My history teacher says “geography is destiny” and made us watch guns germs and steel. I think bad empanada said this narrative promotes a lack of remorse for colonization because it’s characterized as inevitable. He didn’t explain why it was wrong though iirc. My teacher (who likes orwell) says it’s just material conditions. It could be argued that geography is created the original conditions that led to class society before class forced largely took over, though this could be taken to the extent of class being secondary. Anyone know about this?
I don't think the idea itself is wrong but calling it "destiny" is hyperbole. Geography is definitely a real material factor that has an impact on how societies develop and on the interactions they have with other societies. It's a part of the overall environment and a constraint that humans like any other species have had to adapt to over the course of our development. It's a long time since i read Guns, Germs and Steel and i would have to revisit it to offer more substantive critique, but as with most literature of this kind that is written by Western authors for Western audiences there is always some amount of Eurocentrism there which skews the point of view leading to post-hoc justifications for why certain things had to happen.