Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Adrian Goldsworthy is my personal favourite when it comes to Roman History. I must have read this book, "In the Name of Rome" a good 30+ times by now.

Don't laugh - Terry Deary, author of the "Horrible Histories" series of books. They're really great when you're 8 and you're beginning to be interested in history or if you're bored on the toilet.

 Ratbarf wrote:
Adrian Goldsworthy is my personal favourite when it comes to Roman History. I must have read this book, "In the Name of Rome" a good 30+ times by now.

Hmm might have to check that out then. Decently long?

Howard Zinn's "A people's history of America"

For some reason I find European history to be infinitely more interesting than American history. Partly because there's lot more there.

It's a good 300 pages or so, you can get it new for about 10 bucks.

If we're talking historical fiction then my favourite authors would be Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden. They have some amazing stuff between them.

Conn Iggulden I prefer to Cornwell, but he takes a bit too many liberties with actual historical fact.

His Mongolian series was absolutely amazing personally. Loved it to death. Cornwall's best books are the Anglo Saxon Chronicles. I like his Sharpe stuff too, but his medieval era stuff just interests me more.

 Ratbarf wrote:
His Mongolian series was absolutely amazing personally. Loved it to death. Cornwall's best books are the Anglo Saxon Chronicles. I like his Sharpe stuff too, but his medieval era stuff just interests me more.

Mongolian you say? Always did want to read something worthwhile on old Mr. Khan. Especially ever since I heard the 40 million death toll bandied about not to long ago.

First one is Wolf of the Plains. The series spans Temujin's childhood through Kublai's ascendency to the Gur-Khanhood.

Def gonna check that out, thanks!

Yes, the Conqueror series is absolutely awesome! Got me hooked into reading historical fiction not written for children. My favourite must be the first one.

I usually prefer non-fiction but so far I haven't been able to find any quality non-fiction on the Mongols that's without an agenda it seems.

Have you tried the Secret History of the Mongols?

Nyet. I'll peruse that one too. Thanks.

No problem!

 LordofHats wrote:
Gah! Why Seb whhhhyyyyy! Jared Diamond is good for one thing, and one thing only: His rather lengthy text Guns, Germs, and Steel, effectively communicates a myriad of global historical themes within a single text, which is a hard thing to come by. Unfortunately, his text contains numerous historical errors (as does his next book, which is actually even worse, showing a rather patent ignorance of historical scholarship on several subjects), a lack in appropriate focus, and perhaps most importantly his premise is inherently defeatist.

There are errors, but there's going to be in anything as ambitious as Guns, Germs & Steel. And when a book is as successful as it was, then it's going to attract the kind of fact checking that picks out those errors. But in looking at those errors in context of the whole work, they really don't dismiss the overall point.

And that point, ultimately, is a very powerful descriptor of much of history, and condensing something like that in a single text is an impressive effort.

He claims to have written the book to disprove racist theories about why the West has succeeded where others do not (the famous quote being "why do you have so much cargo and we do not"). And to disprove racist theories he falls on environmental determinism. The problem with environmental determinism? It's a racist theory that says westerns succeeded because their environments evolved them to be better than anyone else. Diamond invokes the theory (apparently in ignorance) throughout his book, defeating his own goal.

Not that we evolved to be better, because we haven't evolved any differently at all. But that circumstances caused the development of systems that led to our dominance.

Now, that's a thing that simply can't be denied. Someone explaining how Europe came to dominate the world can't be dismissed 'well it's racist to say European systems are better'... because the simple fact remained that Europe really did dominate the world. Something made that happen. The wealth and power of Europe is still vastly beyond Africa and Asia.

His answer is as non-racist as it gets - circumstance and need drove changes to systems.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
Then explain why Europe, ironically the geographically least likely to end up dominating the world, came out on top through the 19th and 20th centuries? As most global historians will tell you, China was ahead of everyone by leaps and bounds for centuries. Environmental factors fail to account for why China fell behind. Geographically, using an environmentally determinist model, China and the far east should have won (this is not to say environment doesn't matter but environmental determinism is the consideration of environmental factors to the ignorance of all others).

Europe was dominant before the 19th c....

The monolithic nature of the Chinese empire saw it stagnate compared to Europe, which in turn saw Europe expand and colonise, and rapidly outstrip the power of China.

This is one of the inherent flaws in environmental determinism that historians found through the mid-20th century leading to its rejection (that and evolution actually is integral to the theory as it originates among 'historical' Darwinists). The theory just doesn't work. He actually argues against it in his own book when germs destroy European attempts to colonize Africa but ignores that germs were an advantage to Europeans in the Americas. So on one hand, germs help Europeans conquer the Americas, but stop them from conquering Africa, and he never accounts for why Africa never succeeded (he actually probably would have benefited from reading Mosquito Empires as that book alone disproves his entire chapter on the colonization of Africa)?

Seb I wouls be very interested in that if you don't mind. Appreciated.

Not that we evolved to be better, because we haven't evolved any differently at all. But that circumstances caused the development of systems that led to our dominance.

This is what Diamond tries to say. My point is that his argument ultimately boils down to an old racist theory (which he apparently didn't realize because I don't think he did much historical research). Diamond is as a result considered one of the first Neo-Environmental Determinists which is basically just a way of saying someone who subscribes to Environmental Determinism but ignores the racism.

Someone explaining how Europe came to dominate the world can't be dismissed 'well it's racist to say European systems are better'...

It can be dismissed on the sole basis that his explanation is both inadequate, inaccurately supported, and historically false. That he ironically attempts to disprove racist theories by unwittingly falling back into an old racist theory is just icing on the cake.

This is an except from a man named James Blaunt who wrote an article I think a year after Guns, Germs, and Steel came out;

The environmentalistic arguments advanced by Diamond and Landes need to be looked at critically, and I will do so in this essay.[1] It also merits asking why these arguments -- most of them very traditional -- are, today, the stuff of best-selling books. The answer lies in the long-standing and happy marriage between environmentalism and Eurocentrism. It was a marriage, so to speak, made in heaven. In the days of Ritter, and before him Montesquieu and Herder, most European intellectuals took it for granted that a Christian god would favor his own people, Christian Europeans, providing them with racial, cultural, and environmental superiority over all others (Ritter 1865; Montesquieu 1949; Herder 1968). Environmental determinism in those days was not seen as atheism and materialism: It was simply one of God's strategies. Later, overtly religious explanations became unpopular, and Europe's (or the West's) superiority was attributed mainly to race and environment, held jointly to have created a uniquely progressive culture. Now racism has been rejected, and Eurocentric history stands on just the two legs: environment and culture. But culture itself is problematic. If there is no appeal to underlying religious or racial causes, can it be argued convincingly that Europe, long ago, somehow acquired cultural qualities that led it to develop faster and farther than every other society? It is conventional to argue this way, but we notice that historians cannot agree among themselves as to whether the causes of Europe's (supposed) precocity are mental, social, economic, technological, or something else -- within culture. Therefore, Eurocentric history needs environmental determinism as much today as ever it did before, and so the doctrine remains influential and popular.

Now as you can tell, Blaunt is critical of traditional Eurocentrism. His article pretty much destroyed Diamond's book on the geographic front. Blaunt himself is not a historian but a Geographer, and tore Diamond's entire narrative of events a new one by pointing out numerous 'false' assumptions he presents in his book that most geographers would realize are wrong based on simple world maps. Diamond drew distinctions between environmental factors where none existed and according to Blaunt show'd a 'marvelous' habit of failing to understand basic geographic features in Asia and the Americas. (Perhaps by irony, or tragedy, Diamond is now a professor of geography).

because the simple fact remained that Europe really did dominate the world. Something made that happen.

No one has ever disputed that... Well except for Historians specializing in China and India who like to tell a slightly different story from everyone else sometimes. The thing that gets disputed is that Diamond failed to explain it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
Europe was dominant before the 19th c....

The argument can be made but I didn't want to get boggled down in a debate over when China fell behind and just picked a date that assuredly has Europe ahead

The monolithic nature of the Chinese empire saw it stagnate compared to Europe, which in turn saw Europe expand and colonise, and rapidly outstrip the power of China.

Yep and environmental happenstance is inadequate to explain that.

It helps explain the vastly different nature of each colonisation. In the Americas you have Europeans populating areas that were often completely depopulated by disease, but in Africa and Asia you see the Europeans attempting to control local populations.

Except it doesn't. His own ignorance of South and Central American history undid that entire section of the book. He writes that Europeans suffered disease in Africa and that it stopped them from colonizing the area effectively while he subscribes to the complete myth that Native Americans were wiped out in mass by small pox and other such disease (a massive overstatement of what actually happened, unless all those Indian wars for 200 years were just guys in costumes). Spanish colonial power was hinged on controlling native populations and Spanish colonies in effect replaced their entire population every twenty years because malaria kept killing people.

If you don't believe me, here's Uncle Tom Tomlinson who pretty much pointed out this exact same thing:

Such a viewpoint over-simplifies a large body of complex human experience, since much of the history of conquest, settlement and exploitation in the modern world is in fact concerned with what might be termed ‘Eurasian civil wars’ - from the Neolithic invasion of Europe, via the activities of Gengis Khan and his successors, to the fall of Constantinople, the arrival of European armed traders in the East in the sixteenth century, and full-blown European imperialism after 1750. The European empires of conquest in Asia, especially those of the British in India and the Dutch in Java, were not based on clear technological superiority in armaments, nor on the spread of disease, but they spawned a sense of ‘otherness’ and an attitude of cultural and racial superiority at least as intense as that aroused by colonisation in the New World. In Africa, too, European imperial troops (often of African or Indian origin) exploited only a limited and short-lived technical superiority in weaponry that lasted from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Like me he also mentions that Diamond appears ignorant of nearly all historical works into these subjects written in the past 50 years. All the factors that he claims stopped colonization in Africa, were present in the Americas, especially the Carribean. Yet, European colonization in the Carribean was vastly more successful. His book completely fails to account for the conquests of India and Asia where technology and disease were not factors.

But one instance of over-reach doesn't dismiss the basics of the theory.

The basics of the theory aren't what I'm arguing against. No one disputes that environment is important. I'm arguing against Diamond's methodology which is based on assumptions, poor research, ignorance, and produce a false conclusion. He hand waves away culture as an environmental result (in complete ignorance of 200+ years of research on the very subject), gives Europeans credit for technological innovations that were not theirs several times,

A very good question for a book like GGaS, is why did China never develop mass fire arms? They diffenitives knew of gunpowder by the 1st century, and yet, never produced a mass weaponization of the technology? According to Jared Diamond, Europeans just, magically, had the idea by the virtue of being in Europe. This is a gross over simplification of technological advancement, European advancement, and cannot be answered by environment. Diamond would says China's geography stagnated their progress, yet they found gunpowder first? Built the first cross bows, and were constructing structures Europeans wouldn't manage to equal for a least another 500 years. He gives a brief nod to the banning of merchants but go ask a Chinese historian how that banning worked out (it didn't, and that he didn't notice this is both the result of him ignoring politics and trade and not doing any research because he thought environment answered everything).

You're confusing 'reasons for what did happen' with 'dictating what must have happened'.

So does Diamond. In both his books actually. Its completely contradictory with his own introduction in the first 20 pages of his book. That he ignores culture, trade, and politics and instead focuses solely on environments is itself a supposition of predestination even if he likes to pretend its not. To Jared Diamond, where you are determines everything that happens afterwards.

Listening to Jared Diamond is like listening to Glenn Beck. Sure he has an interesting idea here and there and sometimes he says things really insightful, but he's a total hack and no one should really be listening to him in the first place.

Less encompassing than "Guns, Germs, and Steel" but much better written and fact checked I'll put forward "Plagues and Peoples" by William H. McNeill. On the surface it's merely about the interaction of human populations with disease epidemics, but it does get a bit into human interactions with other humans as well. Its a nice mix of biology, history, epidemiology, and anthropology,

You are all small time. Only Thucydides is big time.

Its only big time if your not concerned with any that happened in the last 2000 years

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
Less encompassing than "Guns, Germs, and Steel" but much better written and fact checked I'll put forward "Plagues and Peoples" by William H. McNeill. On the surface it's merely about the interaction of human populations with disease epidemics, but it does get a bit into human interactions with other humans as well. Its a nice mix of biology, history, epidemiology, and anthropology,

Read that back when I was first daeling with Sir Diamond and it is very good, covering Diamond's 'germs' content much more accurately and convincingly than Diamond did. Tiss a good read indeed.

Responding to Guns, Germs, and Steel, was essentially my senior year project . W.H. McNeill and Diamond have been going back and forth over these issues since Diamond's book released (and they still are) and their response to one another appear in Forbes if anyone is interested in hunting them down. That said, William McNeill is a much more sympathetic voice to Diamond's argument than I XD

 LordofHats wrote:

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
Less encompassing than "Guns, Germs, and Steel" but much better written and fact checked I'll put forward "Plagues and Peoples" by William H. McNeill. On the surface it's merely about the interaction of human populations with disease epidemics, but it does get a bit into human interactions with other humans as well. Its a nice mix of biology, history, epidemiology, and anthropology,

Read that back when I was first feeling with Sir Diamond and it is very good, covering Diamond's 'germs' content much more accurately and convincingly than Diamond did. Tiss a good read indeed.

Responding to Guns, Germs, and Steel, was essentially my senior year project . W.H. McNeill and Diamond have been going back and forth over these issues since Diamond's book released (and they still are) and their response to one another appear in Forbes if anyone is interested in hunting them down. That said, William McNeill is a much more sympathetic voice to Diamond's argument than I XD

That I didn't know I'll have to look for that, sounds interesting.

Yeah. If I can give Jared Diamond any positive credits, it's that he is more than willing to engage the opinion's of others to his work openly and respectfully. So there's that

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
Its only big time if your not concerned with any that happened in the last 2000 years

Actually he is pretty big time even if you are. Lets see if you write anything that in 2000 years (or so) is still read with as much frequency. We'll meet back here in 2000 years and compare notes. Not that anything important has happened since then, so I doubt that the next 2000 years will be that interesting either.

Also, what were you doing 'feeling Mr. Diamond' Lordofhats? Sounds inappropriate.

I mean I understand how important he is as a person, but it's not terribly interesting stuff to read, to me at least. I don't know many people who pick him up outside of required reading in college. I usually find him on people's bookshelves next to Shakespeare, Plato, Dante's Inferno, Homer, and anything else people proudly display but often haven't read. Often with the "Used Books" sticker still attached.

 Ahtman wrote:
Also, what were you doing 'feeling Mr. Diamond' Lordofhats? Sounds inappropriate.

Maybe it is

Moving back to the topic, if we are going to include historical fiction I must make a claim for the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey%E2%80%93Maturin_series

Simon Sebag-Montefiore writes some very excellent stuff on Stalin and Russia in general.

I also have great admiration for the works of Andrew Lambert, and David Stevenson.

If anyone mentions Jay Winter in a positive light however, that person is automatically my enemy.