Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries discussion thread.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

The very idea that Meiji was a mere figurehead is completely alien to me.

It shouldn't be; the vast majority of emperors in Japanese history were mere figureheads. They were technically always the legitimate rulers of Japan, but real power usually rested in the hands of the shoguns or other military leaders. The Meiji period was no different.

Out of curiosity, since your knowledge is deep, how much truth was there in the movie "Last Samurai", assuming you have seen it? I don't mean with regard to TC's character, but the civil war in Japan and how it ended in the movie, versus the real world.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Quite an interesting view. in the 16th century, Morocco fought twice againt the subsaharian Songhai empire. On the first time Morocco lost the battle. On the second time (1591), Morocco won against a similar Songhai army. The main difference was that Morocco used guns that second time.

Besides, bows came into use in Subsaharian Africa, at least in western Africa. It was used for hunting an for war (though I do not know to what extent the bow was used vs the spear)

You haven't answered my other post in response to this yet but, something else just occurred to me about weaponry.

It was long held that Custer was was annihilated so quickly because he was so overwhelmed, but many people never really believed that.

Forensics and more in depth study revealed that the reason why Custer could not keep them at bay and went down so fast was because the Sioux had significant numbers of repeating rifles while Custer's men still had only breechloaders- single shot rifles. The amount of firepower the Indians were able to deliver is what overwhelmed Custer's forces, not the sheer number of indians, most of whom still had muskets or bows.

Anyhow, both posts were meant as food for thought. I don't think muskets were as determinative in the early conquest of the Americas as Diamond makes them. Considering the forest in the NE and the jungle in the South. Rather I think the Indian's lack of cohesive social organization beyond the immediate tribe was the real determining factor.

[Drake Tungsten]

The movie didn't deal with the civil war; it dealt with the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. It's very loosely based on real people and events.

[Berzerker]

Dumb Incans, they deserved to be conquered. I can't believe Atahualpa told his warriors to leave the weapons at home when meeting the Spaniards. The reason: political, he thought the Spanish would flee and he wanted them to flee from an unarmed Incan force so the even dumber Incan peasants would think Atahualpa had scared away the gods without weapons.

He could have easily finished off the Spaniards many times over before they even reached the capitol. At least Cortez had plenty of Indian allies in the war with the Aztecs. Less than 200 Conquistadors rode right into 80,000 Incans and captured the idiot running the show.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Institutional arrangements play an important role in decisions indeed. However, the question we are adressing here (I think) is not whether culture is the only thing that matters (even Epublius disagrees with the idea), but whether things are geographically determined.

I'd say that the example of Poland goes contrary to your own argument. Previously in the thread, you argued that China was flat, and that allowed a strong centralized government. Yet, Poland is flat, and had a crippled institutional order, subjected to the abomination that is the Liberum Veto. The geographic argument does not compute.

This is a very weak way of looking at this. Poland is flat, but it is part of a large, flat area, allowing for people and armiers to move about freely.

China's north, were the culture and state we call China was created, is also flat. BUt it is protected from any other large agricultural civs by plenty of steepes, MOuntains, jungles, and Deserts.

Poland as a political unity grew in an area rife with them. China did not, China's growth was relatively isolated-it certainly knew of the foreign world and traded and such, but during its formative stage it was pretty much the only large agricultural civlization in its entire neighborhood. China's eneimes were nomadic tribes, not ohter vast and great civlizations.

The Poland point is to illustrate the weakness of the cultural arguement specially sicne no one here yet has defined culture. Is the political framework existing at the time part of "culture"? After all, had China had, as she had had in the past but did not have in 1838, a strong, popular and Han dynasty in power in Beijing, could she have modernized? Of what is the Taiping rebels had won and ovethrown the Empire? Was China's political state in 1839 somehow "culturally" decided?

(and no, Spiff, I am not claiming it was geographically decided either. You seem to have a very myopic and imcplete view of this "Gepapism" you speak of.)

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Epublius Rex
Anyhow, both posts were meant as food for thought. I don't think muskets were as determinative in the early conquest of the Americas as Diamond makes them. Considering the forest in the NE and the jungle in the South. Rather I think the Indian's lack of cohesive social organization beyond the immediate tribe was the real determining factor.

I'm inclined to agree with you for North America (though the organization of Indians was more complex than you make it look). But that wouldn't explain how easily the Spanish conquered two great empires and a slew of urbanised vassals. These cultures were clearly far beyond tribal.

And even though the Aztecs vassals have turned against them, I still don't understand how the Spanish could have so easily subjected the remaining vassals.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I'm inclined to agree with you for North America (though the organization of Indians was more complex than you make it look). But that wouldn't explain how easily the Spanish conquered two great empires and a slew of urbanised vassals. These cultures were clearly far beyond tribal.

And even though the Aztecs vassals have turned against them, I still don't understand how the Spanish could have so easily subjected the remaining vassals.

Maybe the massive collapse of society as plague ravaged all large Indian societies, killing far more than half of all people, had something to do with it.

Again, Maybe if Atahualpa had not just finished a civil war with his brother Huascar because pox had killed the Inca before then Pizzaro might not have had the luck he had.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I'm inclined to agree with you for North America (though the organization of Indians was more complex than you make it look). But that wouldn't explain how easily the Spanish conquered two great empires and a slew of urbanised vassals. These cultures were clearly far beyond tribal.

And even though the Aztecs vassals have turned against them, I still don't understand how the Spanish could have so easily subjected the remaining vassals.

Well, as you note, in the case of the Aztecs, the were hated by everyone so it was easy enough for Cortez to secure allies.

Most Mesoamericans were not in cities though, most were living a tribal existence in the jungles and along the water ways and coastal areas. In both cases, the empires extracted huge sums from those around them- making them hated entities. I do not discount the ability of the Spanish in conducting a crude form of Machiavellian diplomacy with the smaller tribes in order to get the large empires.

Nor do I discount the advantage they had with horses- the horse was the great military advantage of early indo-europeans as they spread out from the Caucasus.

However, the opposing tribes were bought much too easily by outside invaders. The Romans were very adept at such maneuvers, but over time the barbaric tribes caught on. The indians did not seem to until it was far too late- Little Big Horn being an example of what would have worked had it happened in 1650 instead of 1870 whatever. I just don't think they were capable of rapid change. More importantly with the Inca, they involved themselves in a civil war at the worst possible time. I think they sowed their own seeds of destruction, just as the Aztecs did by their savage rule of the surrounding tribes.

In other words, they, like Rome and Egypt before that, were ripe for conquest- they were not a unified people with a central purpose- the Spanish were, as were the English to the North.

Likewise, the same can be said of China. Steeped in ancestor worship and a religion/cultural belief-philosophy which emphasized simplicity, statism and servitude, the Chinese could not adapt and overcome what they were hit with.

There is something to the idea that Gepap states in that they were isolated once the mongols had conquered them. Japan and Korea did not have the ability to invade them at that point= 1600's, but oh my what a fool Japan made of them in the 1930's.

How does culture figure into the rise and fall of great empires? In the beginning they are filled with a belief in their own supremacy and their inevitable right of conquest. In the end, they become fat and lazy, too quick to hire out the fate of the empire to foreign entities. Egypt with the slave stock. Rome with the barbarians and former slave stock. England with it's former colony- America. Russia with it's former serfs. Aztecs with their vassals who hated them- very similar to Rome entrusting it's fate to the barbarians.

Now America is beginning to crumble. We may just live long enough to see it begin in earnest. But all of the tell tale signs are there. We, and the West in general, are a people without a purpose. We have become fat and lazy (literally) and no longer have the zeitgeist that the founding peoples had carried with them from Europe. Increasingly, we are utilizing foreign peoples for our labor and also increasingly entrusting our security to them.

This part of culture, what it imparts to a people's view of themselves is a critical part in the making of history.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by GePap


Maybe the massive collapse of society as plague ravaged all large Indian societies, killing far more than half of all people, had something to do with it.

Again, Maybe if Atahualpa had not just finished a civil war with his brother Huascar because pox had killed the Inca before then Pizzaro might not have had the luck he had.

Even so, they still had millions to Pizzarro's 160. They sowed the seeds of their own destruction with civil war and abusive taxes. Neither Pizzaro nor Cortez could have pulled it off without Indian allies.

Again, a lack of cohesiveness is central. Beyond that, they were, of course, primitives in their technology. They were essentially still living in the stone age.

As I have said, Europe suffered immense carnage from the plague- society did not break down. Europe, at the time of the plague's first appearance, was fighting the invasion forces of both the Western and Eastern Caliphates on two fronts. And they had no clear technological advantage over Islam. What they did have was political cohesiveness within their nations and a sense of having to stick together in the face of the foreign enemy. And that larger cohesiveness is what saved Europe more then once from Islamic rule.
Islam was at first the more powerful of the two regions. Overtime Europe overcame Islam and by the 20th century was able to easily dominate it. Though that was already set in stone by the mid 1800's.

[Epublius Rex]

Addendum to the Incas, et al-

Remember, Cortez and Pizzaro were merely the first assault of a sustained invasion. European invasions have all followed a general format over the millennia. A relatively small invasion force with a mission and cohesiveness invades and destroys the primary army of native defense. Followed by some form of occupation and a growth of military force. The disarming of the native populace followed by their eventual co-option into the new form of governance. You do not need all of the people, just a enough to make it work- maybe 10 to 15% of the native population. As I pointed out a while back, when India had over 300 million people, it took less then 3 million English men, women and children to maintain the Empire there. A bare 10%. Simply amazing. It took even less to subdue China, and disease was not a factor there.

The next step is assimilating the masses into the new culture.

SOmething else in all this again. IN all of these essentially Asian empires that were conquered, the nobility all thought they were gods. That's something europeans had left behind 1500 years earlier. I cannot help but wonder if that venality didn't contribute to their downfall.

[Epublius Rex]

You know, something that Diamond and some of you negate is the simple fact that Europe was under near constant invasion by outside forces for almost all of the last 5,000 years. That alone may have tempered them into the mighty force they later became.

And stop this absurd nonsense about the Arabs preserving European heritage, The Arabs are the ones who burned the library at Alexandria- because they thought it was all heresy.

It was Thomas Aquinas who translated the Greek properly and thus preserved it in the vaults of the Vatican. The Arabs deliberately translated it in a sloppy way to avoid offending the Koran. The pollution was so extensive that it was incomprehensible from it's original meaning.

Once again, culture was a determining factor.

[Epublius Rex]

Example:

Rome was not a military power per se until Hannibal invaded. During the course of the Carthaginian wars, Rome was forged into the military power that allowed it to conquer the Western world. They survived an immense onslaught through cohesiveness and brain power.

What makes a people great is how they deal with extreme adversity. Not how easily they maintain control over primitive masses.

[Berzerker]

Maybe if Atahualpa had not just finished a civil war with his brother Huascar because pox had killed the Inca before then Pizzaro might not have had the luck he had.

The guy was stupid, that and only that explains how he lost...well...lost so fast. The tide against the new world was unstoppable, but the Inca were nicely positioned to fend off the Spanish for decades or even centuries had they wiped out the Spanish force.

They sowed the seeds of their own destruction with civil war and abusive taxes. Neither Pizzaro nor Cortez could have pulled it off without Indian allies.

Pizzaro had very little help from Incan enemies, they rode into town and the dumb mayor handed them the keys to the kingdom.

You know, something that Diamond and some of you negate is the simple fact that Europe was under near constant invasion by outside forces for almost all of the last 5,000 years. That alone may have tempered them into the mighty force they later became.

Diamond mentioned the arms race in Europe/Spain leading to the guns and steel used to conquer the new world. When two of the main factors relate to arms, I dont know how you can say he "negated" it...

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by Berzerker

Diamond mentioned the arms race in Europe/Spain leading to the guns and steel used to conquer the new world. When two of the main factors relate to arms, I dont know how you can say he "negated" it...

He mentions it, but he failed to see it as a cultural and not a geographical triumph. It took a lot of self control on the part of European kings who liked to make war on one another. Though, before the advent of Martin Luther, the Vatican held some control over warfare in Europe- threatening excommunication for those kings who conducted unjust wars. Religion is culture. It was the means by which the loose alliances against the invaders were held together.

By contrast, the Indians in the New World repeatedly sold each other out. I disagree that it was inevitable in the short term. Eventually, yes, Europe would have had the means to launch an unstoppable invasion force, but it did not have those means in 1600. They could have fought it off for perhaps 200 years, by which time they may have been able to come to some mutual agreement that allowed them more sovereignty then they got.

[Epublius Rex]

I am making a point here- in that Europeans responded in a laudable manner with the invasion attempts over time. Even the Goths came together with the Romans to defeat the Huns. Before that, the Greeks got together to get rid of a trade rival- the Trojans. The Greeks also used natives to defeat the Egyptians, and so forth. There is a pattern that was not evinced by other peoples- especially Asians in general. And in that pattern is shown a propensity to invent new and more powerful engines of war. Faster, better, more powerful. But beyond the weapons were the tactics employed. You have to admit, Europeans raised the art of war to a science- far surpassing the Chinese "Art of War". And Europeans were quick to make alliances in order to harness more manpower.

Here is an example:

The horse, which was gradually bred larger and larger until it achieved the size of the War Horse- the modern day work horse. Many people make the point- a valid one, that compared to Arabians, they were slow and cumbersome. But they miss the point of what they were intended for. Europeans bred them big enough to wear 200 pounds of armor. That made them more resistant to arrows and also added more weight to them- they were not intended for horse to horse fighting in battle. What they did with them is get them up to speed and plow the now 2,000 lbs of flesh and steal into the massed troops- opening up holes in the enemy lines.

The war horse was the forerunner of the tank.

Guns were the answer to armor, cannons the answer to fortified positions.

The Sythians had bronze weapons, the horse and the chariot, later they came up with the saddle and the stirrup and a horse big enough to ride. The Hittites the iron sword and shield and iron clad wheel. The Greeks had their ships- fast and low on the water and the phalanx. The Romans had Greek fire and the turtle. The English had the long bow and eventually their navy. America had steal ships first and the submarine and later the repeating firearm, including the gatling gun. The Germans had the steal rifled cannon that could throw a shell far enough that the enemy could not see where it came from. The British the tank. The Germans the rocket and jet. The Americans the intercontinental ballistic missile.

The arms race didn't begin in 700 AD, it began in 3,000 BC.