Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Society, by Jared Diamond, translated by Wang Daohuan / Liao Yuejuan, CITIC Publishing House, January 2022 edition, 624 pp., 89.00 yuan
"Depression is everywhere, diseases are raging, wealth is gathering, and sentient beings are in danger." This is a sentence from Oliver Godesmith's "Deserted Village", which the most eminent historian of the twentieth century, Tony Judt, as the inscription of his "Depression Everywhere", permeates a historian's sense of crisis and distress about the reality of the world today. At the height of the global pandemic, many people are afraid to think about "will the world be better" and only worry about "how bad things will get". At such times, historians' big narratives about the fate of human society can arouse readers' thinking and resonance.
Jared Diamond, Gun, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 1997; translated by Wang Daoyou and Liao Yuejuan, CITIC Publishing House, January 2022) The original book was published in 1997 by W.W. Norton Publishing, and the one you see now is the latest Chinese edition; according to my ignorance, this is the eighth Chinese edition. The earliest Chinese translation was launched by Times Publishing Company (Taipei) in October 1998 by Wang Daohuan and Liao Yuejuan, whose names were translated as "Judd Dimon"; later Times Publishing Company launched two more editions in 2015 and 2019, with the same translators. The Shanghai Translation Publishing House published four editions in 2000, 2006, 2014 and 2016, all translated by Xie Yanguang. It is said that the original book has been translated into more than thirty languages around the world, and the Chinese publishing industry has had eight editions in more than 20 years, which shows that this is a popular bestseller. Incidentally, Diamond has published a total of eight books to date, all of which have been translated into Chinese. In November 1998, I attended an international symposium at the University of Macau and bought the chinese translation of the just-launched Times edition in a bookstore; in September 2000, when the Shanghai translation was first published, I also bought it. Plus the current CITIC version, there are three Chinese translations on hand. This latest CITIC edition is based on the translation of the original book of the 20th anniversary edition launched by W.W. Norton in March 2017, with a total of 20 chapters in the main text, adding the author's "To My Chinese Readers" "Preface" in addition to the Main Text than the 2016 Edition of the Shanghai Translation: Why is world history like an onion? and "2017 Edition Afterword: Rich and Poor Countries from the Perspective of Guns, Germs and Steel". In these three articles, the author does not mention what has been added or modified in the main text of the 2017 edition; in addition, the publication date of all works and documents listed in the "Further Reading" after the book is still as of 1996. In terms of helping readers read and perpetuate the discussion of the book since its publication, these three new additions and a pamphlet with an introductory article written by several Chinese scholars are new contributions to the CITIC edition.
From the perspective of translation, there is no original book and the 2016 edition of the Shanghai translation on hand, and there are of course some differences from the translations of the above three successive versions. Even if the translator is the same, the latest CITIC version and the 1998 Times edition of the translation are also different, I feel that the former text is more concise and fluent, it should be said that this latest translation has been carefully revised; of course, in the comparison, it is not difficult to find that the former has been deleted in some places, and it is "no need to say more". What is even more interesting is that in the 1998 Times edition, there was a translator Wang Daohua who also wrote "Introduction: Ask the Vast Earth, Who Is the Lord of Floating and Sinking?" (We have been familiar with it since childhood, "who is in charge of the ups and downs"), the article believes that the author is inferior, "but his argument not only shows the ability to synthesize, but also creates a new vision." (p. 10) "The identification of agriculture as the 'ultimate' cause of world history is not an interesting discovery. Agriculture is the source of civilization, yes. However, civilization has transformed the world, history is accumulating heavy and difficult to return, we look forward and backward, the vast earth, who is the lord to float and sink? What we expect to discover from historical research is insights that are not limited by space and space; what we want to grasp is the nature of human existence. ...... What Dimon actually emphasized was that the driving force behind the development of human history came from the interaction of different individuals and different communities. Only on the Eurasian block can different ethnic groups 'experiment' with different development directions, and different ethnic groups have the opportunity to accumulate collective strength from interaction. This fact reveals the essence of the human mind. (p. 14) This may seem to help authors deal with criticism of "geographical determinism," but more importantly, it will inspire the reader to ponder the question of "who is in charge of the ups and downs"—only when different groups (which can also be understood as one group) can "experiment" with different directions of development that they will have the opportunity to rush forward in the vicissitudes of history.
Let's start with Diamond's personal experience and his academic style. From an early age, he loved learning languages, music, science, bird watching, and more importantly, he felt the influence of geography and history from an early age. During World War II, his father pasted maps of Europe and the Pacific and East Asia on the wall of his bedroom, and every night he used pins to indicate the development of the European and Pacific fronts. In addition, in recalling the past, he experienced from the comparison with his European peers the contingency of happiness and suffering in life—the specific suffering of war did not come to him because "it was entirely due to geographical accident that I was born in Boston, not in London or Munich or Belgrade." ("To My Chinese Readers", VI) These extremely true and simple personal experiences had a profound impact on his future research on human society and history, and it should be noted in particular that in his academic characteristics such as extremely knowledgeable, interdisciplinary vision, and large historical narrative, the sensibility and directness derived from personal experience played an important role in the formation of his core views and the broad influence on readers.
A conversation Diamond had with the local Ari in New Guinea in July 1972 was the cause of the research and writing of Guns, Germs and Steel. At that time, Yali asked him, "Why did the white people make so many goods and then transport them here?" Why haven't we blacks made any name for ourselves? As he wrote the book, Diamond said, "This simple question goes to the heart of Ariel's life experience." ...... Yali's question seemed simple, but it was difficult to answer. ...... After 25 years, I wrote this book precisely to answer Alexander's question. (Opening Remarks, XXV) It is worth noting that the "Yali question" is not only a narrative about the cause of the study, but also a core question that has been on the mind throughout the study; more importantly, in response to The blunt, simple questions that Yali derive from life experience, Diamond's academic response also has a straightforward and unpretentious style derived from the core of life experience. This academic style not only makes the book's presentation vivid and interesting, but also enables the author to frankly and honestly face and answer seemingly simple and crucial academic questions that are often easily blurred and avoided in the larger academic narrative. He acknowledges that there is no consensus on how to answer the "Aalis question" (opening remarks, XXXVII); with regard to the final findings of the book, he also acknowledges that there are still many issues that have not yet been resolved, and that they can only provide some incomplete answers and strategies for future research, rather than a complete theory. (p. 477) But at the same time he does not shy away from making the simplest summaries of his findings: "Media reporters like to ask authors to explain a thick book in one sentence. This book can explain: 'The history of the various peoples has followed different trajectories, and this is due to environmental, not biological differences. (Ibid., XXXVIII) Here, of course, it should be noted that the author was careful in his formulation: environmental differences have only caused different trajectories in the historical development of ethnic groups, and in the simplest answers, a line must be taken into account to draw a line with racism and cultural superiority and inferiority.
In "To My Chinese Readers", the author introduces his academic experience and 8 published works, which are very detailed and vivid. His first trip to the island of New Guinea in 1964 was decisive for his life. The birds are the most fascinating and beautiful in the world, with thousands of tribes and thousands of different languages, and it's one of the last places in the world to change its original way of life. After the first one, he went thirty-one more times, all to study birds and learn from the islanders of New Guinea—how to raise children, to anticipate danger, to lead others, and many other things. Wouldn't this experience of academic life be more interesting and meaningful for the academic green pepper, which is now more and more deeply involved in the anxiety of the inner volume? When he began writing professional papers, he found that "I could hardly use the skills I had learned from my mother and from literature in English and other languages to convey ideas to a wide audience." For many scholars, this may not be a problem, but it led him to write short essays for the magazine in the late seventies on the human experience for the general public, which were not related to his gallbladder or bird profession. It was interesting to directly contribute to his beginning in the eighties when he began writing academic books for the general public, one was that the institution expressed its willingness to provide a five-year bonus to fund him to do whatever he wanted to do, which made him think that he should use this freedom in his career to do what was most important to him; second, the birth of the twin sons, which made him think of "creating a better world for children, and therefore need to start presenting the most important and worthy problems in the world to the public." And not just for gallbladder experts and new guinea bird experts." (Ibid., VIII) This is a reflection of his life experience and the most personal and realistic care of his academic career.
From the "Yali's question" to the determination to write for the masses, Diamond's work has a very prominent question-confusion-answer formulation, which is not only a narrative strategy to bring the reader closer to the public, but also a simple background to resist the use of abstract concepts and speculative speculation to establish a profound academic image. But there are also critics who have criticized this narrative style, such as anthropologist Jason Antrosio, who described the narrative of the work as a form of "academic porn" and argued that "unfortunately, his storytelling ability is so compelling that he appealed to a generation of college-educated readers." (See Guns, Germs, and Steel, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) This criticism doesn't actually need to be refuted, but it also shows that Diamond's historical narrative style does appeal to readers.
Guns, Germs and Steel discusses the great question of human history: Why have human societies developed so differently on different continents over the past ten thousand or so years? The subtitle of the book, "The Fate of Human Society," refers to both the different trajectories of the development of ethnic groups and the inequality of development— "Why did Europeans rather than Asians or Native Americans or Africans rise up and conquer most of the rest of the world in recent centuries?" Specifically, "Why is the distribution of wealth and power presented in the way it is today and not in other forms?" Why, for example, did it not be natives from the Americas, Africa or Australia who crossed the ocean to kill, conquer and exterminate, but Europeans and Asians? The answer, and further questioning, is: "In 1500 A.D., differences in technological and political development around the world directly contributed to the inequality of the modern world." Empires made of steel conquered or exterminated tribes that still used stone and wooden weapons. However, how did the world develop into what it was in 1500 AD? (Opening Remarks, XXVI) The racist explanation for this is that Europeans are smarter than other races, while Diamond's research shows that the different historical trajectories of human society on different continents are due to differences in natural environments on each continent: first, differences in the species of wild flora and fauna suitable for domestication, and secondly differences in continental axes and degrees of isolation, which explains processes such as agriculture originating independently in parts of the world, and agriculture brings metal tools, writing, Multifaceted developments, such as the central government, have enabled some ethnic groups to conquer others.
In the "opening statement" at the beginning of the book, the author details the main content and core ideas of each chapter of the book, providing a good introduction for the reader to grasp the basic content of the book more quickly and clearly, and it is not difficult for the reader to find that Diamond repeatedly expresses the core views and basic ideas of the book throughout the book. According to this interpretation, he is in fact trying to reveal not only the ultimate cause of the unequal fate of human society, which he asks, but also, in his view, the universal pattern of human historical development: "The very different rates of development of the continents constitute the most common pattern of human history, and this is the subject of this book. (Opening Remarks, XXXVIII) The jump from the ultimate cause to the universal pattern seems beyond the burden of the book. He himself was well aware of this, knowing that "geography does affect history, the question is how much it affects, and whether geography can explain the universal pattern of history." (Opening Remarks, XXXIX)
"The theme of this book is a historical question, but the way to answer it is science, especially the historical sciences of evolutionary biology and geology." Diamond, who studied medicine, was essentially a scientologist, thinking over "how to design a scientific method to study human history." (Opening Remarks, XL) Under the guidance of scientific thinking, the causal logic of the development and change of things has become the basic starting point of the author. "The Problem of Aalis" asks about causes, and historical causation is the starting point for all the study and argument of the book, as the author says, "The focus of this book is to explore the ultimate cause and to go back as far as possible to the historical causal chain." E.H. Carr said that "the study of history is the study of causes", and Liang Qichao also said that "explaining the reasons of facts is the most important of the various duties of historians". From the perspective of thinking methods, the existence of historical causes and effects seems to be objective and inevitable, and the problem is only how to dig it out. Diamond's job is to question the ultimate cause of history according to the chain of cause and effect, so he repeatedly emphasizes that the world of 1500 AD should be used as a proximate cause of the rise of Western society in modern times, and what happened in the world of 11000 BC is the moment and ultimate reason that determines the "fate of human society".
"Proximate cause" and "ultimate cause" are the core concepts that appear repeatedly in the book, so with the logic of causality comes the problem of historical contingency and inevitability. In response, Diamond explicitly said, "In short, the ability of Europeans to colonize Africa has nothing to do with the so-called ethnic differences between Europeans and Africans advocated by white racists." European colonization of Africa stemmed from a geographical and biogeographical serendipitous sense, specifically, the two continents had different areas, different continental axes, and different wildlife resources." (p. 443) From the book's central point and argument, it is logical to refute white racism by using contingency as one of its conclusions. But, also based on logic, contingency and necessity are contradictory, while necessity and determinism are the same. Conceptually, at least, there is a contradiction between the determinism of geography, which is the core concept of Diamond, and the contingency he affirms in his discourse. Diamond obviously also has a conscious sense of the criticism and opposition that may be aroused, such as some people who think that the inequality of fate is explained by determinism, so is it not to justify this inequality? He argues that "this objection confuses the explanation of the cause with the defence ... We try to understand something, often in order to change a certain outcome, not to repeat or perpetuate evil deeds." (Opening remarks, XXVIII) The key criticism is that his environmental determinism is in fact the identification of biological differences between ethnic groups, which he strongly refutes: "We oppose this racist interpretation not only because it is disgusting, but more importantly, it is fundamentally wrong to say so." There are indeed differences in the degree of technological development between ethnic groups, but there is no reliable evidence of differences in intelligence between ethnic groups. (XXXI) He could confirm from observations of New Guineans in life that they were actually smarter than Westerners, then. On this basis, we return to the "Yali problem": although the intelligence of new Guineans is not lower than that of Westerners, why did they not make a name for themselves? Thus back in the logical narrative of geographical determinism after the elimination of racism. Therefore, in the final "closing statement" of the book, he finally answers the "Question of Yali" as follows: "The races on all continents have very different histories, not because of people, but because of the environment. If the natives of Australia had reconciled their homeland with the natives of Eurasia in the late Pleistocene, I believe that those who occupy most of the land in the Americas and Australia today (let alone Eurasia) would be the indigenous Australians who multiplied on The Eurasian continent. (p. 473) In his view, the implication of this assumption is to logically prove that environmental determinism and racism are by no means the same thing.
The history of the environment in the history of human thought has always been inextricably linked to determinism and race theory. As Norman Davies, an expert on European history, points out, there are distinctly deterministic overtones in many descriptions of European environmental history. Montesquieu said in 1748 that "climate is the decisive factor in the first place", and then considered the climate of Europe to be unparalleled; for Montesquieu and his successors, Europe was synonymous with progress. (Norman Davis, "European History and Classical Era: Prehistory: 337 AD", translated by Liu Beicheng et al., CITIC Press, November 2021, p. 67) Although Diamond's work does not explain the problems that arise between these concepts from the perspective of intellectual history, he does not take them lightly. He knows that "mentioning these environmental differences will lead historians to accuse you of promoting an offensive 'geographical determinism.'" The label seems to have unpleasant connotations, such as the insignificance of human creativity, or the fact that humans are merely pawns at the mercy of climate, flora and fauna. In fact, these worries come from misunderstanding." (pp. 476-477) It is a bit simpler to say that it was a "misunderstanding", but his attitude and position are very clear. The historian and geographer Alfred W. Crosby agreed with Diamond's ideas and views, except that he used the concepts of "biological expansion" and "eco-imperialism" as a tool of interpretation, and his question and conclusion could even be said to be Diamondian: "Why did the superiority of Europeans make them the hegemon of the world?" Why did their superiority lead to the Industrial Revolution, whereas previous imperialist aggression never produced such a revolution, but rather more empires? Relying on brutality and gunfire, and more importantly, geographical and ecological good fortune, Western Europe has done just that. (Alfred Crosby, Biological Expansion of Eco-Imperialist Europe, 900-1900, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, 2004; translated by Zhang Chen, The Commercial Press, 2017, p. 5)
In the grand narrative of history and the ultimate inquiry, Diamond did not give up his dedication to micro-narratives and fieldwork, and this kind of exposition based on field experience and scientific expedition reports and other documents in the whole book constituted its rich content. Chapter XV discusses the history of Australia and the island of New Guinea, which was once connected to it, with indigenous Australians living a hunter-gatherer life and Australia being the only continent that has not independently developed means of food production. "So when discussing why human societies on different continents have different theories, Australia can be a key test subject." We'd like to discuss: Why did the Australian Aborigines maintain a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while the natives of nearby New Guinea mostly became farmers? (Opening Remarks, XLV) When Diamond was traveling in Australia, the extremely hot climate, desert landforms and other natural environments made him feel the difficulty of Australian Aboriginal reproduction in the local area, and at the same time made him realize that UM's use of a very unique natural environment and human society was a test of any explanation of interstate social difference theory. (p. 311) His final conclusion was: "Their society grew out of the peculiarities of the Australian environment. (p. 343) Here I recall my personal experience in 2000 and 2001 when I went to Australia twice to participate in the interviews and filming activities of the "Journey through the Land of Dreams" and "Journey of Discovery" by nearly 20,000 kilometers of self-driving cars. In Australia's northernmost Northern Territory, we examined the rock paintings and ecology of the Rolandi region, and also tasted the Aboriginal "eating" – a small purple-black fruit that grows on a bush, only the size of a fingertip, with a slightly sweet and sour taste, but the tongue soon became numb. Later, in the desert jungle near Alice Springs in central Australia, I saw an Aboriginal lady throw a lizard into the fire, and after a while pull out the blackened and hardened lizard from the fireworks and tear it open, and then open her mouth to eat it. This scene is almost the same as when we were young people in the countryside, grilling chickens and frogs in the field to eat. In addition to kangaroos, birds and lizards, in the past, the main food of Australian Aborigines was insects and plants, and it is said that there are dozens of insects they can eat, and the roots and fruits of many plants are their staple food. An indigenous uncle picked a few small yellow fruits for me to taste, and after eating them, I felt numb and spicy, and my tongue seemed to be a little swollen. In fact, today's indigenous "eating" is no longer dependent on wild fruits and lizards, watching them sit on the grass under the big trees skillfully eating knives to spread jam on bread and skillfully brew coffee, deeply feeling that "eating" is really an important indicator of human social and cultural evolution. I also wrote in the book: "One of the fatal points of Life for Australian Aborigines is that they have not learned to farm,...... But picking wild plants is an innate skill, and they can find edible bugs and plants in places where our humanities are very poor. (Li Xingyuan and Li Gongming, Crossing the Dreamy Land, Guangxi Normal University Publishing House, 2004, p. 49) It should be said that my experience of feelings and experiences at that time was quite consistent with Diamond's observations.
Aboriginal Australians roast lizards. Li Gongming in the desert near Alice Springs, Australia, 2000.
Diamond argues that while the book deals with history and prehistory, its themes are also politically important, as ethnic conflicts still take place in some of the world's turbulent regions today. (Opening Remarks, XXXVIII) From a macroscopic point of view, the depletion of the earth's resources, changes in the climate and environment and the epidemic of infectious diseases and other crises are more serious threats to the fate of human society, "Guns, Germs and Steel" can remind people to pay attention to the beneficial revelations brought by the big historical narrative in the changes in the environment. In his 1997 book, he argued that "disease has always been the most terrible killer for mankind and a key player in shaping history" (p. 191), which seems predictable today.
After the cover-up, I happened to see a bibliography of environmental and historical studies on the Internet, several of which appear to be connected to Guns: Edmund Russell's Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth (2011). John F. Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (2014); James L. A. Webb, The Guts of the Matter: A Global History of Human Waste and Infectious Intestinal Disease (2019); Timothy J. Le Cain's The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past (2017). From the perspective of content introduction, these works start from different research perspectives on environmental history, and all the questions they ask about socio-historical changes in the global perspective should be of great help to rethink Diamond's view of geographical environment history - for a more accurate grasp of the impact of the environment on the fate of human society, there are also more examples of the combination of micro and macro studies.
The earth is vast and undulating. Whether it is the west wind or the east wind, the well-being of human social progress still depends on human freedom, innovation and struggle.