I've possibly made this statement before either here or elsewhere.. doesn't matter.
Jared Diamond's book Guns Germs and Steel seems to attract a little bit of hate from some podcasters and the like, particularly historians. There's much to criticize in the book but I find it to be annoying how much they seem to miss that is "useful".
Primarily in that it explains what is obvious: The domination of European Empires in the last 200-500 years, without resorting to Skull-Caliper Race-Science nonsense; idiotic arguments from Culture, or weepy moralism about how bad colonists/settlers/etc. 'noble-savage-esque' (by our modern moral standards, and the standards at the time, the colonization of the western hemisphere was a horrific series of genocidal crimes... but jesus christ at least admit that the Aztecs were also fucked up... humans are just fucked up in general )
Rather than all of that Diamond says a lot of it comes down to geography, while some can simplify this to be "up-down v. side-side"-simplification of his idea that the shape and orientation of the continents played a role, I think it at least attempts to find an answer to "why didn't the Mayans or Aztecs use Llamas?... surely if you sheared the llamas you might be able to cross panama with them in Winter?" -that isn't something completely racist or a non-answer.
My point is basically that there's something to be said for how this is at the very least a useful starting point for constructing a ""big picture"".
though perhaps I'm just experiencing too much twitter discourse.
Apologies in advance if this is stupid.
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There are better books on that subject. If you want to know "why does the world look like it does today?" you should read Robert Marks's Origins of the Modern World. He addresses biology and science in a historically significant way, for example by showing how England and the industrial revolution broke past the limits of the nitrogen cycle to explode in population.
My other problem with Diamond is that he is very teleological, he assumes that what has happened was always going to happen. Diamond is a biologist and uses biological analysis to determine that Europeans were always advantaged enough to take over the world because of their flora and fauna. He ignores much of the human element.
Marks, on the other hand, addresses that the world could look very different if a few things had played out slightly differently. He also isn't Eurocentric, he recognizes that until the 19th century China and India were the driving economic forces of the world.
The issue with the bits of that book that aren't baseless conjecture or downright false, is that they are surrounded by this other garbage.
It's not worth sorting the good from the bad because the author has discredited himself every step along the way.
Whether you're looking at the book through a historiographical, or a Marxist lens, it's terrible for making the very few meritous points it does. Through either of these lenses we want to look at a series of events as complicated and intricate as this by examining material conditions. And as others have pointed out already, Diamond removed human agency (including material incentive) from his equation altogether.
I also feel the need to say that I find your attitude towards "weepy moralism about how bad colonists/settlers/etc." shockingly ignorant and dismissive of the ongoing systemic genocide being conducted against your fellow comrades as we speak. I don't want to grill you too hard, but that's an awfully dismissive thing to say about people opposing the suffering that people are still experiencing today.
these are all good points. though didn't he cite Material interests as a contributing factor to the shuttering/scrapping of the treasure fleet? That the Chinese being a significant land power considered it wiser to invest inwards rather than potentially stretch itself too thin? (I mean they were regularly invaded/bothered by Steppe Peoples for the first part of the 2nd millennium CE). There were material interests at play in the advancement of European colonies in that they didn't want to trade with the ottomans who had a bottleneck as far as trade with the other side of the continent was concerned (geography) so they funded an expedition to find a way around that and landed on the shores of hispanola.
Perhaps it's a leap in logic to assume this, thank you though, I kind of need a correction.
perhaps I should edit the "weepy" bit; it's difficult to explain.. basically I think:
-->Colonialism/Imperialism/Slavery/etc. are Bad, unjustifiable, and have left deep historical/emotional/psychological/cultural/etc. scars.
-->Europeans, and ""white"" (whatever that means, it's definition varies) are not alone in these practices, nor immune to being victimized by them.. Human history is a bloody mess...
-->this does not mean that historical injustices are not worth attempting to provide reparations for; particularly those that are well documented, and egregious.
-->this does mean that we shouldn't assume that, at least in the case of North America, that anything close to a "noble savage" existed..
-->to re-iterate this does not justify at all the flagrant disregard for and horrifyingly callous treatment of indigenous peoples;
quite often I see people push something that too often reeks of that noble savage vibe, and it starts making me think "okay wait a minute here... how deep are they thinking about this?"
No one is against geography, the issue is trying to drive a square narrative into a round geography.
The imperial subjects of the Aztecs were actually totally cool getting their hearts ripped out because their conquerors weren’t European.
You can’t compare them to the contemporary European empires that ended up colonizing the Americas, but you can compare them directly to other agricultural empires like the Romans. An empire is an empire and by nature requires the subjugation of someone
the aztecs were horrific but a slight difference dwells on the fact that they didnt fucking wipe out 90% of the continent
Yea so compare them to the various Chinese, Roman, Frankish, Teutonic, Mongol, Persian, Mughal empires and so on.
Idk, for me in general historical comparisons of that kind are limited in use. At every step we should ask ourselves what we're trying to prove here - in the context of this discussion we're veering very close to "who are the bad guys" which is a complete waste of time IMO.
It's also important to remember how young the Aztec empire was at the time of first contact.
they aren't just as bad, they're human. Its not a justification, just cynicism.
So is it good or bad when the Aztecs pissed off their neighbors to such an extent that significant numbers of them backed Cortez's otherwise ill-equipped and undermanned expedition?
European exploitation was significantly worse that Aztec exploitation of other indigenous. Aztec policy was mostly to let their dependencies govern themselves if they paid tribute to Tenochitlan.
You should stop thinking of societies as "good or bad." That's colonizer logic that ends up getting used to justify "taming the savages." Colonizer logic is brain poison that we all have to work to expunge.
You completely missed OPs point. No one is justifying what happened with colonization or that European domination of the Americas was better or nicer or kinder than the empires the euros found in the Americas. OP is trying to understand why and how it happened. His point about significant numbers of Aztec subjects backing Cortez is important because we see this shit all the time in the history of empire. Would the US have been able to fuck with Chile or Brazil or Argentina or Afghanistan (80s) without the approval and help of large numbers of local elites who supported them?
the majority of people in mesoamerica were not “aztecs” or “the aztec empire”, which again, yes it was horrific, and that drove huge native armies to fight the war against them, but it’s also true that they didn’t wipe out most of the population like the spanish did
not saying that, frankly Israel has no right to really complain about Palestinian insurgency tactics as they simultaneously lionize groups like Irgun.
I'm not a Jared Diamond expert, but most of the criticism I've seen of him comes in to parts:
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He tries to build evidence to support a narriative instead of using evidence to build a narriative.
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His use of solely biological factors doesn't explain the material drive of the colonizers to conquer and exploit the people and land of North and South America.
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its not as if the spanish didnt have their own ideological justifications. the comparison is kind of absurd because of the scale of their damage, of course spanish rule was a lot worse, but the engine of the aztecs was also material interest sought through terror and aggressive expansionism
lets just go back to julian steward instead. no, wait, to marx
(your point isn’t stupid, ecology and geography should be a part of these discussions, but afaict diamond is still a hack)
