Our usual answer when GGS gets mentioned:

It looks like you are talking about the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

The book over the past years has become rather popular, which is hardly surprising since it is a good and entertaining read. It has reached the point that for some people it has sort of reached the status of gospel. On /r/history we noticed a trend where every time a question was asked that has even the slightest relation to the book a dozen or so people would jump in and recommend the book. Which in the context of history is a bit problematic and the reason this reply was written.

Why it is problematic can be broken down into two reasons:

1. In academic history there isn't such thing as one definitive authority or work on things. There are often others who research the same subjects and people that dive into work of others to build on it or to see if it indeed holds up. This being critical of your sources and not relying on one source is actually a very important skill in studying history often lacking when dozens of people just spam the same work over and over again as a definite guide and answer to "everything".
2. There are a good amount of modern historians and anthropologists who are quite critical of Guns, Germs, and Steel and there are some very real issues with Diamond's work. These issues are often overlooked or not noticed by the people reading his book. Which is understandable, given the fact that for many it will be their first exposure to the subject. Considering the popularity of the book it is also the reason that we felt it was needed to create this response.

In an ideal world, every time the book was posted in /r/history, it would be accompanied by critical notes and other works covering the same subject. Lacking that a dozen other people would quickly respond and do the same. But simply put, that isn't always going to happen and as a result, we have created this response so people can be made aware of these things. Does this mean that the /r/history mods hate the book or Diamond himself? No, if that was the case, we would simply instruct the bot to remove every mention of it. This is just an attempt to bring some balance to a conversation that in popular history had become a bit unbalanced. It should also be noted that being critical of someone's work isn't the same as outright dismissing it. Historians are always critical of any work they examine, that is part of their core skill set and key in doing good research.

Below you'll find a list of other works covering much of the same subject. Further below you'll find an explanation of why many historians and anthropologists are critical of Diamonds work.

Other works covering the same and similar subjects.

• Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

• Last Days of the Inca

• Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715

• The Great Divergence

• Why the West Rules for Now

• Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

Criticism of Guns, Germs, and Steel

Many historians and anthropologists believe Diamond plays fast and loose with history by generalizing highly complex topics to provide an ecological/geographical determinist view of human history. There is a reason historians avoid grand theories of human history: those "just so stories" don't adequately explain human history. It's true however that it is an entertaining introductory text that forces people to look at world history from a different vantage point. That being said, Diamond writes a rather oversimplified narrative that seemingly ignores the human element of history.

Cherry-picked data while ignoring the complexity of issues

In his chapter "Lethal Gift of Livestock" on the origin of human crowd infections he picks 5 pathogens that best support his idea of domestic origins. However, when diving into the genetic and historic data, only two pathogens (maybe influenza and most likely measles) could possibly have jumped to humans through domestication. The majority were already a part of the human disease load before the origin of agriculture, domestication, and sedentary population centers. This is an example of Diamond ignoring the evidence that didn't support his theory to explain conquest via disease spread to immunologically naive Native Americas.

A similar case of cherry-picking history is seen when discussing the conquest of the Inca.

Pizarro's military advantages lay in the Spaniards' steel swords and other weapons, steel armor, guns, and horses... Such imbalances of equipment were decisive in innumerable other confrontations of Europeans with Native Americans and other peoples. The sole Native Americans able to resist European conquest for many centuries were those tribes that reduced the military disparity by acquiring and mastering both guns and horses.

This is a very broad generalization that effectively makes it false. Conquest was not a simple matter of conquering a people, raising a Spanish flag, and calling "game over." Conquest was a constant process of negotiation, accommodation, and rebellion played out through the ebbs and flows of power over the course of centuries. Some Yucatan Maya city-states maintained independence for two hundred years after contact, were "conquered", and then immediately rebelled again. The Pueblos along the Rio Grande revolted in 1680, dislodged the Spanish for a decade, and instigated unrest that threatened the survival of the entire northern edge of the empire for decades to come. Technological "advantage", in this case guns and steel, did not automatically equate to battlefield success in the face of resistance, rough terrain and vastly superior numbers. The story was far more nuanced, and conquest was never a cut and dry issue, which in the book is not really touched upon. In the book it seems to be case of the Inka being conquered when Pizarro says they were conquered.

Uncritical examining of the historical record surrounding conquest

Being critical of the sources you come across and being aware of their context, biases and agendas is a core skill of any historian.

Pizarro, Cortez and other conquistadores were biased authors who wrote for the sole purpose of supporting/justifying their claim on the territory, riches and peoples they subdued. To do so they elaborated their own sufferings, bravery, and outstanding deeds, while minimizing the work of native allies, pure dumb luck, and good timing. If you only read their accounts you walk away thinking a handful of adventurers conquered an empire thanks to guns and steel and a smattering of germs. No historian in the last half century would be so naive to argue this generalized view of conquest, but European technological supremacy is one keystone to Diamond's thesis so he presents conquest at the hands of a handful of adventurers.

The construction of the arguments for GG&S paints Native Americans specifically, and the colonized world in general, as categorically one step behind.

To believe the narrative you need to view Native Americans as somehow naive, unable to understand Spanish motivations and desires, unable react to new weapons/military tactics, unwilling to accommodate to a changing political landscape, incapable of mounting resistance once conquered, too stupid to invent the key technological advances used against them, and doomed to die because they failed to build cities, domesticate animals and thereby acquire infectious organisms. This while they did often did fare much better than the book (and the sources it tends to cite) suggest, they often did mount successful resistance, were quick to adapt to new military technologies, build sprawling cities and much more. When viewed through this lens, we hope you can see why so many historians and anthropologists are livid that a popular writer is perpetuating a false interpretation of history while minimizing the agency of entire continents full of people.

Further reading

If you are interested in reading more about what others think of Diamon's book you can give these resources a go:

• /r/askHistorians section in their FAQ about GG&S
• Jim Blaut on Jared Diamond

Basically it presents a fairly reductionist and unscientific argument for geographic determinism. It's better than chud shit or even a lot of liberal shit because it recognizes some material elements to historical development and is trying to develop an alternative to racist explanations for differences in the wealth of nations. It also ignores a lot of other historical factors basically trying to hard to be the opposite of great man theory that it ignores human agency altogether and relies on some weak to nonesense evidence sometimes. If your dad is a chud it might be a good thing to read even if it is a bit problematic.

GGS was my first exposure to a not-racist explanation for why Europeans came to dominate the world via colonialism - so to that end, I would say don't expect chud shit from your dad reading it, instead expect naive lib shit. As everyone else has pointed out Diamond constructs a grand view of history based around geographic determinism, which ends up downplaying both the acts of resistance by colonized people and the acts of repression by colonizers. Colonization wasn't an "oopsie we gave you a disease which collapsed your society but we might as well take this land nobody is using anymore", it was "we have and will continue killing you for your land and because of our massive support base back home you cannot stop us."

Jared Diamond's mission is the book is to dispel that Europe and its settler-states became hegemonic due to any inherent qualities of white people. While Diamond debunks some racist myths, he replaces them with a new "just-so" story about geography and ecology that really doesn't have that much explanatory power. That geographical determinism also serves to absolve the settler-states of their crimes by portraying it as a given that Europeans would plunder the western hemisphere.

It's babies first materialism. It is not sufficient of course. However I will amways have a place in my heart for just how hard it hit the liberals to consider things might happen for reasons

It's better than 90% of material discussing global history that is in the mainstream. However, it's an ornithologist with no cultural relativism discussing materialism. He's playing at being an anthropologist, and it shows with the amount of nonsense he sells. Still might be good for a chud.

Hiss. No. bad. We do not read Jared Diamond in this house. Geographers have no business discussing history or culture. The thing from /r/History that Bombshell posted is an excellent, if rather forgiving, explanation.

historical determinism that continent shape = white people will win history is not 'materialist'

I read it in high school for an assignment. It has its problems but it's worth reading.

I believe (IIRC) it does advance a very thought-provoking argument that the very lack of sanitation and proliferation of domesticated livestock in the backwater of Europe's cities was what made Europe a petri dish of disease; in stark contrast to the highly advanced sanitation of indigenous Meso- and South American cities that were also densely populated on a scale dwarfing the cities of Europe, on continents that greatly lacked domesticable livestock. In turn, the European conquistadors brought diseases that they were resistant or immune to but spread through the indigenous American peoples like a wildfire.

Racist as shit and still whitewashes the genocide a fuck ton, but the first time someone has actually even bothered to try a good-faith read of the situation. Put it this way: If you only went off of information from the book you could fill in the gaps later, unlike the American education system which flat out anti-informs you. You could certainly do a lot worse but come on, you have so many better books you can pull from who take an effort beyond the bare minimum and aren't dripping with the blood of colonialism. Why are you reading chud books when you have the entire leftist library at your disposal?