giselle wrote:I agree with JD that smallpox and other Euro disease devastated New World populations but I think that malaria and other tropical diseases that are not linked to Europeans have played a very significant role in maintaining the development disparity that we have witnessed over the last 500 years and, I suspect, for centuries before that. This disparity would exist even if Columbus had never sailed.

From the poking around I did on the web, I have to agree with Giselle's statement. Here is what I found on Wiki:
Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of deaths being young children. Plasmodium falciparum, the most severe form of malaria, is responsible for the vast majority of deaths associated with the disease.[10] Malaria is commonly associated with poverty, and can indeed be a cause of poverty[11] and a major hindrance to economic development.

In several of the posts in this thread the idea comes up that smallpox is more deadly than malaria accounts for the more imediate and dramatic impact on world development. I do think this must be the case. I think the little blurb I posted above supports this idea. Malaria doesn't totally wipe out a group like smallpox; rather it creates and or maintains the poverty of a group. In keeping with JD's hypothethis: Malaria prevents people from engaging in activities that contribute to technological advancement or in other words keeps them in poverty - a state that prevents energy expenditure on anything more than meeting essential needs.

DW wrote:By the way, I found that this chapter didn't seem entirely necessary. I think Diamond had pretty much made these points in earlier chapters. Maybe it was good to wrap up what he left hanging at the end of Part One, but it seems he could have done the job more quickly. I don't have any bones to pick with him regarding his major conclusion that when the hemispheres did "meet" finally, the outcome was fore-ordained.

Boy, do I agree. On the whole I think this book is way too long. I think Diamond make his case rather quickly for the impact and importance of geography on world development and then gets carried away with defending it.

DWill wrote: Diamond has a chapter on Africa, and as you can probably imagine, he has an explanation for Africa's falling behind, after having such a huge headstart as the cradle of mankind. Maybe malaria was an obstacle that in areas more favored with the right mix of domesticatable animals and plants, would have been overcome.

I have an issue with JD's 'headstart' idea -- generally, he uses the progress of technology as a measure of the advance of a society (and I have some qualms about this too), but if one takes technological progress as a valid measure then we have to consider how such progress occurs. I think we could find many cases where technology is acquired and adapted quickly, in mere years or decades, and cases where technology has 'leapfrogged' and societies benefited by acquiring an advanced technology without having adopted the intermediate technology. Also, often we are not dealing with technology in its pure form but rather the application of that technology -- so the advantage of a headstart with a technology could be eliminated by relatively fast application of that technology by another group. Finally, the efficacy of a technology will depend on the extent of 'supports' for the application of the technology, for example, education, service infrastructure etc. So, I think the idea of a 'headstart' giving a particular group an advantage is questionable. The advantage could fade away almost overnight and the tables could be turned.

With regards to malaria, a couple points. Historically, malaria is responsible for death and sickness in much of the tropical world and parts of the temperate world. It is still responsible for widespread illness and its limitation to sub-saharan Africa as a killer is more recent. Malaria is somewhat opportunistic in that one's general health standard makes a big difference when it comes to recovery chances ... so in that respect in not only 'causes' poverty but poverty causes malaria, its a vicious circle. This is one reason that outside intervention, even in billions of dollars, has made relatively little difference ... the cycle of malaria and poverty feeds upon itself and interventions, even massive interventions, fail to interupt the cycle. I don't know if one can compare the severity of diseases by body count alone, I think we have to look at the preponderance of factors to make a fair assessment. With respect to to the availability of domestic animals, this may well be a factor because the efficiency of food production will influence the availability and cost of food and hence nutritional intake and ability to fight infection including malaria. I am doubtful about the development of resistance to malaria, perhaps this is true to a limited extent, but I'd have to read upon it more.

We don't have a thread for the 'epilogue' so I will insert one comment here. JD takes an interesting direction in the epilogue by discussing the question of the future of history as a science. I think he makes some good arguments but I am troubled by his basic idea that science has set the bar and that other areas of research and thought are only validated if they can be validated 'scientifically'. I would propose that history is better off being treated as a social science, outside the circle of natural science, and that sound methodology and validation of historical studies will be found within the frame of social science.

Those are great points, Giselle. I want to ask what is the true significance of a headstart to Diamond. It isn't my understanding that he thinks the headstart (i.e, in food production followed inevitably by technology) is any permanent advantage that enables the early starter to always maintain the competitive advantage. I think he sees that the lower levels of development that exist at any given time have made some societies vulnerable to opportunistic stronger societies. He says that given enough time, the New World societies conquered by the Spaniards might have become advanced enough to better repel such an attack (although if they lacked powerful germs of their own, probably not). The point is that everything occurred in relation. If a country was a hundred years ahead of another at a given time, that could be bad news for it, even if two hundred years later that country had been able to catch up.

You are really well informed about the malaria plague in Africa. I can't quite tell whether you see malaria in terms of geographic determinism, as Diamond might. Is there something inherent in malaria that makes it, above all other diseases, the worst? I can't help thinking that given different political conditions there and in the wealthy nations, the disease would not be the scourge that it still is.

I see what Diamond has been doing all along in the book as applying a scientific approach. Even when he isn't citing scientific research, his method is scientific in the broad sense. That's why I'm not bothered by his history as science. Although history will never be able to reach the empirical certainties of physical science, by using the structured methods of science, we can perhaps establish some general truths that escaped us when we were just winging it.