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Xiahou Dun posted:Well, I got the poo poo out of a new podcast to binge. It's even seasonally appropriate! yeah I grew up in a wood heat only home, too! ours made heavy use of passive solar and was well insulated so we got by with about four cord a year in northern new england. it was a huge pain in the dick. also, you have to do poo poo like wake up in the middle of the night on really cold nights to add wood to the fire, and when i came home from school if I didn't make a fire the house was loving cold. every year - cut wood, split wood, stack wood outside. let dry over the summer. take it all down and in to the woodroom. lots of work. at least our woodroom was attached to the house and held four cord, so although it was unheated you didn't have to go outside all the time.
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Sep 22, 2022 13:13
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Fish of hemp posted:Remind me again why did it suck? "Kathleen Lowrey argued that Guns, Germs, and Steel "lets the West off the hook" and "poisonously whispers: mope about colonialism, slavery, capitalism, racism, and predatory neo-imperialism all you want, but these were/are nobody's fault. This is a wicked cop-out. [...] It basically says [non-Western cultures/societies] are sorta pathetic, but that bless their hearts, they couldn't/can't help it" It's very important that we hold people who have been dead for 500 years accountable for some reason. More legitimate criticisms hold that it's overly broad in its conclusions and ignores contradictory evidence, but I don't think that accounts for the bitterness that some hold in regard to this book. zoux fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 14:11
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Fish of hemp posted:Remind me again why did it suck? Because people aren't birds. Diamond was an ornithologist and looks at people as products of their environment exclusively, with no cultural differences that could explain why societies differed. His big thesis is that Eurasia goes east-west while the Americas and Africa go north-south, therefore Eurasian societies had more room to develop more robust systems while staying at the same latitude. This also gave them more access to domestic animals which gave them greater production and disease resistance. Thus, colonialism, where Europeans become conquerors by deterministic chance and others just - get conquered. And he'll ignore anything that doesn't support this grand monocausal theory. He picks a few cases that support his theory and refuses to look at any that don't.
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Sep 22, 2022 15:13
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Cessna posted:Because people aren't birds. Then explain why we move on two legs unlike apes??
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Sep 22, 2022 15:17
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Cessna posted:Because people aren't birds. Slow down there Plato, and allow me to present a counterargument
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Sep 22, 2022 15:21
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zoux posted:Slow down there Plato, and allow me to present a counterargument Back to your barrel, Diogenes.
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Sep 22, 2022 15:29
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Cessna posted:Because people aren't birds. It's also a classic example of someone trying to weave like a dozen academic disciplines together into a Grand Unified Theory of Everything and pissing off the actual experts in every single one of those fields. A mile wide, an inch deep, and draws grand conclusions that are going to be controversial even if they're well supported because of how shitheads will read them. Anecdotally once upon a time I had a memorably insufferable student. A sophomore who walked around in 2010 loudly telling everyone who would listen that he was a Libertarian, but if you talked to him for 30 seconds it became pretty clear that's because post-Bush 2.0 describing yourself as a NeoCon on a university campus was a good way to get ostracized for four years. He was in an intro World History course that I was teaching and oh my loving god he loved that book and held it up as proof that Western society was just better and won out because of it. We're talking day one we're doing the standard bullshit talk around the room while I go over the syllabus poo poo and he """asks a question""" in the form of "Why isn't this class called Western Civ any more, because. . . . " and then going off on a mini-rant that I had to cut short after 30 seconds by saying if he had problems with the course he should consider dropping it and go talk to either the head of the department or a dean about his concerns with the program's organization. So that's the dipshit I think of when I, personally, think of that book.
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Sep 22, 2022 16:30
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Cessna posted:Because people aren't birds. Oh my god.
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Sep 22, 2022 16:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's also a classic example of someone trying to weave like a dozen academic disciplines together into a Grand Unified Theory of Everything and pissing off the actual experts in every single one of those fields. A mile wide, an inch deep, and draws grand conclusions that are going to be controversial even if they're well supported because of how shitheads will read them. Are there any legitimate efforts to unify-all-the-things? Intuitively it seems like if we have all these disciplines producing specialized knowledge for hundreds of years then someone should be able to come along and put it all together and see what it all means. Do you think something like that could ever happen successfully?
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Sep 22, 2022 16:56
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So why were Europeans the premiere world colonists and imperialists and not the Ottomans or Chinese or indeed the native American civilizations
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Sep 22, 2022 16:58
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zoux posted:So why were Europeans the premiere world colonists and imperialists and not the Ottomans or Chinese or indeed the native American civilizations See, Europe goes east-west, and
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Sep 22, 2022 16:59
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Ultimately I'm not convinced it's even a question that needs answering. Yes, Western imperial dominance is a significant thing currently, but the current situation is an eyeblink in the tens of thousands of years of human history. All of human history is not building up to this moment, you can't decide Who Has Won History based on an arbitrary time point. Human history is full of random bullshit happening. Who is ahead in a period of only 2-300 years is not robust to that.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:09
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zoux posted:So why were Europeans the premiere world colonists and imperialists and not the Ottomans or Chinese or indeed the native American civilizations Europe In A Wider World makes the case that the key factor is Europeans wanting better trade routes to access the wealth of India and China. Then the discovery of the Americas and the mass death of indigenous people gave them access to a lot more natural resources. Diamond argues that this is due to animal agriculture giving Europeans a wide variety of zoonotic diseases, which has some basis in fact, but it wasn't a historically predetermined thing. The Incans had domesticated rodents, ungulates, and birds, but as far as I know they didn't have any diseases that spread to Europe.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:13
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Guns, Germs and Gravy
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Sep 22, 2022 17:14
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VostokProgram posted:Are there any legitimate efforts to unify-all-the-things? Intuitively it seems like if we have all these disciplines producing specialized knowledge for hundreds of years then someone should be able to come along and put it all together and see what it all means. Do you think something like that could ever happen successfully? Ashoka, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, Mao Zedong, among others have all given it a try, but practice is more difficult than theory.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:25
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zoux posted:So why were Europeans the premiere world colonists and imperialists and not the Ottomans or Chinese or indeed the native American civilizations If we were to follow Eric Wolf's Europe and the People Without History (1982), the key factors would be: 1) The rise of the Italian port-cities as traders, as a consequence of the movement of the capital of the Islamic caliphate from Damascus to Baghdad and the withdrawal of the Byzantine Empire from maritime trade. 2) A "crisis of feudalism" around A.D. 1300 which European elites responded to by increasing the scale and intensity of war. There's a useful summary here which touches on a lot of the points people have been discussing: https://www.livinganthropologically.com/eric-wolf-europe-people-without-history/ Note that this piece points out that it didn't have to be Europe, as a bunch of the relevant technological factors were available across Eurasia. That it was Europe was down to a non-deterministic historical process, rather than a deterministic geographic one.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:40
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Chamale posted:The Incans had domesticated rodents, ungulates, and birds, but as far as I know they didn't have any diseases that spread to Europe. Possibly syphilis.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:44
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Rascar Capac posted:If we were to follow Eric Wolf's Europe and the People Without History (1982), the key factors would be: Thanks, that's a good read. I think this is where I get confused over the GGS discourse: "Patrick Manning’s summary is apt: “Diamond’s argument, while it has been contested by other scholars, is an elegant simplification of a major issue in world history and an effective illustration of long-term trends in history. Yet when he attempts to use the same reasoning to explain the comparatively short-term changes of imperialism and racism in recent centuries, his results are far less satisfactory”. It's been a long, long time since I read it, but my recollection is that Diamond was trying to do the former, I don't recall what he said regarding the latter. And this is just my suspicion, but some of the stuff in there certainly doesn't belie my supposition that a lot of the bitterest animus towards the book and Diamond in general is more about who is selling books and who isn't. The second half of that article is entirely about why its bullshit Eric Wolf isn't a household name while Jared Diamond is. And maybe that's the case, I'm sure academic historians in every discipline get miffed about begging for grants while some guy writes a 30k view pop history best seller about their field and makes a million dollars and gets to go on TV. It is also kind of funny that the author has to correct the very first claim made to undercut Diamond's overgenerality. quote:Agriculture may not be necessary for sedentary existence–the peoples on the Pacific Coast of North America had settled life through fishing. Agriculture may not have even been necessary for the rise of some of the first states. As textbook authors Robert Lavenda and Emily Schultz explore through their account of state formation in the Andes, “if the first complex societies on the Peruvian coast were based on a steady supply of food from the sea, rather than agriculture, the notion that village agriculture must precede the rise of social complexity is dealt a blow” (Anthropology: What Does it Mean to be Human?q 2015:224). Nevertheless, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to run an empire without intensive agriculture. There may also be geographical features which encouraged city and state formation. [Update April 2013: Some of the latest findings indicate Maize was key in early Andean civilisation, and so it would seem almost all urban-state forms have relied on agriculture.] And maybe part of this is just that I don't understand what is meant by biogeography quote:The fact that Eurasia spawned the world’s most formidable societies does not pose a truly vexing question. Eurasia accounted for some eighty percent of humankind over the past 3,000 years, and probably well before that. Even if formidability were randomly distributed, one would expect to find it more often in Eurasian societies than elsewhere. Indeed because greater population ordinarily means greater interaction, more intense intersocietal competition, and the faster and more thorough acquisition of a broader array of disease immunities, the probability would be even higher than eighty percent that Eurasia should at any given moment have produced history’s most formidable societies. The deck was stacked even without Diamond’s biogeographical factors. So Diamond has proposed some excellent new answers to a less-than-perplexing question. My understanding is that all of the stuff about population and interconnectedness are the part and parcel to the biogeographical factors cited by Diamond in GGS. So, what am I missing? zoux fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 18:54
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Phanatic posted:Possibly syphilis. I thought it was nicknamed Montezuma's Revenge for that very reason.
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Sep 22, 2022 19:50
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zoux posted:And maybe part of this is just that I don't understand what is meant by biogeography Biogeography ties together physical space and evolution, and is a principal thread through ecology and epidemiology. Its power comes from contextualizing Darwin's theories and specifically island biogeography (now termed insular biogeography I guess) underpins large swaths of epidemiology, evolutionary genetics, as well as the methods used to observe genetic isolation. When ecologists talk about the importance of biodiversity, or ecological collapse, biogeography is key to those explanations. It has become the default lens through which a large subset of biologists--probably most biologists--view the world. The distributions of populations across a geography affect pools of genes, but that geography also affects gene flow. The public perception of evolution is its response to stimuli, but biogeography adds accounting for the seemingly arbitrary parts of evolution as well. Picture a chain of islands. A species of birds with a certain type of beak starts at the northeast corner of this chain--the pure 'survival of the fittest' mechanistic description of evolution is that those birds with beaks better suited towards eating the available seeds on an island will thrive and others will suffer, and genes that drive this will become more common in that population. Those mutations that push the edge of that envelope towards greater specialization will survive and thrive as well and through these mechanisms the animal adapts to its environment across eons. But why then might we see two species of bird? Why would they have different specializations--shouldn't they be guided towards a single optimal solution? Why wouldn't they interbreed? The island biogeography answer is that, for some reason, some subset of the initial birds may be transmitted to a second island. A tropical storm perhaps buffets them to an island previously uninhabited. This subset of birds may face a different set of seeds or competitors, but it doesn't need to for isolation to occur. For hundreds of generations, the birds there follow a similar optimization scheme as the first island of birds. If the optimization solution finds a different beak for a different type of seed, you might end up with physically different looking birds on the second island. When another storm later reintroduces our prodigal geneline back to the first island, there's probably some sort of clash. Maybe the species fight over the same resources, but maybe each has become so specialized that they can successfully coexist. They may even be phenotypically forced further apart because the 'inbetween' physical form competes with both pools and is disadvantageous. This explains difference and it explains the benefis of certain evolutionary strategies. You don't need obvious phenotypical changes for biogeography to be important though. Imagine a forest full of frogs who travel all willy-nilly and interbreed in great spawnings each time the Spring brings rains. Now a highway is built through the center of that forest, nearly untraversable by a frog. That highway uses <0.01% of the forest spaces, but may have separated the two genelines as effectively as a mile-wide river. This is now two forests (or islands). The proportions of certain portions of the genome and the mutations within can be used to measure how many genes is moving between these two newly formed regions. Add another road, and a subdivision, and a park, and now maybe you've reduced the breeding populations to isolated families dangerously interbreeding. Or maybe when frogplague comes rolling through, intermediated by an animal that can transverse these roads and parks, the 1 out of 50,000 frogs with genes are only in some of the regions, and that gene that would quickly become dominant for survival in an untouched forest is trapped in these small islands. All the surviving frogs are now trapped in golf course where happenstance had isolated that gene, so all the rest of the frogs die off without opening a niche for the survivor-gene equipped frogs due to access. Here we've explained some plausible reasons for a bunch of frogs to suddenly die off after humans move into an area, even if humans are only using small corridors of that land. Biogeography fills this beautiful slot of 'measurable' and 'explainable' that makes it a darling. And there is something similar about human culture and the prinicpal mechanism of evolution: the gene. Charles Dawkins wrote some books on this. The similarities of the two systems makes equating the two systms philosophically very seductive, but they are different. Memes may have similarities to genes, but the systems of their diffusion and transmission are uniquely different. I think the core accusation against Jared Diamond (other than the ones against his rhetoric), are equivocations in this space. Biogeography has been thoroughly explored and demonstrated across genescapes and associated landscapes. It is a useful model. But just because it was demonstrated in one system doesn't mean it holds true in the other, and Jared Diamond's ideas are untested conjecture, and probably untestable but may be spoken to and referred to as if they carry all the demonstrated weight of biogeography.
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Sep 22, 2022 19:56
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pentyne posted:I thought it was nicknamed Montezuma's Revenge for that very reason. That's diarrhea
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Sep 22, 2022 20:13
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No, it's a ride at Knott's Berry Farm
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Sep 22, 2022 20:26
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zoux posted:Thanks, that's a good read. I think this is where I get confused over the GGS discourse: "Patrick Manning’s summary is apt: “Diamond’s argument, while it has been contested by other scholars, is an elegant simplification of a major issue in world history and an effective illustration of long-term trends in history. Yet when he attempts to use the same reasoning to explain the comparatively short-term changes of imperialism and racism in recent centuries, his results are far less satisfactory”. No, he uses both long and short term examples to prove his theory. In the start of the book he cites the historical example of the Maori and the Moriori in the early 19th century. In brief, he tells of how the Maori lived in the area where they had developed agriculture while the Moriori moved to nearby islands and "reverted" (his word) to being hunter-gatherers. When the groups re-contacted each other the Maori wiped out the Moriori. Thus, says, Diamond, we have proof that geography and environment determines destiny. There’s your short-term example right there. But - it doesn't? This is a single cherry-picked example with little or no context. Isn't it relevant that the Maori made the decision to invade the Moriori due to a very specific set of historic circumstances? As it is, the Maori invaders had been kicked out of their own lands by the "Musket Wars" wherein they themselves lost to Europeans. This gave them not only a reason to attack the Moriori that had previously not existed, but also gave the Maori European military technologies. If they hadn’t been displaced and gotten access to firearms, there wouldn’t have been conflict between Maori and Moriori, and the Maori wouldn’t have had firearms to shoot people with. Diamond also criticizes the Moriori for having communal decision making that emphasizes peace - this led to them being less organized and militarized, thus easy prey for the Maori. That is, the Moriori form of government is weak, while centralized governments are stronger, more efficient and predatory. But - wait, I thought geography and environment alone determined outcomes? If it does, then what does it matter if the Moriori had a different form of government? On one hand he’s denying their agency and refusing to look at such things, but on the other if they lose, well, it’s because they had less competitive institutions, ideologies, etc. If there are other factors beyond geography and environment – like those ideologies, institutions, etc - then why ignore them when you're looking at other examples? I.e., if you're looking at how Europe colonized the Americas and saying "their environment gave them overwhelming advantages and determined the outcome" - well, maybe you should step back and say "why did they want to colonize at all?” For money? As a religious crusade? What was pushing Europe to look elsewhere? Was colonization an inevitability? If so, why (or why not)? Diamond just ignores these questions. As it is, Maori vs. Moriori is a poor test-case for “agriculture vs hunter-gatherer,” to say the least, but Diamond uses it as proof-positive that geographic environment is the determining factor at the small – and, thus, large – scale. But by ignoring everything that doesn’t support his theories – the fact that there are other forces at work, from external pressures to internal systems – his ideas become so simplistic and specific that they’re a reduction to absurdity. It’s Underpants Gnome logic: 1. “Geography determines outcomes.” 2. … 3. “Thus, human history.” Okay, but what’s step 2? zoux posted:And this is just my suspicion, but some of the stuff in there certainly doesn't belie my supposition that a lot of the bitterest animus towards the book and Diamond in general is more about who is selling books and who isn't. "You're just jealous of his success!" Sorry, no. He came up with a simplistic theory that uses Underpants Gnome logic and doesn't really have any applicability in any other area of human history, but presents it as if he's Figured Out How The World Works.
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Sep 22, 2022 20:33
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My experience with GGS was that during the chapters on stuff I don't really know anything about (diseases) I thought his arguments were fairly compelling, but when he talked about stuff I knew anything about (technology, esp in Asia) I was like "what the gently caress is he talking about" and to me that's always a sign that I've read a book that is very wrong but sounds convincing. The thing that really stops grand unified books from being particularly good is that usually its only worthwhile if the writer has decades of experience as a historian, and then on top of that they need to have gotten to a very late point in their career with the ambition, energy, and inclination to tackle such a project (most historians who still have the ambition and energy are, by that point, just gonna continue to evolve into slightly different fields rather than even care about making a grand theory). There are so many attempts to make grand unified theories of history and so many of them are so loving bad. zoux posted:So why were Europeans the premiere world colonists and imperialists and not the Ottomans or Chinese or indeed the native American civilizations Tulip posted:
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Sep 22, 2022 20:40
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But isn't that theory still better than saying that Europe dominated the world because white men are super intelligent and/or super evil?
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Sep 22, 2022 20:46
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Fish of hemp posted:But isn't that theory still better than saying that Europe dominated the world because white men are super intelligent and/or super evil? The first time I got somebody really hating on GGS it was because he was mad that Diamond wasn't giving enough credit to capitalism. Y'know, that 1500s Spanish capitalism.
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Sep 22, 2022 20:47
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I never read the book, I think I saw the documentary, I think its maybe a case where there's a nuanced middle ground where he maybe brings up some interesting points albeit points that are very broad and that maybe regardless of where he's speaking outside of his expertese and mistakes there is still something to talk about and discuss. CGP Grey has put out some videos based off of his reading/discussion/interpretation of GGS and they make for some quality entertainment: Americapox, the Missing Plague Why Zebra are Terrible Horses Grey and the Numberphile Guy Talk about GGS on their podcast And some of the ideas expressed in GGS I see around in various forms in other places, like on Kurzgesagt whenever they talk about human civilization or Civilization Levels such as the way excess surplus energy is a requirement for developed technologically advanced civilizations to develop.
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Sep 22, 2022 20:47
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Fish of hemp posted:But isn't that theory still better than saying that Europe dominated the world because white men are super intelligent and/or super evil? It's better than that, to be sure, but that doesn't make Diamond's theory correct, or even good. If anything, Diamond's theory lets colonialism off the hook because it was inevitable.
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Sep 22, 2022 20:50
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Am I the only one who thinks that the American and British navies have had way more varied and interesting chip names than the French and Spanish?
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Sep 22, 2022 20:57
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Baron Porkface posted:Am I the only one who thinks that the American and British navies have had way more varied and interesting chip names than the French and Spanish? RN ship names rule
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Sep 22, 2022 20:59
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For some reason I don't understand a lot of RN ship names are anglicanised versions of French and Spanish ship names
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Sep 22, 2022 21:00
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HSM Ready Salted is a fantastic ship name.
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Sep 22, 2022 21:00
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I can't really say how valid the arguments are, but what I find interesting is that my reading of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" some years age was largely opposite of what has been discussed here. I understood the premise as Eurasia got really lucky with geography and Europeans didn't do anything to deserve their later success and domination. It would be fair for other people to be lucky for a change. I got the sense that geography didn't as such determine that Europe would rule the world, but it more determined that Africa didn't have a chance and Americas didn't have much chance either. That then leaves the question why Europe and not China, and I have seen the idea it was because of the fragmented nature. Thousand years ago China had a clear upper hand. They were much bigger empire, their treasure fleet started earlier and was bigger. But China was an empire with an emperor who decided he didn't care about it, and that was the end of chinese colonial endeavours. Columbus could hop to the neighbouring country if his ruler wasn't supportive. Chamale's post mentions Europe wanting better trade routes. No European country could dominate over the others, so they were forced to outside for resources and expansion. Maybe everything would have been different if Roman Empire hadn't collapsed. Would the 15th century Caesar have been content to toodle around Mediterranian, occasionally butting heads with vikings and mongols. And given chance for the praerian tribes to launch their fleets towards east. zoux posted:"Kathleen Lowrey argued that Guns, Germs, and Steel "lets the West off the hook" and "poisonously whispers: mope about colonialism, slavery, capitalism, racism, and predatory neo-imperialism all you want, but these were/are nobody's fault. This is a wicked cop-out. [...] It basically says [non-Western cultures/societies] are sorta pathetic, but that bless their hearts, they couldn't/can't help it" Europeans are clearly guilty of colonialism and all its ills and owe all manner of apologies and reparations, but should they have been expected to know better? For millenia everyone has been killing and conquering their neighbours, why would it be so wrong to do that to people far away. Except for the unfair advantage you have over people who don't have centuries of experience fighting against you. If the Inkas or Africans had similar technological headstart would they not have colonized equally harshly. I fear colonialism is one of those things you need to try in massive scale before you learn why you shouldn't do it. Magnetic North posted:This made me curious: From Wikipedia: That's not a good example. The chapter compares Haiti and Dominican Republic, two countries sharing an island, and a significant difference in forest cover. The most meaningful difference between the countries was that Dominican Republic had a dictator who considered forest conservation important and severely limited logging. Japan was another example where the shogunate recognized the importance of forests and restricted their use.
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Sep 22, 2022 21:02
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Can't imagine why people were a little resistant to attribute Haiti's issues away from the sphere of the political. 
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Tulip posted:My experience with GGS was that during the chapters on stuff I don't really know anything about (diseases) I thought his arguments were fairly compelling, but when he talked about stuff I knew anything about (technology, esp in Asia) I was like "what the gently caress is he talking about" and to me that's always a sign that I've read a book that is very wrong but sounds convincing. See this is what confuses me because the very first thing you cite in the Great Diversion is saying that social and physical geography was the most plausible explanation for the development of heavy industry in western Europe and I don't understand how that's different from GGS
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Sep 22, 2022 21:02
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Europe managing to maintain a sort of mechanistic 'balance of power' dynamic from the 1500s onwards where no single powerful nation was able to overpower the rest was probably a pretty big factor in how things shook out.
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Sep 22, 2022 21:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:Europe managing to maintain a sort of mechanistic 'balance of power' dynamic from the 1500s onwards where no single powerful nation was able to overpower the rest was probably a pretty big factor in how things shook out. What? This whole period right up to 1990 consists of Spain, France, Germany and Russia all taking turns to with varying degrees of success dominate Europe. It wasn't stable at all. e: I think there's a strong case that Sub-saharan Africa is just extremely unlucky with geography, more interesting is that China and Japan have the option to do Lots Of Imperialism and kinda just choose not to. e2: if anything the intensely unstable situation in Europe and the constant drive to seek any kind of edge over rivals might arguably be a driving factor motivating states to organise imperial endeavours and the supply of people to carry out colonialisation. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 21:16
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I do tend to like some books with really broad premises because you get exposure to a whole lot of stuff, kinda like a buffet of information, but then if you have something with such a wide scope, it's also going to be pretty shallow instead of deep. I read a book called "Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future" which I thought was okay, but I don't really think it had any cohesive answer to everything, it just talked about a bunch of things like how China probably didn't develop steam engines because labor for draining fluid from mines was cheap, or how european attempts at opening broader trade relations with China failed horribly because they didn't bring the right things to show off what they could offer (possibly from all the negotiating with far lesser states in the rest of Asia, Africa, and the New World). There were some fancy graphs that I thought were neat at the time. I guess if nothing else, reading a cool book full of dumb bullshit is an important part of most people's development of literacy to learn how just because something is in a book and competently written for your brain to absorb doesn't mean it's true or good.
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Sep 22, 2022 21:24
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Alchenar posted:What? This whole period right up to 1990 consists of Spain, France, Germany and Russia all taking turns to with varying degrees of success dominate Europe. It wasn't stable at all. "Varying degrees of success" is doing a lot of work here. You had brief periods of ascendancy and having a dominating position; but there was never a period where any of them straight up possessed such a preponderance of economic and military power as to be able to do as they please and overwhelm the rest; before imperial overstretch, systemic underlying economic issues, and geopolitical rivalries would conspire to drag them back down and let someone else attempt to climb out of the crab bucket. To make an analogy between the BoP and a crab bucket: The crab bucket doesn't mean at no point another crab is ever up higher than any other crab; it's that no single crab completely succeeds in exiting the bucket. And to be clear going up to "1990" is out of scope for most of the relevant balance of power international politics college classes I had taken; the main era looked at in those classes is 1500 to 1945 or two main periods of 1500 to the Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe and then another period of Congress of Vienna to 1945. Modern geopolitics of the bipolar world was looked at with a completely different lens. e to add, the point I'm getting it feeds your point here: Alchenar posted:e2: if anything the intensely unstable situation in Europe and the constant drive to seek any kind of edge over rivals might arguably be a driving factor motivating states to organise imperial endeavours and the supply of people to carry out colonialisation. The "balance of power" kept Europe unstable as you put it basically is what I am saying. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 21:26
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zoux posted:See this is what confuses me because the very first thing you cite in the Great Diversion is saying that social and physical geography was the most plausible explanation for the development of heavy industry in western Europe and I don't understand how that's different from GGS GGS does not argue that geographic differences between Europe and China were meaningful. It argues that they had in fact the same set of geographic advantages and were functionally part of the same geographic unit. In GGS the differences between Europe and China were attributed to cultural differences over who was allowed to be an exceptional inventor and how that knowledge was passed down and distributed. It is not an original claim in GGS, though I'd argue that it is exceptionally poorly presented since it seems that Diamond did not actually familiarize himself with literature on that subject. Arguments along those lines that were made by people more familiar with both European and Chinese intellectual history were considered in The Great Divergence, and in that work Pomeranz rather convincingly dismantles them, notably showing that not only did China have a robust intellectual tradition (which, duh) but also that its mechanisms for spreading new inventions were no less successful (more often more so) than European ones.
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Sep 22, 2022 21:47
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Baron Porkface posted:Am I the only one who thinks that the American and British navies have had way more varied and interesting chip names than the French and Spanish? I presume you're an anglophone so you would naturally find words that you understand in your native language more interesting. The French at present name their ships after emotional states, forces of nature, famous French people and naval figures, mythological figures, gemstones, months of the republicans calendar, historical provinces of France, birds, and battles. edit the french have a ship named "pourquoi pas?" for fucks sake, culture rear end ship name KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 21:47
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