was the perfection of the steam engine which was of the utmost importance in the extraction of coal.) And while Northern China did have a major source of coal Pomeranz asserts that invasions by foreign groups such as the Mongols, civil wars, enormous floods, and other series of catastrophes all resulted in the Chinese never being able to fully exploit this major resource.                                                                                                                    
  So then Pomeranz believes that “the great divergence” between Europe and Asia was due to the former’s advantage being gained from its imperial adventures and its fortuitous geographical position in an area of rich resources, namely, coal.                                                                       

 Pomeranz’s emphasis on empire and geography is similar to that which can be found in Jared Diamond’s overly praised Guns, Germs, and Steel. I myself wasn’t particularly sold on the thrust of that book’s argument, and though Pomeranz makes a similar one here he does so in a more persuasive fashion than did Diamond. I have no doubt that empire and geography played an important role in creating a divergence between the West and other areas of civilizations. My problem with Pomeranz isn’t that his analysis his faulty since I think he was right about much of what he said only that it is incomplete. Missing from Pomeranz’s discussion is the place ideas might have had in helping to create such a divergence.  Examples of revolutionary ideas in the West that I think played a significant part in vaulting that region ahead of others include vital developments in political theory such as the Lockean notion of property and in economic theory such as that propounded by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations to give just two possible examples.                                                                                                                                   

 Now, I completely understand why some might not want to focus on the role of ideas or “intellectual capital” since in the past this tended to be the sole focus made by other scholars that often was abused to suggest that the West was superior to other cultures, an implication many today rightly dismiss. (Niall Ferguson might possibly be a modern voice of such a view.) Because of this fear it seems to me that the discussion has tipped completely to the other side in favor of examining other factors that would seem to, at least initially, give civilizations an ontological value equal to one another so that potentially uncomfortable implications might be avoided. While understandable I think such a position is egregious since it appears to me to rule out at the very beginning of the discussion any part that ideas might have had in helping to create this “divergence”.  Historical study demands a certain kind of exactitude that is being ignored when we focus on only some factors and completely rule out others.                                                                   

 Perhaps this is simply the nature of “big history”, i.e., because the study of civilizations is such a vast enterprise one is tempted to be less comprehensive than one ought to be. Nevertheless, comprehensiveness should be the goal. How ironic it is then that so many “big historians” tend to suffer from an acute case of myopia