This book by Jared Diamond published in 1997 won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. I don’t often open a review by arguing with the author about the title, but I prefer the one that had the subtitle, “A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years.” It is an excellent book that deserved awards. It is easy to read, although I caught myself skimming in some sections where the author was describing, as an example, lengthy lists of food-producing plants. This part will focus on the role of guns, germs, and steel in the conquest of many native peoples.
The Prologue is titled “Yali’s Question, The regionally differing courses of history.” The author explains that New Guineans had tens of thousands of years of history and were still using stone tools when the Europeans showed up with all manner of manufactured goods, including steel axes. New Guineans called all those goods “cargo.” Yali was a New Guinean politician who inquired, “Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?” The Europeans used their superior technology to impose a centralized government and dominate the New Guineans, who they considered to be primitive. Yali’s question is mentioned often in the author’s quest to understand how Europeans and Asians were able to dominate original occupants of many lands, such as Native Americans, despite having no genetic superiority.
Chapter 2, “Natural Experiment of History,” leads with a chilling description of the Maori invading the Chatman Islands 500 miles East of New Zealand. The Moriori who lived there had originated from the same Polynesian origins, but the Maori developed into highly organized warriors while the Moriori had lived peacefully. The Maori told the Moriori they were their slaves, and those who resisted were killed and consumed. The others were kept and killed like sheep. One Maori explained what happened was “…in accordance with our custom.”
Chapter 3 is titled, “Collision at Cajamarca,” and describes an equally brutal event, only involving larger numbers of people. The Spanish conquistador Fancisco Pizarro had a remarkably easy time of defeating the Incas and capturing their emperor. Pizarro was leading 168 Spanish soldiers, “…in unfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local inhabitants…, and far beyond the reach of the reach of timely reinforcements.” Atahuallpa was in his empire of millions of subjects, surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers, and fresh from recent victories over other Indians. Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within minutes and held him captive for eight months while the Incas delivered a ransom of gold that would have filled a room measuring 8 feet in height, 22 feet long, and 17 feet wide. Pizarro then reneged on his promise to free Atahuallpa, and executed him.
The capture of Atahuallpa was triggered when a Friar was sent to negotiate with Atahuallpa, demanded that Atahuallpa subject himself to Jesus and the King of Spain, and offered him a bible. Atahuallpa knocked the book to the ground, and the Friar yelled for an attack. The Spaniards began firing their guns, blowing their trumpets, and charged with cavalry and infantry to slaughter Indians at will. The slaughter finally ended with the coming of night, and 7,000 Indians had been killed without the loss of a single Spaniard. The guns (called harquebuses) had killed a few Indians and frightened the rest. The Incas had been weakened by an earlier smallpox epidemic that spread after being introduced by some Spanish settlers and caused a civil war in which one Inca emperor and his heir died from the disease. Finally, the Incas had no defense against the Spaniard’s steel swords. Thus we come to the basis of the title, “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” However, that doesn’t account for the charge by 62 cavalrymen on their horses that swept away any Indians who stood in their way. The events of Cajamarca would be recreated by invaders conquering the indigenous people in numerous other parts of the globe. Disease often had a large role. Smallpox introduced to North American by Spaniards reduced the Native American population from 20 million to one million within a century or two following Columbus’s arrival.
The second part of this review will review the parts of the book that describe the domestication of plants and animals and the impact on human history.