Unit 2: GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL

Recap:

In this unit, I learned much about the reasons behind why there are rich poeple in some parts of the world, and poor people in other parts of the world. It all comes from the theories of Dr. Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel. His overall message is that a society's success is based on their geographic luck. That is, those civilizations that settled in areas with good raw materials for farming were those that became more successful more quickly and had time to develop skills that would advance them further, such as writing, bulding, weaponry, and so on. Another contributing factor concerning geography was isolation. Those civilizations with bad resources that were separated form other civilizations by ocean or uncrossable terrain would not receive the aid they would need to advance. In fact, when explorers eventually came to new lands, they often brought with them diseases that wiped out the natives. When that didn't happen, they conquered the natives and/or slaughtered them. Needless to say, the current situation in the world can be traced back to where the ancestors of civilizations settled in the world, and how successful or otherwise they became, due to the effects of guns, germs and steel.

Revisit:

Observing the current situation in Africa, I researched the South-Central African country of Zambia. It is currently quite poor, with roughly a 50% unemployment rate, and a fairly poor economy that is certainly not ready to reduce poverty at any significant rate. Although the source of this poverty is rather unclear, it may stem from the fact that Zambia was not an independent nation until 1964. Previously, it was ruled by the U.K. since 1923. Before this time, it was controled by the South Africa Company since 1891. Clearly it has not had a considerable ammount of time to set up its own, independent goverment, much less establish programs that would permanelty help stablilize the economy and drastically reduce poverty... And as far as I can tell, there is no word of outside help to their situation... This seems to be a common (and unfortunate)trait among contries in central Africa- they spent most of their lives as colonies and now they do not have the strength to live well on their own. Information above taken from pbs.com's Journey to Planet Earth Country Profile for Zambia.

On a positive note, the CIA World Factbook says that Zambia's economy has been getting stronger in recent years, a good sign for this poor country. Also, acording to plan-uk.org, the situation is beginning to get better for Zambia, but many of the people have not yet benefited. This site is encouraging, though, because it proves that there are, in fact, efforts to relieve the situation in poor countries like Zambia!

Reflect:

I think the impact of geographic luck is certainly unfortunate, but also somewaht random. after all, if Africa had been the land rich in resources and Europe and North America without them, it could've been Zambia as a leading world power and the U.S. as a struggling country. This is a tough scenario to iamgine, but if Jared Diamond's theory is right (which is seems to be), then was as possible as the current situation in the world. By this logic, I think that everyone should pitch in to give aid to stuggling third-world coutnries (especially in Africa). Perhaps this will become mroe common as knowledge gets out that we could've been them if we had settled in their place.