Three hundred years ago something big happened. The western world began to look at the world with new scientific eyes. There was a problem with this, though. As scientists began to classify the world into different categories, they also began to divide the human species into sub-species. Because of this an authoritative justification of slavery and colonialism happened. People have suffered because of this for over three hundred years. And while many people back in the day argue that the dominance of Europeans was because its race was “superior” to those of Africa, China, the Americans, etc. The truth is that their power really came from luck.
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Script:
In 1997 a man named Jared Diamond published a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel. The book was inspired by a question that a New Guinean man named Yali asked him. One day Yali asked Diamond, “why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Diamond spends his book answering this question. He details evidence that points to the environment rather than biological differences between different groups of people, for their success. He goes back over 13,000 years to discover why the west rather than the east, Africa, or the Native Americans, have dominated the world. The argument he points to is the European dominance is a result of opportunity and necessity rather than any kind of particular ingenuity. That there was a chain of events that led them to the position they are in.
If we go back far enough into history we can look at these developments. The road to such inequality began when people stopped being hunter-gatherers and started farming. When this happens, people don’t have to spend all their time looking for food to eat and instead can plant, harvest, and store a surplus of food. With enough food stored, people can have free time and do stuff like build cities, develop states, and consolidate those states into empires.
It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, however. A number of factors must be in your favor in order to make the transition from hunting-gathering to farming. First you have to have crops that are high in nutrients which can also be stored. And you need a climate that is dry enough that will allow storage. You also need animals that can be domesticated by humans and used to help with the farming process. When you have control of these things, you can make extra food which can be used to feed lots of people who can grow the population, learn other things, and innovate socially and technologically. At this point societies start to become hierarchical and political structures develop that lead to nations being built.
Another key in explaining that dominance of Europe is disease. And animal domestication had a lot to do with this. Many of the diseases that have wiped out enormous populations in Europe and Asia are a consequence of people living in close proximity with animals. Diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza all come from living close to animals. Over hundreds of years exposure to these diseases have allowed Eurasians to develop resistances toward them. As they traveled they also took these diseases wherever they went – and when they came into contact with people who have never been exposed to them, the deaths of millions resulted.
Europeans were able to adopt the animals and plants of Southwest Asia, and their agricultural techniques over thousands of years ago. By 1000 CE pretty much all of Europe had adopted the plants and methods of Southwest Asia.
Because societies in Eurasia were able to produce a crop surplus and develop cities, people were able to specialize in skills outside of basic survival. People like craftsmen and scribes made Eurasian societies grow economically and technologically much faster than hunter-gatherers. These advantages eventually led the people of one part of Eurasia – Europe – to conquer the world using technological advances like guns and steel.
Even today as the world has entered a more globalized era, the difference in wealth and power is huge between people who have descended from western Europeans and everyone else. In fact if you look at a list of the richest people in the world, the majority are people who have descended from western Europeans. Most of us don’t stop to think about it, but the consequences of geographical and environmental luck have had a lasting impact on each and every one of our lives today.
