Discussion Topic
Diamond's primary questions in "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
Summary:
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond's primary questions explore why different human societies developed at different rates and why some civilizations conquered others. He investigates the environmental and geographical factors that influenced the development and spread of agriculture, technology, and political organization, ultimately shaping the fate of societies around the world.
How did Diamond rephrase the primary question that inspired "Guns, Germs, and Steel"?
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond says he wrote the book in response to a question from a New Guinean named Yali. Yali's question was this:
"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own"(Diamond, 14).
After thinking about the question for a while, Diamond saw that the true question was much more broad and universal than Yali's initial question. He reworded the question as follows:
"Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are rather than in some other way?" or "...why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians" (Diamond, 15).
This question is what Diamond's book attempts to answer.
What are the two key questions Diamond aims to answer in Guns, Germs, and Steel?
The answer to this question can be found in the Prologue of Guns, Germs, and Steel. One of the formulations of the question is on p. 15 in the paperback edition of the book while the other is on p. 16.
In this book, Diamond is attempting to answer “Yali’s question.” This is, fundamentally, a question about inequality. Yali, a native of New Guinea, wanted to know why “white people” had so much “cargo” (material goods) while Yali’s own people did not. Diamond eventually wrote this book to answer the question.
On p. 15, he gives one formulation of the question. It is
Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way?
In other words, why did Europeans become rich and powerful and able to conquer people in the Americas? Why wasn’t it the other way around?
On p. 16, Diamond gives the second formulation of the question. It is
Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents?
In this book, Diamond tries to answer these questions and comes to the conclusion that it was geographic luck that caused these things to be.
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