For most of history, the Asian and Middle Eastern civilizations have dominated the world in every way, technologically, economically, militarily. The various states of Europe were absolutely tiny and backward compared to the other Asian and Middle Eastern civilizations.
How then can we explain that from the 16th century onwards, these small European states, which were backward, economically poor, militarily weaker before this period, were able to succeed in dominating the world as no other continent has managed to do in history?
How did Europe manage to dominate the world for several centuries?
This question and its answer are the basis for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond.
GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES NORTON & CO., NEW YORK, 1997
Guns, Germs, and Steel, my best-known book, was published in 1997. It has been translated into 36 languages, including all the major languages of book publishing, as well as languages of small markets such as Estonian and Serbian. It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, plus numerous other prizes. I shall now summarize Guns, Germs, and Steel’s question, its answer, extensions and discoveries since its publication, unresolved questions, and criticisms.
THE QUESTION
Guns, Germs, and Steel seek to answer the biggest question of post-Ice-Age human history: why Eurasian peoples, rather than peoples of other continents, became the ones to develop the ingredients of power (guns, germs, and steel) and to expand around the world. An extraterrestrial being visiting the Earth 14,000 years ago could have been forgiven for failing to predict this outcome, because the human populations of other continents apparently also possessed advantages. Africans enjoyed a huge head start, because Africa is the continent with by far the longest history of human occupation. North America is a big fertile continent, with the result that it supports the richest and most productive nation today. Australia provides by far the earliest evidence for human ability to cross wide water gaps, and some of the earliest widespread evidence for behaviorally modern humans. Why, nevertheless, were Eurasians the ones to expand?
Although every lay person sees that this is a question crying out for answer, historians have mostly ignored this question. Several reasons explain their neglect. One reason is that the answer clearly lies in the pre-literate past, because by 3400 BC Eurasians (and North Africans, biogeographically and politically part of Eurasia rather than of sub-Saharan Africa) had already had metal tools for thousands of years and were starting to develop writing and empires, thousands of years before any of those things would appear on any other continent. But most historians consider history to begin with the origins of writing, and consider the pre-literate past as lying outside the scope of their discipline and instead to be left to archaeologists. Also, as we shall see, the answers to this question involve details of subjects (especially plant and animal biology and microbiology) in which history graduate students receive no training. But lay people still want an answer to this obvious question. As a result of the failure of historians to supply an answer, lay people often fall back on the transparent interpretation of supposed racial superiority of Eurasian people themselves, despite the lack of evidence for that interpretation.
THE ANSWER
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A National Geographic / PBS 3-part documentary series based on the book was also made.
The simple answer is that they took control of the seas with their ship-building and sailing skills, and they greatly enhanced their international trade, which enhanced their wealth and power, which they could then use to improve their military size and skills and armaments, which allowed them to further expand their control of the seas and to colonize far-away lands and get access to their natural resources.
Prior to that, Arabs and Middle-Easterners were the wealthy ones because they controlled trade routes on the land. Arabs had learned to cross the Sahara into southern Africa and gain access to various resources there - especially herbs and spices that were of great value in Europe - and they traded well into Europe and Asia - but they were largely stuck on the land and limited to land routes.
When Europe got out of the Dark Ages and were able to focus on ship-building, they turned things around in a big way. They could get resources from much further away for much cheaper on the oceans than it could be transported over land routes, and that changed the world.
Even today, the incredible level of International trade only exists as it does because the US Navy protects the seas, and allows the nations of the world to trade safely, without the constant threat of piracy and war. That's brought benefits to the entire world - even those who count themselves as the enemies of the US.
Roman Empire. It never stopped to exist, it split up and transformed in different European cultures. Europe is since two thousand years under attack of enemies, Umayyad Caliphate, Golden Horde, Ottoman to call some of them. Steady pressure of enemies is beneficial for development.
Europe has a lot of waterways that facilitate transport of goods and that had a significant impact on trade in away that did not occur in other regions. Also they formed natural borders and there was never hegemonic regimes in the same way as in other regions. So it was more competitive.
It will be pointed out that the Chinese had a lot of technological advances before Europe. There was a significant Chinese naval expedition very early but as I recollect the Emperors decided that this was a bad idea and it all stopped. Into the 1800's there wasn't much China wanted from European traders until Opium When Europe developed ocean going ships it was all go instead and various goods started to be traded. In some ways poverty became a motivator.
China certainly had gunpowder first. But the competitiveness of warfare in Europe caused more development of it's use well beyond what the Chinese made of it.
So on first thought these are my pick of factors. In a lot of ways it was weaknesses becoming strengths.
In the early 1400s, China had huge sea-going ships, and was one of the wealthiest nations on earth (and one of the oldest, if not the oldest continuing nation), and they literally loaded up these giant ships full of goods and took them to other countries to give away, both to establish relationships and to show Chinese superiority. But then a new Emperor came to power and decided that contact with outsiders was bad for China, and so the ships were burned and China closed itself off to foreign contact almost completely for over 200 years.
China certainly had the technology to be a powerful empire, probably at several different periods, but leaders came and went and changed the priorities of the country, and that limited their influence.
@MrOracle Yes China had deep water ships earlier but threw it away. Part of that might have been seeing that anything not chinese had no value. When Europe started trading direct with China there was the problem that Europe didn't have any goods China wanted and there was a huge flow of silver to China. Then the European traders discovered the Chinese liked opium and the flow of silver reversed.
In the intervening time Europeans developed better ships, cannon and guns than China had. The European desire to trade certainly at least ended up with them collectively developing better ships.
That there was continuing war between states certainly helped weapon development and piracy helped to having merchant ships packing cannons. Then there was a path to purely naval ships. First private enterprise privateers - pirates with a paper thin veneer of legitimacy. By 1511 there was a Tudor navy and the Mary Rose had a broadside of cannon.
So I think stable State conflict helped in Europe. In China dynasties often didn't last that long but it was stable for a while after the fight was settled so there was not the same martial impetus.
In addition in later periods conflict came from outside. First the Mongols, then the Manchus (a Mongol variant). There was a lot more than a century of humiliation if you count them.
I agree with your analysis. Like most things in history, there are a lot of complex factors as well as the simple fact that the humans in charge had different ideas at different times and had big impacts on the long-term outcome of their history.
@MrOracle There is a lot of randomness that comes from those complex factors. Supporting Ukraine has a fairly anticipated consequence of pushing Russian & China together but where it goes from there is not clear. A couple of generations on it might be when they see everything as falling apart or something like the heroic resistance to Hitler.
It's precisely because of the nature of Europe that it dominated the globe. Only Genghis khan had a larger empire than Britain at its height, and Khan's successors couldn't hold it together.
The British Empire had the advantage of being outward looking as it expanded, giving Australia and New Zealand to the Empire as well as holding Canada after the War of Independence with the Colonies.
European countries looked outwards to expand while China built a wall. It's all in how the countries handled growth. The East fought between themselves while the West did as well but the West's wars ended in expansion into exploration.
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Anonymous
(45 Plus)
2 mo
Thier Navy's discovery of the new world opened up a largey untouched Eden for the powers of Europe to exploit. it's not surprising England, France and Spain were the the most powerful European powers. The navy's allowed these European powers to spread thier influence and imperialism globally. In a sense Naval powers from the 1500's up to the 20th century was like the Nuclear weapon of the time.
Rome ruled the known world because of thier roads, Europeans ruled because of thier Navy's.
Completion inspires brilliant minds. War culls the weak. Hostile conditions promote curiosity to explore and expand to find new opportunity. As a result people of European heritage tend to have the highest deviations in IQ (genius minds), the strongest and smartest warriors, and a culture that is never settled and always reaches for the stars.
It turns out that having good navies is EXTREMELY important in being able to dominate other cultures. The Europeans had the ability to manufacture higher quality steel, and they had ports deep enough to build big ships.
When you have big ships, you can transport large amounts of material to support attacks on far away countries.
Other continents haven't really had the ability to do that, historically.
I think it's because they consisted of small nations in direct competition with each other that was able to not have a dominant power for long by their ever-changing alliances, which also helped to accelerate their need to expand. I'm not going to be out done by the French. - Britain. There, you have them approaching other continents partly to say, look at what I took.
There's also the age of exploration. Europeans were not satisfied with having to make such a long trip through the trade routes to get to China and India via land. Looking for an alternative route they believed that crossing the Atlantic would lead them to Asia, which is true, but they underestimated the size of the planet. Now in Asia, the Chinese and pretty much everyone else were already "satisfied” with what they had, vs the Europeans that wanted what they had. Competition plus supply and demand.
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