Guns, Germs and Steel

Guns, Germs and Steel: a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared Diamond [first published 1997]. [A review]



This book tries to understand European colonialism, and European domination of the world, beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The title of the book is a brief summary of the answer-- the Americas and Australia, conquered and resettled by Europeans, did not have either guns or steel to defend themselves. Nor did they have horses, which were often crucial in early warfare. Disease germs such as small pox and tuberculosis brought by Europeans, were new to the regions they conquered, and the native people were decimated by diseases they had never encountered before.
Of course, the almost 500 page book has much more than this. It attempts to present a broad sweep of history, beginning with the occupation of the world. It provides examples of how weapons and germs devastated certain groups, and then goes on to try and understand how these weapons and germs came to be in Europe. Food production, leading to a surplus, was the basis for sedentary, complex societies, which led to diversification and the development of technology, as well as of writing and political organisation. Animal domestication was the basis for certain germs. Climate, terrain, and naturally available plants and animals were a crucial aspect of where agriculture would develop, how much it could increase, and how it could spread.
This winner of the 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize is vast in its scope.
Some of its ideas are now outdated or disproved, as for instance the view that agriculture spread through Eurasia from the Fertile Crescent.
Why did Europe suddenly overtake Asia in development and technology? Why did Europeans and not the great Asian empires colonise the world? These questions need more analysis, but the book is still an interesting read.