Niall Ferguson vs. Jared Diamond - Who was right about history?

Who is right about western dominance in the last ~500 years?

Jared Diamond: Climate and other environmental factors helped europe while africa was doomed to be poor and primitive. Basically: determinism.

Niall Ferguson: Western values like individualism, property rights have uniquely developed in christian europe.
Its less deterministic but christianity/protestantism played a role that allowed these values to be established.

Who is right?
Domesticating Zebras is harder than domesticating horses. But there are plenty of other animals that could be used, even in africa.

Or are both wrong and /pol/ is right: african mean IQ of

/pol/ is always right.

None.

Jared Diamond is meme Environmental Determinism which has been proven wrong numerous times already. His shit is literally 19th Century tier.

Niall Ferguson is a neocon trash from- of all fucking places, the British Isles- who thinks Western History = Anglo, and the whole of fucking Europe underwent the same "development."

/thread

Another view to this point.

Both are meme historians.

they are both bad but diamond is probably slightly more tolerable than ferguson

you should particularly ignore ferguson whenever he discusses economics

>which has been proven wrong numerous times already
By whom exactly, people keep saying that so I'd like to know

Jared's central point is valid, however his attempt to prove it was awful.

Ferguson is memeing. Things like individualism arise in every culture where a multitude of middle classes and lower-middle classes arise who are able to escape social conventions traditionally imposed by the martial/ruling class onto the working class.

By the real world.

The meme goes that men living in jungle conditions in the tropics won't be inclined to "do civilization" since- as the 19th century put it- "indolent, idyllic, and merely plucking fruits from trees and hunting abundant game."

This explains some social groups alright, this doesnt explain shit like South Asia/Southeast Asians who lived in such abundant conditions and yet saw the need to fucking engage in extensive agriculture and civilization building processes like social organization, state formation, etc.

I don't think this also applies to all the fucking africans given that limited agriculture and cattle raising does not speak of an easy fucking life.

In the end there's more factors to the rise of civilizations than mere environment. Sure it is a big factor, but so is population growth, the influence of other societies neighboring junglenigs, climate conditions, migration, kinds of flora and fauna, the fucking culture of the people of a given society, the list bloody well goes on.

Besides, the funniest thing is, if you go devil's advocate, you can use Environmental Determinism's arguments against itself. Ok "lol Tropical people are lazy" because "DA GOOD LIFE." Whoever said that it was easy to live in the tropics probably never did. Going to Southeast Asia, those assholes there get wrecked by typhoons, have to deal with funny diseases. Overfishing in an area will drive away fish and fruit trees have shitty shelf lives. It must have occured to some tropical assholes to get shit organized or FUCKING DIE in a green hell.

While that seems to be a good argument FOR E. Determinism, it still isn't. Since people in those conditions either organized or remained into tribal hunter gatherer societies.

I havent read the book but i know enough about it to say you havent either. Diamonds argument isnt that Africans were too lazy to build societies.

Uh you were asking about environmental determinism in general? I am not user from the two posts up

I wasn't asking anything, that wasn't my post.

Modern interpretations of environmental determinism are nothing like that user said. And diamond certainly didn't try and make that argument in the book.

Everyone always likes to say "academics hate this book its trash etc etc." but they can never say why. When you go out of your way to actually look at academic reviews it seems like they're mostly pretty positive about the book but criticize it for getting some historical facts wrong and maybe trying to be a bit too far reaching.

Like i said, I've never read the book but with some of the shit people say about it I don't think anyone on this board has.

Has individualism shown up in China then?

Both

>In the end there's more factors to the rise of civilizations than mere environment.
>Sure it is a big factor, but so is population growth, the influence of other societies neighboring junglenigs, climate conditions, migration, kinds of flora and fauna, the fucking culture of the people of a given society,

This is the power of Veeky Forums.

are you seriously asking this?

>it's a buttblasted Anglophobe post

Really tired of this meme.

All three are somewhat correct. Ferguson is deeply patriotic and Diamond attempts to fuse history with his own scientific specialisation, which drives each to their own hyperbolic conclusions. Neither wants to touch the race aspect that /pol/ seizes on, and in its own contrarian spirit, emphasises above all else.

I mean I was
But now I look foolish

fpbp

Ferguson only has one book worth reading.

Since the 90s China has become more individualistic. Another reason might be that people living in poverty are more dependent on their community.

If his other books are dumb, what makes this one different?

I wouldn't blame it only on IQ because IQ cant always be the best indicator as to why a race is doing good or bad.

The mean american IQ is 80=85 which is equal to that of middle easterners which is also 80.
There are some civilisations who don't even reach that level of IQ like Qatar which is 78 but they have a rapidly expanding community despite having a lower mean IQ than African Americans.

Also the mean IQ for white in american was in fact 70 now of course it has become 100 due to the FLIN effect,which I would recommend people to study, tells us that it's not just about IQ.

His expertise is on financial historiography. Look at his academic record:
>1983–1986 Master of Arts, Magdalen College, Oxford
>1985–1989 Doctor of Philosophy, Magdalen College, Oxford
>1987–88 Hanseatic Scholar, Hamburg and Berlin
>1989–90 Research Fellow, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge
>1990–92 Official Fellow and Lecturer, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge
>1992–2000 Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Jesus College, University of Oxford
>2000–02 Professor of Political and Financial History, University of Oxford
>2002–04 John Herzog Professor in Financial History at Stern School of Business, New York University
>2004–present Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School
>2010–11 Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, located within LSE IDEAS, beginning in 2010

His first book, Cash Nexus came out in 2001. Ascent of Money was published in 08.