4 ms·

How can that be racist? What is the alternative non-racist way? I can only see one alternative and that is “luck”. Luck however os a pretty shitty explanation

How can that be racist? What is the alternative non-racist way? I can only see one alternative and that is “luck”. Luck however os a pretty shitty explanation for anything. If you rule out luck or geography as reasons for European supremacy then the only thing left is biology, which would most definitly be the MOST racist explanation.

jcranmer 9y ago
Well, for starters, the book sets out to explain how Europe conquered the world by describing the superiority of Eurasian agriculture. Which misses the mark by failing to explain how the consistently poorest, least advanced, and least populated portion of Eurasia conquered the consistently richest, most advanced, and most populated portions of the world. Even the explanation of how the Old World conquered the New World falls flat, because (for example) the Spaniards could not have conquered Tenochtitlan were it not for their 20,000 Tlaxcala allies, and, even then, the battle was not a slam dunk. The real answer is that the growth of political power tends to be on the basis of a transitory superiority in some regard (usually, but not exclusively, military weaponry). Europeans happened to have had their time to shine in the first era to make intercontinental empires possible. I guess you'd call that "luck," but that ignores the fact that there are deeper reinforcing situations in political, cultural, and socioeconomic spheres that cause small advantages to become big ones.
madhadron 9y ago
If it were an accurate mechanistic inevitability, then it wouldn't be racist. Constructing an inaccurate one to justify the current distribution of wealth and power is a racist act. Now, luck and other alternative causes. Any process in history on the scale of western European dominance is necessarily a sample of one, so describing a sequence of events is the only way to work with it. Whether that sequence of events seems lucky or not is irrelevant. Indeed, a "lucky" confluence of many factors is often required for a particular large scale shift to occur. The only time you can talk about luck or chance usefully in history is when you have many similar situations, and a few of them come out quite differently for some reason. Empirically, we say that those are "less likely," but that is a way of summarizing things. And you are leaving aside culture. If we accept that the general set of behaviors and approaches of a group differs from other groups, then that's a vital component of any historical description or explanation. Why, when the Maori obtained firearms, was one of their first acts to go massacre a nearby island's population, while when the Hawaiians got them, the result was a war of unification? Any explanation of that is going to involve cultural differences. How western Europe went from being a backwater with, as Jared Diamond would put it, less "cargo" than much of the rest of the world up to the 15th century to having more is very complicated, and much of it involves culture.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  > Constructing an inaccurate one to justify the current distribution of wealth and power is a racist act. Good thing it doesn't try to justify anything. > Why, when the Maori obtained firearms, was one of their first acts to go massacre a nearby island's population, while when the Hawaiians got them, the result was a war of unification? All I know about that "war of unification" is what I just read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Hawaii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Hawaii, but "the introduction of European weapons gave some Ali'i an advantage over others, and they began aggressively taking over their neighbors" sounds pretty much the same as "go massacre a nearby island's population". What's the difference you are trying to construct between these two cases of people going out and killing their neighbors?
  - madhadron 9y ago
    You're right. Justify is not the right term. Explain the existence of. But mechanistic inevitability is considered justification in our culture for accepting what is and moving on. We don't inveigh against the injustice of not being able to levitate out of our seats when we wish. For Polynesia, the difference is that in one case they used force to impose a political structure on the population. In the other they completely wiped out the population.

jcranmer 9y ago

Well, for starters, the book sets out to explain how Europe conquered the world by describing the superiority of Eurasian agriculture. Which misses the mark by failing to explain how the consistently poorest, least advanced, and least populated portion of Eurasia conquered the consistently richest, most advanced, and most populated portions of the world. Even the explanation of how the Old World conquered the New World falls flat, because (for example) the Spaniards could not have conquered Tenochtitlan were it not for their 20,000 Tlaxcala allies, and, even then, the battle was not a slam dunk. The real answer is that the growth of political power tends to be on the basis of a transitory superiority in some regard (usually, but not exclusively, military weaponry). Europeans happened to have had their time to shine in the first era to make intercontinental empires possible. I guess you'd call that "luck," but that ignores the fact that there are deeper reinforcing situations in political, cultural, and socioeconomic spheres that cause small advantages to become big ones.

madhadron 9y ago

If it were an accurate mechanistic inevitability, then it wouldn't be racist. Constructing an inaccurate one to justify the current distribution of wealth and power is a racist act. Now, luck and other alternative causes. Any process in history on the scale of western European dominance is necessarily a sample of one, so describing a sequence of events is the only way to work with it. Whether that sequence of events seems lucky or not is irrelevant. Indeed, a "lucky" confluence of many factors is often required for a particular large scale shift to occur. The only time you can talk about luck or chance usefully in history is when you have many similar situations, and a few of them come out quite differently for some reason. Empirically, we say that those are "less likely," but that is a way of summarizing things. And you are leaving aside culture. If we accept that the general set of behaviors and approaches of a group differs from other groups, then that's a vital component of any historical description or explanation. Why, when the Maori obtained firearms, was one of their first acts to go massacre a nearby island's population, while when the Hawaiians got them, the result was a war of unification? Any explanation of that is going to involve cultural differences. How western Europe went from being a backwater with, as Jared Diamond would put it, less "cargo" than much of the rest of the world up to the 15th century to having more is very complicated, and much of it involves culture.

tom_mellior 9y ago
> Constructing an inaccurate one to justify the current distribution of wealth and power is a racist act. Good thing it doesn't try to justify anything. > Why, when the Maori obtained firearms, was one of their first acts to go massacre a nearby island's population, while when the Hawaiians got them, the result was a war of unification? All I know about that "war of unification" is what I just read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Hawaii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Hawaii, but "the introduction of European weapons gave some Ali'i an advantage over others, and they began aggressively taking over their neighbors" sounds pretty much the same as "go massacre a nearby island's population". What's the difference you are trying to construct between these two cases of people going out and killing their neighbors?
- madhadron 9y ago
  You're right. Justify is not the right term. Explain the existence of. But mechanistic inevitability is considered justification in our culture for accepting what is and moving on. We don't inveigh against the injustice of not being able to levitate out of our seats when we wish. For Polynesia, the difference is that in one case they used force to impose a political structure on the population. In the other they completely wiped out the population.