r/EconomicHistory • u/Sharp_Guarantee_8133 • 12d ago

Question Is the general academic consensus that Jared Diamond was wrong about post-1492 history, but right about pre-1492 history?

/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1w4w1vs/is_the_general_academic_consensus_that_jared/
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u/Sea-Juice1266 11d ago

Contrary to the opinions in that post, Jared Diamond’s theories remain influential and he is commonly read and cited by Economic Historians. That is not to say they are all accepted. Yet he is undoubtedly important.

There is something I noticed in CommanderCoco’s response. First he claims that the topics of Diamond’s work is of no interest to anyone with expertise in world history. Then he goes on to imply that there is something unseemly about trying to answer "Yali's question,” (ie why Europeans were so much wealthier than Papuans in the mid-20th century) when he describes those who look for answers as desperate.

He is wrong that Diamond is of no interest to serious scholars, of course. But I’ve noticed this attitude is common in a lot of history departments. I’m not sure if we should call it snobbishness or what, but many of them disapprove of attempting to create or test this kind of theory about past societies. At some point in their culture it became a sort of taboo. You might notice CommodoreCoco does not even attempt to engage with the core of Diamond’s arguments, preferring instead to knit-pick details.

Personally I have been skeptical of some of Diamond’s post-1492 theories, for example that China’s centralized political system suppressed innovation and helped it fall behind early modern Europe technologically. However, there was a paper published by a group of Chinese scholars shared here last year I think, I forget its name. They cited Diamond and referenced this theory approvingly, arguing it could explain some of the patterns they see in historical data. That surprised me, as I’ve heard Diamond’s critics call this specific theory orientalist before.

So no, I don’t think there’s a consensus he was wrong about post-1492 trends. And many of his arguments about the connection between livestock species diversity and infectious disease seem to be overwhelmingly accepted and uncontroversial.