Self-Assessment This Course Forced Me

¶ … Self-Assessment

This course forced me to ask myself the question: what sorts of historical forces propel human society? The answer, provided by one of the books read this semester is clear -- Guns, Germs, and Steel. In other words, violence, accidents of biology and geography, and superior technology explain more about how the world and politics works than ideology. For example, it was superior military technology such as their swordsmanship and cavalries that allowed the Spanish conquistadors to conquer the Incas. The morally arbitrary fact that White settlers had communicable illnesses that the native societies had not encountered was an additional aid to all Europeans in their conquests of the New World. Although the Europeans may have liked to think that it was God that ordained their triumph, Guns Germs and Steel shows that access to things like domesticated animals in the form of horses have far more influence than belief systems on the outcomes of human history.

Even today, geography is still a factor in forming the divide between those with money and resources and those without these things. This is important to remember when examining the plight of the developing world and not assigning moral blame to people who are not as affluent as people in the United States. In the U.S., wealth and prosperity is often equated with moral superiority and democracy, but the fact the U.S. has the political and economic strength is due to such factors as its protective shores, accidents of climate and human migration, not because of the superiority of the American democratic experiment.

For example, to apply some of the lessons of Guns, Germs, and Steel to today's society, one of the reasons the United States is so wealthy is that none of the major wars of the 20th century were ever fought on its soil. Also it is a larger nation than any of the European powers. Of course, Europe has tried to change this by banding together in the form of the European Community. This is not to say that politics has no affect at all on human life, but that sometimes historians can place too much emphasis on politics and not enough emphasis on anthropological factors.

Of course, this is only one perspective on history. But one of the most exciting things about reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, and the March of Folly is that they had such a clear perspective, unlike the textbook the Human Venture. Sometimes when a historian tries too hard to be objective, it is hard for the reader to make sense of a long narrative of historical facts, and it is better to read different biased perspectives and come to one's own conclusion as a student. Also, there is really no such thing as pure objectivity, as even to tell the story from the perspective of a person of the present, looking at the past carries within itself the tendency to see the conclusions of what occurred as inevitable.