Analysis Of Guns, Germs, And Steel By Jered Diamond

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jered Diamond attempts to revolutionize the way we think about Europe’s rise to superiority. He tries to do this by proposing that Europe’s rise was the direct result of geography. Diamond believes geography gave the Europeans access to the best crops, and granted Europeans access to thirteen of the fourteen large, domesticized mammals. According to Diamond, these two fortunate circumstances allowed Europeans to develop societies that gave people the option to have a specialized, nonfood-based occupation. As a result, Europeans societies became highly conducive to technological advances, allowing them to develop superior weaponry. In addition, Diamond says that because of these domesticated animals, which he claims …show more content…
Diamond argues that geographical luck put Europe on a path to creating the world’s most dominant military technology. However, even a rudimentary knowledge of European and South American history can show that this is not true and that instead it was competition and a survival of the fittest mentality then caused this to be. In Europe, nations were constantly at war and because of this, European countries had to be incessantly improving their military capabilities, or else they would be overridden by the technological developments of another country that was more invested in its own military. As a result, European nations would go on to develop the most impressive, and deadly weapons in the world. On the other hand, the empires of South and Central America did not have to worry about being annihilated by other nations. This is because they were surrounded by small, weak tribes that had no intention of doing battle with their neighborhood empire. As a result, while the military was still important, it was far less essential than it was in Europe, and far less went into developing superior weaponry because they weren’t constantly being threatened by potential