Hey Veeky Forums
Halfway through this book. Wondering if anyone has any more suggestions for good broad range history non-fiction books. Things that cover a wide range of history, not just specifically a certain event or something. Interested in learning more about the age of exploration, imperialism and colonization.
Before this I read "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari and really enjoyed that.
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If you like that book you could read collapse by the same author.
Veeky Forums hates GGS, so beware of that.
As for recommendations, this might be more specific than you would like, but The Great Divergence by Ken Pomeranz should interest you. It covers why Europe pulled so far ahead of the rest of the world in the 19th Century, so it's very involved in imperialism and colonialism and isn't limited to one region or event. It's not quite as sweeping as GGS, but its still fairly broad.
10k explosion here
GGS a shit
>yfw they don't disagree on anything
Expand they do have divergences
I read them back-to-back, they have different focuses, but never actually contradict each other.
10k spends a lot of time supposing underlying genetic differences, but not a lot of time giving us genes, their distribution, and their effect on people and populations. So it's thesis could be proven, if we find genetic evidence for it.
GGS presents a thesis that can't ever really be proven, but seems self-evident; geography affects the development of human populations. He gets some flak for saying that people from Paupau New Guinea are 'superior', but if you read the passage, it's a direct response to people who have said they are evidently inferior, because they don't have the same stuff we do.
I've recently acquired the Hobsbawm's Ages, that goes from the long 19th (Age of Revolutions 1789-1848, Age of Capital 1848-1875 and Age of Empire 1875-1914) and the Short 20th (Age of Extremes 1914-1991).
I'm still on the first book, about the French revolution and British Industrial revolution. I can't compare to other such works, but I find it amazing.
*to the Short 20th...
Alexander to Actium by Peter Green. very good overview of the Hellenistic period. not that that has anything to do with what you're interested in, but it's worthwhile!
Yeah, I read his comments about Papua New Guineans and wasn't bothered by it. I understood it to mean that if modern society collapsed, people in Papua New Guinea would probably be doing better than the rest of us.
But the problem is, he didn't say that (which is true), he said they were genetically superior, which is blatant racism
great intro to anthropology, with an accessible and convincing narrative, but not the most intellectually rigorous. Diamond is out of his expertise for a lot of the book, and it can show. It receives a lot of criticism from scholars and armchair Veeky Forumstorians but I thought it was a fun read.
Another book on the same topic that is recommended is "Why the West Rules for Now"
I don't get why Veeky Forums hates that book so much.
If you're going to argue that environmental determinism isn't correct at all, then what is? Genetic determinism i.e racism?
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It's not racism if God determines genes ok
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The book has fuckall to do with anthropology bro. Also skin deep and handwaves culture and a lot of other things. The problem with the book is than so many people push it in school, heck I seen it being pushed were I live in historian classes.
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More than Diamond doesn't delve into social agencing, and calls all societies equal.
There are many examples of ethnicities that were hosted under circumstances he fine ripe for the advent of civilization, but that didn't have the adapted social agency to progress.
Don't know but Veeky Forums feels that to leave out that factor is only looking at the half of things.
>I don't get why Veeky Forums hates that book so much.
Well, I can't speak for all of Veeky Forums but I hate it because he supports his premises with almost solely counterfactual history. The /pol/ of this board, and let's face it this is /pol/ with dates, hates it because it treats everyone as equal instead of MUH WHITE SUPREMACY. Academics, in general, hate it because it's full of easily disproved bullshit. Qing China had no desire to change nor the dissidence needed to do it? Bullshit. The entire Qing Dynasty was one rebellion after another and the Qing desperately wanted to change but the conservatives among them disavowed it. Africa has no large domesticable animals? Even excluding meme domesticates like the Eland, Africa has fucking COWS that they domesticated without Eurasian influence as early as 7000 B.C. I don't even mean buffalo. I mean actual fucking cows. The only regions where support for his blanket premises even exist are the Americas and Austronesia/Oceania, and even those have their significant issues. It's so full of bullshit that you can tell it was written by someone who isn't knowledgeable about basic history and refused to do even a TINY bit of research.
tl;dr
Book is pop-history hogwash
Intellectualy honest would be to admit that we don't really know.
It's probably related to so many factors that it breaks down to chance to us. But no he has to push in an agenda HARD and use a shit ton of historical inaccuracies.
The sanga cattle is mixed with Taurus and Indicus, but the original was probably a result of mixing Bos Taurus domesticated be the Anatolians with the wild Bos Mauritanius be the Egyptians, without the anatolian or outsider influence is the first time I hear it and even that is only vagely supported for what I read, tough I'm not an expert in cattle.
>Why The West Rules - For Now
This is a good book, read it folks
Erm...
Cows were introduced to Africa. They didn't domesticate local species, though they did interbreed their cattle with them. They did begin farming local plants and develop iron-working by themselves, though.
Modern breeds are, yes. Modern archeological evidence shows that Taurus and Indicus are recent additions to the Sanga blood lines.
>Cows were introduced to Africa
They were not. Archeological evidence disputes this.
>They didn't domesticate local species, though they did interbreed their cattle with them
This is false. The Sanga breeds spread North into Southern Egypt from modern Uganda/Tanzania, not the other way around.
First time I heard this, and I find it difficult to believe because Bos Mauretanicus is a north African animal. But as I said I'm not an expert in cattle.
I don't have any sources that aren't behind paywalls, but here you go.
link.springer.com
You can even check the (minimal) wiki page for Sanga cattle. They're native to East Africa and spread North.
No more recommended books, folks?
I enjoyed this - attempts to cover similar grounds to GGS.
I'm not shitposting here, but what do you think Diamond's agenda was with this book? It was pretty clear to me that the book was explicitly written to be anti-racist, giving a non-genetic explanation for Eurasian triumph over other peoples. It's ironic that mainstream lefties now decry the book as racist by arguing that it merely justifies colonialism and imperialism.
OP here, thanks for the replies guys, good discussion here.
I will definitely check out "Why the West Rules for Now" after this one.
I also don't get the impression that Diamond is trying to circlejerk about Papua New Guineans like so many critics of the book say.
I will also check out this book too, Alexander the Great has always interested me ever since listening to the Iron Maiden song as a kid. Ancient Greece is also a historical period I'm not too knowledgable about.
This sounds interesting too, will also check it out. So much information to absorb so little time lol. I can't fathom how people can be so historically illiterate when it is so fascinating.
Anybody have any books about the age of exploration/imperialism/colonialism?
his agenda was to earn money.
"Fire in the Minds of Men - Origins of the Revolutionary Faith" by the US Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. Covers European history from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Revolution, and frames revolutionary thought and progressivism as a modern secular religion. Totally blew my mind.
>reality is racist thus it isn't my reality!!!
treating everything equally is denying basic evolutionary facts
Collapse is trash.
Read 'The Collapse of Complex Societies' by Joseph A. Tainter instead. It gives a vastly more nuanced depiction of why societies fell and even uses some of the same case files for examination.