Reddit mentions of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Studies in Environment and History)

I really want to CYV on this. Honestly, I feel like the reddit historical community (at least /r/badhistory and /r/AskHistorians) has failed to explain itself on this subject well. Most criticisms of GGS we see are caught up in (justified) nitpicking, and perhaps a little bit of elitism, perhaps caused by the fact that Alfred Crosby wrote a book that did everything GGS did but better and 10 years earlier. Crosby's book, of course, received nothing close to the acclaim GGS did despite coming out earlier and avoiding all the problems GGS has, probably because in comparison to Diamond, Ecological Imperialism reads like particularly bad Twilight fan fiction.

But, other than the well documented problems with Diamond's scholarships and the details of GGS(read some reddit takedowns here and here ), why do historians get so upset about Diamond?

The problem comes from Diamond's misinterpretation of Yali's question (or at least, what the historical community is convinced is the important question). Diamond hears Yali ask why Westerners have so much stuff, and Papua New Guineans have so little, and responds by writing a book that explains how the Westerners got so much stuff. Diamond's central thesis is that Europe was able to dominate the world because their environment gave them the resources to do so.

The question of how is an important and interesting question to answer, and Diamond does an alright job of it (although, it should be stressed if only to better understand historians' hostility towards Diamond, that Crosby did the same thing better 10 years earlier) even if I think he still leaves out a great deal of important stuff. But Diamond doesn't purport to answer the HOW question, he purports to answer the WHY question, and in doing so screws up majorly.

Essentially, by arguing that Europeans dominated the rest of the world because of their superior resources, he implies that this domination was somehow inevitable and natural. That all societies seek to maximize their own advantage at all times, even at the expense of others. That if you give a man Steel, a Gun and some Biological Weapons, he'll immediately set out to use them on others. This is not the case. We can point to many different societies that don't ruthlessly exploit others for their own benefit, even people within their own society. More important to historians then HOW Europeans dominated the world is WHY they chose too. The Capitalist and Mercantilist systems that gave rise to European imperialism are unique in history, but Diamond paints it all as just emerging from the inevitable march of history, that every society placed in the same environment would evolve the same way. In doing so, he removes human agency from the equation. Yet we can easily prove that vast differences in culture can emerge from places that have nothing to do with the areas Diamond identifies as being the key ones in human development. Jesus, Aristotle, and Locke all played major roles in shaping western thought. It's difficult to connect any of their ideas to the presence of livestock in the old world.

One unintended consequence of Diamond approaching Yali's question this way, especially ironic given the intention of his book, is that the Western view of the world is reinforced. The Western concepts of capitalism and imperialism are portrayed as something universal, inherent to humanity and their development as inevitable. The real question for historians, the WHY, is to examine these concepts, how they worked and why they appeared. Diamond, and his audience outside the historical community, ignore Yali's real question, content in the knowledge that they have answered it.

So that's why GGS is generally hated among the historical community, it misses the point so entirely while being completely assured that it has found the ultimate answer to one of histories deepest questions. And it's popularity has led large portions of the world (including my high school history teacher) to cease looking for an answer to one of the world's most important questions.

I do think GGS has a role as a book. It's well written and it examines history from a perspective that most people never look at it from, excellent for introducing people to "Big History." But if it's the only book you've read on the subject, you're missing out on a lot.

Link to discussions in r/askhistorians.

A book on the same subject that predated Diamond's and seems to be more highly regarded by historians is Crosby's Ecological Imperialsm

Alfred Crosby's Ecological Imperialism is a fantastic book on this topic (Crosby is, in reality, the father of the field of environmental history).

Link to Amazon