Guns, Germs and Steel
I've been meaning to read Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel". Well, now I ran into a documentary based on the book on YouTube so I can sort of skip reading the book in good conscience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ
Seriously, everybody who's even a little bit interested in history and especially the driving forces behind history, this one is a must see. Or a must read. Whichever, just do one or the other.
Basically, Jared Diamond wanted to find out why some cultures advance faster than other and why they have such a great advantage over the other cultures, case in point: the Europeans. And he refused to believe that it had anything to do with race, because he had worked with native New-Guineans for years and knew that the supposed white supremacy was a load of BS. In the documentary he explains his theory in great detail: about how geography and biology have helped some cultures and hindered others and how these things have affected certain turning points in human history.
And talks about his thoughts on how we could help erase these inequalities between cultures to fight poverty and exploitation.
I think this suits best for those who don't have a problem thinking of human history in fairly materialistic terms... I don't, I've always thought that it's important to remember the material reasons behind historical events. Oh yeah, and stay away from the comments. Obviously, it's YouTube after all.
I'm also really glad that it brings up the great ancient South-African cultures that have been just passed by in the teaching of history for AGES. Yes, there were kingdoms and EMPIRES in South Africa, they built palaces and had trade that reached as far as China and Indonesia. The Europeans completely ignored the achievements of these societies, destroyed them and almost completely erased them from history, claiming instead that the archeological remains were signs of an earlier white empire in South Africa since obviously the black Africans weren't smart enough to reach such high stages of culture. Turns out they were, as was later proven.
The whole thing is frustrating, sad, and full of bullshit and people need to know more about this. I happened to be reading about South African history from pre-colonizing era just the other day and damn, it's fascinating and opens a whole new world of knowledge. The documentary only touches the roots and the surface of it all, hardly getting into the actual events. They only mention one conflict between the white settlers and the Zulus, for example, and in the documentary it almost sounds like the Zulus were crushed by the superior weaponry of the Dutch... which is partly true, but it didn't happen in one single incident. The Zulus were a huge power, they went on to fight with the Brits and initially caused horrible losses for the British army. They definitely weren't crushed easily, even with the 19th century technology. And that's only the Zulus; even though they were undoubtedly the greatest opponent, they definitely weren't the only one.
Also, there were several battles between the Portuguese and the predecessors of the Zulu empire, the smaller but great kingdoms of the Southern Africa. And before the advanced firearms, when all the Portuguese had were stuff like muskets and such, the whites didn't have a similar advantage and lost several times. There were also alliances between the Portuguese and the African kingdoms against other African kingdoms. Yeah, it's all so interesting. =3=
In some ways I'm all "well, I really shouldn't be so surprised about all of this" but on the other hand I am. Though mostly I'm just surprised I DIDN'T KNOW ANY OF THIS BEFORE. Goddamnit, none of this was taught at school. All we were taught about Africa was that the people there were primitive and Europeans subdued them and then all of Africa was a patchwork of colonies and now everything there is full of shit. No wonder people have a hard time understanding anything about Africa. And no wonder racists have such easy time telling people that Africans are stupid and primitive.
Seriously, everybody who's even a little bit interested in history and especially the driving forces behind history, this one is a must see. Or a must read. Whichever, just do one or the other.
Basically, Jared Diamond wanted to find out why some cultures advance faster than other and why they have such a great advantage over the other cultures, case in point: the Europeans. And he refused to believe that it had anything to do with race, because he had worked with native New-Guineans for years and knew that the supposed white supremacy was a load of BS. In the documentary he explains his theory in great detail: about how geography and biology have helped some cultures and hindered others and how these things have affected certain turning points in human history.
And talks about his thoughts on how we could help erase these inequalities between cultures to fight poverty and exploitation.
I think this suits best for those who don't have a problem thinking of human history in fairly materialistic terms... I don't, I've always thought that it's important to remember the material reasons behind historical events. Oh yeah, and stay away from the comments. Obviously, it's YouTube after all.
I'm also really glad that it brings up the great ancient South-African cultures that have been just passed by in the teaching of history for AGES. Yes, there were kingdoms and EMPIRES in South Africa, they built palaces and had trade that reached as far as China and Indonesia. The Europeans completely ignored the achievements of these societies, destroyed them and almost completely erased them from history, claiming instead that the archeological remains were signs of an earlier white empire in South Africa since obviously the black Africans weren't smart enough to reach such high stages of culture. Turns out they were, as was later proven.
The whole thing is frustrating, sad, and full of bullshit and people need to know more about this. I happened to be reading about South African history from pre-colonizing era just the other day and damn, it's fascinating and opens a whole new world of knowledge. The documentary only touches the roots and the surface of it all, hardly getting into the actual events. They only mention one conflict between the white settlers and the Zulus, for example, and in the documentary it almost sounds like the Zulus were crushed by the superior weaponry of the Dutch... which is partly true, but it didn't happen in one single incident. The Zulus were a huge power, they went on to fight with the Brits and initially caused horrible losses for the British army. They definitely weren't crushed easily, even with the 19th century technology. And that's only the Zulus; even though they were undoubtedly the greatest opponent, they definitely weren't the only one.
Also, there were several battles between the Portuguese and the predecessors of the Zulu empire, the smaller but great kingdoms of the Southern Africa. And before the advanced firearms, when all the Portuguese had were stuff like muskets and such, the whites didn't have a similar advantage and lost several times. There were also alliances between the Portuguese and the African kingdoms against other African kingdoms. Yeah, it's all so interesting. =3=
In some ways I'm all "well, I really shouldn't be so surprised about all of this" but on the other hand I am. Though mostly I'm just surprised I DIDN'T KNOW ANY OF THIS BEFORE. Goddamnit, none of this was taught at school. All we were taught about Africa was that the people there were primitive and Europeans subdued them and then all of Africa was a patchwork of colonies and now everything there is full of shit. No wonder people have a hard time understanding anything about Africa. And no wonder racists have such easy time telling people that Africans are stupid and primitive.