I question Diamond’s assertion that some regions had more domesticable plants and animals. He asserts IIRC for instance that zebras are too aggressive and ill-tempered to be domesticated. But wouldn’t early wild horses have likely been as temperamental as zebras, and become more docile through domestication? And the Americas actually had a lot of large animals including I think horses, before early humans wiped them out.
I did like his explanation that areas, like Europe and the Mediterranean region, linked by relatively easy sea and river transit, had an advantage over the interior or Eurasia for instance, where the fastest way to get around was horseback. Easier travel led to more sharing of ideas and innovations, which makes sense when you think about the concentration of innovation in Greece, Italy, and the British Isles—areas obviously very accessible by water. And continental Europe as well with its rivers and coasts.
I think Diamond is correct on these points. Biological species vary innately in their aggressiveness and group behavior, and the African savanna is notorious for its very aggressive herbivores. For example, Cape Buffalo are far more aggressive than buffalo in other regions. Zebras do not seem to have the internal group hierarchy that Central Asian horses do. This enables humans to place themselves at the top of a stable hierarchy.
I think that the best evidence is that no one has successfully domesticated zebras, even during modern times, while Central Asian wild horses were successfully domesticated. Their wild ancestors were undoubtedly more difficult to control than current domesticated horses, but that does not mean that they were as aggressive as wild zebras.
Given how extraordinarily useful domesticated zebras might have been, it seems reasonable to suppose that domestication was tried and failed many times during prehistory. After all, modern humans and zebras lived in the same area for hundreds of thousands of years. The locals were smart enough to exploit all useful resources.
Yes, the Americas did have lots of large herbivore mammas, but as you noted, they all went extinct before the invention of agriculture, when they would become most useful.
The within-Eurasia problem is the right test, and the society-type parallel the piece draws actually helps identify what's missing. Both geography and society type are good at explaining structural differences between societies: why one region started with denser populations, more productive agriculture, and more complex political organisation. But both struggle to address questions of timing and sequence, i.e., why one configuration eventually leads to industrialisation while a comparable one doesn't. The question is what kind of variable could actually do so.
The candidate is whether the governing coalition is organised around producing things or extracting from them. Britain in 1760 didn't have a uniquely favourable geography. China, India, and the Middle East shared most of the same endowments. What Britain had, following the political settlement of the previous century, was a dominant coalition whose interests had aligned with expanding productive output. The geography was similar. The coalition structure was not. Even if geography helped produce the coalition, there would still be a question of why then?
The post-1960 record is where this becomes testable rather than illustrative. Of the countries that have made a sustained industrial transition since independence, the patterns look coalitional rather than geographic. Taiwan and South Korea are not better located than the Philippines or Indonesia. Vietnam's trajectory since the 1990s doesn't read as a geography story. In each case, the structure of the governing arrangement — what it was organised to produce — seems to be doing the explanatory work that geography cannot.
Nonetheless, the argument that geography deserves better specification rather than abandonment is probably right. But the version of that claim that might actually survive the within-Eurasia test is more specific: does geography shape the probability that a productive coalition forms in the first place? If it does, geography recovers explanatory power, not as a direct cause of industrialisation, but as a prior condition that makes certain coalitional outcomes more or less likely. The within-Eurasia problem would then be about why northwest Europe produced that coalition when it did. That's a narrower claim than existing geographic theories are making. It might also be a more defensible one.
Your explanation does not explain why Britain had "a dominant coalition whose interests had aligned with expanding productive output." This is the problem with most theories of material progress: What caused the cause?
If Britain had not evolved into a Commercial society long before 1760, then that political coalition would have been impossible.
And I disagree that British geography is the same as China, India, and the Middle East. I have not yet written an article on British geography, but I have about Northwest Europe. Britain had all those advantage plus it was an island which was sizable defensive barrier which made standing royal armies much less necessary that in the rest of Northwest Europe:
My way of making sense of this is that we are living in a world of high causal density, where multiple factors operate and interact across different timescales. At the deepest and slowest-moving level sits geography; then human nature, which shapes culture and politics, together yielding a foundational layer of societal type. Faster-moving forces, institutions (social and economic) and technologies, then mediate and reshape the impact of both geography (resource endowments, for example) and society itself. [Taking your point that I was too quick to lump various geographies together.]
Above this, specific political and social arrangements and forms of common knowledge can shift quickly, producing more abrupt phase shifts. Viewing all of this through a complex adaptive systems lens is what allows one to hold these layers together, granting each its appropriate weight without collapsing them into a single causal story. Seeking 'a' cause is often a misguided endeavour.
I question Diamond’s assertion that some regions had more domesticable plants and animals. He asserts IIRC for instance that zebras are too aggressive and ill-tempered to be domesticated. But wouldn’t early wild horses have likely been as temperamental as zebras, and become more docile through domestication? And the Americas actually had a lot of large animals including I think horses, before early humans wiped them out.
I did like his explanation that areas, like Europe and the Mediterranean region, linked by relatively easy sea and river transit, had an advantage over the interior or Eurasia for instance, where the fastest way to get around was horseback. Easier travel led to more sharing of ideas and innovations, which makes sense when you think about the concentration of innovation in Greece, Italy, and the British Isles—areas obviously very accessible by water. And continental Europe as well with its rivers and coasts.
Thanks for the comment.
I think Diamond is correct on these points. Biological species vary innately in their aggressiveness and group behavior, and the African savanna is notorious for its very aggressive herbivores. For example, Cape Buffalo are far more aggressive than buffalo in other regions. Zebras do not seem to have the internal group hierarchy that Central Asian horses do. This enables humans to place themselves at the top of a stable hierarchy.
I think that the best evidence is that no one has successfully domesticated zebras, even during modern times, while Central Asian wild horses were successfully domesticated. Their wild ancestors were undoubtedly more difficult to control than current domesticated horses, but that does not mean that they were as aggressive as wild zebras.
Given how extraordinarily useful domesticated zebras might have been, it seems reasonable to suppose that domestication was tried and failed many times during prehistory. After all, modern humans and zebras lived in the same area for hundreds of thousands of years. The locals were smart enough to exploit all useful resources.
Yes, the Americas did have lots of large herbivore mammas, but as you noted, they all went extinct before the invention of agriculture, when they would become most useful.
The within-Eurasia problem is the right test, and the society-type parallel the piece draws actually helps identify what's missing. Both geography and society type are good at explaining structural differences between societies: why one region started with denser populations, more productive agriculture, and more complex political organisation. But both struggle to address questions of timing and sequence, i.e., why one configuration eventually leads to industrialisation while a comparable one doesn't. The question is what kind of variable could actually do so.
The candidate is whether the governing coalition is organised around producing things or extracting from them. Britain in 1760 didn't have a uniquely favourable geography. China, India, and the Middle East shared most of the same endowments. What Britain had, following the political settlement of the previous century, was a dominant coalition whose interests had aligned with expanding productive output. The geography was similar. The coalition structure was not. Even if geography helped produce the coalition, there would still be a question of why then?
The post-1960 record is where this becomes testable rather than illustrative. Of the countries that have made a sustained industrial transition since independence, the patterns look coalitional rather than geographic. Taiwan and South Korea are not better located than the Philippines or Indonesia. Vietnam's trajectory since the 1990s doesn't read as a geography story. In each case, the structure of the governing arrangement — what it was organised to produce — seems to be doing the explanatory work that geography cannot.
Nonetheless, the argument that geography deserves better specification rather than abandonment is probably right. But the version of that claim that might actually survive the within-Eurasia test is more specific: does geography shape the probability that a productive coalition forms in the first place? If it does, geography recovers explanatory power, not as a direct cause of industrialisation, but as a prior condition that makes certain coalitional outcomes more or less likely. The within-Eurasia problem would then be about why northwest Europe produced that coalition when it did. That's a narrower claim than existing geographic theories are making. It might also be a more defensible one.
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the thought that you have obviously put into it.
I think that the concept of Society Type can explain "why one configuration eventually leads to industrialization while a comparable one doesn't."
The key missing concept is Commercial society, which both:
1) Created the first self-sustaining economic growth that benefitted the masses, and
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-commercial-societies
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-geographical-preconditions-of
2) Created the fundamental preconditions for the Industrial Revolution.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/what-actually-triggered-britains
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-the-industrial-revolution-happened
Your explanation does not explain why Britain had "a dominant coalition whose interests had aligned with expanding productive output." This is the problem with most theories of material progress: What caused the cause?
If Britain had not evolved into a Commercial society long before 1760, then that political coalition would have been impossible.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/another-way-at-looking-at-pre-industrial
And I disagree that British geography is the same as China, India, and the Middle East. I have not yet written an article on British geography, but I have about Northwest Europe. Britain had all those advantage plus it was an island which was sizable defensive barrier which made standing royal armies much less necessary that in the rest of Northwest Europe:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-geography-enabled-northern-european
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/rise-of-european-predatory-empires
My way of making sense of this is that we are living in a world of high causal density, where multiple factors operate and interact across different timescales. At the deepest and slowest-moving level sits geography; then human nature, which shapes culture and politics, together yielding a foundational layer of societal type. Faster-moving forces, institutions (social and economic) and technologies, then mediate and reshape the impact of both geography (resource endowments, for example) and society itself. [Taking your point that I was too quick to lump various geographies together.]
Above this, specific political and social arrangements and forms of common knowledge can shift quickly, producing more abrupt phase shifts. Viewing all of this through a complex adaptive systems lens is what allows one to hold these layers together, granting each its appropriate weight without collapsing them into a single causal story. Seeking 'a' cause is often a misguided endeavour.