As the person who used the phrase “opposite of racism” far, far above, I object most strongly to this gross misrepresentation of what I must therefore think. It is a huge and unjustified extrapolation of a one line comment.

And by the way, Adamhenne, when you say that you have not been negative about other commenters on this thread, may I remind you that earlier you accused people of having read you in bad faith?

There is no “why”. You and your comrades (including, amazingly, LP) make a category mistake here, IMO. A society is not a conscious entity, you can’t ask it “why did you accept Christianity?” and get the answer “because I wanted to achieve…” It’s just as silly as asking a species: “why did you have to grow these huge fangs, when a pair of wings would suffice?”

Society evolves, adapts to the environment, culture reflects this process. And, incidentally, individuals carry no responsibility for the society as a whole, only for what they do.

And I think human agency matters – is that weird? GGS flatly denies it, and its supporters here seem untroubled by that. I’m not sure what straw man arguments you’re referring to, or why it’s ironic. In other words, what are you on about?

And finally, 154 was me, and I stand by that. I think it’s exactly the sentiment at the heart of GGS, and it sure sounds like the reason a lot of people around here are so attached to the book. Some of us have pointed that out and been roundly attacked, with a lot of heat and very little light. And you drop in occasionally to make snotty comments devoid of content, so that certainly cheers things up around here. So I’m wondering, what’s going on? Nearly three hundred comments now and I’ve read, like, maybe 10 that presented a meaningful challenge to my argument? With like 100 that are nothing more than insults. Now, clearly I’m some kind of masochist, but what’s your motivation for keeping this up?

While any discussion of “European dominance” is bound to bring up racist ideas, highlighting “sensitivity to racism” as the big divider between sophisticates and non-sophisticates is really just a lot of unproductive back-patting. Do anthropologists and laypeople differ on Diamond just because anthropologists have a more nuanced understanding of racism? Please. adamhenne thinks the most important thing “we” should take away from colonial history is a feeling of guilt. How nuanced.

Meanwhile we have the endless loop:
“Diamond’s arguments can be used by racists.”
“I don’t want to hold this against him, because the argument is not necessarily racist.”
“It’s so suspicious that Diamond’s defenders refuse to see racism and are so offended by accusations of racism.”
“Listen, the argument is not necessarily racist.”
“Man, so much obtuseness. I knew Diamond’s book and its popularity was fishy. Not that I’m accusing anyone of racism.”

Giving Dr Slack and others the benefit of the doubt as to whether the data they supply is correct, the question is left whether there is something not just mistaken but self-serving about the argument. Define the meaning and implication of “self-serving” in this context.

Hilarious. The engine behind this whole comment thread is people complaining about how Diamond’s argument can be used in racist ways. Then when a Diamond “defender” says that the argument is not necessarily racist, the same people shake their heads and wonder why there’s so much resistance to seeing racism. This is how we can get to nearly 300 comments about racism without anyone actually putting forth a racist argument.

And then there’s the side arguments about how to weigh human agency and structural factors in assessing causal historical forces. On one side, there are apparently people who believe that human agency is completely irrelevant to history. On the other side, there are people who bravely argue that “human agency matters.” Ironically these very same people are quite quick to complain about straw man arguments.

My favorite two comments so far:
154: Oh thank goodness, it’s not because anybody made any racist decisions, it’s not because white supremacist ideas authorized the massive slaughter of less powerful folks, it’s just that the shape of continents gave some people some stuff that others didn’t have. Any other population in the same position would have done the same. Nothing to feel guilty about after all.

198: If I could imagine a more illiberal, immoral project than this, I don’t know what it might be. Keep posting, Henri, you’re making my argument better than I ever could.

@277 However, Diamond explicitly acknowledges that both the Chinese and European social groups had those capabilities, yet only one engaged in colonization. He does engage in some small speculation as to why Europeans did what they did (William McNeil, for example, suggests that the political balkanization of Europe as opposed to the unity of the Chinese polity played a significant role).

I don’t see how Diamond or McNeil can get away with arguing China was not expansionist in much the same way that Europe was. What about China’s massive 18th-century expansion into Central Asia? Look at a map of the PRC and compare that to a map of China during the Ming—China expanded massively, and most of that territory was taken during the Qing period, between 1644 and the early 1800s, and held continuously, and practically none of this new territory had been held for any length of time by previous dynasties. It’s at least comparable to Russia’s expansion into Central Asia.

So why on earth is China characterized as not effectively expansionist? Why does imperial expansion in the 1800s make European powers expansionist, but China’s expansion in the 1700s not qualify? It looks to me like Eurocentrism. As Dr Slack said @227, just-so stories told from a European perspective—Europe was expanding into Asia in the 1800s, so that’s the important period to look at when comparing imperial expansions. Not the 1500s when the Ottomans were expanding or the 1700s when China was expanding. Not the 1900s when Asian nationalist movements were expanding at the expense of European political control.

And European transport and military devices in 1500 were not more devastating than those elsewhere in Asia. The Ottomans conquered about a third of Europe in the 1500s, using military organizational techniques that were far more effective and more similar to later, modern techniques (advanced, if you will) than those of European states at that time. Why are so few people even aware of this now, much less feeling compelled to explain it? Europeans in the 1600s were certainly aware of it.

So why all this interest in only those periods when European states expanded at the expense of non-European states? Why is there such fascination with this, and a virtual denial or so-glaring-it-almost-seems-willful ignorance of periods of conquest OF Europe BY Asian states (or, more firmly in GGS territory, reverses inflicted by Native Americans)? Why are these not in need of explanation? Why is expansion into the Americas or India more representative of a state’s power to expand than expansion into Central Asia?

So what I am now seeing in GGS is less a faulty explanation or justification of European hegemony as a Eurocentric assertion of European hegemony that makes it look bigger and more unchallenged than it really was, and sneakily subsuming all of Afro-Eurasian history under the umbrella of Europe, as if Europe were commercially and technologically all but independent of the larger Asian economy by the 1500s when the conquest of the Americas was underway. GGS is part of a wider practice of rehearsing European hegemony as transcendental historical fact, a practice exacerbated by both GGS’s proponents, and the “guilt” line of reasoning.

However, Diamond explicitly acknowledges that both the Chinese and European social groups had those capabilities, yet only one engaged in colonization. He does engage in some small speculation as to why Europeans did what they did (William McNeil, for example, suggests that the political balkanization of Europe as opposed to the unity of the Chinese polity played a significant role).

Sure – Diamond acknowledges that his meme could be applied to China but dismisses the question with the balkanization argument you mention. I think Dr. Slack, maybe, addressed this a hundred comments or so back there. But this is exactly what I’m talking about in terms of how little attention he pays to political explanations. We get only a couple of speculative paragraphs about a point on which his whole argument should pivot.

But Diamond is, I think, very clear throughout the book that he is providing a macro explanation as to why Europeans had the capabilities they did and why other indigenous societies had such difficulty resisting them.

Right – and he also very clearly dismisses anything but this “macro” explanation as epiphenomena or noise, without any determining power. And he’s equally clear that possessing those capabilities is not just a necessary part of explaining European conquest, but is sufficient explanation.

At least it was clear to me. This more than any of the factual or logical failings is what got my back up the first time I read the book – “where does he get off claiming his [silly] argument about continents as the master explanation for the state of the world today?” He elaborates this repeatedly in his introduction, in terms of “ultimate” and “proximate” causes; he even refers to everything involving culture and individual activity as “residue,” to be dismissed in the epilogue.

Fair enough, I’m certainly open to arguments that the book got facts wrong, still can’t wrap my head around the racist angle, this for example…

Any argument which denies or largely makes irrelevant issues of culpability and, in its place, asserts a determinism which explains unequal cultural outcomes is either a racist argument, or very nearly a racist argument. It doesn’t matter what deterministic mechanism is at the heart of the argument.

Does this argument really apply to pre-modern cultures? If I say the New Foundland native were able to dominate the Iceland Vikings because of inherent geographic advantages is that close to a racist argument. What about Homo Sapiens vs. Neandertals?