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From the article: >>"Afinogenov’s study also offers a striking contrast to the simplistic “guns, germs and steel” narratives of pop history, which all too ofte
by RobertoG 6y ago
From the article:
>>"Afinogenov’s study also offers a striking contrast to the simplistic “guns, germs and steel” narratives of pop history, which all too often assume the inevitability of European imperial power in the early modern period. In fact, it was not at all clear in the seventeenth or even the eighteenth century that European armies and technologies would prevail over those of the Ottomans, Mughals, Safavids or Qing."
It seems that it has become fashionable to criticize "guns, germs and steel" but many of the criticism I read (some of them here in HN comments) don't mach with what I remember of the book.
It's not the argument of the book that the "inevitability of power" was of all the Eurasian continent, not of only the western part? Maybe I remember wrong.
- iguy 6y agoYes, there are things to criticise, but I don't recall it offering a reason to bet on the very western edge of Europe over (say) the Ottomans.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoBasically it said why to bet on Eurasia over the Americas, as I recall.
- dane-pgp 6y agoWell, it would be surprising if the Ottomans had discovered and colonised the Canary Islands (not to mention Cape Verde or the Azores), which were used by Columbus in his voyages to the Americas. I suppose the question is why wasn't there an empire that spread across the European continent at the time of Columbus.
- foolmeonce 6y agoI liked the book, and the (geographic network) advantage for Eurasia was a fair point, but the arguments that domestication couldn't work on most wildlife of the Americas struck me as pure survivorship bias. Really there are simpler answers for why a high density northern population would have to put up with animal husbandry, while any low density population with hunting opportunities would tend to find it a pointless burden.