Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries discussion thread.

[Mr. Harley]

From Wikipedia

Disease began to kill immense numbers of indigenous Americans soon after Europeans and Africans began to arrive in the New World, bringing with them the infectious diseases of the Old World. One reason this death toll was overlooked (or downplayed) for so long is that disease, according to the widely held theory, raced ahead of European immigration in many areas, thus often killing off a sizeable portion of the population before European observations (and thus written records) were made. Many European immigrants who arrived after the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of American natives assumed that the natives had always been few in number. The scope of the epidemics over the years was enormous, killing millions of people — in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas — and creating "the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death of medieval Europe."6

This matches other accounts I have read. There are journals kept by Spanish explorers moving north out of Florida coming on Native American communities where the huts have been stacked full of corpses, and there were not enough people left to dispose of the remains. The diseases were absolutely devastating. The Black Death changed European culture while killing just 30%, find me a culture that survived a 90% death rate without massive trauma, and then better yet find me one that survived a military assault after this devastation. I'll bet you cannot can up with one.

The diseases also fed into the European claim that the savages were wasting all this land, it was largely empty. If the Native Americans had been given a century or two to recover population levels, the history of the United States would be very different. To dismiss them as simply "Neolithic" shows such a lack of comprehension of their culture, and accomplishments, as to border on the absurd. And also shows a strong vein of racism - i.e. unless your civilization meets our standards, i.e. iron use you are savages. The Cherokee had more Democratic government and more rights for women than any of the invading European cultures. Who was more "civilized"? Now the question, "Who had better technology?" is neither a leading question, and the answer to that is also very simple and straight foward. Sadly, technology and numbers almost always prevail in warfare, no matter who is more "civilized."

[Drake Tungsten]

"Neolithic" is a racially loaded term now?

[JohnT]

Last episode is tonight.

Here's my prediction for the 52-odd minutes:

3 minutes recapping the thesis of the book
9 minutes recapping the previous two shows
25 minutes of historical re-enactment.
6 minutes showing Diamond play with spears
7 minutes of actual new information
1 minute of credits
1 minute of "This program brought to you by..."

The graphic of the travelling arrows will be repeated.
My wife will fall asleep within 45 minutes.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Sikander


I guess my whole attitude to the "Muslims saved the legacy of the West" semi-strawman is, so what? Why wouldn't they, for the vast majority it was their own legacy as well. Just because they converted to Islam and changed their names to Arabic names doesn't mean that the inhabitants of the former Greco-Roman empires were actually replaced by people from Arabia.

One could also point out that the Byzantines also preserved ancient science and culture, and passed it on to the Italians. By the time that Byzantium finally succumbed in the 15th century the western european renaissance had already begun. In fact universities began appearing in the 13th century. While it's true that these learning centers borrowed from the muslims of Spain, they also acquired knowledge from Byzatium.

[GePap]

Originally posted by molly bloom

Given how close Alaska is to the Asiatic mainland, I find this a curious statement, especially given that Chinese junks could even just by hugging the shore, reach East Africa.

Really, then, there should have been no difficulty in heading north past Kamchatka and on to the Aleutians and the Queen Charlottes, Vancouver Island, et cetera.

Polynesians made it as far as Madagascar and New Zealand and Easter Island- from starting points in Taiwan and Indonesia, for instance.

And why on earth would the Chinese settle posts in Kamchatka, or Alaska? Even today those lands are at best sparesly populated. Any Chinese expedition that kept going north would have no lands of any worth to report. Why then keep going? It would make no sense to continue trying to make outposts in marginal lands. The economic cost wouyld not have been worth it. Besides, specially if hugging the coast those trips would have been long.

Going to east Africa made sense because between China and East Africa you get lands worth a damn. Warm lands with people and lots of possibly exotic and useful goods. The same can;t be said of going north, to waters that are far less friendly than those of the Indean Ocean, specially through a great deal of the year.

So when you say this I'm confused- clearly the Vikings and Normans did want to colonize, as did Viking kingdoms and Norman kingdoms, and no one is suggesting they weren't European.

In fact part of the reason Normans were so willing to colonize and conquer was because they were land hungry, but they were also very adaptable, as were indeed the Vikings- willing to marry local women from Ireland to Russia to Sicily and Greece and establish local dynasties.

I recommend John Julius Norwich's books on the kingdoms of the Normans in Sicily and Italy to you- one of the most splendid fusions of cultures of East and West, North and South, Christian, Jew and Muslim was to be found at the court of Palermo.

No thanks. First, the Normans were conquering more than "colonizing" It's not like Siciliy was "empty" when the Normans arrived, and enither was the area that became Normandy. Heck, the Mongols did a hell of a lot more of that.

As for the Vikings-lets see, poor people in marginal lands set out to find new lands to settle-yup, sounds like some pressing cultural imperative as opposed to say some economic urge to export surplus people.

Sorry Molly, but the behavior of the Normans and Vikings is in no way trully "peculiar" nor is any cultural drive needed to explain what simple human greed and ambition would explain (ie. politics and economics)

[Mr. Harley]

Drake, if you read the references to "Neolithic", it is being abused to imply a more primitive culture instead of a more primitive technology. Just as the term "Savages" was used to describe the Native Americans, it is a loaded term. By the way, Native Americans did have various degrees of metal working, with wide-spread gold and silver extraction and smithing among the Aztec and Inca, while various North American nations engaged in copper smithing, including the Hopewell who actually mined copper. So not only is it a perjorative term in this context used to justify the treatment of those less "civilized" (note again the confusion of technology with culture), it is also inaccurate.

To use an inaccurate term, to justify (note - justify, not explain) the military defeat (and the resulting genocide) of a people is definitely racial. It's all in the context. Want me to go through the use of that, and other terms, historically, and their use in the justification of the treatment of Native Americans? I hold you in higher regard than ER, and I don't think you need a quick lesson in that, you are not that stupidly and willfully ignorant. I could go on for paragraphs, you know that, and I will cite in excrutiating, and boring, detail.

If you want to argue that the technological advantages of the Europeans were critical, I would agree. If you want to argue that the technological advantages of European culture made it superior, I will disagree. Technological advantages simply reflect the focus of the culture, and make it neither superior, or inferior. They do give it an edge in conflict that is often insurmountable, but I measure the value of a people not just in their ability to make war. Neither did Christ, nor Buddha. And now I'm throwing religion into the mix and adding a third dimension.

[Drake Tungsten]

Drake, if you read the references to "Neolithic", it is being abused to imply a more primitive culture instead of a more primitive technology.

So? Stone-age cultures are more primitive than modern cultures. I have no idea why this is offensive to you...

Just as the term "Savages" was used to describe the Native Americans, it is a loaded term.

The terms aren't similar in the slightest. "Savage" carries a tone of judgemental negativism that "neolithic" doesn't have.

If you want to argue that the technological advantages of the Europeans were critical, I would agree. If you want to argue that the technological advantages of European culture made it superior, I will disagree.

I'm not arguing anything; can't really say I care about this discussion. I'm just wondering why a perfectly good word like "neolithic" has suddenly become politically incorrect...

[MORON]

Reguarding Epublius Rex's arguements..... about how Europeans not break down completely from diesase and warfare and that is the result of culture.

But I always thought that GGS's original arguements revolves of geological determination (okay, thats too strong a word), of culture development. Due to the fact that the Europeans went though thousands of years of new dieases from everywhere in the Asian continents and invaders from far and close, their culture and insistutions is less vulnerable to sudden and complete collapse from warfare and diesase as system thats vulnerable would have been replaced far eariler. The relatively isolated American agriculture civilization suffered from no outside attack and have much less culture and other resistance to them. An culture learns something about war after fighting from the Greeks, Romans, Huns, Mongols, Arabs, Vikings and each other endlessly.

Explain how the English conquered India and China with such limited numbers- in real terms, even less then the Spanish in S. America.

The same way Napeleon and Hitler can conquer europe?

Just an small edge in brillance can do alot of things. Only that people are really quite equal most of the time.

Well, using dimaond's arguments, I'd say:
1. Both India and China had been isolated from the industrial revolution. The Europeans have been smacking their heads over with cannons and muskets for centuries, where those that fail to adopt would have been destoryed. India and China only had decades at best to adopt in your time frame, which wasn't enough, and give them an centuary they've both become powerful nuclear capable nations. However they are still Chinese and Indian rather than Europeans.
2. Neither really had is culture wiped out. For the most part it is only an replacement of high level government. In China, this was not even the case and they protected their geological integrity. Losing the navy and an few armies is enough to collapse an unstable government, but it is far from disloging an population and is insignificant in the long run.

If all people and their cultures (which don't exist) are equal,

They are not equal as, an modern industrial state have an different culture from an stone age one, and an modern industrial state can defeat an planet of stone age people. However, the reason behind culture is evolution relative to environment (where geology is static and easier to study) rather than determinism due to current traits of any specific groups of people.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by GePap


And why on earth would the Chinese settle posts in Kamchatka, or Alaska? Even today those lands are at best sparesly populated. Any Chinese expedition that kept going north would have no lands of any worth to report. Why then keep going? It would make no sense to continue trying to make outposts in marginal lands. The economic cost wouyld not have been worth it.


No thanks. First, the Normans were conquering more than "colonizing" It's not like Siciliy was "empty" when the Normans arrived, and enither was the area that became Normandy. Heck, the Mongols did a hell of a lot more of that.

As for the Vikings-lets see, poor people in marginal lands set out to find new lands to settle-yup, sounds like some pressing cultural imperative as opposed to say some economic urge to export surplus people.

Sorry Molly, but the behavior of the Normans and Vikings is in no way trully "peculiar" nor is any cultural drive needed to explain what simple human greed and ambition would explain (ie. politics and economics)

Gosh, why did the Vikings keep going from the Orkneys and Shetlands to the Faeroes and Iceland and Greenland and the New World ?

Furs, narwhal tusks, whales, sealskins, polar bears, fish, walrus ivory.... trade is what you make of what you find, isn't it ? Especially if you can find items that are unavailable or rare where you come from.

And isn't that exactly what brought the expedition of Zheng He all the way to East Africa ? Of course, he was also a Muslim, and so knew of the trade routes to the south and south west thanks to the presence of fellow Muslim traders, but so far you haven't provided any evidence other than an assumption that Siberia and Kamchatka offer nothing worth trading for or buying as to why various Chinese dynasties may not have explored northern latitudes and hugged the coastline to Alaska.


You also seem to be making a distinction I didn't make- or at least assuming I made a distinction, and you are reducing the reasons waves of Vikings emigrated to just one- which isn't correct.


You seem also to be confused about what to colonize means- the Normans who settled in Sicily and Greece wanted to establish themselves there, to the extent of taking on the characteristics of the local inhabitants and intermarrying.


Main Entry: col·o·ny

Pronunciation: 'kä-l&-nE

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural -nies

Etymology: Middle English colonie, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French, from Latin colonia, from colonus farmer, colonist, from colere to cultivate -- more at WHEEL

1 a : a body of people living in a new territory but retaining ties with the parent state b : the territory inhabited by such a body

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=colony

Main Entry: col·o·nize

Pronunciation: 'kä-l&-"nIz

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): -nized; -niz·ing
transitive senses

1 a : to establish a colony in or on or of b : to establish in a colony


Exactly where on earth has been 'empty' for potential colonizers, except the odd islet in the Atlantic or Pacific, et cetera ?

Southern Greenland, I suppose, but that's where the Vikings developed a colony isn't it ?

Now you seem to be making a somewhat spurious distinction between conquering and colonizing with regard to the Normans.

Were the Normans colonizers, and does conquering preclude colonizing ?

Actually, no.

Main Entry: con·quer

Pronunciation: 'kä[ng]-k&r

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): con·quered; con·quer·ing /-k(&-)ri[ng]/

Etymology: Middle English, to acquire, conquer, from Old French conquerre, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin conquaerere, alteration of Latin conquirere to search for, collect, from com- + quaerere to ask, search
transitive senses

1 : to gain or acquire by force of arms
2 : to overcome by force of arms

Having conquered, the Normans could colonize. Strangely enough this is what the Mongols did later, in southern Russia and the Khwarezm Khanate in Iran and Central Asia- where they formed the Khanate of the Golden Horde and the Il-Khanate.

While the Middle Ages in Ireland had witnessed the establishment of an Anglo-Norman COLONY, the native Irish lords had not been comprehensively CONQUERED and so Irish society and culture had remained predominantly Gaelic.

http://www.thoemmes.com/dictionaries/irish_intro.htm

Stradling belonged to a leading Welsh family that allegedly could trace its origin to one of the original Norman COLONIZERS of Glamorganshire....

http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/stradling/intro.html

How the early Norman COLONIZERS managed to make sense of this extraordinary apparition, what for them amounted to a novel and hybrid species, becomes quickly apparent as Gerald goes on with his account...

http://web.mit.edu/lit/www/spotlightarticles/gender.html

This book provides a selection from the abundant source material generated by the Normans and the peoples they CONQUERED. As this study demonstrates, few other medieval peoples generated historical writing of such quantity and quality. This book takes a wide European perspective on the Normans, assessing and explaining Norman expansion, their political and social organization and their eventual decline. The Normans in Europe explores such areas as....[..] the role of women and children in Norman society; the main chronicle sources for the history of the Norman INVASION and SETTLEMENT ; [...] ...the progress of the Normans amongst the first SETTLERS in Southern Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

http://www.haskins.cornell.edu/Anon18-3.htm

My emphasis throughout.


I'll leave the last word on Norman Sicily to a Sicilian:

"Norman Sicily stood forth in Europe --and indeed in the whole bigoted medieval world-- as an example of tolerance and enlightenment, a lesson in the respect that every man should feel for those whose blood and beliefs happen to differ from his own."

Palermo native, Vincenzo Salerno

http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art171.htm

But I do urge you to read 'The Normans in the South' and 'The Kingdom in the Sun'- well worth perusing.

[Mr. Harley]

Drake - I just showed - the Native American's weren't stoneage, i.e. neolithic. They worked metal. Thus, when ER uses that as justification for their defeat by the Europeans, implying that even without disease they would have lost - now he's playing the "superior European culture". Their culture was NOT superior, many of the Native American cultures had more freedom, more democratic elections, and did it over a larger area than some of the European countries (think of the Five Nations). Imagine the results of King Philip's War is the Seneca had let's say quadruple the number of braves. Or the fate of Roanke colony.

Primitive https://www.maquah.net/We_Have_The_R...6Glossary.html

the first definition in Webster's Dictionary reflects the original Latin meaning, "of or existing in the beginning or earliest time or ages, ancient, original." Subsequent definitions, and the derogatory connotations of popular usage show the mutation of words in the English language as a means of stereotyping, labeling, and creating a dehumanized image of Aboriginal Indigenous people.

That's not just my opinion. So if I call Japanese culture barbaric, citing everything that happened over WW2, and ignoring all the more civilized aspects, would I be correct? (and many people used exactly that straw man) Or if I called United States a genocidal nation, exceeding the Nazis atrocities, would you pick an argument with me?

Of course. I would be picking out single, accurate instances and using them to paint a distorted picture of the culture. Thus, when you or anyone pigeonholes a culture with a single word, in this case Neolithic, which is not even accurate, then yes the term is perjorative when it is being used to sum up a culture and paint a distorted and vastly over-simplified picture of it. Those cultures had certain superior aspects to the occupying and displacing European cultures (including farming techniques). They also had decidedly inferior iron working, chemical, and ocean-going technology, and their culture was decidedly inferior at the entire organization of a society behind total warfare, and industrial level plantation slavery and the brutal policies required to successfully implement that kind of farming technique (which is actually a very inefficient form of land use, but which generates more concentrated income for those who control the planation economy rather than a higher level of diffuse wealth for many smaller farms in the same land area).

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by GePap

First, the Normans were conquering more than "colonizing" It's not like Siciliy was "empty" when the Normans arrived, and enither was the area that became Normandy. Heck, the Mongols did a hell of a lot more of that.

As for the Vikings-lets see, poor people in marginal lands set out to find new lands to settle-yup, sounds like some pressing cultural imperative as opposed to say some economic urge to export surplus people.

Sorry Molly, but the behavior of the Normans and Vikings is in no way trully "peculiar" nor is any cultural drive needed to explain what simple human greed and ambition would explain (ie. politics and economics)

See, the more I think of this, the more strange your notions of what the Normans and Vikings did sounds. The idea that the Normans were 'more conquerors than colonizers' is really just so bizarre, as is the idea that the Vikings were the equivalent of 8th Century Okies.

Here's the settling of Normandy by Vikings:

"The west Frankish monarchy started the tenth century in a weak position. In 911 Charles III, unable to expel them, conceded lands in what was later called Normandy to the leader of the Norse (read: Viking) arrivals, Rollo.

Baptized the following year, Rollo set to work to build the duchy for which he did homage to the Carolingians; his Scandinavian countrymen (read: more Vikings) continued to arrive and settle there (read: colonize) until the end of the tenth century, yet soon became French in speech and law."

from: The Penguin History of Europe, by J. M. Roberts

" On Christmas Day 1066 Duke William of Normandy was acclaimed king in Westminster Abbey [...]

England received not just a new royal family but also a new ruling class, a new culture and language.

The result was that England and Normandy, once two separate states, now became a single cross-Channel political community, sharing not only a ruling dynasty, but also a single Anglo-Norman aristocracy.

The Norman Conquest of 1066 was followed by an Angevin Conquest of 1153-4; although this did not involve the settlement of a Loire valley aristocracy in England...

[...]

The Norman Conquest, in other words, ushered in a period during which England, like the kingdom of Jerusalem, can fairly be described as a part of France overseas, Outremer ; in political terms, it was a French colony (though not of course, one that belonged to the French king) until the early thirteenth century and a cultural colony thereafter."

John Gillingham, 'The Early Middle Ages' (1066-1290), Chapter 3 of the Oxford Illustrated History of Britain

Sorry Molly, but the behavior of the Normans and Vikings is in no way trully "peculiar".

Gepap


And yet I can't recall my having suggested it was.

But you did suggest this:

Europe did not "want" to colonize anything. Where the hell do you get that notion?

Umm, possibly from the European Vikings and Normans having colonized areas stretching from southern Greece and Palestine to Greenland ?

[Drake Tungsten]

Drake - I just showed - the Native American's weren't stoneage, i.e. neolithic. They worked metal.

If the DL is wrong, then call him wrong. Don't make up some BS about "neolithic" being a racist term.

[Mr. Harley]

No Drake - read the cite on "primitive". If the use and context of language isn't so important, why have the Republicans specifically targeted language and it's uses and spent millions (I have seen the amount of two billion bandied about, but I believe that is for all conservative think tank spending which is not just on language) on specifically that.

Many words can be used in a racist context. Context. Say it three time firmly. If an archeologist was using it to describe a culture from 20,000 years ago, then it is not racist. If one was using it to justify the White Man's burden in let's say New Guineau - then it's racist. Good God, look at how the left turned standard military terms into pejoratives during the Viet Nam war. Or the right turned Liberal into a negative word in today's American lexicon. Language shapes the debate - as you well know.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by GePap

First, the Normans were conquering more than "colonizing" It's not like Siciliy was "empty" when the Normans arrived, and enither was the area that became Normandy. Heck, the Mongols did a hell of a lot more of that.

Indeed they did:

'In Khorasan a refugee, asked to tell what had happened in Bokhara, replied with admirable succinctness:

"They came, mined, burnt, killed, plundered and left."

It was the authentic voice of those who had experienced the Mongols.'

from: 'The Mongol Empire', by Peter Brent

The Normans on the other hand...

Monreale is world-renowned for its cathedral, a dazzling mixture of Arab, Byzantine and Norman artistic styles framed by traditional Romanesque architecture, all combined in a perfect blend of the best that both the Christian and Muslim worlds of the 12th century had to offer.

http://www.bestofsicily.com/monreale.htm

[GePap]

Sorry molly, but this is still all falling flat.

Hell, the Inca's colonized the whole of the Andes (certainly more space than what the Normans did) and they built roads, towns, and even carried out mass movements of populations.

Last time I looked the Arabs by your definition "colonized" a vast area outside the Arabian penninsula. Just look at their works in Spain. And then the Han Chinese, who colonized all of southern China and Taiwan.

The notion that territorial expansion is something that can be culturally linked to "Europeans" seems stange when so many clearly non-European people's have done it, around the world (like the Bantu colonizing all of Southern Africa).

So what exactly is you point? That Viking and NBOrman lords liked to take over new lands!? Wow, what a shocking cultural revelation, cause no non-European group of human beings have EVER done that...come on.

And as for thos Vikings, given that you are so bent on their "colonizing urge" Why did they stop, huh? Why weren;t they all over the Americas when they got so close? Did their "colonizing drive" have some sort of maximum distance from home or something?